The best drinks I tried — and didn’t write about — this year
Besides gifts and cookies and awkward family arguments, the holiday season also tends to bring reflections. As the year draws to a close, my thoughts drift toward accomplishments I’ve made over the past 12 months, my mistakes, my regrets, my triumphs — and the cocktails I drank but never wrote about. (Shut up, it’s true.) Over the past year, I had the chance to try some truly unique drinks, and while many of them made it into this column, I couldn’t quite fit some of them (especially the quirky ones) in. Now’s my chance, with this salute to all the things I’ve loved but didn’t get around to paying attention to until right now. (Well, all the drinkable things, anyway.)
Fitting, given all the globetrotting I did in 2008, that one of my favorite cocktails of the year hails from Poland (I’m told it’s even something of a “national drink”). The Charlatka is simple and refreshing — just apple juice and vodka — but damn is it good. I’d never much considered apple juice as a mixer; I’ve always associated it with my friends’ kids. Highland Kitchen (150 Highland Avenue, Somerville, 617.625.1131) is the first place I encountered apple juice in a cocktail, and their Charlatka ($7) is perfect: crisp, cold, and smooth. This might be my new flu-season liquid medicine.
This year, I also discovered dark rum. Not that I’d never tasted it before, of course, but it’d never been my go-to spirit. A spring trip to the Caribbean introduced me to the glory of dark rum mingled with fruits and nutmeg. In the wintry months, I find that whenever I need to de-stress and daydream about vacations, a dark rum cocktail takes me immediately back to the beach. The Syrian Spiced Punch ($9.50) — a Mount Gay rum, ginger, and grapefruit cocktail — at Casablanca (40 Brattle Street, Cambridge, 617.876.0999) is sprinkled with Baharat, a wonderful Middle Eastern spice blend that’s typically made with some combination of cinnamon, allspice, cardamom, nutmeg, and black pepper. It’s usually used in meat dishes, but it gives incredible dimension to a cocktail, especially one made with dark rum, which boasts a sweet spice of its own.
My love affair with rum continued at Barbara Lynch’s much-buzzed-about watering hole Drink (348 Congress Street, Boston, 617.695.1806), where bartender Ben Sandrof poured me a teensy taste of Old Monk rum from India. Sipping Old Monk is, as I giddily discovered, like drinking cool toffee. I begged Sandrof to make me a cocktail with this liquid magic, and he did: an Old Monk Daiquiri ($10), made with Old Monk and fresh lime juice. It was easily the best daiquiri I’ve ever had, thanks to the rich, sinful notes of the rum. I suspect Hemingway himself might agree.
Drink also mixes up another highlight, the Fort Point ($10), a variation on my all-time favorite cocktail, the Manhattan. I’ve
been drinking Manhattans since I was old enough to legally imbibe (and a little bit before that, too — ahem). My grandfather, who passed away long before I was born, used to drink perfect Manhattans (that’s a Manhattan made with equal parts sweet and dry vermouth), and my parents have always toasted Grandpa Dan’s birthday with his favorite beverage. I liked the sentiment, so I grew to like the drink. The Fort Point, Drink’s signature cocktail created by bar czar John Gertsen, is a derivative of a derivative of the Manhattan (the Red Hook, created in New York bar Milk & Honey) made with Old Overholt rye, Benedictine, and Punt e Mes vermouth, served over hand-cracked ice. A Luxardo maraschino cherry comes on the side, an optional garnish. It’s a mellower, more sophisticated version of the official Alterman family cocktail, with the Benedictine adding pleasant hints of herbs.
Another masterful version of this cherished cocktail can be found at Audubon Circle (838 Beacon Street,Boston, 617.421.1910). Chef Noah Elsass, also a faithful Manhattan drinker, created a vanilla-and-cinnamon-infused bourbon for the Audubon Manhattan ($10), which is sweet and warm on the tongue, perfectly spiced, and full of brown-sugary goodness. The infusion actually came about on a whim: Elsass uses fresh vanilla for Audubon’s chevre cheesecake and, typical of a chef’s waste-not sensibilities, he didn’t want to toss the leftover vanilla husks. So he tossed them into a bottle of bourbon and waited. Lucky for me and my fellow Manhattan devotees.
I’m still searching for local versions of some other beloved cocktails I sampled in different cities this year. I’ve been trying desperately to replicate a Cherry Fizz to which I got addicted in Beijing (where the cocktail culture is young but blossoming fast), as well as a sweet green tea and whiskey drink that sounds atrocious but was fantastically bizarre. And my mouth still waters over a blueberr-and-cardamom cocktail I sampled at Chicago’s Indian/Latin fusion restaurant Vermilion. All over the world and right here at home, 2008 was a great year for cocktails; now I’m very much looking forward to what 2009 brings to my glass.
