At last month’s Manhattan Cocktail Classic, a cowboy-hat wearing Dave Pickerell, Master Distiller for Hillrock Estate Distillery, gave me a “C’mere, kid!” crook of the head, beckoning me to something secret seeming. He pulled from his tuxedo jacket’s breast pocket a small, glass bottle full of an amber-hued liquid and grinned.
Best Sips
With Brooklyn Uncorked mere days away (woo hoo!), I’m finding myself unendingly thirsty for local grapes. Over some Long Island fluke I’d picked up at the Southold Fish Market on my way back to NYC, I popped a Macari 2012 Sauvignon Blanc, which was great with my butter-seared fish with its crazy, straight-back notes of zingy lime, grapefruit, and tart apples.
It’s time for one of my all-time favorite wine events of the year, Brooklyn Uncorked – a sipping and swirling smorgasbord of Long Island’s fab vinified offerings. But this year in particular is pretty special because it marks a moment in Long Island wine country history – the 40th Anniversary. A glass raised to that.
For those who decry, “Vodka has no personality! Meh!” the good folks at Prohibition Distillery beg to differ, and have the proof (80%) in their pretty, retro-botanical, stamped glass bottle.
Giants have a funny ability (or, perhaps, curse?) for becoming oddly invisible–or, at least, not considered closely. Especially if that giant is a well-known, massively distributed spirit in a land where the trend is that the tinier in production and more homespun the story, the more imbibers want to sip it and hear the tale told. But everybody starts somewhere, and when you know the story of Bacardi – a name synonymous with Puerto Rican rum – it might surprise you to learn that it began on a different island entirely.
When Eleanor and Albert Leger left behind careers in software and teaching chemistry, respectively, they bought a farm in Vermont and discovered something special: the apples of the North Country.
Trying to describe Red Hook, Brooklyn’s Cacao Prieto is a tricky task – is it a distillery? A chocolate making wonderland with a heavenly shop full of organic confectionery treats? A science lab and farming-innovation think tank?
El Buho Mezcal is pretty easy to love–a little like drinking bottled smoke, but with a sweetness and earthy quality laced in that balances the whole act in your mouth.
The mash bill of this young whiskey (its aging is all of 18 minutes) combines local corn, spelt, and malted wheat, and it’s meant to be a receptacle of a spirit – for whiskey lovers who don’t dig vodka, it’s the equivalent of a base-spirit blank canvas. It’s soft, fruity, and creamy in your mouth, with just a little bit of sweetness that lingers subtly on your tongue from the corn.
When Monte Sachs wants to do something, he doesn’t horse around.
It’s no easy feat to be a show-stopper on a crowded liquor store shelf, be it boutique or big box. But then again, there really isn’t anything else like Jack from Brooklyn’s Sorel liqueur.
