Aromatic bitters tend to be a mix of baking spice, licorice, fruit, and bitter notes. While some brands will push one of these aspects to the fore, Angostura bitters keep things pretty balanced. Clove, nutmeg, allspice, cardamom, and a touch of cinnamon represent the baking spice angle, and while there’s a recognizable licorice note, it doesn’t dominate. A sweet and sour tamarind-esque fruit flavor shows up next, with a woody, slightly bitter flavor rounding things out
Tonic Water was originally devised to help prevent Malaria back in the early 1800s. Trouble was, it tasted awful, so oftentimes Gin would be added to help mask the bitter quinine taste that makes tonic water what it is. But the resulting combination is so much more than the sum of its parts.
A super interesting development in the American whiskey world is spirit being made at one particular distillery, MGP of Indiana, that is fresh picked off the still and exported across the US to be aged and eventually bottled as a semi-homeade whiskey. With a handful of these producers around, it’s been fascinating to try whiskey that all began at one place, yet ended up tasting totally different as uniquely sourced oak barrels and vastly different climates play their part.
Denni again, howdy! Last time I chatted about flexing my creative muscles behind the bar, but sometimes instead of doing all the heavy lifting myself, I like to lift a page from a bar's book, literally. Reproducing or improving upon a delicious bar find is our favorite drinking game.
Hosting dinner parties is one of my favorite things, coming up with the food menu and then finding cocktails to pair with it. I tend to make appetizers rich in flavor, so a light and lovely sparkling cocktail that cuts through the richness is a perfect match.
Established in Venezuela in 1959, the Ron Diplomatico distillery nestles between the heart of the countries sugar cane production and a national park that provides the purest of water. Renowned for the quality of their rum, we loved finding out they are equally focused on creating sustainable jobs, community social and health care programs, and have implemented an ecological treatment process to turn waste water into sugar cane fertilizer.