(EE-craftiness: part of a heart garland.)

I love Valentine’s Day.  I view it as an ideal holiday, and strenuously disagree with those who consider it to be over-commercialized, depressing, and all the rest.  Valentine’s is a bright spot in in the otherwise desolate month of February (at least in the Northeast).  Even before the days of EE, I was always happy to invite a pretty lady to be my valentine (and in my limited experience, ladies always enjoy being a valentine).  What could be better than fine dining, and perhaps the exchange of an extravagant gift or two, with someone whose company I enjoy?  Share the love, that’s what I say.

(Only on Valentine’s Day will your friends give you this card.  Hopefully.)

This year, EE and I somewhat reinterpreted our traditional Valentine’s celebration: we threw a cocktail party!

We hosted about 30 guests, a mix of singles and couples, for the express purposes of Valentining and having cocktails.  The goal was not to provide dinner - it was to provide an extra oomph of glizt and glam (and maybe even gossip and drama) to whatever evening people may or may not have planned for themselves.

In preparation for this momentous event, I went to work creating some drinks that fit the occasion.  The challenges/criteria were:

• 3 colors – EE often thinks in colors, so we determined the need for a red drink, a pink drink, and a white drink.
• Glassware – we only have so many of each type of glass, and wanted to avoid plastic.  The drinks had to spread across tumblers, stemmed wine, and stemmed cocktail glasses.
• Flavors – needed more than one type of flavor profile for a range of drinkers.

The results were (bearing their Valentine names):

Passion

Color: Red

Glass: Tumbler

Flavor area: Bitter

Ingredients

1 Tequila

3/4 Campari

3/4 Blood Orange Italian Soda (I bought this at Whole Foods)

1/3 Sweet Vermouth

drop Orange bitters

A muddled cherry (buy the frozen ones)

Muddle the cherry, stir vigorously with ice and all ingredients except the soda.  Strain into serving pitcher, add soda and stir gently.  At the party, I mixed batches of these in a pitcher, which we put out with an ice bucket and the correct glassware.

Blush

Color: Pink

Glass: Cocktail

Flavor area: Lightly fruity, easily accessible gin

Ingredients

1 Bombay Sapphire

1/4 Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur

1/4 Kumquat liqueur (you have to make it yourself – a post for another time – substitute Cointreau)

half a Lime’s juice

drop of Cranberry juice

Combine all ingredients with ice in a shaker and shake vigorously.  At the party I shook up batches and funneled them into a good-looking clear liquor bottle that I had de-labeled and cleaned.  The bottle was then left in an ice bucket next to the correct glassware.

Lovely

Color: White (ok, it’s yellowy, like white wine is white.  But true white is a pain)

Glass: Wine

Flavor area: Light, aromatic, refreshing, and sweeter

Ingredients

2 Seltzer Water

1 White Wine (something dry and simple – I used an Austrian wine made by Berger)

3/4 St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur

1/4 Dry Vermouth

1/4 Dolin Blanc Vermouth

Combine all ingredients and stir.  Or, if using a siphon for the seltzer (a superior way to go), just add the seltzer last and allow the blast of seltzer to do the mixing.  For the party, I had some old french lemonade bottles with flip-tops that I put batches into and then topped with seltzer.  We left the bottles in a bowl with ice next to the correct glassware.

Note:  Sadly, we had such a good time at the party that we didn’t take any drink/party pictures.  Sorry, that was lame of us.  Here’s a final photo:

(My present to EE this year – they are antique sterling stirrer-straws. I was a little wary of giving her something cocktail-related, given it’s kind of my own hobby at all, but she does seem to like them very much.)

]]> http://www.tessinrinpoche.com/2010/02/15/a-valentines-threesome/feed/ 1 http://www.tessinrinpoche.com/2010/01/11/drinking-provence-or-an-insight-into-making-things-up/ http://www.tessinrinpoche.com/2010/01/11/drinking-provence-or-an-insight-into-making-things-up/#comments Tue, 12 Jan 2010 05:08:58 +0000 Bertessa http://www.tessinrinpoche.com/?p=744 When I make drinks for people, I am frequently asked how or why I created the drink.  To me the answer seemed obvious: grab some bottles, pour, mix, taste.  Upon reflection, however, I realized that I do always have some sort of target.  The inspiration for that target can take many forms. 

A drink target could involve an objective property of the drink being designed: flavor (spice, citrus, basil), glass-type (cocktail, highball, solo cup), color (red, clear, orange), garnish-use (onion, brussel sprouts, licorice)… really anything that describes some aspect of the drink.

Another drink target could be a concept, feeling, or vibe that the drink should impart.  This type of criteria is trickier because it is inherently more subjective, but it is often my most effective method when mixing for those I know and love the most.  Since I’m a home mixologists, most of my guests are in this category.

As an example of designing a drink by feeling, I have two recipes for the same feeling.  The two recipes are nice because they illustrate differences of interpreting the same mandate, and because one is simple, the other complex.

EE said to me one Thursday, when making omelettes – something she’s very, very good at –  ”I’d like a drink that tastes like herbs, like in Provence.”  Nevermind that neither of us have been to France outside Paris.  I thought I got the idea: fields of lavender, soft skies, not too sweet, not too anything. 

In my head, at least, I saw something like this:

Fields of Provence, with lavender flowertops and soft light, is a good example of a concept or feeling a drink can seek to capture.

The result was the light and relatively simple:  

Flowertops:

Ingredients

1 lavender-infused gin

1/2 Dolin blanc vermouth

1/3 St. Germain’s elderflower liqueur

5 drops lemon bitters

couple leaves of mint

Shake vigorously.  Serve up.  Garnish with a flower, piece of fresh lavender, or any herb you have around (you know, make it pretty).

Unfortunately (but not that unfortunately, as come on, we’re talking about mixology here), this isn’t what EE had in mind.  She refined her request by saying, “No, no, it needs to be red and yellow too!  Like a tablecloth.”  She was thinking of vibrant, Provence-style linens, and of something much more earthy.  Ah!  Got it.  The concept of rich, aromatic soil is a much more challenging flavor, because it is quite complex. 

The Provence-style linens EE was thinking of, to complement her omelettes.

Still Provence, but more earth, and red soil - the Terroir.

The result was a drink that got high marks for meeting the desired target, and for just being a great drink:

Terroir de Provence (Cheesy name, yes, but there are enough ingredients to merit the grandiosity.  As I say, I’ve never been there, so there’s a lot of tongue-in-cheek involved in this whole project):

Ingredients:

1 lavender-infused gin

1/2 sweet vermouth

1/2 St. Germain’s elderflower liqueur

1/3 basil-infused bourbon

1/3 Bols genever

splash of brandy

whisper of dill-infused vodka

a little freshly grated ginger

Stir.  Serve up with an herbal garnish (EE voted for a rosemary sprig).

Two great drinks (Flowertops for me, Terroir for EE) to accompany a simple meal at home. 

Bon apetit.

Pomplamoose (the band) is awesome, as I’ve said previously.  Pomplamoose (the word) is awesome. Say it with me, slowly to appreciate it, Pah-mm-p-la-mmoooooo-ssse.  So fun.  I’m even going to say it again to myself.  Really, thank you France for creating such a cool word for a pretty lame fruit.

I’m OK with grapefruit. I went through a period in college when I ate them every day (I even own grapefruit spoons as a result), but I have never been that enthralled with the flavor – certainly not with the name.  Grapefruits neither taste nor look like grapes.  The world wide web tells me they are so named because they grow in clusters on a tree.  This seems like a poor naming convention, as grapes are also fruits and had claimed the cluster format first.  “Pomplamoose” on the other hand – that is a name that suggests the pithy food that is this strange pummelo-orange hybrid.

Luckily someone else already graphed grapefruit’s place in the world (though I’m not 100% in agreement on all counts):

A Pomplamoose is much cooler than a grapefruit, regardless of taste.

Me being who I am (someone with a mixology hobby, let alone a mixology blog), I decided that I needed to create a drink honoring Pomplamoose (the band) and Pomplamoose (the word), while improving upon Pomplamoose (the fruit).  There are grapefruit bitters commercially available, but I wanted to really taste the fruit in my beverage.  I was also feeling too lazy for the trek to the east side to buy them.  The main problem with really tasting the fruit is that grapefruit juice is pretty unbearable.  I overcame this problem, but it wasn’t cheap or easy.

The Tessin Rinpoche Pomplamoose is heaven:

A Pomplamoose, in one of our set of new (to us) vintage glasses

Ingredients

1 grapefruit juice

1 Bols Genever (other Dutch genever probably works, but British gin won’t)

1/3 Dolin Blanc vermouth (again, sorry, run-of-the-mill vermouth won’t work)

1/4 Agave nectar

1/4 Cointreau

drop absinthe (I mean a smidgeon, barely a drop)

Combine over ice and stir madly.  Do not shake this one – the genever doesn’t like it, the Dolin doesn’t like it, the absinthe doesn’t like it, and the cloudiness just isn’t desirable.  Strain into a cocktail glass.  Garnish with a twist (lemon – the twist is actually more than looks here).

This is a SPECTACULAR aperitif.  It is highly drinkable, yet palate cleansing.  I generally post drinks that most anyone could make easily, but sadly this one is a little less accessible.  There isn’t any strange technique involved, but some of the ingredients are a bit hard to find and they’re expensive when you do.  I’m sorry for that.  That said, these liquids are well worth the time and money.

Besides, you get to say to guests, “would you like a Pah-mm-p-la-mmoooooo-ssse?”

Then you can listen to the band:

I’m calling this month’s Mixology Monday entry the Sillke Water.  If you’re new to MxMo, it is a monthly event where mixologist from around the world wide web contribute drinks related to a theme.  This month’s theme: vermouth.

A great many drinks involve vermouth, and I have actually written previously about the value of using vermouth as a base for cocktails.  Additionally, many of the drinks I have already posted involve vermouth.  For my entry, I wanted to create something quick and totally different from my previous posts.

I spent the past Saturday on the New York Junior League house tour, which involved a visit to Marco Pasanella and Rebecca Robertson’s amazing home, located above their even more amazing wine store.  In addition to wine, they also has a great selection of some premium cocktail ingredients (e.g., Dolin vermouth and Dutch Genever).  In addition to these goodies, I picked up some sake.

The sake became my focal ingredient, but I also have some freshly-infused dill vodka.  I suspected that dill would go well with sake, and it turned out that I was right.   The result is a drink that comes across as watery and light, but that washes over the tongue with surprising complexity and a subtle finish.

Ingredients

1 sake

3/4 dill vodka

splash dry vermouth

dash maraschino liqueur

drop lemon bitters

Combine the ingredients in a shaker and shake.  I’m not too sure if shaking is good for sake, but I like the drink up with some ice floating on top….  Garnish with a cherry.

Photo credit: EE

This is our dog, Dahlia.  She knows what weekdays were intended for (she spends hours in this position on my couch – I spend them at work).

Don’t give in to a case of the Mondays.

Now I’m not saying Harry Potter is limited to Halloween, but this drink also has a ghoulish yellowy hue that I associate with Voldemort (I’m not providing a link; if you don’t know, go read the books).  The Pensieve isn’t limited to Halloween either, but it is best late – once the evening has mellowed.  Definitely not something to serve before dinner.

The Pensieve

Ingredients

1 Bourbon

1/2 Dry Vermouth

4-5 dashes Lemon Bitters

1/4 Absinthe

Combine the bourbon, vermouth, and bitters in a shaker.  Shake.  Stir in the Absinthe.  Strain into a cocktail glass.  Garnish with a twist.

Peer into the drink and watch the absinthe swirl a bit.

Don’t fall in.

My cocktail trinity consists of the Gibson, the Negroni, and the Manhattan.  I’ve already demonstrated the Manhattan, and today I will demonstrate the Gibson.

A Gibson is a martini: truly a martini because all it has is gin and dry vermouth.  The defining ingredient of a Gibson is the cocktail onion garnish.

Onions in cocktails?  YES!

I have a very strong preference for onions in sweet vermouth instead of dry vermouth.  The onion at the end of a Gibson is probably the greatest existential joy one can experience in polite company.

How it’s done:

Ingredients

1 gin (I use Hendricks or Bombay Sapphire for this purpose)

1/4 dry vermouth

Combine with ice in a shaker and shake very vigorously.

Drop two sweet vermouth soaked onions into the glass (Sable & Rosenfeld are my go-to).

Consume the drink in a leisurely way, saving the onions for the end (except Joseph, who is allowed to consume his onions before finishing because he had faith in my mixology habit long before he should have).

Cheers

EE and I attended the Employees Only “Tales From Behind the Bar” seminar.  It was spectacular.  Jason and Dushan told the entire EO tale, which they punctuated by serving drinks relevant to particular points in EO’s history (drink-making was assisted by Steve and Vince).  In all, we ended up being served six* drinks (ok, seven, but only because we hung out and sweet-talked Steve).

First we had a vintage recipe Manhattan:

Bourbon (Maker’s)

Vermouth

Grand Marnier

Bitters

After a bit of Manhattan (or the whole thing for the guy next to me), we were onto the EO Provencale:

Lavender Infused Plymouth Gin

Herbs de Provence-Infused Vermouth

Cointreau

Had some Provencale (guy on next stool got it all down again), and it was time for a Mata Hari:

Courvoisier VS

Chai-Infused Vermouth

Fresh Squeezed Pomegranate Juice

I didn’t really like the Mata Hari.  I think I dislike pomegranate juice (guy next to me apparently does like pomegranate juice – he got it all down again).  EE thinks that the next drink was the Billionaire Cocktail:

Bakers Bourbon

Lemon juice

Homemade Grenadine

Absinthe Bitters

I don’t remember much of the Billionaire, assuming EE is correct that we had it (and guy next to us had it all – maybe he drank mine?), but more importantly, all previous drinks were then eclipsed.  We received the most amazing drink of the day, a Gimlet:

Gin

Lime Cordial

I’ll explain the Gimlet’s magnificence more a bit later (guy next to me seemed to enjoy all of it as well – I had to join him for the Gimlet), but we were then refreshed with the final cocktail, whose name I do not know.  This drink is supposedly new and recently invented by one of the apprentice bartenders who was not present.  It might have been called a Quiet Storm (I got up to use the WC at the point they introduced it).  Regardless, it was great.  It involved ginger beer and seemed like a relative of a Pimm’s Cup.  Look for it on the EO menu.

That’s a wrap!  We mulled about sipping and chatting.  But this is a bar, and chatting led to discussions on drink-making, which led to EE asking about scotch-based cocktails.  Naturally, a sample had to be produced.  The currently trendy (at least based on Twitter) Blood and Sand resulted.  I liked it, EE didn’t, but not my favorite way to drink scotch.  I just don’t like OJ.

A bit more on the Gimlet.  I’ve had gimlets; I’ve made gimlets.  Gimlets were always a somewhat lame combination of gin and lime juice, if the maker was snobby about fresh ingredients, or gin and Rose’s if not.  Apparently, that’s not what gimlets were meant to be.  EO created a lime cordial that does not exist in the market currently, but was commonly made back when the gimlet was born.  The lime cordial has bite from using the peels of the limes in addition to the juice.  The EO Gimlet was a truly revolutionary cocktail experience.  Luckily for all us sinners, EO is going to be releasing a line of products for public consumption – they’re including the lime cordial.  I’m just hoping it gets to stores before my graciously gifted little home stash runs out.

MCC was not all tastings and history, though!  There was a bar at the Astor Center where everyone gathered from the various tastings and seminars at different bars around town.  Anyone who attended could have sampled the aformentioned lime cordial in some of the drinks on offer.  The MCC bar and Astor Center were lovely, but cocktail hour just isn’t the same following an afternoon of cocktails.  It seemed like we weren’t the only ones who had been cocktailed-out, but I think it would have been great to go back to Astor Center today for the party.

Overall, the event was spectacular and I encourage anybody who can to attend in the future.  Jason and Dushan’s talk also helped me refine my Theory of the Cocktail a bit.  They reinforced my ideal that drinking should be fun, and that a large part of the fun is bringing new creations into the world.  This seems obvious, but it’s not.  As soon as I started paying more attention to my fellow mixologists I started seeing lists of drinks “every bartender should know.”  While it’s true that a bartender should know those drinks (I do like being able to order and know what I’ll get), I don’t think the rest of us should know them.  We should make things we like for the joy of creation – an idea I have now embedded in the Theory.

So why do I write the blog if everyone should make their own drinks?  Inspiration.  Standing on the shoulders of giants (EO, not me) and all that jazz.

Have fun.

* There is some debate as to how many drinks were served, the order of those drinks, and in what glasses they were served.  EE is probably correct, but it’s hard to say – I mean there were more than five for sure.

Bertessa's Manhattan. Josef Frank's Manhattan design.

“Hey, come out, a bunch of us are having a drink.”
“XYZ Class HAPPY HOUR! DIVE BAR near you!”
“There’s gotta be a bar somewhere near that subway stop, wait for me there.”

Any of the above can easily lead to a dive bar. I’m using the dive designation broadly to encompass anywhere that:

• has a digital jukebox
• smells pleasantly of stale beer
• isn’t conducive to open-toe shoes because the floor is gross
• allows and encourages beer pong

I am NOT saying that dive bars are bad.  They are a critical piece of any normal social life, but they may not make the best cocktails.  They definitely won’t have a cocktail menu, and the bartender may throw you out for requesting drinks he/she can’t pronounce (plus some patrons may then identify you as an easy mark).

What to do?

You could order a beer.  Unless this is a true dive, there will be some decent beer.  If it’s such a dive there is no decent beer, then definitely order a beer – from bottle if possible.

“I don’t like beer.”  “I’m on a low-carb diet.”  “Damnit, I want a friggin cocktail!”

Right-o, then, let’s think about the criteria for a cocktail you can try in the dive setting:

1. manly (even better if you’re female)
2. dark color (kinda like beer) (see point 1)
3. simple ingredients
4. not too many ingredients
5. taught in any bar course the tender may have once taken
6. resilient to poor craftsmanship
7. enough alcohol to sanitize the glass

Your dive bar testing cocktail: MANHATTAN

Ingredients

1 whiskey

1/2 sweet vermouth

bitters

Why The Manhattan

If the bar fails on any of these points, skip cocktails:

1. any bartender should know it and what’s in it
2. can be made with bourbon (e.g., Jim Beam), something even the diviest bar will have
3. vermouth is the first basic after beer and basic liquors
4. bitters, typically Angostura, are right after vermouth in the basics list

From there, even inverting the ratios will yield something drinkable.

Go forth and fear not, even when diving.

How I make a Manhattan

1 Rye Whiskey

1/2 Sweet Vermouth

6 drops orange bitters

Combine in a shaker and shake.  Serve either up or on the rocks as you prefer.  Garnish with a maraschino cherry.  Be sure to have a stem on the cherry – people can pick it up that way, and the best people can knot that stem in a way that impresses their company at a dive bar.   I know.  I’ve impressed people this way.

A note:

I think Wednesdays are a good day for a regular post.  That makes this the inaugural “What I’m Having” Wednesday post.  The idea will be to cover a basic (that I wouldn’t give blog love otherwise), or let me express a limited thought about how or why something is so.

my raw milk label (redacted to protect the source)

Using raw milk as an ingredient takes this cocktail right back to the Prohibition  era.  U.S. governmental agencies do not like raw milk.  To be fair to them, there was a very bad period in the country’s milk history when people got quite ill from contaminated raw milk.  Pasteurization pretty much solved that.  These days, however, there is a new push to give raw milk another chance (under more sanitary conditions), and it’s one that I support for various reasons (mostly flavor, as my milk consumption is pretty much limited to my morning coffee).  If you want to know more about it, I highly recommend Nina Planck’s book Real Food.

Luckily for us raw milk lovers, there are ways around governmental intransigence (don’t worry, it hasn’t turned to tommy-guns and untouchables).  Luckily for you cocktail lovers, this all inspired me to create a new cocktail honoring our modern day prohibited beverage.

Doing justice to this illicit ingredient was challenging.  We only have access to a half gallon per week, so the milk deserved center stage.  I’m familiar with the brandy milk punch, but wanted to create something with a little more zing.  Of course, milk drinks will tend toward sweetness (if you drink milk and sugar in your coffee, late summer raw milk is so sweet that you must scale back on the added sugar), but I don’t like my drinks overly sweet.

The problem I found with almost any liquor was that they tended to give the drink a flat sort of taste.  The liquors I tried seemed to strip some of the milk’s natural sweetness.  Even worse, too much liquor caused the milk to separate.  Remember this is raw milk we’re dealing with.  It isn’t homogenized.

The key ingredient was skulking toward the rear of my fridge: Stone’s Original Ginger.  I discovered Stone’s about six months ago.  I’ve been using it in place of sweet vermouth ever since.  Unlike many liqueurs or flavored beverages, when Stone’s says ginger, it means ginger.  The stuff zaps the tongue.  Yet, it is a wine made from currants and has tangy underlying sweetness.

I took Raw Milk in a fruity direction to bridge the gap between milk and Stone’s: maraschino liqueur and a splash of orange bitters to make sure the drink had the zip I was looking for.  I didn’t just go fruity because fruit is sweet (in the case of the bitters, fruit didn’t bring sweet along anyway).  I probably would have gone for a spice flavor (e.g., cinnamon) in the winter, and herbal in the spring.  Alas, it is early fall/late summer, and those cows have been eating sweet green grass.  You can really taste the sweet, late summer air.  If the milk were tasting like the barn, I’d have to go a different direction.

How to make the beverage:

Ingredients

3/4 raw milk

3/4 maraschino liqueur

1 Stone’s Ginger currant wine

6 dashes orange bitters

Combine the above ingredients in a shaker with some large ice cubes.  Shake it hard.  Pour into cocktail glass (this will take some more shaking as a heavy foam layer will develop – give it time to empty).

How to light it:

Ingredients

1 small round section of reddish fruit skin (nectarine, apricot, whatever)

dash high proof rum (clear/white)

Turn the skin inside out so the colorful part forms the inside of a bowl.  Place the fruit skin in the center of the drink, letting the little bowl nestle in the foam.  Pour some rum in the fruit bowl to create a small puddle.  Don’t fill the bowl; don’t overfill the bowl.  Light the rum.

With hindsight, I must admit a couple things:

• I used nectarine, not apricot as stated in the video.
• A match would have worked better than a torch.  The torch is too powerful, blows the flame out, and fries the foam a bit.  My torch is awesome.

Alterations

The basic drink could easily be served sans flame outside a cocktail glass.  Served either on the rocks or very cold without ice, it would be a good replacement for brandy milk punch.

One might consider stirring the drink to avoid excessive foam.

I actually served Raw Milk on the rocks at brunch this morning with great success.

I’ve gotten requests to help others start their home Mixology Stations, and that is just what this post will attempt to do.  Luckily I’ve been asked to opine on this topic previously and another time the in-laws asked what was needed for a fun Christmas.  The answer was about the same…

Rude interruption from the readership rabble: “Tess, you’re a dork, why not just call it a bar?”

Bite me.

A bar is more complicated, and sounds a bit trashy to bring into one’s home.  More importantly, though, this blog is about mixology, not say, beer and wine.  I’m not saying I’m never going to write about beer or wine, but I don’t mix beer and wine.  I think we would all agree that beer and/or wine would be a part of any bar.

Alright then, on with it.

Tools

There are some basics that you have to have.  I wouldn’t buy anything too gimmicky, but I’m not sure you can get by without the following:

• shaker
• jigger
• stirrer
• strainer

Glassware

Drink from your morning latte’s crumpled Solo cup if it fits the circs.  If you’re going for the more traditional style or registering for your wedding, start with at least four of each:

• high ball glasses
• martini glasses
• tumblers

Liquor

“I only like X!”  Then only buy X.  Why fight it?  But if you want to be able to host with the basics, some basics are required.  All of these are placed here with the idea of MIXING drinks (remember, this is building a Mixology Station), so if you get all high and mighty about what is best on its own, then buy that for serving on its own.  If you’re a fiend for labels and want multiple high-end whatever, then by all means, get more of that whatever.  I won’t object anytime you add another bottle to the cart.  Basics:

• Gin – I keep Sapphire and Hendricks and think gin is basically the best base liquor
• Whiskey – you need at least one, even if you don’t drink it, regardless of what I said before.  They should be (in order of importance):
  • Bourbon – don’t spend a ton, but make it good.  I recommend Buffalo Trace
  • Scotch – something in the middle range if you’re not into scotch already
  • Rye – whatever you can find.  It’s needed for Manhattans
• Tequila

Am I really leaving off vodka?  Damn straight I am!  Unless it is infused, it does nothing for mixing flavors.  If you want to stock it, go for it, but buy something really cheap for mixing, as people truly can’t tell the difference.  I also left off rum.  Rum is hard.  Poor rum, go marry a Coke.

Liqueurs and Such

SHOCKER: The real key to mixology is not the liquor, but the random stuff you have to put in it.  This becomes more subjective, but the list below is ordered with necessities at the top and things I prefer descending below:

• Cointreau – no way around it, this is critical
• Vermouth – sweet (red/Italian) and dry (white/French)
• Bitters – keep at least Angostura.  Look for specialty flavors like Fee Brothers or Regan for Orange/Lemon/Peach, etc.
• St. Germain’s Elderflower liqueur – just makes mixology too easy
• Campari – I love the stuff, turns a drink red, people accuse me of having a girly drink, and then I give them a taste…
• Absinthe – I’m using LeTournement and think it adds great flavors
• Domaine de Canton’s Ginger liqueur – great way to spice things up

This is a starter list.  Recipes will call for all kinds of junk, but you can pretty much cheat using the first three items in this list.

Other Things You’ll Need

• Citrus – mainly limes, but some lemon too
• Olives – they can be be in vermouth in a jar in the fridge indefinitely
• Onions – get the ones in sweet vermouth; I’ll write many odes to them in posts to come
• Fruit juices – unsweetened cranberry is #1, after that it just depends
• Any fruit you can put in the freezer – blueberries and cranberries are particularly useful
• Mint – you can freeze this too
• Sparkling water – feel free to get a siphon
• Tonic – particularly in the summer

Wait, I don’t have this much space, you’re not a dork, you’re a nut!

If you go with the first two items in each list, you’ll be fine.  A lot of where and how to store things comes down to aesthetics, and there’s nothing wrong with picking your bottles to enhance your decor.  Plus, you should use the fridge.  I keep the gin, plus the citrus, olives, etc in the old icebox.  My own bar cart is pictured at the beginning of the post, but I also think a minimalist setup like the below is sweet.  Make your own, since this is expensive:

Ultimately, your Mixology Station should match your style.  If it limits your menu, so be it.  Just be sure you limit it to drinks you like.

Ingredients, Stations, Mix!