Templeton Rye takes the lead on my whiskey shelf.

Templeton Rye is from Templeton, Iowa.  My father-in-law turned me onto Templeton when we visited Des Moines over Christmas, and I became an instant convert (I sampled my first glass at Sbrocco, a really wonderful restaurant where you can buy your wine retail from their well-stocked basement).

The back of the bottle shows Templeton’s provenance (note the recent bottling date, 12-05-09 — this does not sit on store shelves long).

The trick with Templeton is that it can be challenging to obtain.  It is basically sold-out in Iowa, and even the restaurants that carry it run out.  Miraculously for those of us who live in states that allow online purchases of liquor, Templeton is also sold from Illinois by Binny’s.

Here’s what it all boils down to: Order it today.  Order a lot.

Templeton has a deeper and smokier flavor than I have encountered in other ryes.  It also has pedigree with a recipe dating to Prohibition.  And, oh yeah, it only cost me $35 a bottle!

As if all that weren’t enough, the TR initials and logo are perfect for Tessin Rinpoche:

Dahlia rocks my Templeton Rye logo hat

(sorry about the green eyes - my software has red-eye correction, not dog-eye correction)

EE was making dinner last weekend, her first Sunday chili of the colder months, and I was puttering around in my mixology cabinet, trying to create a chili-friendly cocktail.  EE had left some New York sharp cheddar cheese on the counter cut and waiting to garnish our bowls.  The temptation was too great: I infused something with cheddar.

Infusing liquors sounds a bit intimidating, you say?  It sounds complicated and technical, not something for the casual home mixologist?  No!  Infusions are incredibly simple.  Put something in a sealed container with a liquor and voila!  A custom drink and flavor that you can’t get anywhere else.  This allows for incorporating local, seasonal ingredients, and for creating something really unique without having to pay a fortune for a rare bottle of X.  Given the simplicity, the ability to custom-craft flavors, and the cost-effectiveness of the deal, you can expect to hear me suggesting infusions frequently.

I poured about a cup-and-a-half of Sazerac rye whiskey over about one cubic inch of cheese broken-up into smallish chunks.  Whiskey seemed like the natural spirit for a cheddar flavor.  Rye seemed like it had the best balance of earthy, sweet, and cutting notes.  Sazerac seemed better to risk on this venture than my Rittenhouse because Sazerac is sweeter, and honestly, I don’t like it as much.  The concoction sat for three days, and on the third day the cheese was strained.

Opening the infusion, tasting the cheese (blech), and straining.

I was a bit surprised by the fat floating on the top of the rye, and the cheese chunks were like an inedible whey (new rule: don’t eat anything that has been the infuser, ever).  However, after I poured the rye through a tea strainer and a coffee filter, the Sazerac had a pleasant umami flavor that wasn’t present before.  More importantly, the finish on the whiskey was unmistakably cheddar flavored.

Chedda Rye getting strained through a coffee filter.

Chedda Rye is worth having as a stand alone drink – sip it on the rocks when you want whiskey with a little more body.

Not being content to let such a creation go undisturbed, I decided to create a cocktail with it as well.  EE made the brilliant suggestion of doing something with apples, but we have zero in the apple department (this is such a good idea, though, that I saved some Chedda Rye for future creation).  Lacking apples, I created an evening sipping drink that is pretty good.  It is sort of like a Bloody Mary, but not as sharp.  We’ll call it the Chedda Rye Mary

Ingredients

3/2 Chedda Rye

1/3 Dubonnet

2-3 grape or cherry tomatoes

dash Tabasco

Cut the tomatoes in half.  Combine all ingredients in a shaker and shake.  Strain well to avoid tomato seeds.  Garnish with a cheddar cheese twist.

Maybe this is an unexplored area of mixology for a reason, but the results weren’t bad.

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.

Water from ice both chills the drink and, obviously, adds water.  Notice that I did not say, “it waters down the drink”.  While a poorly made drink may be too watered-down, a well made drink incorporates that water as part of the drink.   We are not high-schoolers looking to see how much we can drink as quickly as possible.  We want drinks that make people happy.  How does water make people happy?

Time to return to my Theory of the Cocktail – Aspects of Happiness edition.  First and foremost, the drink should make people want to consume it for the flavor.  Next, it should enhance the atmosphere.  As a chaser, it should never inhibit people from attaining their goals.  Water is the lubricant that brings together

• Flavor – obviously the most critical element of drink
• Style – sometimes a drink needs volume to look right, or at least to keep people from interrupting the flow of an event for a refill
• Inhibition – lowering your own a bit is relaxing, but getting so drunk that you are inhibited from making it to dinner, bed, work, or a functional life is completely unacceptable

Add water, and the Flavors have a medium to mix in, the drink is volumized a bit to have the right Style, and people can drink appropriately to loosen Inhibitions without inhibiting their lives.  Pleased with the balance of Flavor, Style, and Inhibitions, people are happier.

Now that we know water properly belongs in cocktails, what sort of water should we put in?  Clean, filtered, tasteless water (another post will address flavoring the ice).  If you don’t like the water out of your tap, then don’t make ice out of it.

OK, so does it really matter what shape the ice is in?  Well, sort of.  As the article in the first line suggests (article) the more surface area exposed, the faster the ice melts.  So, if you only want a little water in the drink, then the bigger the cubes you can make the better.  Is it worth creating a gazillion types of ice?  I vote no, but I am pretty far along on the spectrum of laziness when it comes to things that are supposed to be fun.  I do think it is worth having a large and a very small size cube ice tray.  You can mix the two if you want a midsize.  For absurdly large whole glass cubes: there has to be a reason to go to fine cocktail establishments.

Of course, shaking a drink does a great deal more to break down the ice and introduce water than stirring, which must also be taken into account.  Somewhat surprisingly, I actually find larger cubes to be better for shaking than smaller.  I think the larger cubes fracture more and release even more water, plus they break up any fruit or other non-liquid items more effectively by virtue of their heft.

Fruit in the shaker brings up my final point: ways to cool a drink other than water.  You can freeze anything you want and put it in a drink, but it should be something that makes the drink look better (possibly influence the taste), and IS EDIBLE. 

Rocks DO NOT BELONG IN DRINKS:

Add ice or drink your whiskey straight.