Life is far too short not to have a little umbrella in your drink. ~ Leigh Standley, Curly Girl Design
Last summer I couldn’t pick up a newspaper or magazine without seeing some reference to cocktail gardens. Growing plants to put in drinks was the rage.
But not this year. Instead, a different trend has surfaced.
Bartenders are no longer satisfied with plain names for plain drinks like margarita, martini and Manhattan. Further, according to Frank Bruni in a story in the June 9, 2010, issue of The New York Times, “The monikers offer no clue: They’re pure literary whimsy, a proudly opaque muddling of the chartreuse with the abstruse.”
Consider these cocktails from various bars around New York City: Penelope Cruiser, Beggarman Thief, Legend of Zarro, From Beirut With Passion, White Star Imperial Daisy and Sexy London.
Johnny Michaels is the best bartender in the Twin Cities. I know because I’ve tasted a few of his concoctions over the years and because I once took a cooking class for the sole reason that he was presenting drink recipes. (Unfortunately, I can’t remember much about either his strong drinks or the food.) He has long been associated with La Belle Vie, the best restaurant in Minnesota, and other enterprises of Tim McKee and Josh Thoma.
Here’s Johnny’s drink list: Night of the Hunter, Black Pearl, French Teen Idol, The All New 2010 TCG 1000, This Boot Was Made For Drinking and my favorite, Gild the Lily.
The Redhead is a restaurant in New York City that was brought to my attention by a small mention in Esquire, perhaps a year or two ago. Esquire raved about The Redhead’s Bacon Peanut Brittles—a simple snack of “maple-roasted peanuts with smokey bacon” and “because everything tastes better with bacon.”
The cocktails listed on the Redhead menu have simple names—especially in comparison—and the bartender thoughtfully added subtitles. For example: Gotham (a dark and complex Manhattan), Vesper (James Bond’s first martini) and Aviation (high flying classic).
Wanting to bring of bit of that vibe to my happy hour, I ordered a package of Bacon Peanut Brittle and filled a crystal party dish. Then I guessed at amounts of rum, ginger syrup and fresh lemon juice in their ingeniously named drink, the Ginger Snap, and toasted the day.
Well, The New York Times is certainly on board with my Cocktail Garden notion. For the fourth time in almost as many months, the newspaper has featured another twist.
In the Shaken & Stirred column in the Sunday, August 30, 2009, edition, Jonathan Miles focused the use of tomatoes in cocktails.
…tomatoes…have all but exploded onto cocktail menus this summer, as bartenders increasingly embrace a philosophy, called "farm-to-bar," in which fresh local produce plays as important a role as the liquor…The result is a slew of tomato-based cocktails that leave the Bloody Mary way, way behind.
Really great-sounding drinks are detailed, including Heirloom Tomato Mojitonico, Greekjito, El Pomodoro, Summer Crush and the Bloodless Mary made with tomato water, vodka, dry vermouth, lemon juice and hot sauce.
Part of my self-imposed job as Cocktail Garden Connoisseur is to keep abreast of developments in the Cocktail Garden arena from other sources. I seriously peruse magazines and newspapers and do rigorous field research at bars.
So I couldn't miss the front page headline in the August 19, 2009, Dining & Wine section of The New York Times, "How to Sip a Flower Garden". And if further enticement was necessary, the story was accompanied by a photograph of a pretty pink-and-green cocktail called The Hummingbird, made with gin, elderflower liqueur, lemon juice and seltzer and decorated with fresh flowers.
The writer, Laura M. Holson, wrote of flowers as ingredients in cocktails. She includes back stories and recipes for Lavender Mojito, The Hummingbird, Coming Up Roses and The Marea, an unusual concoction with preserved wild hibiscus flowers as both ingredient and adornment.
Holson then makes a point that was new and rather Michael Pollan-esque. "For many, the trend is another iteration of local food traveling from farm to table; if it tastes great on a plate, it is sure to please in a glass with ice and gin." She quotes Scott Beattie, a former bar manager from California: "'People have more access to better products…Once you start tasting real flavor in cocktails, you don't want to go back to cut melon balls.'"
Another idea for our Cocktail Garden comes from Melissa Clark, A Good Appetite columnist for The New York Times.
In the August 5, 2009, Dining & Wine section, Clark admitted to an obsession of cooking with flowers. She had previously used rose petals, lemon-scented geraniums, lavender, marigolds and violets in recipes and, this day, was experimenting with chamomile.
I could have steeped the chamomile directly in the gin. But that would take days to infuse and I was far too thirsty to wait. Instead I simmered together a simple syrup laced with chamomile blossoms, and stirred a few drops into my next gin and tonic. It made a slightly sweeter drink than usual, and with a delightful flavor that was aromatic, herbal and complex. ~ Melissa Clark, The New York Times
Let's summarize the various manifestations of plants in cocktails. • fresh flowers, foliage or fruit muddled directly in the drink • fresh flowers, foliage or fruit infused into booze • fresh flowers, foliage or fruit decorating cocktail • a real tree, the swizzletree, as the swizzle stick
Plants as ingredients in cocktails. basil, Thai blueberries chamomile chilies cucumber hibiscus flowers (dried) lavender lemon verbena lemongrass mint rose petals rosemary sage strawberries sunflower petals tarragon thyme tomato watermelon
Plants to garnish cocktails. begonia, tuberous borage calendula chamomile chive chrysanthemum, garland daylily lavender marigold nasturtium rose sages, gentian, Pineapple, Honeydew Melon swizzlestick tree violet
Ok people, we are on to something here with this Cocktail Garden idea.
Right up there with Vita Sackville-West's White Garden and Monet's Giverny, I proposed on June 16, 2009, that the Cocktail Garden is worthy of eminent theme garden status. Even The New York Times has since chimed in with a story on June 24.
Now two more publications are trying to get in on the action.
Newsweek (Thank you, Jan, for sharing this story.) recently devoted its Food page to "Garden Variety" cocktails. The writer, Julia Reed, quoted several sources including "master mixologist" Dale DeGroff, Brooklyn's Clover Club and an "exotic-drink book", The Gentleman's Companion, by Charles H. Baker Jr.
Among Reed's cocktail offerings: • Thai daiquiri using lemongrass-infused simple syrup • Pimm's Cup using fresh cucumber • Bloody Mary made with fresh heirloom tomato juice • Mojitos flavored with watermelon, strawberries and rose petals • Simple syrups flavored with thyme, lavender and basil
A new Fine Gardening special publication, Grow, is featuring edible flowers. Wonderful! We keep adding to our list of flowers which are strictly, let's be clear about this, to float in cocktails. So far our list includes nasturtiums, pansies, borage, roses, chamomile, marigold and daylily. Now, according to the author John Bray, the list continues with: • Tuberous Begonia, Begonia cvs. • Tuberous Nasturtium, Tropaelum tuberosum • Calendula, Calendula officinalis • specific sages such as gentian (Salvia patens), Pineapple and 'Honeydew Melon' (S. elegans ccvs.) • Garland Chrysanthemum, Chrysanthemum coronarium
In honor of these delicious-sounding drinks and embellishments, my husband and I created Cocktail Night. Each Saturday evening we will taste-test a new drink upon which we'll float an edible flower. Watch this space for reviews.
I have news about my theme garden nominee, The Cocktail Garden. The notion certainly resonated with people around the region as I heard from several readers. And I've since read stories in two disparate publications that support my premise.
The current issue of Northern Gardener (July/August 2009) magazine includes a feature about edible flowers by Meleah Maynard. In addition to nasturtiums, pansies, and lavender, Maynard mentions borage, roses, chamomile, marigold and daylily as edible flowers–and, therefore, according to my theme, as candidates for floating in drinks.
On June 24, 2009, The New York Times included a special Summer Drinks Issue. Not only were there were wonderful stories about root beer and real beer, frozen drinks and cola drinks, but several recipes called for using plants like mints, chilies, blueberries and Thai basil in cocktails.
But the coolest story was by Robert Simonson who wrote about swizzle sticks and not "one of those colorful plastic doohickeys." These swizzle sticks are actual parts of an actual tree called the swizzlestick tree (Quararibea turbinata), which is native to the Caribbean.
Simonson describes the swizzle stick: "The sticks are about six inches, with small prongs sticking out at the end, like the spokes of a wheel without the rim, and they are used as a kind of natural, manually operated Mixmaster."
Bartenders use the swizzle stick to mix drinks instead of old-fashioned methods like shaking and stirring. Doesn't a Bermuda Swizzle or Barbados Red Rum Swizzle, made and served with a real swizzlestick, sound enticing?
There are a few, truly eminent theme gardens. Vita Sackville-West designed a one-color garden, The White Garden, at Sissinghurst Castle. A fellow British garden designer, Gertrude Jekyll, created the first perennial border which was a whopping 200' long x 18' deep. Perhaps most beloved are two gardens conceived by Claude Monet at his home near Giverny, France. Monet designed The Grand Allee which practically dripped with climbing roses and his final masterpiece, The Water-Lily Pond (the original water garden?).
Here's my theme garden entry: The Cocktail Garden. Think about it. What a natural combination. Not only would fresh herbs add distinctive flavor to a drink but imagine the amazing aroma that would waft about the glass.
The Cocktail Garden isn't original to me but the notion resonated when I first read about a Mojito Garden in the October 2007 issue of Gourmet magazine. As we know, though, "everything old is new again." In 1510, French Benedictine monks dreamed up the clever idea to infuse alcohol with herbs when they created the liqueur, Benedictine. Now in the 21st century, bartenders all over the country are concocting herb-laced cocktails.
Here are several herb and drink combinations to sample. • lemon verbena: lemonade, gin cocktails • mint: juleps, lemonade, mojitos • rosemary: great with gin • sage: tequila, margaritas • tarragon: good with peach flavors and vodka • thyme: martinis, peach-flavored cocktails like a Bellini
Finally, ditch the olive or twist of lime as garnishes. Jazz up that Friday Night Cosmo. Float a fresh, edible flower like a nasturtium, lavender, violet or chive blossom in the glass.
