Author: Richard Murff

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Good People: ‘Bama’s Best Beer

Any beer nerd will tell you that one of the great things about the whole craft beer scene is traveling someplace and discovering some new and fantastic brewery while you are away from your hometown go-to. The downside of this hyper-local arrangement is that when you go home, you’re out of luck if you crave that beer you found while traveling. Like so much else in life, craft beer nerdery cuts both ways.

I have some friends, real baseball geeks, who will not return from their spring training trip in the droopy end of Florida without a couple of cases of Pulp Friction Grapefruit IPA from Motorworks Brewing. So, passing through the Madison Growler shop the other day, I was pleased to see two selections from Good People Brewing out of Birmingham, Alabama. Good People have been making beer, legally at any rate, since 2008. I dropped in on them a few years ago, unannounced, for an interview. They were strictly local then, but were kind enough to show me around and talk beer. Alabama was pretty early — by Southern standards — in adopting laws friendly to craft brewers. It shows. If you can’t get out to North Carolina, you could do a lot worse than drinking your way around northern Alabama. They also pointed out that said changes were recent enough to make all the “Murffbrau” I brewed up in my room at the University of Alabama entirely illegal.

If you can’t get to Alabama, at least you can get to Midtown, where two Good People beers are currently on tap at the Cash Saver. What is interesting about their Muchacho is that most craft brewers like to harken back to the great beer brewing cultures of Europe for their inspiration. Good People looked south of the … wall, steel slats, questionable logic? … (Well let’s just call it the border for now) to make a drinkable Mexican-style lager. It’s light and crisp and doesn’t linger very long on the palate. It will pair beautifully with the sort of tacos you get on Summer Avenue. Or for that matter, fried chicken or catfish. With an ABV of 4.8 percent, you can drink enough to battle the spice.

The theory that we put lime in Mexican beer because it inherently needs help is simply not true. Muchacho is the cosmic ideal of either Corona or Dos Equis, wonderful on its own without any assist. Still, a squeeze of lime gave it a little pop. Don’t be a beer racist: If it’s okay for the Belgians to do it with oranges, it’s okay for the Mexicans to do it with limes.

The other selection was a Winter Ale called Denim Downhiller. According to the Urban Dictionary, the term describs a skier of the Appalachian alps who wears jeans instead of snow pants, is rockin’ a mullet, and almost certainly a denim jacket. This ale is a tribute to that guy. Budweiser may be the king and Miller the champagne, but Denim Downhiller is the mustache of beers. It’s earthy and toasty, but I’m not entirely sure why it’s called a Winter Ale. It tastes like a nut brown to me, and fans of the brown/red ales will feel right at home. Perhaps the season to which the Good People are referring is the one in LA (read: Lower Alabama). They really don’t have anything we’d call a winter down there.

Denim Downhiller was a little sweet for my tastes, not quite syrupy. At 5.6 percent ABV, it is higher in alcohol than the Muchacho, but nothing that’s going to knock you off the slopes, as it were. At 18 IBU, it has got a lot more hops to it as well, but a toasted malt counterweight balances this beer out.

Speaking as an alum — and a former resident and unintentional bootlegger from the great state of Alabama — I would advise you to hurry. After Clemson managed to out “Bama” Alabama the other night, the state might just drink itself dry.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Scotched!

So, it happens the last Thursday of every month until, well, it stops happening. And you’ll need reservations. And tickets. But there is no good reason not to do it. After the success of his Irish Whisky tastings last year, D.J. Naylor over at the Celtic Crossing is now picking out some the best Scotches he’s ever had to share, taste, and talk Scotch whisky.

This isn’t just “drinking Scotch” as wonderful as that is — it is a production in praise of good Scotch … while drinking a tot here and there, or course. Ah, and aren’t you glad that I didn’t say a “wee dram”? Tasting is different from drinking, or more to the point, “drankin’.”

Scotch tastings in Memphis can be tricky. The day before, it was 40 degrees and I was all set to wear my tweed and drink some wooly Scotch. Then it turned out to be 70 degrees and I wore my tweed anyway becausee I’m bloody-minded and thought it would help me sweat the toxins out. As D.J. said: “We’re here to educate — to increase your purchasing power. We’re not here to taste a $1,000 bottle of whisky.”

At half-time during the tasting, reservation tickets included a smoked salmon appetizer and a bit of Scotch egg — which is a hard-boiled egg wrapped in sausage and deep-fried. It lacks finesse, I’ll admit, but it is wonderful. Now, here’s what we tasted.

Glenfiddich Single Malt Scotch, 14 Year Bourbon Barrel Reserve, Dufftown, Baniffshire, Scotland $50, ABV 43%

As the name might suggest, this is a homage to U.S. bourbon — the Scotch is aged in used bourbon barrels and finished in deep-charred new American oak, which is a little different from the usual process. This is a light golden Highland Scotch — it’s malty, it’s got some spice to it, with little hints of toffee and vanilla. If you are a little nervous or wary of those peat-fire Scotches, this is a good choice for you.

Bruichladdich — The Organic Scottish Barley, Isle of Ilay, Argyll, Scotland, $100, ABV 50%

Pronounced “Brook-laddie” because, of course it is. Bruichladdich was bound to happen: The Scots went all organic. It is the localvore Scotch, using all local ingredients from three counties that no one on this side of the Atlantic ocean can pronounce. Bruichladdich has no pesticides and no artificial coloring. This last bit really threw me because I always thought that the original “water-of-life” was that rich golden brown on its own. I thought this because like a lot of people, I crave order in a disturbing universe. So it looks lighter than its counterparts, but at 100 proof, this can be misleading. It is the color of hay and has fine, oily legs when swirled in the glass. There is some sweetness to it and a hint of spice for the big feel of this most virtuous of scotches.

With a high-proof scotch, you can really see how diluting with a little water changes the taste, if not the character of a whisky. Here a little bit of water in a whisky neat really opens up the flavors. For one thing, undiluted spirits at that strength will pretty much overpower the senses.

Ardbeg Corryvreckan, Isle of Islay, Argyll, Scotland, $90, ABV 57.1%

D.J. says, “If you are a peat-head, this is a most enjoyable peat whisky.” In 2010, the year Ardbeg introduced its Corryvreckan (pronounced: Ahh … do we really care at this point?), it won “World’s Best Single Malt Whisky” and “Single Malt of the Year.” It has been likened to Laphroig 10-year, but I don’t see it. They are in the same ballpark, but Laphroig is the more smoky peat-fire of the two. One wonderful thing about the Ardbeg is that is has a lot of spice from the French oak casks, but because it’s distilled close to the sea, it has that certain iodine, seawater brine character. Which, I know sounds nasty, but it really is the hard-to-press-down quality that, for me, makes a great Scotch.

Macallan Extra Rare Cask Edition, Craigellachie, Banffshire, Scotland, $300, ABV 43%

This is just ostentatious. Wonderful but ostentatious. And I’m not just talking about the $300 price tag or the awesome red box it comes in that viewers of The Crown know looks suspiciously like those dispatch boxes the queen gets her official business in. This Scotch is blended from whiskies drawn from 16 Sherry cask styles. It leaves me asking, “Why?” Is it to justify the $300 price? Don’t get me wrong, this was an epic snort of whisky, but I’ve had much better at $70. It is dark gold in color, with flavors of Sherry and oak and a long dried fruit finish.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Merf’s Up: A Cabernet for the Holidays

For reasons never fully explained to me, my in-laws kick off the holidays by having Thanksgiving on the Sunday before the rest of the country. I assume this is because the engaging Mrs. M’s grandfather was English and never took the whole Pilgrim thing very seriously. So I served crawfish étoufée, because nothing says “America” like some French/Spanish colonial fusion dish served to the English.
It got me thinking about the avalanche of facing several Christmas parties, actually Christmas, a non-denominational mid-winter shindig or two, and that perennial amateur night for bad drunks, New Year’s Eve.

Which is exactly why your holiday wine list is different — the hootenanny is coming, and you’ll want to brace yourself. Since last January you’ve been on and off diets and cleanses, avoided starches, red meats, sugars, and everything else that makes life bearable. Your wines — even the reds — have likely been light, drinkable little numbers that would never think of getting into a brawl with a three-bean salad. Now the holidays are here and it’s no jaunt, but a grueling slog of bon homme and good damn cheer.

I was contemplating this and other terrifying ordeals while wandering that intriguing maze that is Gaslight Liquor Shoppe on Summer Avenue, when I happened upon a liquor rep named Jacques having a tasting of some new-to-the-market reds: specifically a cabernet sauvignon called Merf. The wine is the brain-child of a restless man named David “Merf” Merfeld — a former Iowa farmer, brewer, and now, evidently, vintner in Washington State. I just liked the name, for obvious reasons. At $10.99, I liked the price, too.

Now, this is a nice, workable holiday wine — a fruit-forward cabernet that’s big on plum and dark cherry. I tend to favor the earthy cabernets; this was jammy. Despite the fruit, Merf managed to stay somewhat dry with little hints of vanilla and toffee. Even if the big, fruit-forward thing isn’t entirely your bag, remember what you are up against, food wise, for the next month. Your system is in for a shock, and you’ll need to stay in the proper humor of the thing if you want to be invited back. This is a bottle that will stand up to barbecue, ham, liver pâte, dips, swell stinky cheeses, or anything a sane person is likely to throw on the Big Green Egg. For dessert, refill your glass and dive into enough rich dark chocolate to fill a mop bucket.

Granted, Merf Cabernet just may overpower and brutalize your kale salad with vinaigrette, but if we’re going to be honest with ourselves, that is pretty much a non-issue until sometime in mid-first quarter of 2019, at the earliest.

Which makes me glad that I broke down and tried some, because I have something of a low-key dislike for people trying to sell me anything. That, and I can’t shake the feeling that Washington State is a second rate place to make wine — I keep thinking of rain and those sparkling vampires my daughter used to be into. Of course, I feel wrong: The difference between the southeast corner of Washington and Northern California is just a squiggle on the map, and it is becoming one of the major wine-producing regions of the country. So they showed me.

Being a successful liquor rep, Jacques ignored my concerns about Washington State wine and started talking about holiday food. He mentioned that his mother (presumably the same nice lady that named him Jacques) was serving up her special étoufée. I admitted that I’d just terrorized my in-laws with my less-special version of the same. Then a bond was formed, some tiny fraternity of people who stew shellfish for the holidays as opposed to pretending to honor those constipated political refugees up in Plymouth.

Holidays or not, this is exactly why I hate when people try to sell me stuff.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Doc 52: A Memphis Rye-Bourbon Blend

Americans have a weird and fairly awful propensity to want to stick things into neat little categories. It enables us to start a lot of sentences with the phrase, “Well, actually … ” or other ways to make ourselves obvious. Fortunately, we also have that grace-saving habit of embracing novel ideas every once in a while. Sometimes these originals are the result of brilliant innovation or, as often, a blind accident. … And there I go, putting things into categories again.

A lot of innovation in the liquor world involves what super-mellow hotel art painter Bob Ross called “Happy Accidents.” The story goes that Bulleit was gearing up for a bottling run when a technician mixed a tank of bourbon and their rye. Now, a lot of bourbons have some rye in them (like 5 percent), but a 50/50 mix is something else. You can’t unmix a vat of whiskey; at that point, you’ve got what you’ve got.

Seeking to salvage what looked like a complete loss, Bulleit sold the mixed whiskey for pennies on the dollar to the only willing buyer: a distillery in Utah that no one had ever heard of called High West. They called it Bourye. The company claims Bourye is one of those innovative novelties in homage to the cowboy’s spirit. Well actually, it looks a lot more like a pure cock-up that was saved with a last-minute Hail Mary. Good stuff, though.

Local spirits store Doc’s Wine and Spirits is introducing its Doc 52 Blended Whiskey. It’s also a 50/50 Bourbon/Rye blend. It’s a limited release, retailing for $49.99, that hit the shelves on November 17th. Doc’s is using their own limited release rye (the entire run was sold out in advance) with a mash bill of 51 percent rye and 49 percent corn. This, manager Ryan Gill tells me, makes for a sweeter rye, that has a bit of yellowcake feel to it. Not the sort that you make nuclear dirty bombs out of, but the moist, delicious kind.

“What we like about this rye,” says Gill, “is that blending with the bourbon gives it a heavier mouth feel that turns the yellowcake into rum cake. It really turned out well.”

Gill started out in the liquor business as a wine guy, making custom blends for customers, but he has been dragged, chuckling along, into the bourbon boom. “I did the same thing with wine — drink everything, compare products. Two bourbons from the same distillery, with the same mash bill, housed for years on different floors of the same warehouse will taste different in the bottle.”

Picking and choosing barrels with Gill are Mike Jones, a Certified Bourbon Steward, whose moustache is only slightly less famous than his palate, and Angie Adams, who would be a steward, too, if she’d only take the damn test.

I asked all three the crucial question: “So what’s Doc’s Blend taste like?”

Angie said, “Trying to explain what other brand it tastes like does it a disservice.” Truly, that sounds like something a woman who hasn’t taken her finals would say. On the other hand, she’s completely correct.

Mike said, “We’re creating something new — so it’s difficult to say. Hard to pigeon-hole what it is. But it’s good stuff.” True enough.

Gill was a little more technical in his answer, but still a little vague. “I can’t put my finger on it. The composition is very close to a Basil Hayden, or even a Granddad, but it tastes like neither.”

From where I’m standing, Granddad and Basil Hayden taste completely different. Which brings us back to that indefinable element of sensory things that makes it impossible to stick them into neat little categories. It’s the je ne sais quoi, which literally translates from French as “I don’t know what.”

Fortunately, there is one solid and fool-proof way of finding out what the Doc 52 blended whiskey tastes like. Give it a try.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Feelin’ Groggy: How to Make a Sailor Happy

I never thought much about rum until about eight years ago. While writing an article about the local Delta Sailing Association, the Commodore pointed out that I couldn’t properly do the piece unless I knew how to sail. Fair point, but I suspect he was just short of crew that day. At any rate, once you start hanging around with sailors, you start to form opinions about rum.

It was “America’s drink” long before bourbon whiskey reigned supreme. Old Naval lore is drowning in the stuff — Churchill never made the “Rum, sodomy, and the lash” quip, but someone did. The Royal Navy didn’t officially abolish the sailor’s daily rum ration until 1971. In a boozy counter-point to American’s Whiskey Rebellion of 1791-94, Australia’s Rum Rebellion, in 1808, was more or less successful.

The triggering gripe was that the local soldiers didn’t like the governor of New South Wales, one William Bligh, because he cut off their supply of cheap rum. If the name is familiar, it’s the same William Bligh who commanded the HMS Bounty until that infamous munity in 1789, where the crew set him and a few others adrift in the south Pacific without food, water, or topsiders. The salty bastard survived somehow, so naturally he was made governor of a penal colony. In no time, the Australians hated him as much as everyone else who’d ever met the guy.

It’s worth noting that in the vast annals of business books, there is not one called Management Secrets of Captain Bligh.

Still, with stories like that floating around, what little boy, standing on white sandy beaches of Destin, hasn’t looked out on the Gulf Coast and said, “Golly, those old fellers used to get pretty gassed on something called grog. What was that all about?” Although it’s possible that was only me.

Like a lot of cocktails invented by the British military-industrial complex, grog was essentially just spiked medicine. The official Royal Navy recipe was simple: half a barrel of water, half a barrel of rum, and a quart of lime juice. The rum “sterilized” (sort of) the water, provided a mild pain-killer, and helped the average jack-tar to NOT think about his grim lot in life. The quart of lime juice provided much needed Vitamin C that acted as a hedge against scurvy, thus extending the sailor’s misery.

The problem is that, if you haven’t been press-ganged into the navy, grog is actually awful. So how to make a civilian version? The first step is to lighten it up: use soda instead of still water, keep the ratio about the same: one-part water, one-part rum. Give it a good squeeze of lime, more than a twist. Use dark rum — it’s more interesting. The light stuff has too much of a tiki torch/beach party vibe and no sense of adventure.

There are some fine rums out there that aren’t getting the same attention as bourbon, tequila, or, more recently, gin. Rhum Barbancourt 15 is regarded as one of the best in the world. Interestingly, as it’s produced in Haiti, a country not known for producing the best of anything. It will set you back about $53 and is available at various liquor stores around town. Worth every penny, yes, but too fine for grog.

For cocktails, the middle way is best. For my money, at $18.99, Gosling’s Dark Seal Rum is perfect for the job. Mount Gay also makes a great bottle at $24.99.

Around the same price point, I have a soft spot for Flor de Caña, made in Nicaragua. While in Managua, I managed to run smack into in what they call “social unrest” down there. The story would be a lot better if I hadn’t been using my father as interpreter — he grounded me from going to the riot. Which is why you should never take your father on assignment. Still, Flora de Caña always makes me a tad nostalgic.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Lawn Order: A Taste of Loflin Yard

Loflin Yard pulls an eclectic set of folks that’s hard to put a single finger on. It is not a high or a low type crowd, but refreshingly all over the place. There seems to be more of that now — the sort of thing that you used to never see in Memphis outside of a Grizzlies game. Just how they’ve pulled this off is a mystery to me, because it is south of South Main on Carolina Street, and since I don’t live Downtown, I can never remember exactly where the hell it is. Right about the time I say to the wife, “Are you sure we’re in the right place?” there it is — sitting on the corner like a block of concrete.

Loflin Yard

Your first impression is of some hole in the wall, and I mean that in the most positive sense — there are not nearly enough respectable dives in this city. The concrete edifice is the Safe House, with a bar and some indoor dining space. Behind it, the place opens up, with plenty of outdoor seating. If you want more space, you can cross the bridge into the yard, which looks like an eccentric lawn party just waiting to happen. It’s scattered with lawn chairs, fire pits, and even some hammocks, over on the side.

There will be dogs, but you can’t order a basset hound with your sazarac, as interesting as that would be. It’s strictly BYOD. For the record, Loflin Yard makes a good sazarac, which is hard to find these days, but so very important.

You’d think that this little oasis would be called the Back Yard, but it’s called the Front Yard, and beyond it is another drinks-only bar. And if you pass through that space, you’ll find the Back Yard, with a nice view of trains. I’m not entirely sure why it has to be quite so complicated, but it is pretty charming.

Loflin Yard’s cocktail menu isn’t extensive, but it is clever. It’s includes: Bro, They’ve Got Pumpkin Spice; A German Synonym for a Party; and So Do Ya Want an Old Fashioned Er No. While I’m not sure what they were thinking with all that, they are thinking, so you have to give them credit. The ladies in front of me ordered a This Is The Vodka Drink. The name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but the staff seems to know what they meant. I was told that the aforementioned — made of vodka, orange crema, cinnamon, Carmel lemon, and apple cider — was “to die for” and tasted like apple cider with a vodka wallop.

For those of us seeking a less ironic experience, there are a handful of wines — from the affordable to the less so — available by bottle and glass. There is also a solid selection of local go-to beers — Wiseacre’s Tiny Bomb, Memphis Made’s Fireside, and High Cotton’s Scottish Ale — that fit nicely with the cooler weather.

The only drawback is the pricing — which isn’t written down anywhere accessible and seems to depend somewhat on who you ask. This can be annoying to a skin-flint like myself because ordering is like playing dice with your debit card. Although at happy hour you can come up lucky.

Since the “Smoke House” is behind the “Safe House” and right there in the “Front Yard,” the place smells like a backyard grill. Which sort of acts as its own appetizer and behavioral nudge, forcing you to lose any resistance to the brisket tacos and the house-smoked sausage and cheese plate.

The music is classic and eclectic at the same time, downshifting, for example, from The Beatles’ “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” to Gary Wright’s “Dream Weaver.” In sum, it’s a good place to have a drink.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Why — and How — to Oxidize a Wine

After inflicting a Bud Light Orange on Mrs. M. last week, she declared that I owed her a decent bottle of wine as restitution. Fair point, but which wine?

The climate in northern California provides a wonderful stand-in for north and central France, and if you move down toward the Central Coast toward Santa Ynez Valley, what you get is a pretty fair approximation of the south of France. It’s called the American Riviera — and not just because the members of the Santa Barbara Chamber of Commerce are delusional. These vineyards are some of the oldest in the country, but they differ in character from their Napa and Sonoma Valley cousins by leaning toward the Rhône style.

I picked up a bottle of 2006 Zaca Mesa Z Cuvée from Santa Ynez Valley, a blend of 59 percent Grenache, 23 percent Mourvèdre, 15 percent Syrah, and 3 percent Cinsaur. Theoretically, this should have been a perfect Rhône stand-in, but I wasn’t impressed. I found it astringent and faded quickly to water. Mrs. M. was a little more visual, describing a bowl with heavy lines and nothing in the center. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that some reasonable wines that start off peculiar improve if allowed to “breathe.”

Understand that opening a bottle 10 minutes before drinking it will not allow it to breathe, as there isn’t enough exposed surface area in the bottleneck to allow air to pass. I’ve heard opening the bottle an hour earlier is best, but the physics don’t really support this, either. Besides, different wines benefit from aeration differently: Younger, harsher wines can be vastly improved, while the flavors of an older vintage will flatten out.

Aeration triggers two reactions in wine. Oxidation, the process that turns an apple brown once you break the skin — which is bad — and evaporation, which can mellow flavors. Aeration reduces the sulfites that are added to all wines sold in the U.S. and at least partially responsible for the “wine headache” you get. Since the Zana Mesa had that astringent or ethanol taste, I reckoned we’d aerate the hell of out of it and see what happened.

The mere act of pouring wine into a glass aerates it. So does swirling it around. Swirling thoughtfully also improves conversation by giving you time to think up lies to make yourself seem more interesting. If the wine in question needs more CPR than that, decant it in a wide-bottomed ship’s or duck decanter that creates a lot of surface area. If you aren’t going for style points, a water jug will do the same thing.

You can buy aerators that mix the wine with oxygen as it pours. They work well enough and show assembled company that you are a sophisticate — and probably a pretentious ass — in the bargain. Much more effective, however, is to just dump the wine into the decanter. And I mean dump. We’ve built up so much prissiness around wine that we think it needs to be treated like nitroglycerin. Just turn up the bottle, vertically, and dump it. This will churn up the oxygen and speed up the process considerably.

A note of caution, if you’ve got an older bottle that might have some sediment in it, don’t do this. You’ll only mix the crud in the decanter to settle in your glass later. This is bad.

An inventor called Nathan Myhrvold claims to have pioneered hyperaeration — pouring wine into a blender and pulsing it for 30 to 60 seconds. While that sounds fun enough, if you need to assault your vino with whirling blades to make it drinkable, then perhaps your brand loyalty is misplaced. Half an hour in a decanter did improve the Zaca Mesa somewhat. Mrs. M. marked more improvement than I did, but conceded that it might just be because we were getting toward the end of the bottle and, well, you know how it is at the end of the bottle.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Bud Light Orange? Just Say No

With football season upon us — after nine months of it not being upon us — so are the football gatherings. Unlike hanging out for a couple of beers after work or on the weekend, tail-gating really isn’t the place for craft beer. For one thing, you are drinking for too many hours on end; and for another, when it comes to filling the cooler, these things usually have a community chest rule. Tail-gating is the time for that old standby: Cheap Domestic Beer.

Fortunately, the explosion of craft beer has made the major brewers reflect on the variety of taste profiles they offer. In theory, that’s a good thing, but in practice, they might want to stop thinking so hard.

Over the summer, I had a Schöfferhofer, a German grapefruit shandy that looks like a Fanta in the bottle but tastes light and refreshing and is just a little different. Leinenkugel’s, out of Wisconsin, makes a popular shandy that’s widely available in town. This, I think, is what Budweiser was attempting with the release of its Bud Light Orange. Given how tightly the Germans regulate beer production, Schöfferhofer doesn’t use artificial flavoring. Budweiser isn’t quite so picky, however. This is what happens when traditional brewing meets economies of scale and double entry corporate bookkeeping.

BLO wasn’t even on my radar until the underage child of a friend (both will remain nameless) suggested I review the new Bud Light Orange.

“Is it good?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” she said. “It’s awful.”

This piqued my interest because I remember my own comically low standards at 19. Being a professional at this by now — and something of a masochist, I thought, why not?

If you are expecting a burst of warm Florida sunshine and wholesome Vitamin C from BLO, go elsewhere. This tastes like a watery Tang, but without the childlike faith in its country’s space program — or future. The orange flavoring is thin and industrial, almost Orwellian. Like Big Brother has already crushed our will to live and now he’s just toying with us. Bud Light Orange is the Room 101 of beer.

I do like a hint of orange in a cocktail. Once, while having drinks with the Commander at Hog & Hominy, I thought up a concoction involving gin, a dash of simple syrup, and orange bitters. Served with a twist. We explained it to the bartender and called it a Comedian, because that made sense at the time. They were great, and we drank too many. As far as I know, the Comedian isn’t on the H&H drinks menu; the bartender was just being amiable.

Bud Light Orange, however, failed to capture the same humor. The long-suffering Mrs. M. — a fan of regular Bud Light — was dubious when I showed her the six-pack, so I resorted to subtle and complex psychological warfare to get her to test this stuff with me. And some obvious pouting. After I’d pulled my shirt over my head, she looked down and said, “Okay, Chubs, get up off the floor and pour me that orange beer.”

I used our wedding crystal because I’m such a romantic.

Mrs. M. thought it tasted like a Jolly Rancher and beer. I quote: “This isn’t even a college girl beer. This is what a four-year-old would want with his Happy Meal.”

Wise lady, that one. In fact, it doesn’t taste like a Jolly Rancher and beer — just a Jolly Rancher. Were it not a Budweiser product, you’d be hard pressed to call it beer. Picture orange-flavored children’s medicine without the benefit of the medicine.

I paired it with Brim’s Seasoned Pork Cracklin’ Strips (small on carbs, big on hypertension), not so much for a salty/sweet thing but to get the taste out of my mouth. Now we have four left in the fridge. If you want them, swing by; they’ll still be here.

I’m going to go make myself a Comedian.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

What Beer Pairs Best With Buffalo Wings?

CREDIT: Sergii Koval | Dreamstime.com

When you can’t turn on the nightly news without hearing yourself utter, “What fresh hell is this?” it just may be time to go back to the basics and find some common ground on which we can all agree. It’s time for that universal American comfort food of bar-flies, sports fans, soccer moms, and tortured undergraduates alike. I speak, of course, of buffalo wings and beer.

Buffalo wings were invented, so the story goes, in 1964 by one Teressa Belissimo — and who knows how the Republic got that far without them. While the details are fuzzy, they seem to revolve around a college-aged son, Dominic, and the late-night tomfoolery of either his drinking buddies or some hungry Catholics. Accounts vary.

Sergii Koval | Dreamstime.com

There was a time when I was someone’s college age son, sitting on the Tuscaloosa strip, sweating profusely over a basket of “nuclear” buffalo wings at Wings N’ Things and washing the little buggers down with a frosty Miller Lite. It was the first time I’d ever had buffalo wings, and I remember distinctly a sign that read, “Please clear tables in lieu of tipping.” It was the first time I’d ever seen the word “lieu.” College really is a place to learn.

I’m fairly sure that a steady diet of beer (warding off infection), as well as vinegar-based cayenne pepper sauce (cauterizing my insides) kept me out of the Student Health Center. We could all use some therapeutic sweats to get our heads right.

So I was at Huey’s the other day, contemplating the right brew to accompany an order of wings. The truth is that it doesn’t really matter, other than a vague instinctual directive to “keep it light.” That can mean anything from a Michelob Ultra to some crafty IPA — although I’d steer clear of the really hoppy ones until you’ve cleaned your basket. That combo is an awful lot to have going on with one’s taste buds. And in my experience, the hoppy brews tend to get more so as they warm up.

On the other hand, this might not be a problem if you order your wings extra hot, because you’d be quaffing the stuff down double-quick. Borrowing yet another hand, if you suck down three double IPAs with an order of extra-hot buffalo wings, I’d advise rolling the windows down on the way home. (This is the sort of dialectical masturbation a fella gets into with a top-notch college degree.)

Still, I wanted the perfect buffalo wing beer. My eye went to the Wiseacre tap — a great Memphis stand-by — but it wasn’t the Ananda IPA or Tiny Bomb Pilsner, though either would have been winners with a basket of wings. It was Gotta Get up to Get Down — a coffee stout. I just couldn’t convince myself this would be a good idea with wings. For some reason, the Deepwater Horizon disaster keeps leaping to mind. Don’t get me wrong; it’s a good coffee stout. I was at the lake about a year ago, and (I’m not proud of this) I had it for breakfast, where it really hit the spot. Somebody was frying a mess of eggs and bacon, but that wasn’t for me. I was being alert and heart healthy. We went skiing after this.

The Scottish Ale seems a bit toasty for hot sauces — like trying to fry ribs after you smoke them. Then, of course, there are the classic domestic mass-produced pilsners. I’m not a big enough snob to say those would be wrong. Just maybe not perfect.

In the end, I went with a Bell’s Two Hearted Ale out of Kalamazoo. It’s light, but you know its there. There is enough hop to appreciate it without thinking, “My, what a cavalcade of hops!”

And here’s that college education again — I like a brewery that would name a beer after a Hemingway short story.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Vermouth Truth

Last week my fellow Spirits columnist Andria Lisle wrote about a bottle of Tribuno vermouth left by a departed father who was, evidently, a first-rate bartender. It reminded me when, in college, I’d carted some girl to New Orleans to meet my godparents. For all the city’s great food, Aunt Pouff (And no, I’m not making that name up) admitted that her favorite meal was “A bowl of salty treats and a martini with more vermouth than you children like these days.”

Which made her the first person I ever met who actually liked vermouth … or had lived 75 years entirely on hors d’oeuvres.

We all know the dry martini recipe that calls for whispering “vermouth” over ice-cold vodka. But as Pouff pointed out, “That’s not a martini; that’s just a cold hooker of vodka.” She then remarked that “martinis are made with gin.”
It’s likely that the reason most of us don’t like much, or any, vermouth in a martini is because nine times out of 10 the stuff we’re drinking is rancid. And if you are using vodka, the funk is all you will taste.

Vermouth isn’t a liquor; it’s fortified white wine — the light and dainty cousin of port or madeira. If refrigerated, it will last longer than a bottle of pinot gris, but the experts suggest you ought to throw the stuff out after a couple of months. It’s made from grapes such as Clairette Blanche and Bianchetta Trevigiana and a few others that you’ve never heard of — mainly because they don’t make very good wine. If they did, no one would be hiding the flavor with herbs, roots, and tree bark.

So yes, vermouth is made with regrettable white wine, to which is added a neutral grape spirit, and sometimes sugar water, which is poured into the aforementioned dry ingredients in a barrel and rolled around a bit. The first variants were made with wormwood, which the Germans called “wermut” and the French called that “vermouth.”

The Chinese were doing this 3,000 years ago, but, in 1786, a sweet wine was introduced to the royal court in Turin, Italy. They went wild and you really can’t buy word-of-mouth like that. A generation later, a pale, drier French version evolved. Both were aperitifs as well as medicine — which is as good a cure as any for sobriety. It would be another 100 years before it was so closely associated with cocktails and liquor. And, unfortunately, it got stuck behind the bar as opposed to being put in the fridge.

If you are going to stick to the classics — like martinis, Manhattans, and Rob Roys — a Tribuno or Martini & Rossi are hard to beat. Noilly Prat is a little darker and bolder, so be warned.

When the expatriates and the professionally fabulous were famously sipping vermouth on the Riviera, they weren’t drinking the stuff off the bottom shelf — and there is a difference. If you want to break out and be a little creative, Dolin has a Vermouth de Chambéry; a large bottle retails for $15. My personal favorite, a blanco Vermut Lustau, retails for $25. These are both clean and very crisp, and Vermut Lustau doesn’t have the vague bitterness that generally puts people off.

Last month, when the heat was really starting to get uppity, a friend introduced me to the following: One measure of vodka, one measure of Vermut Lustau, with tonic and a squeeze of citrus over ice. Not a twist or a thin wedge, you want a solid squeeze here, but just one. It works beautifully with gin as well, but the vodka lets the Lustau do what it does without the botanicals. As summer drinks go, this is one of the best I’ve discovered in a long time — it just floats over the weather.

And Pouff, if you can read this from that palm-lined boulevard in the sky, I use more vermouth than the children like these days.