Pisco: bebida historica del Oeste de los EEUU

The cocktail divide: West Coast and East Coast cocktail cultures couldn't be more different - right?
Gary Regan, Special to The Chronicle
Thursday, June 26, 2008

Like true sons and daughters of the hippie generation, the young bartenders of San Francisco tend toward organic cocktails filled with homegrown this and hand-fed that. Their creative juices are sweetened only with the pure agave nectar.
Back east in New York City, the progeny of Wall Streeters hold forth from behind the ivy-covered bars of the Big Apple. They seem to enjoy reinventing drinks that have been with us for a century at the very least, adding a drop of this, a dash of that, changing, perhaps, just one ingredient to bring the drink into the 21st century.
You simply can't get a classic cocktail in San Francisco, and if you go to New York you'll find nothing but.
Unless I'm wrong, of course ...
Although more than a few American cities boast great cocktailian bartenders, these two are often considered the leaders of modern American mixology, and each has its own vocal set of partisans. Since I've been listening to generalizations about East and West Coast bartenders for some time now, I think it's about time we set the record straight. First, I should probably point out that I've listened to similar comparisons between British and American bartenders, I've heard bartenders in Paris talk about their German counterparts, and believe it or not I've been privy to discussions about the merits of Slovakian bartenders compared to the guys who mix drinks in the Czech Republic.
Let's start out with a simple truth: All bartenders are created equal. Where they go from there is a matter of individual choice, and although certain styles most definitely emerge in specific locations - more on this in just a bit - there are bartenders who embrace their hometown fashions, and there are bartenders who shun them.
Now, let's get into some specifics.
Toby Maloney, a New York bartender who is currently the head mixologist at the Violet Hour in Chicago, muses that the cocktail scene today is much like the culinary landscape of a couple decades ago. "The East Coast is rooted in tradition - (and) by that I mean it is more conservative - where the West Coast is more experimental," he says. "I think that the bartenders in San Francisco are a little, well, nicer. We can have some serious attitude (in New York). You got a problem with that?"
Jacques Bezuidenhout, a man who has worked behind many of the finest cocktail bars in San Francisco, best sums up the general feeling I get from most, though certainly not all, of the city's bartenders who I asked about their style of creating drinks.
"I think we tend to look toward fresh ingredients," he says, adding that many San Francisco bartenders work closely with the kitchen to get their fruits, herbs and fresh produce - something found in abundance out west. "I think the trend started in the kitchen with the likes of Alice Waters and then over the years moved to the bar," he says. Good point, Jacques.
We also have to consider the fact that bartenders are wont to travel, so some New York quirks tend to make their way west, and our bartenders take some of their West Coast idiosyncrasies back east.
Pros with eggs and ice
Greg Lindgren, bartender and co-owner of Rye, says that last time he was in New York he learned a lot from talking to the bartenders at Little Branch and Death & Co. "New York (bartenders) handle eggs and ice better than I do," he noted. And Toby Cecchini, the New Yorker who is generally recognized as the creator of the cosmopolitan as we know it (Cheryl Cooke, a Miami bartender, came up with the concept, Toby ran with it) has noticed some bartenders in New York "doing lychee this and shiso that," ingredients that are far more commonplace behind bars in San Francisco. "With so much media attention focused on bartenders and bartending in general, I find things are beginning to blend together a bit more," he says.
Bartenders don't merely visit other cities, though. Sometimes they pull a few shifts while they're there. Thomas Waugh, for instance, the creator of some very serious cocktails who can usually be found shaking and stirring at San Francisco's Alembic, recently did a guest stint at New York's Death & Co., a speakeasy-style joint that's known for killer cocktails. And Phil Ward, the big cheese bartender at Death & Co, took Waugh's place behind the stick at Alembic.
When asked about the differences between bars on both coasts, Waugh said that cocktails on the West Coast might have been heavy on the citrus side about five years ago, but that's no longer true. Remember, this is the view of an individual, and although most of Waugh's drinks are not citrus-heavy, there are Bay Area bartenders very willing to take the opposing point of view. That doesn't make Waugh categorically wrong, though, and he makes a good point when he notes that the major difference between drinks on opposing coasts could be that the citrus fruits available to Californians are of better quality than the limes and lemons that the good folk back east can get their hands on.
"Don't take this the wrong way," he pleaded. "I loved working at Death & Co."
Geography or history?
Ward, on the other hand, thinks that the biggest difference in bars out west lies in the expectations of the customers. "San Franciscans tend to want to know where the ingredients in a cocktail come from in a geographic sense, whereas New Yorkers are more interested in where they came from historically," he says. It's an interesting take on both coasts' cultures, I guess, and I'll bet that Ward isn't the first bartender to notice this - traveling far and wide in order to learn the craft isn't an entirely new phenomenon.
New York-born bartending pioneer Jerry Thomas, for instance, held forth from behind the mahogany in San Francisco during the days of the Gold Rush, and he tended bar in Charleston, Chicago and a few other cities before returning to the Empire State.
Rival bartenders
Thomas' main rival, Harry Johnson, on the other hand, got his basic training in San Francisco, claims to have published America's very first bartender's manual here - no copies have been found to my knowledge - and then moved on to Chicago where he opened, as he humbly described it in the 1900 edition of his "Bartenders' Manual," "what was generally recognized to be the largest and finest establishment of the kind in this country." After that joint burned to the ground in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, Johnson went on to Boston, and he ended up opening his own place, Little Jumbo, on the Bowery in New York.
Thomas and Johnson, it seems, had the chance to work with the best of the best ingredients in San Francisco, if Hinton Helper, a 19th century journalist from North Carolina is to be believed: "I have seen purer liquors, better sugars, finer tobacco, truer guns and pistols, larger dirks and bowie knives, and prettier courtesans here in San Francisco than in any other place I have ever visited; and it is my unbiased opinion that California can and does furnish the best bad things that are available in America," he wrote in his 1855 book, "The Land of Gold."
And more than 150 years later I'm guessing that most of us believe that Helper's observations hold true today. More than a couple of world-class spirits producers are made right at San Franciscans' doorsteps. California spirits producers such as Anchor, Charbay, Distillery No. 209, Germain-Robin, and St. George Spirits have not only inspired bartenders on both coasts, but many understood, long before major liquor producers, how important bartenders are to their survival.
Even if the citrus-heavy theory of San Franciscan drinks isn't true today - and it might be - it most definitely was true in the late 1800s. And for good reason, too. At that time pisco punch was the toast of the town here while New Yorkers of the same time period were more likely to be knocking back Manhattans, and it's not hard to figure out why. Pisco was being shipped to San Francisco from Peru, and there happens to be quite a bounty of citrus in California. Pisco punch, then - basically pisco, pineapple juice and fresh lemon juice - would have been a natural for this neck of the woods.
Although whiskey was most definitely being served on the West Coast in those days, it wouldn't have been quite as easy to get here as it was back east, simply because back east is where it was being made. Much of it came from Kentucky, but a lot of whiskey back then was also being made in Pennsylvania and Maryland, too. By drinking what was readily available, then, quaffers on both coasts were saving their carbon footprints. And they didn't even know that they had carbon footprints.
Drinking locally
If gas prices keep soaring we might be headed right back to the 19th century when it comes to supplies, but for the time being bars here and in New York have access to just about any ingredients they want to play with, so it's interesting to look at what kind of drinks they choose to make. I asked a handful of bartenders on both coasts if they'd like to share an original cocktail recipe they believed represented their home city.
Jonathan Pogash, director of cocktail development for an exclusive chain of New York bars including the Campbell Apartment in Grand Central Station, sent me a recipe for the Midtown Buck, a drink that calls for gin, fresh ginger, lemon juice, simple syrup and a Long Island dessert wine. Traditionally drinks that fall under the "Buck" heading contain ginger ale, so this is a riff on a classical theme, and it also includes a local New York ingredient.
Hometown spirit
San Francisco's Bezuidenhout offers his Romanza cocktail as one that might embody the spirit of his fine adopted hometown, and I can see where he's coming from. The Romanza, a fairly simple affair that calls for Campari, Grand Marnier and fresh white grapefruit juice, points out the city's love for all things bitter. When you ask a bartender here to have a drink, chances are that she will head straight for the Fernet-Branca, right?
To sum up for the West Coast we'll listen to the words of Jonny Raglin, head bartender at Absinthe, who told me, "I can mix a killer Sazerac, and most of my creations are twists on classics." And if we allow Toby Cecchini to represent East Coast bartenders I should tell you that, given the chance, he'll bend your ear for a good long time about a variety of sour cherries called Sure-Fires that he once found at the Union Square greenmarket that were "unusually dark, like Bings, and held not only their shape and color, but even their stems and leaves remarkably after even two years of soaking (in maraschino liqueur), and their flavor was unreal ... ."
So it's just like I said: In San Francisco, they look to the past and lean toward tweaking the classics, and back in New York they put on their hippie vests and look to their greenmarkets for organic ingredients and homegrown this, that, and the other. That is what I said, right?
RECIPES ON F3
Nouveau Carre
Makes 1 drink
The formula here is adapted from a recipe by Jonny Raglin, head bartender, Absinthe, San Francisco. It shows its creator's abilities to knit together some very complex ingredients and bring them together harmoniously, without leaning on citrus or fresh fruit.
1 1/2 ounces Herradura añejo Tequila
3/4 ounce B&B liqueur
1/4 ounce Lillet Blanc
4 dashes Peychaud's bitters
1 lemon twist, for garnish
Instructions: Combine the Tequila, B&B, Lillet Blanc and bitters in a mixing glass filled with ice. Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Add the garnish.
The Final Ward
Makes 1 drink
Adapted from a recipe by Phil Ward, head bartender, Death & Co., New York. The classic Last Word is made with gin, maraschino, Chartreuse and lime juice. Here the whiskey replaces the gin, and Ward changed the citrus from lime to lemon.
3/4 ounce Rittenhouse rye whiskey
3/4 ounce Luxardo maraschino liqueur
3/4 ounce green Chartreuse
3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice
Instructions: Combine ingredients in a mixing glass filled with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
Winter Tale
Makes 1 drink
Adapted from a recipe by Ektoras Binikos, head bartender at Aureole, New York. It seems like such a San Francisco effort, with cardamom seed brought in from the kitchen, caraway-flavored aquavit and a tot of a Cognac-based, pear-flavored liqueur.
1 cardamom seed
2 to 3 dashes Regans' Orange Bitters No. 6
1 ounces White Porto
1/2 ounce aquavit
1/2 ounce Belle de Brillet Liqueur Originale Poire Williams Au Cognac
Instructions: Put the cardamom seed and bitters into an empty mixing glass and grind them with a wooden muddler until the cardamom is well crushed. Fill the glass two-thirds full with ice and add the remaining ingredients. Shake for approximately 15 seconds, and strain into a chilled Riesling glass.
Grilled Peach Old Fashioned
Makes 1 drink
Adapted from a recipe by Neyah White, head bartender at Nopa, San Francisco. White utilizes the restaurant's wood-fired ovens to roast peaches for this drink. The roasted fruit is then muddled with an orange slice, lots of Angostura bitters and some brown molasses sugar - White prefers Billington's Natural Dark Brown Molasses Sugar, which is available on Amazon. Ice and a goodly amount of rum follow.
1/4 to 1/2 peach, grilled over open flame until soft
1 orange slice
1 teaspoon brown molasses sugar
8 heavy dashes of Angostura bitters
1 1/2 ounces aged rum (preferably Santa Teresa Gran Reserva)
Instructions: Muddle the peach and orange with sugar and bitters in a large old-fashioned glass. Add ice and rum, stir briefly and serve.
Gary Regan is the author of "The Joy of Mixology" and other books. E-mail him at wine@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page F - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle