Imbibe Names 25 Most Influential Cocktails of the Past Century

Finally got my copy of the May/June issue of Imbibe in the mail. (Contributors seem to get the magazine later than subscribers, or just about everybody. Haven't figured that one out yet.) The cover story is "The 25 Most Influential Cocktails of the Past Century." Meaning Dale Carnegie would really like these drinks!

Keep in mind the idea is "influential." Not "popular," or "good," or "for the ages." Influential. It doesn't say if they're in any particular order. I'm guessing not. Interesting round-up. A few are incontestable (Margarita, Bloody Mary, Moscow Mule), a few surprising (Harvey Wallbanger, B-52), and I doubt the Last Word would have slipped in if Imbibe were published in New York and not Portland, Oregon. But a good argument is made for each drink. Nice to see the Gin-Gin Mule and the Red Hook, two cocktails I recent picked as among the most influential of the past decade, make the cut.

Here's the list:

1. Dry Martini
2. Cuba Libre
3. Mojito
4. Alexander
5. Singapore Sling
6. Aviation
7. Sidecar
8. Margarita
9. Bloody Mary
10. Negroni
11. Last Word
12. Zombie
13. Mai Tai
14. Bellini
15. Moscow Mule
16. Irish Coffee
17. Caipirinha
18. Kangaroo
19. Harvey Wallbanger
20. Pina Colada
21. Long Island Iced Tea
22. B-52
23. Cosmopolitan
24. Gin-Gin Mule
25. Red Hook

Drinking in Brooklyn

I spent a good deal of the early part of the year talking to anyone and everyone who has anything to do with the cocktail, beer and coffee scenes in Brooklyn. The canvasing was in service of a feature on the Brooklyn drinking scene for Imbibe magazine. It wasn't difficult to research; a Brooklynite for 16 years, I had been doing casual, unscripted research for such a survey two or three years by simply paying calls on the new Brooklyn bars and cafe as they opened in waves in 2008 and 2009. And most of the people I interviewed for the piece I had already come to know. Nothing quite as pleasurable as doing an in-depth piece on your own hometown.

Here's the article. There are also lists of places to go for  cocktails, coffee, beer and wine (yes, wine does get a mention in the piece, though not a thorough going over, thank God—adding that aspect to the article might have killed me), all put together by yours truly. But I won't print those here. I have to leave some reason to go out and buy the mag.


A SCENE GROWS IN BROOKLYN

By Robert Simonson

IN THE LATE 19th CENTURY, BROOKLYN WAS A GLORIOUS PLACE TO DRINK. The borough (then a full-fledged city in its own right) boasted 48 breweries and lent its name to The Brooklyn, one of the country’s most popular cocktails at the time. Two of America’s largest coffee roasters of the area—R. Buckle Brothers and the A & P company—called Brooklyn home, and the venerable, gas-lit Gage & Tollner restaurant on Fulton Street served coffee so strong, some customers asked for it to be diluted.

Then came Prohibition, the Depression, high taxes and rising labor costs. The Breweries—Trommer’s, Piels, Rheingold—closed one by one. The last, Schaefer, turned off its Brooklyn taps in 1976. The Brooklyn Cocktail died from memory as an essential ingredient, Amer Picon, fell into obscurity. Gage & Tollner closed, its landmark interior eventually invaded by TGI Friday’s and then Arby’s.

In the last decade, however, craft breweries, cocktail lounges and coffee bars have been cropping up from Greenpoint to Bushwick. The shift took root in the ’90s, when New Yorkers crossed the East River in droves to escape rising rents and encroaching homogenization bred by Manhattan’s bear hug of chain stores and luxury condos. Some of those transplants became entrepreneurs, opening bars and cafés over the years to slake the thirsts of the new locals. That trend has steadily gained steam, and today Brooklynites have reclaimed one of the most enviable drink cultures in the country.



How Brooklyn Got its Brew Back 

"You can go anywhere in Brooklyn and get a great beer,” says Garrett Oliver, the poised yet cheerful Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster, who could be considered the godfather of Brooklyn’s beer renaissance. “Fifteen years ago that wasn’t true.”

Brooklyn Brewery, founded in 1987 by reporter Steve Hindy and banker Tom Potter, can take a lot of credit for changing the borough’s there-but-for-the-grace-of-Manhattan-go-I reputation. Suddenly, something was made in Brooklyn, and it was really good! Now, it’s difficult to find a bar in the borough that doesn’t serve locally made beers—and not just dedicated beer bars like Park Slope’s epicurean Beer Table, Carroll Gardens’ rustic Bar Great Harry or Greenpoint’s fun-loving The Diamond Bar. You can also find them at the typical corner dive. “People in this neighborhood would never eat at Burger King, but they had no problem drinking cans of PBR,” says Joe Carroll, owner of Williamsburg’s seven-year-old Spuyten Duyvil, which boasts a mouth-watering array of international craft beers. “I think that’s changed. They know good beer now and drink good beer.”

The second wave of Brooklyn’s craft-brewing renaissance began with the 2004 arrival of Sixpoint. Owner and Wisconsinite Shane Welch didn’t want to be tethered to the standard brew-and-bottle formula when coming up with a business plan for his brewery. “Why not make a whole bunch of beers and let people enjoy them?” he asked himself. The trouble was there are only a few places in the country where a brewery can support itself on draught alone. Welch picked up and moved to Red Hook, rightly guessing that Brooklyn was one of them. He set up business in a tight space behind a couple of huge, green, bay doors on lonely Van Dyne Street. Now in its sixth year, Sixpoint has produced 63 different beers and counting, including its first and most familiar, Brownstone Ale, and dozens of one-offs. The beers are unfiltered and known to be surprisingly complex yet approachable, from the hoppy IPA Bengali Tiger and the bracingly sharp Righteous Rye to the toasty, dense Brownstone, which is made from a blend of 12 different malts.

Sixpoint’s facility is tiny, so it contracts with Clinton Hill’s Green Point Beerworks to produce some of its beers. As a testament to the partnership and collaboration that goes on among Brooklyn’s entrepreneurs, Green Point happens to be the base of operations of Kelly Taylor, the brewmaster at Kelso—the third entry in Brooklyn’s triumvirate of micro-breweries. Two years after Taylor began working for Heartland Brewery in 2000, the brewpub chain—the most prominent of the Manhattan brewpubs that sprang up in the 1990s—decided to set up Green Point to help defray some of its costs. They put Taylor in charge.

“I was given carte blanche to build this place,” he says. When some tanks sat idle, Taylor asked to take up the slack by creating his own line of beers, starting in 2006 with Kelso Nut Brown Lager, his flagship beer. The brewery frequently focuses on German-style beers—producing a classic, European-style Pilsner and St. Gowanus, a blend of Belgian-style golden ale and American-style pale ale—plus an array of seasonal brews.

These distinctive Brooklyn-born brews are perfectly matched by Brooklyn’s highly individualized beer dens. The Diamond Bar, owned by the affable Dave Pollack (a former Spuyten Duyvil bartender), is an oasis on a darkened Greenpoint block, specializing in session beers, shuffleboard and quoits (a twist on horseshoes). It typically gets its cask-conditioned ale from Brooklyn Brewery, just six blocks away. Similarly, Carroll Gardens’ dog-friendly Bar Great Harry, an ordinary-looking bar with an extraordinary beer selection, often has multiple draught lines of nearby Sixpoint. “Brooklyn’s got a lot of love for Sixpoint,” says owner Mike Wiley. “It’s an easy beer to sell.”

Clearly, there’s a lot of local pride for home-grown brews. Williamsburg’s Barcade, which marries a two-dozen strong draught line-up with an array of vintage arcade games, holds events like “Brooklyn Beer Night” and “Sixpoint Beer Night.” Bierkraft, a Park Slope beer store and grocery, regularly carries Kelso and Sixpoint beer for growler refills. And Kelso may have pulled off the savviest placement trick in the borough, getting the staid, 123-year-old Brooklyn steak house Peter Luger to go local and put his Nut Brown Lager on tap. “We let them call it Peter Luger Lager,” laughs Taylor.

A New Class of Cocktails 

With the ongoing migration of New Yorkers over the East River bridges, it was only a matter of time before the new Brooklynites would start looking for cocktails on par with those they’d enjoyed in Manhattan. Quietly forcing the issue was the fact that many of Manhattan’s best bartenders and cocktail lounge owners actually lived in Brooklyn: Mayahuel’s Phil Ward; Summit Bar’s Greg Seider; Death & Co.’s Brian Miller and Joaquim Simo; Pegu Club’s St. John Frizell; and Flatiron Lounge owner Julie Reiner.

So the 21st-century dawn of such landmark Manhattan cocktail spots as Milk & Honey, PDT and Little Branch was quickly followed by the 2008-2009 deluge of high-end Brooklyn bars. In 2008, Reiner opened Clover Club in Cobble Hill, a sepia-hued picture-postcard of the dark-wood, upholstered, Victorian era. A year later, Frizell opened his cozy Fort Defiance in Red Hook, outfitted with a patchwork of memorabilia from places where he has either lived or visited, such as New Orleans and South America, and named after a Revolutionary War citadel that once stood nearby.

But Fort Defiance and Clover Club aren’t the only bars with heavyweights behind them. Cocktail consultants Tad Carducci and Paul Tanguay of The Tippling Bros. created the opening cocktail menu at Williamsburg’s Bar Celona, whose bar is managed by Clif Travers, formerly of Om in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Clover Club. Sasha Petraske, considered one of the forces behind New York’s craft cocktail movement, designed the menu at Kathryn Weatherup’s eponymous Weather Up in Prospect Heights, and former U.K. bartender of the year Charlotte Voisey consulted at The Hideout in Fort Greene.

Accordingly, the cocktail menus at these bars are complex and sophisticated, offering a mix of classics and new creations. Clover Club’s menu, for instance, is divided into sections such as “Bucks & Mules” and “The Work of Charles Baker” (the mid-20th-century cocktail writer and creator). Bar Celona riffs on the simple Gin & Tonic, offering several subtle variations. And Prime Meats, a quasi-Germanic restaurant that opened in Carroll Gardens in early 2009, deploys ingredients like Fernet Branca and unaged corn whiskey and makes homemade pear bitters with fruit from a tree in the restaurant’s backyard.

But as writer Thomas Wolfe famously said, “Only the dead know Brooklyn.” The borough and its residents are so various it would take a lifetime to really know them. Thus, what works on Brooklyn’s well-trafficked Smith Street—a once-dangerous strip that’s now chockablock with the likes of Clover Club, JakeWalk and the swank whiskey haven Char No 4.—might not fly in warehouse-laden Red Hook. “We’re prone to deal with a different clientele,” says Frizell. “If you talk to people who go to PDT or Pegu Club, 90 percent of the customers understand the whole cocktail renaissance. In [parts of] Brooklyn, you have to be ready for the people who have no idea what’s going on.” Consequently, Frizell keeps his cocktail menu “non-confrontational,” leading off with well-known classics like the Manhattan, as well as new creations like the Colonial Cooler, made with gin, two kinds of sweet vermouth, lemon juice and Cointreau.

It’s all part of what keeps Brooklyn’s spirit so down to earth. While the first wave of the borough’s new cocktail dens brought places like The Hideout, which took cues from Manhattan with a limited-seating, no-signage, speakeasy feel, a more open-door scene has since prevailed. Frizell painted “Fort Defiance” in large letters on the outside wall of his convivial corner saloon-café, while the spacious Clover Club greets the street with a clear-glass facade and a big illuminated sign. “Everything I’ve ever done has been accessible,” says Reiner. “Speakeasy has never been my shtick.”

The Coffee Comeback

It’s that no-nonsense attitude that drew Duane Sorenson, owner of Portland, Oregon’s vaunted Stumptown Coffee, to set up shop in Brooklyn. “Brooklyn and Portland, to me, are similar in many ways,” says the scruffy 38-year-old. “I’m drinking beer with people who raise bees on their roof. They’re pickling in their kitchens.”

Sorenson was barely a day on Brooklyn soil when a friend took him to a party at the popular Carroll Gardens eatery Frankies Spuntino, run by Frank Falcinelli and Frank Costronovo, two laser-intense local food moguls known as “The Franks.” The Franks were already fans of Stumptown, and they took to Sorenson immediately. “The next day, they showed me where my apartment was going to be,” Sorenson says. “They showed me where I was going to roast coffee. It happened like that.” The Franks hold the lease with Sorenson to the roastery, and they plan to open a combination café and cocktail bar in the front by mid-2010.

Sorenson’s experience is almost symbolic of Brooklyn’s coffee scene in general. While the borough has long been home to several large wholesale roasters, such as Gillies Coffee, at the retail level, coffee was more of an afterthought. Then, around 2007, cafés started sprouting up across Brooklyn, staffed with professionally trained baristas and sourcing beans from the country’s best-known artisan roasters. “It’s rapidly evolving from bodega-grade to quality-focused,” says Kevin Cuddeback, CEO of Gimme! Coffee, a roaster/retailer with locations in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Upstate New York. “Lust for great coffee continues to spread with every new shop that opens. I think there’s tremendous potential for Brooklyn to become known for having a loud heartbeat in modern café society.”

Imbibe Names 25 Most Influential Cocktail Personalities of the Past Century

Well, now, here's an article that's bound to start a few barroom arguments over the next couple months. Imbibe magazine has stepped and named those 5-and-20 individuals they feel were the most influential cocktail figures of the past 100 years. Some are dead (Donn Beach, Harry Johnson, Harry MacElhone, Harry Craddock—oh, a lot of Harrys), but most are alive. So as to not contibute to any of those coming booze-fueled disputes, I'm just going to post the list as written, and without comment. Enjoy:

The 25 Most Influential Cocktail Personalities of the Past Century
The May/June 2010 issue cover story features the 25 Most Influential Cocktails of the Past Century. Compiling that list got us thinking about the people behind some of those cocktails, so we thought it only fitting to create a list of the 25 most influential cocktail personalities of the last 100 years. For this list, we considered the type of influence someone has had on the cocktail world as well as the duration of that influence—and keep in mind that these are people who have specifically influenced cocktail culture, not spirits. Whether they’ve created an iconic cocktail, spawned a cocktail trend or dedicated themselves to educating the public about the craft of cocktails, the following 25 people have undoubtedly impacted the way we all drink cocktails today, and for that, we raise a toast to each of them.

Tony Abou-GanimTony Abou-Ganim began his bartending career in 1980, and three decades later, he’s influenced countless bartenders and has built an empire of modern bartending, including a line of bar tools, numerous television appearances and his recently released book, The Modern Mixologist.

Donn BeachThe forefather of modern tiki and creator of the Zombie cocktail, Donn Beach (born Ernest Raymond Beaumont-Gantt) opened his first Polynesian-themed restaurant Don the Beachcomber in Los Angeles in 1934. Spawning a multi-generational tiki craze, tiki wouldn’t be what is today without him.

Victor BergeronTrading the sports theme for tiki aesthetic, Victor Bergeron converted his Oakland, Calif. bar, Hinky Dinks into the instantly popular Trader Vic’s in 1937. Credited with creating the first Mai Tai cocktail, and author of several tiki cocktail books, Bergeron and the Trader Vic’s franchise later opened more than 20 restaurants around the world.

Jeff BerryTiki historian Jeff “Beachbum” Berry has authored five books on Polynesian cocktail culture, unearthing never-before-published recipes and fascinating tiki trivia. He currently conducts tropical drinks seminars around the globe and can be found this summer lecturing on tiki culture on the secluded Greek island of Antiparos, and he’s helped inspire a whole new generation of tiki appreciation.

Salvatore CalabreseSimply called “The Maestro” by his colleagues, London-based bartender Salvatore Calabrese has published 10 cocktail books, the first of which, Classic Cocktails, sold close to one million copies. Arguably the best-known and most-awarded U.K.-based bartender, Calabrese also co-owned the recently closed Salvatore at FIFTY bar in central London’s St. James’s neighborhood.

Ada ColemanAs the head bartender for the American Bar at The Savoy Hotel in the early 20th century, Ada Coleman was one of the first well-known female bartenders. She mentored Harry Craddock and mixed cocktails for famous authors, royalty and actors—the latter of which, Sir Charles Hawtrey, inspired her to create the Hanky Panky, which was among the first cocktails to incorporateFernet Branca.

Harry CraddockAmerican-born Harry Craddock left the States during Prohibition to continue his craft abroad, taking a job behind the American Bar in London’s Savoy Hotel. He is credited with popularizing the dry Martini and went on to publish The Savoy Cockail Bookin 1930—a book that has become an immeasurable resource for mixing the classics.

Dale DeGroffDale “King Cocktail” DeGroff gained a following in the mid 1980s at the helm of New York City’s Rainbow Room bar as a preeminent proponent of classic cocktails and fresh ingredients, and over the decades since, he’s inspired legions of bartenders to be better at their craft. Author of The Craft of the Cocktail, DeGroff has developed numerous cocktail recipes, is the recipient of several prestigious awards and is the founding president of the Museum of the American Cocktail.

Patrick Gavin DuffyAs the bartender of New York’s Ashland House for some 40 years, Patrick Gavin Duffy served drinks to famous faces like Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde and J.P. Morgan, and he chronicled their favorites tipples in his well-regarded books The Official Mixer’s Manual and The Standard Bartender’s Guide.

David EmburyNeither bartender nor journalist, David Embry was the first connoisseur to publish a cocktail book simply based upon his affinity for well-crafted mixed drinks. His immensely popular book, The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, was published in 1948 and is considered the first cocktail guide for both hobbyists and pros.

Hugo EnsslinGerman-born bartender Hugo Ensslin wrote Recipes for Mixed Drinks in 1917, a book that would become New York’s last published bartending guide before Prohibition. It included the Aviation cocktail for the first time in print as well as new ingredients of the day like grenadine, applejack and triple sec. Ensslin is considered a major influencer of Harry Craddock and Patrick Gavin Duffy.

Ray FoleyA former Marine and bartender, the always outspoken Ray Foley (no relation to Imbibe founder, Karen Foley) launchedBartender Magazine three decades ago, serving for a long stretch as one of the few magazines dedicated to bartending. He’s authored several bartending books (as well as a few joke books) and founded The Bartenders’ Foundation, a non-profit that raises scholarship money for bartenders and their families.

Ted HaighKnown as Dr. Cocktail, Ted Haigh has become the leading authority on vintage cocktails and spirits. As an author, Imbibecolumnist and Museum of the American Cocktail curator, he’s become an unparalleled advocate for rediscovering what’s lost or forgotten in the world of cocktails.

Robert HessThis “technology evangelist” for Microsoft is also something of a cocktail evangelist, reminding the world that cocktails should be made with the same craft and care as gourmet food. He’s a co-founder of The Museum of the American Cocktail and a co-founder of The Chanticleer Society, a website attracting cocktail enthusiasts from around the world. He’s also the brains behinddrinkboy.com, the author of The Essential Bartender’s Guide and host of The Cocktail Spirit.

Harry JohnsonThe first edition of Harry Johnson’s Bartenders’ Manual was published before our century cutoff, but this landmark book is still being reprinted to this day, and bartenders around the world look to it for guidance in honing their craft. Perhaps what makes Johnson’s approach especially significant is that his book was the first how-to, articulating how to be a bartender (not just what to make), and the wisdom Johnson imparted then still applies today.

Chris McMillianAs much a New Orleans institution as the Sazeracs he serves, career bartender Chris McMillian is a living piece of Nola cocktail history. His bartending style is one part historian, two parts storyteller, and his pitch-perfect Mint Juleps are a legend in their own right.

Harry MacElhoneWhen Harry MacElhone took over the New York Bar in Paris, he slapped his name on the front and quickly created an institution. Said to be the birthplace of such classics as the French 75, the Monkey Gland and the Bloody Mary, the bar is one of the most famous watering holes in the world.

Sasha PetraskeAt the dawn of the 21st century, when Cosmos and Jager shots were still the drinks of choice, Sasha Petraske sparked a classic-cocktail revolution when he opened the members-only speakeasy Milk & Honey on New York’s Lower East Side. Since then, dozens of speakeasy-style bars have cropped up across the country, and Petraske has built a mini-empire, including White Star, Little Branch and Dutch Kills.

Brian ReaAfter decades of mixing drinks in such lofty locales as the 21 Club in New York, Brian Rea turned his talents toward teaching, developing and conducting bar management programs for UCLA and Cal Poly University, as well as the National Restaurant Association. The author of Brian's Booze Guide and Brian's Bartender Guide, Rea’s collection of rare cocktail books and ephemera is considered to be the most extensive in the world.

Gary ReganWith countless newspaper and magazine columns, books and newsletters to his name, Gary Regan is known the world over as one of the most-read cocktail experts around. Whether he’s lecturing at The Smithsonian, conducting workshops or maintaining the Worldwide Bartender Database, he’s helped raise the world’s mixological awareness.

Audrey SaundersJust a few years ago, housemade cocktail ingredients like bitters and tonic water where a rarity behind the bar. Then in 2005, Audrey Saunders opened Pegu Club in New York, a bar that helped put the “craft” in the classic cocktail movement. By using housemade ingredients to update old-time recipes, she brought long-forgotten drinks into the 21st century’s spotlight.

Jerry ThomasYes, he came and went before our 100-year cutoff, but considering that Jerry Thomas continues to influence cocktails and bartenders to this day, we think of his impact as timeless. Considered nothing less than the father of American Mixology, his seminal The Bar-Tender’s Guide (alternately titled How to Mix Drinks or The Bon-Vivant’s Companion), published in 1862, was the first cocktail book ever published in the United States. Not only that, his larger-than-life personality and showman’s skills—he was famous for mixing flaming drinks—set the tone for every bartender who came after him.

Kazuo UyedaKazuo Uyeda began tending bar in the '60s, going on to become one of the world's most respected bartenders. He's won numerous cocktails competitions, authored several books, including Cocktail Technique, and elevated awareness of Japanese bartending techniques around the world, including the hard shake, a method now championed by a whole new generation of talented bartenders, such as Stanislav Vadrna.


Robert VermeireAs a London barman in the 1920s, Robert Vermeire compiled a recipe book that has stood the test of time. Cocktails: How To Mix Them, published in 1922, includes the original recipe for the Sidecar, among other drinks that offer a snapshot of the times. What makes the book even more notable is how it catalogs the inventors of the drinks, preserving this historical information for posterity.

David WondrichFew people have done more to illuminate the history of our drinking culture than David Wondrich. A top-notch mixologist,prolific writer and partner in Beverage Alcohol Resource, said to be the world’s first advanced education program in spirits and cocktails. Wondrich entertains as well as he educates.

The Herbsaint Scholar

I first encountered Jay Hendrickson at the 2009 Tales of the Cocktail where he was a speaker at a panel about New Orleans pharmacists who had had an impact on the cocktail world. He was speaking about pharmacist J. Marion Legendre, the man who invented Herbsaint. When he took the stage, he reminded me, with his unironic moustache and limp brown hair and glasses, of the drummer from Cheap Trick, and he spoke in an unrelenting and very soft monotone that made me wonder how he had ever been allowed behind a lectern. Yet he knew everything about Herbsaint and a lot more besides. Plus, he had an amazing collection of old bottles and liquors. I thought, who is this guy?

I found out when Imbibe gave me the opportunity to profile Hendrickson. And the story was worth uncovering. It's published in the March/April issue. Here it is:

The Informant

By Robert Simonson

In 2005, Stanley Schwam was invited to speak on a panel about bitters at Tales of the Cocktail, the tippling convention that takes place in New Orleans every July. He knew something about the subject. For 40 years, he worked for the Sazerac Company, which purchased Peychaud’s Bitters decades ago. At the end of the seminar, Schwam was approached by an unassuming-looking man with lank brown hair, plain moustache and oval-shaped glasses. “Ever seen one of these?” he asked, pulling out an old bottle of Herbsaint. Of course Schwam had. Sazerac had owned the anise-flavored liqueur since 1949. Then he did a double take—the date on the vessel was 1934, the year Herbsaint was introduced. “Where did you get that bottle?” he asked.

Jay Hendrickson, the mystery man in the moustache, had found it on eBay. It’s just one of his many Herbsaint keepsakes. He also owns Herbsaint bottles from the 1940s and ’50s, miniature and full-size; Herbsaint recipe booklets and old labels; bottles from the Prohibition-era drug store owned by J. Marion Legendre, the man who invented the popular absinthe substitute; examples of long-discontinued Herbsaint relatives like Legendre Anisette and Legendre New Orleans Bitters; even the original, pre-Herbsaint Legendre Absinthe. “He’s got a lot of things we don’t have,” admits Kevin Richards, Herbsaint’s brand manager. “The best we can do is scour eBay to try to get our hands on our own.”

The cocktail world breeds more than its share of obsessives, people focused with laser-like intensity on particular drinks, products lost and extant, recipes, revered mixologists and bygone bars. But even among that monomaniacal crowd, Jay Hendrickson stands out. With no stake in the spirits industry and no interest in entering it, the Houston native has nonetheless transformed himself, in 10 short years, into the world’s leading authority on Herbsaint.

His standing is such that, when the Sazerac Company hosted a tasting of Herbsaint Original—a new bottling of the liqueur’s original formula, which was released into selected markets last November and December, and nationwide in January—Hendrickson’s collection of memorabilia was prominently displayed in the tasting room. “I know he’s the leading authority on Herbsaint,” says Truman Cox, lead chemist at the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Kentucky, where most Sazerac products are made. Cox then added, laughing, “But I didn’t really know there was one until we started working on this project.”

One could picture Hendrickson, 52, cutting quite a figure as a stamp collector, but as a booze Boswell, he’s an unlikely candidate. He doesn’t possess the bold facial hairstyles, tattoos or larger-than-life personalities of many of the liquor industry’s various brand ambassadors, bartenders, bloggers and historians. He has the mild looks and mild manners of a middle-school social studies teacher, his speaking style is slow and deliberate, seldom shifting out of first gear, and his longtime day job has been as an architectural graphics designer for Houston’s Fastsigns. But Hendrickson might surprise you with hidden pockets of flamboyance and eccentricity. The 1940s-era, Hollywood-style shirts he likes to wear are truly vintage, not reproductions, and he’ll occasionally don a custom-made fedora and two-toned jacket he calls his “Howard Hughes outfit.” It’s not that surprising a get-up when you consider Hendrickson has a pilot’s license and his other passion is aviation history.

The seeds of his Herbsaint obsession were planted many years ago when a young Jay Hendrickson and his father were watching the W.C. Fields classic The Bank Dick. “I was about 10 years old,” he remembers. “There was a scene where a harried movie director comes into this bar where Fields is standing and he mentions he has a set of shot nerves and he needs something to calm him down. Fields recommends he have a glass of absinthe. I asked my dad ‘What’s absinthe?’ And he said it was something you can no longer get. It just stuck in my mind that if it’s something they don’t want you to have, it must be interesting.”

Fast forward to 1998. Reading Barnaby Conrad’s 1987 book, Absinthe: History in a Bottle, Hendrickson noticed Herbsaint mentioned along with absinthe. He bought a bottle and gave it a try, and before long, he was joining online absinthe forums, trying to find out if Herbsaint had ever been a true absinthe (it never was). “Nobody seemed to know anything about its history, just that it had come out of New Orleans,” he recalls. Before long, he had picked up the Herbsaint torch and has been carrying it every since.

Through his historical spelunking, Hendrickson uncovered nearly every chapter in the Herbsaint saga, beginning in 1933, after Prohibition was repealed, when New Orleans pharmacist J.M. Legendre launched Legendre Absinthe. The authorities were not pleased. Absinthe, thought to create mental mayhem in those who imbibed it, had been outlawed, even in name, so he withdrew the label and renamed the absinthe-like liqueur Herbsaint. (“Always served when absinthe is called for,” read the tag line of one ad.)

Up until the reintroduction of absinthe to the world market a few years ago, Herbsaint had retained its place in absinthe-tinged cocktails like the Sazerac (and, indeed, some still prefer their Sazeracs with Herbsaint). And while you might assume Herbsaint has taken a hit in sales due to the re-emergence of absinthe, Richards says it’s been quite the contrary. “The brand has benefited from people now looking at that section of the liquor store.”

Sometime after the Sazerac Company bought Herbsaint, the drink’s flavor composition was altered slightly (a date and reason that seem to have been lost to history). The green-colored spirit became lighter in hue and less complex in flavor with, according to Hendrickson, more emphasis on the flavor of star anise. Then, a couple years ago, in an effort to celebrate Herbsaint’s 75th anniversary, Sazerac decided to reintroduce Legendre’s original recipe. With the help of Schwam, the company dug Legendre’s old recipe out of the files, but they didn’t have any actual samples of the vintage potion, just empty bottles. Guess who did have some?

Hendrickson sent one of his two well-preserved, 120-proof mini-bottles of the original Herbsaint to Truman Cox. “We believe the 2009 edition is spot-on for the flavor intended on the 1930s edition,” says Cox, who compared the two prior to the product’s release. Hendrickson tasted a prototype of Herbsaint Original at last year’s Tales of the Cocktail. In response, he typed into his blog, New Orleans Absinthe History, one of his trademark deadpan reactions: “I’m very pleased.”

Sazerac, meanwhile, is pleased that Jay is pleased. “Any time we can use him to help tell the story of Herbsaint, we do,” says Richards. “Sometimes, it’s nice when the company is not trying to peddle information, and you get an honest third-party guy like Jay doing it.”

Given the level of his passion, one has to ask: does Hendrickson really like the stuff that much? In short, yes. “I was very happy when I tasted my first glass of Herbsaint,” he says. “Do you remember the mint Sen-Sen? I used to eat Sen-Sen all the time. It was anise-y, licorice, floral. I really like that flavor profile.”

Today, there’s not much about Herbsaint worth knowing that Hendrickson can’t tell you. So, with Herbsaint Original back on the shelves, and nearly every gettable artifact already acquired, is he ready to retire his hobby? Never underestimate a hooch historian. Hendrickson has now begun looking into an early Legendre competitor, L.E Jung & Wulff. Jung was the only documented distilller in New Orleans who made a true absinthe before the ban. When Prohibition ended, he brought out an absinthe around the same time Legendre introduced Herbsaint. Shut down by the Feds in 1934, Jung bounced back with an absinthe substitute called Milky Way.

Hendrickson, who managed to uncover an image of the Milky Way logo, is already collecting Jung memorabilia. “That is sort of the Maltese Falcon of absinthe-related brands, because so far no one has ever seen a bottle of Milky Way anywhere,” he says. “Believe me, I’ve looked!”

The Sipping News

A couple Milwaukee resident go on a search for the burg's best Bloody Mary. One thing we learn: in Wisconsin, it's customary to get a beer chaser with your Bloody. But we should have guessed that. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]

Dr. Vino, the perpetual thorn in Robert Parker's side, asks, "Does the Wine Advocate Buy Over $700,000 Worth of Wine a Year?" I think we all know the answer to that one.

Dr. Vino also quizzes wine importer Terry Theise on one of my favorite topics, the state of Riesling.

Jonathan Miles at the NY Times files his last "Shaken & Stirred" column.

The latest issue of Imbibe looks at second-label wines.

It Came From Thailand

I first encountered Mekhong, the national spirit of Thailand, in a tasting room at the 2009 Tales of the Cocktail convention in New Orleans. I had never heard of it, and wouldn't say it was exactly love at first sip, but I couldn't get around the fact that I had never tasted anything quite like it. The flavor staid with me, and since then I've seen it put to good use in several New York cocktails. Here's an article I wrote about the spirit for the January/February issue of Imbibe:

A YEAR OR SO AGO, few had ever heard of the Thailand-made distillate Mekhong other than the Thais themselves, Far East tourists and fans of the Pogues. Yes, the Pogues. The spirit is mentioned on the Irish band’s 1990 album Hell’s Ditch: “She gave me Mekhong whiskey/Put me on a breeze to Kathmandu.” But the Pogues got it wrong. Mekhong isn’t whiskey, though its copper color might fool you into thinking so. What is it? That’s a little tricky.

Describing Mekhong as a spiced Thai rum would, perhaps, be easiest, but not very accurate, or fair. The spirit is, like some rums, primarily distilled from sugar cane, but it’s blended with a five-percent injection of rice distillate, giving the flavor a distinct, sake-like backbone. Add an infusion of native Thai herbs and spices and you get something that doesn’t resemble anything else on the back bar: a light (70-proof), vaguely exotic spirit smacking of toffee, citrus, nuts and
vanilla.

The initial U.S. marketing plan was to place Mekhong in Thai and Asian restaurants, where it would have a ready clientele. But when it was discovered that many of these places lacked liquor licenses, the company that owns the brand turned to the craft cocktail movement. Today, Mekhong is rolling out across the United States and already appearing on cocktail menus in New York, Chicago, Miami and Boston. Bartenders have found that it combines surprisingly well with other cocktail ingredients, from herbal Chartreuse to spicy ginger to rich chocolate bitters. “Mekhong mixes so well,” says John Freeman, head bartender at Elizabeth in Manhattan. “The reason you get a different flavor profile than what you might get from rum is because of that five percent rice.”

In Thailand, spirits don’t have the long pedigrees that they enjoy in, say, Scotland or Kentucky. Mekhong, in fact, is the country’s first domestically produced, branded spirit. The Sirivadhanabhakdi family created the spirit in 1941 and still runs the company today. They named their product after the Mekhong River, which flows along Thailand’s eastern border—a good choice, as shortly thereafter the French attempted to divert the river out of Thailand, and Mekhong sales were
boosted by a wave of nationalistic Thai pride. It quickly grew to 20 million cases a year during that period (today productions stands at 1 million cases a year).

Fortunately, Americans don’t need an international incident for an excuse to drink Mekhong. The exotic taste, and the novelty, are more than enough temptation.
—Robert Simonson

Make Mine With Extra Almonds

When it comes to holiday drinks, everyone knows about egg nog. Everyone knows about hot buttered rum, even if they've never had it. But communicating knowledge of Glögg is a little like showing your hand. It tells people something about you. You're Scandinavian, maybe. Probably from the Midwest.

I plead guilty on both counts. So I was in a good position to write about this classic yuletide punch for Imbibe magazine. I even knew my fair share of Norsemen to turn to for a recipe. (It's not easy to get a Scandinavian to give up their Glögg recipe, in case you didn't now.) The one I found for Imbibe is from Anne Heid, a lovely Finnish woman who is married to my brother-in-law's brother. (You got that?) It came from her mother, so it's authentic. Here's the article and the recipe. Enjoy.

Norse Code
Scandinavians warm up their holidays with Glögg (just don’t ask them how)

By Robert Simonson

Glögg. The guttural syllable doesn’t naturally make you smack your lips, does it? But consider these other liguistic equivalents for the hot beverage know to English-speakers as mulled wine: vin fiert (its name in Romanian); izvar (Moldavia) and grzaniec (Poland). After wrapping your tongue around those consonant sandwiches, “Glögg, please!” rolls out pretty easily.
Glögg (pronounced “glug,” and derived from the verb “to heat up”) is the term used by Nordic people for their favored alcoholic drink of the winter months. You’ll find it in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Iceland, and in those parts of the United States where the fair-haired sons and daughters of those countries immigrated. And the time you’re most likely to find a steaming glass of the stuff is during Advent, the six weeks leading up to Christmas.

Glögg’s origins go back a good millennium or so, but most sources have a drink with peculiarly glögg-like touches—such as almonds popped into every glass—appearing in the mid-19th century. Nordstjernan, a Swedish newspaper printed in the U.S., notes that "a relatively recent addition to the Christmas beverage menu, glögg arrived in Sweden from Germany in the 1800s.” Whenever the beverage showed up, it’s a natural for the holidays, as it has three big cheer-inducing elements going for it (beyond its alcoholic content, that is): heat, sweetness and spice. In fact, those are among its few constants. As novelist and noted drink aficionado Kinsley Amis once wrote, “No two recipes for it are more than rather similar.”

The base for glögg is typically red wine, but it can also include white wine, Madeira, brandy, vodka, Port, sherry and, of course, aquavit. You may infuse this mixture with any or all of the following: cinnamon sticks, vanilla beans, cardamom seeds, cloves, orange peel, dried cherries, raisins, almonds, figs, prunes, and fresh ginger. You then sweeten things up. Many lay sugar cubes on a rack over the pot and dissolve the lumps by ladling warm or flaming glögg over them. Others simply light the whole concoction on fire at the end of the process, dousing the flame soon after by covering the pot. This not only makes for a good show, but it adds a toasty flavor component to the punch. Pour the hot stuff in a cup, plunk in a raw almond and maybe some raisins, slide a pepperkaker cookie or piece of gingerbread on the side, and skoal!

If there’s an epicenter of glögg culture in America, it may be Simon’s Tavern, a 75-year-old bar in the once-heavily Swedish Chicago neighborhood of Andersonville. Each winter, owner Scott Martin cooks up 2,000 gallons of homemade glögg, selling it to an endlessly thirsty clientele at $5 a cup. He claims he makes the only commercially available brew in the area that uses all-natural ingredients, with no extracts or artificial flavorings or other industrial shortcuts. He begins with Port wine steeped in yellow raisins, cinnamon sticks, cloves, cardamom seeds, orange peel, almonds and some sugar, set over a flame for two hours. He then adds the remainder of the sugar and simmers it for another hour. After letting the mixture sit overnight, he adds brandy and two secret ingredients he won’t reveal.

Glögg-makers’ reluctance to reveal their tricks is typical. Martin remembers buying Simon’s from the founding Lumberg family in 1994. “When we signed the contract, they put a paragraph in there saying there never will be allowed arcade games in Simon’s,” he says. “I thought I’d play a game with him. I said, ‘I’ll agree with that if you give me your dad’s glögg recipe.’ With a nod and a wink, he handwrote the worst glögg recipe I’ve ever seen in my life. He was doing it on purpose. No good Swede gives away their recipe.”

So what, then, is the secret ingredient to making good glögg? Martin doesn’t hesitate with his answer: “Love,” he says.

Holiday Glögg

This recipe was handed down to Simonson’s friend, Anne Heid, from her Finnish mother. She says that since the wine is heavily flavored during the mulling process, it’s not necessary to splurge on boutique bottles—she usually uses an inexpensive Burgundy. She also suggests using a slow cooker to simmer the mixture, and says she sometimes adds 2 cups of vodka to the mixture during the simmering stage to give her glögg an extra kick.

1 gallon dry red wine
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 Tbsp. Angostura bitters
6 whole cardamom, crushed
5 whole cloves
1 inch fresh ginger, peeled
1 cinnamon stick
peel of 1 orange
2 cups raisins
2 cups slivered almonds

Mix together wine, sugar, spices and orange peel in a non-reactive container and let stand overnight (or a minimum of eight hours). Strain mixture into pot or slow cooker and simmer until warm, stirring. To serve, add a few raisins and almonds into each small cup or mug before ladling in the warm wine mixture.

Purple Haze

My article about the newly resurrected liqueur Creme Yvette is in the September/October issue of Imbibe. Creme Yvette is the latest potion to come from the inventive and busy mind of Robert Cooper, the man that gave the world St. Germain two years ago. Unlike St. Germain, the new product is not a new creation, but a reclamation of a once widely available violet liqueur. It was no problem for Cooper to bring the stuff back, as his family owned the rights to the name and recipe.

But I say too much. Go ahead and read the article (for the recipes, go to the Imbibe website, or, better yet, buy the damn magazine, you cheapskate!):

Yes, Yes Yvette

By Robert Simonson

Growing up as a scion of the venerable Philadelphia-based Charles Jacquin et Cie liqueur company, young Robert Cooper became fascinated with the defunct products that lined the “memorial” wall in the office of the company’s plant manager. “I kept asking questions about this unusual product called Crème Yvette,” he says. “Nobody thought much of it.”

But if the folks at Jacquin weren’t that interested in the purple-hued, violet-scented liqueur—which plays a role in such classic cocktails as the Blue Moon—others were. “I started getting e-mail from cocktail experts like David Wondrich and Dale DeGroff,” Cooper continues. “They knew the Yvette brand was in my family. They kept chipping away at me. Finally, I decided, ‘What the hell?’ ”

Cooper resolved to revive the elixir. He could afford to gamble: His most recent venture into distilling had been the popular elderflower-flavored liqueur St. Germain in 2007. And he had no problem locating the recipe: The formula for Crème Yvette had been in the family since Cooper’s grandfather acquired the rights to it from Sheffield of Connecticut back in the 1930s. However, much else had changed since Yvette was taken off the market in 1969. “We couldn’t track down the same raw materials,” says Cooper. The original suppliers had faded away. So, new purveyors of the needed ingredients were found. He sourced dried violet petals from Provence, and the berry maceration (a mix of blackberries, red raspberries, wild strawberries and cassis) from Burgundy. A spice blend of honey, orange peel and vanilla completed the flavor profile. (The influence of the berries and vanilla, and a more viscous mouthfeel, set it apart in terms of taste from the more violet-dominated Crème de Violette already on the market.) Armed with a few old bottles from his family’s stash, Cooper was able to test the new liquid against the original.

The revived Crème Yvette is expected to start hitting the market in early fall, to the delight of many a bartender. “I think we’re in a time where we are all so committed to classic cocktails and their origins, we want to know more,” said Michael Madrusan, a bartender at New York’s Little Branch. “Crème Yvette’s return brings with it answers to questions which, without Rob Cooper’s efforts, we would not have access to.”

The enthusiasm of the cocktail crowd aside, Cooper is realistic about the potential pull of his latest project. “Without taking anything away from Crème Yvette, I don’t think it’s going to have the same broad appeal St. Germain has had,” he says. “St. Germain has a very approachable flavor. It’s so user-friendly in cocktails. Crème Yvette doesn’t have anywhere as near the same versatility. I see it as being a welcome reintroduction.”

There’s just one thing Cooper was unable to discover during his years of research and experimentation: Exactly who was Yvette? “I have been searching for the answer to that question for years now. Nobody seems to know.”

Jamie Kutch and His Pinot

I spent a fair amount of last spring delving into the world of Wall-Streeter-turned-Sonoma-Winemaker Jamie Kutch and his prized boutique Pinot Noirs. Kutch is making Pinots that are not typical of the big California style and much to my liking. Here's the resultant article, which just came out in the July/August issue of Imbibe.

Jamie Kutch’s Stock Is Rising
How a former Wall Street trader is securing his spot in California’s wine world
Story by Robert Simonson

Jamie Kutch doesn’t lack confidence. A tall, muscular man with close-cropped hair, he looks a little jockish and gives off a slightly swaggering energy that he picked up during his decade as a Wall Street trader. His patter is the smooth line of someone who’s spent hours on the phone convincing people to buy something they hadn’t necessarily planned to, but these days he’s traded in selling stocks for a more understated career in winemaking.

In 2005, Kutch, now 35, abandoned his $250,000-a-year Wall Street career in favor of an unsalaried position working as a novice California winemaker. His sole tools were a decade’s worth of wine tasting, a reputation as a fevered habitué of wine chat rooms, and the practical tutelage handed down from winemaker mentors like Michael Browne and Robert Rex. (Well, that and $150,000 in savings.) “It’s the best single decision I’ve made in my life, no question,” he says.

Other people seem to agree. Kutch scored a 93 in Wine Spectator with his first release, a 2005 Russian River Valley Pinot Noir. His 2007 vintage is considered his best yet and has been given the nod of approval by Robert Parker. By April, it was nearly sold out, leaving the thousands on his waiting list disappointed.

Kutch (pronounced “Hutch”) keeps production on his three lines of Pinot Noir low and practices minimal intervention, using natural yeasts and punching down the grapes with his bare feet. For the 2007 vintage, his third, he produced only 600 cases, having sold off 10 out of 34 barrels because they didn’t meet his standards. With the reviews he’s gotten, he could easily raise prices, but he’s kept his three offerings in the $40 to $50 range. He says he has yet to make much money on his wines, pouring most of the revenues ($88,000 in 2008) back into the business. He and his wife, publicist Kristen Green, live in a 900-square-foot apartment in San Francisco and drive a 2002 Honda he calls “vineyard-dusted brown.”

As a barnstorming winemaker with limited finances, Kutch does not own a vineyard, but, like many fledgling vintners, he buys grapes from well-regarded, existing estates, such as McDougall Ranch, Kanzler Vineyard and Spring Hill, which is now in the process of planting five acres of Pinot Noir earmarked for him. In April, Kutch nailed down a commitment for Pinot Noir grapes from Anderson Valley’s prized Savoy Vineyard, a coup that will likely result in a new Kutch bottling for the 2009 vintage. In the next few years, he hopes to secure his own vineyard and release a couple new wines, one of them possibly a Chardonnay. “I’ve read all these novels where the characters have second chapters and I thought, ‘Those are people in books,’ says Green, who has gamely thrown herself behind her husband’s new career by handling his label’s publicity. But family members say not to write Kutch’s success off as a simple fairy tale. “Jamie is a perfectionist,” says his uncle Donald Moonjian. “Unless it’s going to meet 100 percent of his expectations, he’s not going to do it.”

Perfection, for Kutch, basically means Burgundy. At a time when most California Pinots have become increasingly big and bruising, he’s made his name crafting Pinots in the French model. “I got bitten by the Burgundy bug,” he says. “And that’s high acidity, low alcohol—it’s more earth and soil than fruit-driven … the approach that wine is meant to be consumed with food.”

Kutch first discovered the joys of wine—and, specifically, wine with food—while a student at Fordham University, where a gregarious professor named Gerard Reedy noted Kutch’s budding interest in wine and invited him to dinner. “We had Champagne, Sauternes with foie grois, Burgundy with lamb chops,” recalls Kutch. “It was an experience I had never had.”

After that, the stock trader and wine maniac remained perpetually intertwined. While working the NASDAQ board at Merrill Lynch, Kutch spent a good deal of work hours burning up online wine chat rooms and finding a way to justify his obsession by tracking down choice cases for his cellar-building bosses. “It was similar to what we would do in our trading,” recalled Nelson Barriocanal, a former fellow trader at Merrill Lynch. “He would put together several different investors and buyers to fill in the wine order. That way, he could participate in the buy and everyone else would subsidize it a little bit.”

Kutch might still be a trader if it weren’t for winemaker Michael Browne. In 2005, Kutch was making the rounds of the chat rooms when he sent Browne—a California Pinot-making star—an e-mail note of adulation about a Kosta Browne Pinot he had tasted, saying, “You’re living my dream.” Browne recognized Kutch’s yearnings. Once intent on becoming an architect, Browne leaped from restaurant grunt work into a collaboration with Dan Kosta as a lauded guerilla winemaker. Browne offered to mentor Kutch.

“He planted the seed,” said Kutch, who was trading technology but fantasizing about enrolling in winemaking classes at UC Davis. Two or three days after Michael sent that e-mail, Kutch found out about a job opening at a trading company in San Francisco, and feeling the location alone would get him a step closer to his goal, he and Green moved.

In San Francisco, he lived a double life. He worked his trading job during the red-eye West Coast market hours (4 a.m. to 2 p.m.), then drove up to wine country after work and on weekends to labor with Browne. Within six months, he quit the trading job and dove into the deep end of winemaking, helping Browne with everything from pushing down wine bins to sorting grapes during harvest. “I learned by doing,” Kutch says. “Michael did a great service for me. He assisted me in getting started and opened my eyes to how [winemaking] gets done.”

With Browne’s help, Kutch bottled his first vintage, using fruit from Amber Ridge in the Russian River Valley. Browne had been buying fruit from the vineyard and put a few tons aside for Kutch to purchase. He bottled the wine at Robert Rex’s Deerfield Ranch winery (where he’s capped every vintage since) and tapped the Sonoma business Paragon Labels for the labeling. He created a 400-strong mailing list for his first vintage by returning to his old haunt, Robert Parker's chat board, and relating his winemaking journey as it happened. The vintage was sold out before it was even made.

After that, he was on his own. He quickly put his hard-driving Wall Street skills to use for the most central task: securing quality fruit. “He had to make sure he got the right grapes,” said Barriocanal. “Pinot Noir was pretty popular, so it wasn’t an easy task. He really pounded the pavement. That requires being aggressive and not afraid to pick up the phone and take rejection. In trading, people may not be responsive the first time you approach them, but you have to be persistent.”

“I’m an ex-New Yorker—maybe a little pushy,” Kutch says. “I tried to give as many options as I could to get the fruit. I said, ‘I’ll pay you in advance. I’ll show you my bank account.’ ” Karen London took notice.

“Jamie called me out of the blue,” recalls London, a Petaluma farmer who, with her husband Chris, sells grapes to highly regarded wineries, such as Patz and Hall, Nickel and Nickel, and Talisman. “I invited him out and fell in love immediately. Jamie is young, like us, and it’s hard to find younger individuals in this industry, because it is very expensive to get into and it’s a lot of hard work. He’s by himself, and he’s motivated.”

But others in the comparatively laid-back California winemaking world have sometimes bristled at what they see as Kutch’s brashness, as well as his marketing prowess. He managed to garner press even before his first vintage was released and is the subject of a recently completed documentary by filmmaker Stefan Sargent titled Pinot: Escape from Wall Street. “He’s a star,” says Sargent, explaining why he made a film about Kutch. “He doesn’t care what people say, what they think about him. He doesn’t really care too much about what people think about his wine, as long as he loves it. He’s got the passion.”

Kutch, who admits that he and Green are still “New Yorkers by a mile,” doesn’t apologize for blowing his own horn. (He also admits it doesn’t hurt having a publicist in the family.) “How do you not tell the story? You could make the greatest wine in the world and if no one’s out there talking about it, that wine would never be discovered. Being small, I think we have to work extra hard to get the story out.”

What no one disputes is that Kutch backs up the hype with results. His 2007 McDougall Ranch Pinot Noir is a masterful wine, with a dusty, rose-perfumed nose and a focused, elegant, yet earthy palate of cherry, grapefruit and vine-like notes. The Sonoma Coast bottle, meanwhile, is light-bodied at 13.2 percent alcohol, with a balanced blend of spice, tobacco, plums and cherry—a wine of easy, but not shallow, personality.

“I’m driven to quality,” says Kutch, who is fond of saying he makes his wines for a test market of one: himself. He’s also not concerned about making a fortune from his wines. “I have never in my entire thinking of this project thought about money. I need to make money to make this work, but it’s all about making great wine. I don’t think like Wall Street. I think great wine and passion, and the other things will follow.”