LEAF and Chopin Vodkas Express Themselves This Holiday Season

LEAF Vodka greets us with a stunning view of Lower Manhattan.

LEAF Vodka

Sometimes putting aside ones prejudices and saying yes to something that normally we would not give a second thought to can be a good thing. Take for instance a few weeks ago. We were invited to a vodka tasting at a location that promised a nonpareil view of the city. Being suckers for a grand view, and some sips of free booze, we decided to accept LEAF Vodka’s invitation to attend its NYC launch in the sky. We are happy to report that both the view and the vodka were breathtaking.

Since vodka is made up of mostly water, the folks at LEAF Vodka decided to focus on that one ingredient in its two expressions, and this proves to offer rewards most satisfying. LEAF’s solution is to the point: Make vodka using better water, but at an affordable price. So while the bottle will only set you back a little more that $15, you can relax and focus more on the content. Clean, pristine water can be found throughout the globe, and LEAF decided to focus its quest in the United States.

LEAF Vodka’s two expressions: green for Alaskan Glacial Water Vodka and Blue for Rocky Mountain Mineral Water Vodka.

First try the Rocky Mountain Mineral Water Vodka. This will taste most traditional to vodka aficionados; it is smooth and has a hint of natural mineral sweetness that occurs from aeons-old water trickling through layers and layers of stone. It is a true delight and will mix up well in a variety of traditional vodka cocktails. Try the Rocky Cucumber [SEE RECIPE BELOW], which is a riff on a classic Gimlet.

The other expression is distilled from the water of four glaciers that wends its way down Alaskan mountains into Blue Lake. We were floored by how different this expression tasted compared to the Rocky Mountain version. A little smoother and a little sweeter, you begin to wonder whether or not some sugar was added to the distillate, sort of the way some sugar is added to Champagne to alter its sweetness. But rest assured, there is no additive. It is pure and simple and exquisite. Try it in a Pink Glacier [SEE RECIPE BELOW], a variation of the classic Cosmopolitan. You’ll swear there’s no alcohol in the drink at all (until of course you start to feel a little giddy).

Pink Glacier
(created by LEAF Vodka)

Ingredients
2 ounces LEAF Vodka made from Alaskan Glacial Water
1 ounce lime juice
3/4 ounce simple syrup
3/4 ounce pink grapefruit juice
1/2 ounce cranberry juice
1 lime wedge

Method
In a cocktail shaker, combine grapefruit juice, lime juice, simple syrup, vodka, and ice. Shake and strain into a martini glass. Add cranberry juice for color. Garnish with a lime.

Rocky Cucumber
(created by LEAF Vodka)

Ingredients
2 ounces LEAF Vodka made from Rocky Mountain Mineral Water
1 ounce lime juice
3/4 ounce simple syrup
4 cucumber slices
3 dashes hot pepper sauce
club soda
ice

Method
In a cocktail shaker, muddle 3 cucumber slices, hot pepper sauce, lime juice, simple syrup, and vodka. Shake and strain into an ice-filled rocks glass. Top off with soda. Garnish with a cucumber slice and an extra dash of hot pepper sauce.

❤ ❤ ❤

Chopin Vodka

Wheat, Potato and Rye
Chopin Vodkas

They used to say in an old commercial, “When it rains, it pours.” Well, it’s been pouring vodka recently at Cocktail Buzz. We were very curious about all the different expressions of Chopin, the famous Polish vodka named after one of the greatest composers of piano music, so we sampled all three of its expressions, each distilled from a different plant: potato, rye, and wheat.

If you ask, most people will tell you that vodka is distilled from potatoes. But really, vodka can be distilled from any plant, and the distinguishing characteristics of each distillation will taste different from one to the next.

Trying the potato vodka reminded us of being reunited with an old friend. Its taste is traditional, smooth and creamy, with a slight sweetness that plays pleasantly with your taste buds. Chopin (the distiller, not the composer) suggests you pair it with a dirty martini when eating a classic steak. Try the Chopin Extra Olives “CEO” Martini [SEE RECIPE BELOW]. You’ll notice that not a trace of dry vermouth is present. Why? Well, we’re certain the people at Chopin know full well that dry vermouth and vodka do not make a good match, and, after all, they want you to enjoy the vodka, not a vodka that tastes of dry vermouth. We couldn’t agree more.

Next up was the rye vodka. After sipping it, we immediately looked at each other in disbelief. How could this vodka taste so different from the potato one? Its flavor spicier and less sweet and smooth. Intrigued, we looked to see what Chopin suggested making with it. The Chopin Splash [SEE RECIPE BELOW] is simple enough to make year-round, and Chopin suggests pairing rye vodka cocktails with a red-sauce pasta dish. Give it a whirl and see what you think.

Following that, we tried the wheat vodka, which turned out to be the most different vodka we had ever tasted. Its taste and consistency were like water-thinned honey, so we decided that this would be the perfect vodka for those who are uninitiated in the world of mixology and spirits, and would like to dabble without the fear of alcohol-burn. Chopin suggests pairing this expression of vodka with roasted chicken. Try it with the Chopin Bohemian Luxury [SEE RECIPE BELOW].

Of course, no holiday season is complete without a spirited cocktail, so the fine folks at Chopin have created a Christmas Cosmopolitan using the potato vodka, a cocktail that is sure to make you happy, before, during, or after a few hour of caroling, or perhaps shopping for the perfect cocktail shaker set for your office Secret Santa. And despite its moniker, we’re certain you can imbibe a few during Thanksgivukkah this Thursday. L’chaim.

Christmas Cosmopolitan
(created by Chopin Vodka)

Ingredients
1 1/2 ounces Chopin Potato Vodka
3/4 ounce mulled cranberry juice *
1/2 ounce lemon juice
dash of Grand Marnier
a 3-clove–studded orange twist

Method
Shake all ingredients with cubed ice

* Heat cranberry juice with 2 crushed cloves; add nutmeg, cinnamon, and almonds to taste. Allow to cool and infuse. Sieve the juice and use accordingly.

Chopin Bohemian Luxury
(created by Chopin Vodka)

Ingredients
1 1/2 ounces Chopin Wheat Vodka
1 ounce pineapple juice
1/2 Chambord (raspberry liqueur)
5 large ice cubes
1 ounce Moët & Chandon Nectar Impérial Rosé
orchid, as garnish

Method
Shake first three ingredients in ice. Strain into a chilled Champagne flute. Top with Moët & Chandon Nectar Impérial Rosé. Garnish with orchid.

Chopin Splash
(created by Chopin Vodka)

Ingredients
2 ounces Chopin Rye Vodka
1/2 ounce Aperol
1 ounce fresh pink grapefruit juice
3 ounces club soda

Method
Build in a tall glass with ice. Garnish with 1/4 slice pink grapefruit.

Chopin Extra Olives “CEO” Martini
(created by Chopin Vodka)

Ingredients
2 1/2 ounces Chopin Potato Vodka
3 extra large or blue cheese-stuffed olives

Method
Shake with ice and strain into a chilled martini glass. Add garnish

Optional: Add olive brine to taste to make a Dirty CEO [even though the world is filled with enough of them].

top photo © Steve Schul, Cocktail Buzz

Happy 2011 from Cocktail Buzz!!!!! Enjoy Our Mocktail!!!!

(Sorry, are we being too loud?)

The Cocktail Buzz Mocktail will get you through your post-Holiday insobriety.

The Season of Good Cheer has come to an end. You overdid it? Welcome to the club, Sister Maria. Perhaps you’d like to take things a bit slower as 2011 starts to come a little more sharply into focus. The hills may no longer be alive with the sound of Santajesusdreidel music, but don’t let that stop you from enjoying something tasty to imbibe.

The following recipe is for you, dear reader, if :

1. You are tired of sipping Holiday punches, throwing back Chocopeppermint shots, or toasting with Herehaveanother champagne cocktails.
2. Your New Years resolution involves the word “healthy” or a variant of the word, as in “I will try to be healthier and not eat 200 gingerbread cookies washed down with Martha Stewart’s eggnog in the span of a week.” (200 may be a personal record, but now you’re regretting it.)
3. You like fresh citrus juices and would like to clear your head for a spell.
4. You want something that’ll taste good with brunch, but won’t give you a hangover by dinnertime.

The Cocktail Buzz Mocktail

(created by Cocktail Buzz)

Ingredients
1 1/2 ounces cranberry juice (with no sugar added)
1/2 ounce orange juice
1/2 ounce pink grapefruit juice
1/4 ounce agave nectar
1/4 teaspoon grated ginger and its juice
1 1/2 ounces ginger ale
orange wedge, as garnish

Method
Shake first five ingredients in ice for 15 seconds. Double-strain into a rocks-filled glass. Top with ginger ale. Add garnish.

Note: If using cranberry juice with sugar added, leave out the agave.

If you are having a health-seekers party and would like to pre-batch your Mocktails, you can make a pitcher of them by simply performing a little math and adding some tap:

Ingredients
30 ounces cranberry juice (with no sugar added)
10 ounces orange juice
10 ounces pink grapefruit juice
5 ounces agave nectar
1 1/2 tablespoon grated ginger and its juice
7 1/2 ounces water

Method
 Add ingredients to an empty 64-ounce fruit juice bottle, shake, and chill until ready to serve. (If you are serving your guests, you can keep the bottle in the refrigerator. If you’d like the guests to serve themselves, and you don’t want them messing with your fridge, keep the pitcher in a bucket of ice wherever you decide to create your bar area. See “Also Note,” below.)

Then do the following per drink:

Fill a rocks glass halfway with ice. Shake the bottle containing the Mocktail vigorously for a few seconds. Strain 4 1/2 ounces into the glass. Top with 1 1/2 ounces ginger ale. Garnish with orange wedge.

Note: If using cranberry juice with sugar added, leave out the agave.

Also Note: You will be considered a perfect host if you place a measuring cup by the bottle on ice and write out on an index card the instructions for your guests. Feel free to embellish with colorful stickers or hand-drawn adornments.

For more recipes, and for cocktail-party food pairings, visit us at CocktailBuzz.com.

Photo © Steve Schul, Cocktail Buzz

Revisiting the Cosmopolitan

The Cosmopolitan looks fabulous against a city skyline.

Although we are the first to admit that we do not drink them very often, Cosmopolitans are here to stay. If you don’t know what a Cosmopolitan is, you are either under ten years old or you eschew all forms of media, in which case you wouldn’t be reading this now. (And if you are under ten, please stop reading this and go pour yourself a glass of organic, farmers-market milk.)

The Cosmopolitan, that pink-hued slightly sweet, slightly tart cocktail, started popping up in bars on the Coasts in the late 80s, gained momentum in the early 90s, and skyrocketed to cocktail hall of fame in the late 90s. Made superfamous by Carrie, Amanda, Charlotte, and Samantha (if you don’t know who they are, then you are lost), it became the drink in the early 00s, at least until the Mojito came along to usurp that title. As with all trendy things, like Merlot and leg warmers, the Cosmopolitan would peak, then become the butt of jokes. Those hangers on who don’t follow trends would have to take their Cosmopolitan tippling to the closet. But don’t hate on the Cosmopolitan. It’s actually a perfectly balanced drink, when made properly, and is light and refreshing—ideal for a late spring night on the terrace. It won’t get you stupid (unless you keep drinking them, of course).

Prompted by a recent night out with our friends Daniel and Matt during which Daniel ordered a Cosmopolitan and drank it with un-ironic gusto, we decided to reinvestigate the rise and fall and nascent comeback of the drink that defined an era. When researching trends, it’s important to understand the current zeitgeist, which right now seems to be channeling the 90s, so the Cosmo is the ideal drink to vet at the moment. (You know a cocktail has reached international status when its name has a shortening.) Who better than to know a thing or two about a Cosmopolitan than Dale DeGroff, one of the most celebrated bartenders of our age. We consulted his Craft of the Cocktail and read the recipe. We didn’t have the traditional citron lemony-flavored vodka that most recipes deem necessary; instead, we substituted Stoli Oranj (we used that for a signature-cocktail commission so we had a lot left) figuring orange-flavored vodka would be close enough. We always have some Cointreau on our shelves, which is traditional, well-balanced in terms of sweet and bitter, and preferred by DeGroff.* The other two key ingredients in the Cosmopolitan are cranberry and lime juices. We always have fresh limes on hand, but what about cranberry juice? This is a common enough juice, but which one should you get? Instead of sugar-added or high-fructose corn syrup–fueled cranberry juice, we always opt for those that are made “with no sugar added,” which is plenty sweet for this drink if you ask us.** We shook it all up and after sipping them from cocktail glasses decided we would bump up the lime juice and Cointreau to provide more sweet-and-sour flavors. This would stand up to any food we would decide to pair them with at a later date.

The funny thing about experiments, usually someone else has detected shifts in the zeitgeist and is performing the same experiment as well. Take the morning after our Cosmopolitan. We received an e-mail from Rachel Van Dolsen, with Nike Communications, imploring us to make one of these pink beauties. After all, Dale DeGroff made these in the early 90s for Madonna and her entourage at the Rainbow Room. Well, how coincidental was that? But reading her e-mail further, we noticed that Dale’s recipe for the Cosmopolitan differed from the one we imbibed the night before. A quick e-mail to Rachel and a just-as-quick reply revealed that the recipe in the book was in fact Dale’s original recipe. But like all evolved and evolving artists, Dale changed his recipe, adjusting his ratios to perhaps satisfy his ever-evolving palate. Or maybe to adjust to current, more discerning tastes? Perhaps he felt this shift in the air and needed to appease the crowds who were growing weary of Cosmos night after night.

So, what turned people off of the Cosmo? Perhaps it was the ubiquity. Carrie Bradshaw (the Carrie from the first paragraph) in Sex and the City (the movie) stopped drinking them “because everyone else started,” suggesting that once New Yorkers witness the viral spread of their trends, they seek something else to bewitch them. Another reason may be its association with the female sex. After all, Carrie and her playmates ordered them for six seasons on Sex and the City, but I can’t remember any straight man ordering one on that show. This can definitely turn off a lot of guys who aren’t comfortable with their own sexuality or secure in their masculinity. So you can see why ordering a pink drink would certainly send these gentlemen into fits of self-doubt, as if Delilah came along and snipped the locks from Samson’s head, or Superman encountered some Kryptonite while trying to pick up a coworker from the Daily Planet on an after-work happy hour. But New York is now populated by guys and gals who are redefining society, in which gender and sexuality are more fluid, less reliant on labels. Pink is just a color instead of a marker.

The history of the Cosmopolitan is legendary, shrouded in controversy regarding its provenance. Is it possible that bartenders across the country in such disparate locations as Provincetown, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and South Beach created the progenitor Cosmo in vacuums, independently of one another? If we scour the Internet and read cocktail-history books, we discover that men and women behind the stick began experimenting with 1986’s new crop of citrus-flavored vodka, creating drinks that immediately piqued the palates of bar crawlers across this land. It was bound to happen. Just imagine being a bartender and all anyone asks you for is a vodka tonic or a shot that taste like Mom’s apple pie and is sickeningly sweet. As far as we’re concerned a shot’s good for one thing: getting you drunk. So if you’re a creative person and your creativity is only coming out in the form of one-gulp shots with inappropriate names, you might satisfy your yen for mixology by shaking up a new cocktail with those flavored vodkas on hand.

Regardless of these seemingly independent mixologists, we like to think that Toby Cecchini, while tending bar at Manhattan’s Odeon in the late 80s, felt the tremors of the mixological zeitgeist and crystallized the drink into what we know today. To us, evolution seems to be the winning ticket in explaining the genesis of the Cosmo. As in life, evolution is a natural progression, and the Cosmopolitan survives to this day because it is in fact one of the fittest drinks around. It appeals to our innate need for balance: the lime juice is sour, the Cointreau sweet, the cranberry juice adds sweet and tart. It’s as if spring and the coming warmer months kiss your lips with each sip.

So regardless of your gender and sexuality, or how close you follow trends, come out and enjoy the sensations of the drink that defined a decade. The Cosmopolitan. We’re certain you’ll rediscover its positive attributes. And it goes with just about every little salty noshy nibbly you can imagine. Can that be a bad thing?


Cosmopolitan
(adapted by Cocktail Buzz)

Ingredients
1 1/2 ounces citrus vodka in any combination
3/4 ounce Cointreau (preferred, but you can try another triple sec)*
1/2 ounce fresh lime juice
1 ounce cranberry juice (with no sugar added, preferably)**
orange peel, as garnish (or orange wheel or lime wheel, whatever you’re craving)

Method
Shake in ice for 15 seconds. Strain into chilled cocktail glass. Add garnish. Remember now why you drank them?

photos © Steve Schul, Cocktail Buzz

* Orange liqueurs are numerous and they all have unique flavor profiles. If you don’t have any Cointreau (40% abv [alcohol by volume]), which is a truly incredible product that beautifuly balances the bitterness and sweetness inherent in oranges, you can try substituting other triple secs such as Combier Liqueur d’Orange (a brighter orange flavor at 40% abv) or, say, an inexpensive one such as Hiram Walker (lighter—you can even choose the proof of this triple sec—they have one at 30% abv and one at 15%).

** No sugar added implies that the cranberry juice with be extremely tart, but this is not the case because most cranberry juices have other naturally sweet fruit juices added, such as pear, white grape, and apple, or a combination thereof.

A Four-Course Elegy to Gourmet Magazine

October 5, 2009, the day that Gourmet Magazine announced that it was throwing in the towel, our hearts all skipped a beat. Was it really possible, or, like Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby, were we all in a feverish nightmare trying to wake up to the smells of something good coming from the kitchen? No, it wasn't a dream; it was really happening. We had just renewed our subscription (for two years . . . we loved it that much) just the day before. What would we do now?

Cousin Barbara e-mailed us the press announcement as reported by the New York Times. She suggested that we should come together to celebrate the life of this golden magazine by cooking our favorite recipes culled from shelves of dog-eared magazines, compilation books, and stained recipes printed from Epicurious. A gustatory feast? What an inspired way to eulogize the years of culinary inspiration, for not only did Gourmet provide each and every one of us with recipes to provoke, comfort, and challenge, it also gave us glimpses into the world of top-notch chefs, food writers, growers, butchers, and manufacturers. Every time we opened the mailbox and saw the latest issue awaiting us, our hearts aflutter, our eyes glued to the cover dish, we’d wonder what photo or seasonal veggie would inspire us to make our shopping list and walk to the local market in preparation for our next Gourmet meal.

Every Gourmet reader had their favorite month. Traditionalists loved November, filled with Thanksgiving side recipes and new ways to make the turkey tender and savory. For some, fall’s orchard recipes would inspire pastry chefs of all ages to break out the rolling pin and start dusting the counter with flour. For others, many would count the days before the first spring issue arrived, excited for new recipes with peas, asparagus, and artichokes, almost forgetting what these harbingers of spring tasted like after a surfeit of winter root veggies.

We decided to wait until spring to break bread. The season of renewal would inspire us, even if some of used fall recipes. Just so long as we made some of our favorites. It didn’t matter that none of us made a meat dish, or that there were two pasta dishes. This was about love and loyalty and getting together with friends to share an evening hanging out in the kitchen, and moving into the dining room when it was time. For a challenge, we’d also have to pair our dish with a beverage, either alcoholic or non-.

To read more about this adventure of 4 foodies and the amazing dishes they made, plus two delicious and refreshing drink recipes, click here.

Fava Bean and Pecorino Bruschette, plus recipes for Oysters Rockefeller, the Tom Collins, The Mocktail, and links to recipes for the very best Macaroni and Cheese; Almond-Crusted Shrimp Cakes with Lemon Soy Mayonnaise; and Mushroom, Radicchio, and Smoked Mozzarella Lasagne. Click here.