Tales of the Cocktail Blogging, Wednesday, 4:30 PM

[xiphias]

After the "Creating the Right Cocktail Menu" panel, Lis went to a "Designing Smarter Bars" panel, which interested her from a user interface design perspective (among the takeaway messages she got: people fuck up architecture in pretty much every way that people fuck up computer programs, and for most of the same reasons -- and you don't have to get to a very high level of abstraction before the solutions start looking real similar, too). I didn't go to a panel, instead electing to go to a tasting that Plymouth Gin was holding. See, they're bringing a new product in the the United States in the next couple months: Plymouth Sloe Gin.

I'm cribbing this description from SOMEONE else at Tales, and I can't remember whom. It could have been one of the presenters at the tasting . . . "In the United States, sloe gin is a bottle you only find in dive bars -- and it's usually the scariest thing there. It's covered in dust somewhere in the back, and it tastes entirely artificial and like cough medicine only worse."

One step up from that, but still unbearably vile, is the stuff that the presenter's grandmother makes. She takes the cheapest gin in plastic gallon bottles that she can get from the supermarket, soaks sloe berries in it, and adds tons of sugar.

Then there's the stuff we had at the tasting.

I mentioned, on this blog sometime, what it was like when I first had the marasca sour cherries in syrup that Luxardo makes, didn't I? You know, the REAL Maraschino cherries?

It was the same experience, only more so. "Oh. NOW I see what the entirely artificial gross thing was attempting to be like, and entirely failing to do."

Imagine sloe gin. Except good.

Yeah, you can't do it, can you? I suspect that even you Brits will have trouble with this one, since most of you probably have the same kind of sloe gin that the presenter's grandmother makes.

For you, just know that the stuff in the States is even worse than that.

. . . .and that I kind of like it anyway. . . .

Comments

[rosefox]

people fuck up architecture in pretty much every way that people fuck up computer programs, and for most of the same reasons -- and you don't have to get to a very high level of abstraction before the solutions start looking real similar, too

Yep. That whole "design in a vacuum" thing again.

[nitoda]

Whenever I've had sloe gin, it's been home made and it's been very lovely. It's hard to find sloes though and people who know where they grow usually don't want to share that knowledge, I find.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I haven't had sloe gin since my friend Jeni died. She really knew how to make it. She also used to make rumpot -- you get a big stone jar and as each kind of soft fruit comes ripe in the garden in turn, you toss a layer in, with a dose of rum. After the blackberries you seal it up and by Christmas you have this amazing stuff, which she used to bottle in little tiny bottles and give to her friends. Then she'd take the fruit and make it into killer trifle.

Gosh I miss her.

It's not just the rumpot and the long thin Saxon acre of garden full of growing food and hens that she used to garden with an electric wheelchair with tractor treads, it's the way we'd be doing something normal -- taking redcurrants off their stalks or playing Scrabble -- and she'd suddenly be reminded of something amazing she'd done, like helping find the cure for Dutch Elm Disease or smuggling people out of Hungary in the fifties, and she'd just mention it as if it was as ordinary as making honey into mead.

I'm very lucky to have known her. You'd have loved her, and she'd have loved you too, because she'd have really appreciated that spirit of experimentation you have, and the empathy too. You'd have really got on.

Death sucks, but I am very fortunate in my friends.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Isn't that one of the wonderful things about food and liquor?

What we eat and we drink is not merely calories, but is also a reminder of those who we have eaten and drunk with, those who have made those foods and drinks. Sloe gin is a tribute and a part of your memories of your friend Jeni, and therefore, even though I didn't know it, when I was at that tasting, I was honoring your friend.

Food and drink and music are all magical, because they reference and honor the people who have done them before.

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

Very well said!

Is there such a thing as gin that doesn't taste like Pine Sol smells? I can never drink anything that has gin involved at all because of that.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Well.

Sort of.

The sine qua non of gin, short for the Dutch "jenever" is "jenever", which, in English, is "juniper."

Without juniper, you don't have gin.

Juniper, of course, is an evergreen conifer. Now, there ARE differences between the smells and tastes of juniper, spruce, and pine, but, well, they're more similar than not.

But there are gins that use the juniper as only one of the flavorings, often using coriander and orange peel as other major flavorings. Rose, star anise, and grains of paradise are also ones that are used.

So there are gins which have other flavors BESIDES the juniper -- but gin definitionally has juniper as a major flavor component.

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was aware of the origins of the spirit, but it's good to know there are variants. Possibly one of those would be more appealing to me; I'll have to explore.

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

Just dropping in to say how much I'm enjoying/being fascinated by these posts,lots of stuff I'd never even thought of, its well cool, definitely sounds like the most informative convention out there.

[porcinea.livejournal.com]

sloe gin is a bottle you only find in dive bars

But... but.... but! how else can you have a sloe comfortable screw up against the wall? (Which probably tells you more than you ever wanted to know about my personal drinking history.)