Few people know the difference between these two drink because they both contain gin, lemon and soda water. Some people throw the Gin Rickey into the equation to make things even more confusing. Just for the record, Gin Rickey's use lime in place of lemon and sugar is optional. The Tom Collins and Gin Fizz are both good refreshing drinks that are usually served in the summer. Basically, they are fizzy gin flavoured lemonade. So what is the difference between the two drink?
Continue reading Gin Fizz or Tom Collins.
The class of drinks called “sours” are pretty common. The general recipe is spirit, lemon/lime, sugar, egg white and sometimes bitters. The Whisky Sour is a classic sour, which is probably the most commonly ordered in North America. But you can have a brandy sour, a Midori sour or a Pisco Sour. Pisco is the national spirit of Chile / Peru and they are currently still fighting over ownership. Aside from the politics, the Pisco Sour has become a trendy cocktail. It still follows the basic sour formula, but because Pisco is a grape distillate, the flavour is different which seems to intrigue people. Plus raw egg whites are always an interesting edition to a cocktail.
In the world of being a bartender, at a fine dining restaurant, I tend to serve a lot of wine. Red is by far the choice with most meals, but pinto grigio (pinot gris) is a very popular white wine. I like wine, but usually only when I’m having food, or possibly drinking with friends who are wine lovers. My preference is cocktails and beer. There is nothing like a cold, malty, hopped up beer after an intense eight hours behind the bar, while listening to some tunes, like Green Day, Sam Roberts, Rage Against the Machine and the Tragically Hip. Anyway, wine doesn’t generally go with my post shift shutdown down procedure, but because I serve plenty of wine, curiosity got the better of me. That’s when I cracked open a bottle of Yellow Tail Shiraz (2005) that has been sitting in my wine rack for a while. Here’s what I thought.
Last week I contributed an article to Wine Blogging Wednesday, which happened to be on the topic of champagne. For this blogging event I decided I’d use up some of the champagne in the form of cocktails, which are always great. One of my favourite combination's is champagne and ice wine, which is an expensive combination, but well worth it. After creating the cocktails I was left with some ice wine, which I decided to drink neat and do a quick review, because if you haven’t tried ice wine, it is an absolute must.
Summer has come and gone again. As I’m preparing to hunker down for another Canadian winter the thoughts of summer cocktails are slowly leaving my mind. The summer of 2006 presented me with some interesting cocktails, but the one standout ingredient was rum. Where I work the mojito was immensely popular and so was the caipirinha and caipirissima. The classic Mai Tai was popular with my guests at the bar, when I could convince them that it was a good drink and not some fruit laden cocktail concoction. Then I got my hands on a bottle of rhum agricole and of course the ‘Ti Punch need to be tried, a few times.
Occasionally, at the new bar, I get requests for a French Martini. Prior to this I had never heard of one, nor had I made one, but after a quick look through Difford's Guide to Cocktails, it was a simple effort to shake one up. What strikes me odd about this cocktails is that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of “french” in this cocktail. But then again so many cocktails suffer from this problem. The part that makes this a French Martini, is the Chambord raspberry liqueur. The vodka and pineapple juice are not that french, but they do combine nicely in this cocktail, in a martini fashion. 
This month Wine Blogging Wednesday is being hosted by Sam over at
While killing some time, I decided to peruse the isles of a big book store. I usually check out the magazine rack for any new drink magazines or cooking journals. Then I wander around the store and avoid the Starbucks, I’m not a fan of their coffee. Then I take a walk down the Food & Drink isle and look over the bartending, wine and cocktail books. Usually there isn’t much that makes we want to shell out $25, but this time something caught my eye. The book is called “The Art of the Bar” which kind of rang a bell with me. I opened the book, out of curiosity, and it was artfully colourful with well written sections. The best part is that the writing is done by bartenders, from a bartenders perspective.
One of my favorite bourbons is Makers Mark, plain and simple. This whisky is big, bold and surprisingly smooth. The main thing I like about it is the moderation of the corn aromas in the nose. Being a bourbon it is obviously going to have some corn characteristics, but unlike some cheaper bourbons, Makers Mark has created a wonderful balance. You may notice that I use “whisky” instead of “whiskey” to describe Makers Mark, that’s because the heritage of the company goes back to Scotland and they retained the Scottish spelling of whisky.
The idea of sour mix is simply one of efficiency in a fast paced work environment, such as bar or big party. By premixing simple syrup and fresh squeezed citrus juice, and then bottling the mixture, you can avoid doing this repetitively for each drink. For most people, making sour mix is not something they need to do, unless you drink a lot or you have people coming over for a party. The only other reason may be because, you like to experiment. The best method for the aspiring home based mixologist is to make it using equal parts citrus juice and simple syrup (2:1). For the professional, there is a sour mix recipe that follows that can help with efficiency and still taste great. Also, if you want the whole in-depth story on Sour Mix, purchase a copy of 
At one point in time, before synthetic flavours became all the rage, grenadine was made with real, fresh, pomegranate juice. If you’ve tasted modern commercial grenadine, it tastes more like super sweet vanilla / almond extract. I can almost guarantee that there are no “natural” vanilla flavours in the commercial grenadine. Basically, there is no real comparison in flavour between the two, unless you are like Homer Simpson and think red is a flavour. Actually, he thinks purple is a flavour, but you get the point. Now I’m seeing new promotional material for pomegranate flavour liqueurs and pomegranate flavour vodka. So, is this the second coming of this age old ingredient? Will artificial grenadine syrup start to play second fiddle to real pomegranate syrup?
Recently there has been a lot of blog posts (Waiter Rant, Boozenews.ca, etc.) about tipping, and I figure I should throw my two cents into the ring. In general, tipping or providing gratuities, for a job well done by a server or bartender is a given in the food and beverage business. But it is always a crap shoot from the servers point of view. Sometimes we get stiffed even though we provided exceptional service, sometimes we get stiffed because we sucked that night, which is rare because most professionals can turn “it” on when they need too. I personally hate the “tipping system,” I’d rather get paid a decent wage with benefits, like a normal job.
It seems that the number of cocktail blogs popping up around this Interweb thingy is growing at an exponential rate. Just over a year ago there were just a handful of dedicated cocktail blogs. The first ones I remember browsing were Cocktail Chronicles, DC Drinks, the Bar Mix Master and Slakethirst. There may have been others, but these are the first ones I started reading. The Art of Drink started in October 2005. Now there are all sorts of cocktail and bartending blogs, as you can see (
