OK, OK, so we're a little obsessed with bourbon right now. But Derby Day is just around the corner, the sun is starting to make a cameo and, well, bourbon is absurdly delicious.

While at a whiskey-and-barbecue eatery the other night, the bartender stopped short when he heard me order Woodford Reserve, mistaking me for some high-rolling aficionado (I'm new to the cult and have never even tried Pappy Van Winkle). "You like bourbon?" he asked, smiling. With a flourish, he produced this bottle of Vintage 17-year-old bourbon. I laughed when I saw it. Look at that photo! It was like someone saying, "You know what's a high-quality nail polish?" and dramatically presenting you with an old bottle of cherry-red Wet & Wild with its insanely '80s script. How could this be tasty stuff?

One sip shut me straight up. My companion crowed, "It's incredible! It coats the palate with caramel!" All I could muster after a long day writing about food was a sober, "Yeah," and a deep sigh -- the sigh of a woman who had just acquired a very expensive new habit.

I'm always a fan of booze-based kitchen pyrotechnics, and a sucker for a good technique demo. The twain are meeting in this video from Gourmet.com's The Test Kitchen video series. In this particular installment, Gourmet's test kitchen director Ruth Cousineau talks her way through a flambé of sirloin pan juices, olive oil, and a goodly lashing of whiskey, outlining her strategies for forestalling danger along the way. Fire pretty. Video handy. Me hungry.

Other useful video tutorials include methods for measuring honey and flour correctly, coring apples, cleaning herbs, and general behind the toque tips and techniques from their staff's seasoned kitchen pros.

[via: Gourmet.com's Test Kitchen]

Let's just call this year "Suntory time."

For the first time, whiskey produced outside of Scotland has won awards for best in the world by Whisky Magazine.

In the single malt competition, Yoichi 20 years old, which is distilled near the city of Sapporo on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, beating out a number of other ostly Scottish brands. Judges chose Yoichi 20 for its "amazing mix of big smoke and sweet blackcurrant," "explosive aroma" and "big, long and sweet finish." The best blended whiskey award went to Suntory Hibiki, the same brand that was used in the movie Lost in Translation (hence, "Suntory time").

What would a collection of SuperBowl dip recipes be without a little blue cheese, considering that it is held to be the gold standard of hot wing dips - excluding hot wing sauce itself, of course. Blue cheese (or bleu cheese, if you prefer) dip is made with a pungent, creamy cheese that cuts into the spiciness of hot wings by adding a new layer of flavor and a cooling sensation that dulls the heat of the chicken. The strongly flavored cheese, in most of these dips, is often combined with sour cream, mayonnaise or cream cheese, each of which contributes to the overall texture of the dip without bumping up the flavor to the point where it overpowers the hot wing itself.

This particular dip is a pretty standard recipe that you'll probably find in several different places. It calls for sour cream and mayonnaise in addition to the cheese, so "healthy" is not something that could be applied. You can always substitute low fat or nonfat sour cream/mayonnaise; using a good quality blue cheese will make up for any loss of flavor in either of those ingredients.

The Holiday Season is approaching rapidly and it seems that many makers of quality spirits will be changing their look this year, some are making permanent changes and others are changing the packaging just for the holidays.

The first I heard about is Beefeater Gin which will be getting a makeover for its packaging by the design firm, Design Bridge. Beefeaters sales dropped dramatically earlier this year and they hope the change will boost their lagging sales. The new look should be hitting the shelves any day now in preparation for the next two months when liquor usually has its biggest sales of the year.

The second is Highlands Scotch, one of the best scotches in the world. Highlands Scotch unveiled their radical redesign of the bottle, packaging, and website on Monday at WhiskyFest New York. The bottle has a tall oval shape to it which is different from 95% of scotch's which have more traditional square or rectangular bottle shapes, and they hope it will offer a showcase for the premium scotch inside.

And last but not least is Absolut with it's Absolut Bling-Bling gift pack, a limited edition, golden plastic covered bottle symbolizing... symbolizing... what exactly? Conspicuous spending? Flash? More is more lifestyles? Um... yeah... that's just what I want, riiiight. Pimped and Blinged up vodka.

If you thought that a mixologist was just a fancy term for a bartender, you'd only be partially correct. Most mixologists start off as bartenders, but the terms are not entirely interchangeable according to mixologist Leo DeGroff. The latter is more like a chef, creating new drinks, not just pouring them.

People have been coming up with new drink recipes for hundreds of years, but it is only in recent times that cocktail creation has really grown into an art, using fruits, vegetables and other flavors with the same precision that they are used in cooking. Mixologists often rely on seasonal ingredients, too. The drinks they create are frequently commissioned to be appropriate for particular events, menus and themes. As an example of the way mixologists work, take a look at the three "old west" theme drinks that were recently created for the launch of a new AOL game, Gold Rush. All the drinks use whisky, a classic American spirit, as their foundation, but come out with entirely different flavors.

The French drink 150 million bottles of whisky a year with 3 billion bottles produced each yeart, 1 billion of them in Scotland. Now a French champagne grape producer thinks there is room in this massive market for a little French Whisky.

Thierry Guillon saw that, besides grapes, his home region is a major barley producer - barley equals whisky. He now faces rising demand for his Single Malt de la Montagne de Reims.  Demand has pushed production up to 60,000 bottles this year. Thierry says that even Scots and Japanese (both major producers and consumers of malt) are heading to Reims and Troyes to buy their malt.

At Luxist, Deidre reported that a new scent called the Spirit of Scotland is to go on sale soon. Following in the footsteps of another unusual scent, the Spirit of Scotland is supposed to smell like malt whisky. While people have sample the scent and given it positive reviews, not everyone feels that it actually smells like whisky. Apparently, it has smoky, peaty notes with floral overtones. Honestly, it seems like you wouldn't want to walk around smelling like whisky all day, so it's probably just as well that the perfume is not an exact match for the spirit. Of course, if you already walk around smelling like whisky and are looking for a way to hide that, this could be the perfect product. 

The last surviving crewman off the SS Politician -  the ship that inspired the book and film Whisky Galore has revisited the wreck.

Maurice Watson, 82, was a 17-year-old cadet when the ship hit rocks during World War II. As soon as the local islanders heard of the ships cargo - 260,000 bottles of whisky - they managed to 'save' or 'liberate' thousands! This story inspired Compton Mackenzie's 1947 novel Whisky Galore - and the classic Ealing comedy starring Joan Greenwood and Gordon Jackson.

Maurice, of Wirral, Merseyside, visited the Hebridean isle this week and relived the moment the ship ran aground on February 5,1941. It was heading for the Americas and also had £3 million in Jamaican currency in its hold. 

Maurice said: "The gunner said he thought he could see an enemy battleship. We took evasive action and we hit a rock. The bow scraped all along, over the rocks. Eventually, the stern was on rock and started bouncing up and down. What we had actually seen wasn't a battleship but the island of Eriskay."

"Those of us who knew about the cargo cracked jokes about the money and the whisky on board. We knew we couldn't get at it, it was stacked up in the hold, with six steel bars with locks going across. To this day, I don't know how the islanders got it out."

The Kentucky Derby, in its 132nd run, takes place this Saturday at Churchill Downs in Kentucky. It's called the "run for the roses" because of the huge floral wreath that is draped over the winning horse. This cocktail is called the Crown of Roses, after that very wreath. Though the mint julep is the classic Derby drink, there is no reason not to branch out and try something new on Derby Day this year. The Crown of Roses is more colorful and much fruiter than a julep, but still has the classic (and traditional) Derby whisky in it.

Crown of Roses

1 oz. Crown Royal whisky
1/2 oz. amaretto
1 oz. pineapple juice
1/4 oz. cranberry juice
3 dashes Angostura bitters
1 maraschino cherry (garnish, optional)

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice and add all of the ingredients. Shake well, then strain into a chilled cocktail glass and add garnish.

[Image Barnone Drinks]

A Scottish glass design studio has won the prestigious Queen's Award for Enterprise by designing a glass specifically for whiskey. Glencairn Crystal, is one of 145 firms receiving the award that recognise the achievements of business across the UK in areas such as innovation and international trade.

The company is family owned and has developed the whisky nosing glass with the assistance of some of Scotland's master distillers. The glass now sells more than a million each year across the world.

 Glencairn Glass director Scott Davidson said: "Winning the Queen's Award is a superb achievement for everyone here, and reflective of the innovation not just within the business but also within the wider Scottish whisky industry."

 

 

Scotch whisky is enjoying unprecedented popularity around the world, especially in Asian countries. The annual foreign market is more than £2 billion. Understandably, the distillers would like to hold on to as much of this market as they can, but there are some who are none too happy about the current market.

In India, sales of whisky have enjoyed a fifty percent increase in the last year and a Scotish Whisky Association (SWA) representative said that "India is the industry's number one trade priority." That is where the trouble starts. The SWA is protesting the 212-525% taxes and tariffs on their imports, which the Indian government and distillers say is necessary to protect local products. Indian distillers, in turn, are protesting the fact that the EU does not permit them to sell their own brew as "whisky" in Europe because it is molasses-based, not cereal-based. The Indian distillers, like magnate Vijay Mallya, say that having to call their beverage an "Indian spirit" hurts sales and the EU's labling requirements amount to protectionism, especially since they are not asking to call their products "scotch," and are willing to use the label "Indian whisky."

Efforts towards a settlement have failed thus far, but the EU is apparently conducting negotiations to see if a resolution can be reached.

The only Swedish whisky distiller, Mackmyra, has released a single malt. Coming from the countries only distiller means it is also the only Swedish malt whisky.

Preludium:01 is a blend of the premier casks of whisky made in the small-scale distillery in 1999, when it was founded, and the first ones from the new distillery, opened in 2002. Although, like scotch whisky the producers use ex-bourbon casks and ex-sherry butts, they have an added local feel by utilising new casks made of Swedish Oak.

They took the first first-fill sherry cask, the first first-fill bourbon cask, the first Swedish oak cask, and mixed it together and to get the volume. Adding the new distillery caks as well made a mix of everything they have produced.

Preludium:01is the first in a series of six that will be released during 2006 and 2007.

[From The Scotch Blog]

The UK's most northerly radar station - RAF Saxa Vord in the Shetland Islands is to get the islands first whisky distillery. The distillery will also take on the crown of being Scotland's most northerly.

The RAF base closed last month with the building of the distillery, which should be finished later this year, the job losses will be negated. Blackwood Distillers was set up four years ago and currently produces gin, vodka, and a vodka liqueur which have helped Blackwood win a Scottish Exporter of the Year title.

As well as using local peat and the famed local water - famed for its clarity - Blackwood intends to use an old strain of 'bare' barley which has been grown on Unst for the last 5000 years which will make it totally distinctive.  It could be several years before the whisky is exported though.

In a vain attempt to keep the Friday cocktail imbibing relevant to the week's news here on Slashfood I offer -

Bird of Paradise

• 1 shot Gold Tequila
• 1 shot White crème de cacao
• ½ shot Amaretto Liqueur
• 2 shots single cream

Shake ingredients with ice and strain into a martini glass.

Sword of Damocles

• 3/4 shot melon liqueur
• 3/4 shot light rum
• ¼ shot fresh lime juice

Shake ingredients with ice and strain into a shooter glass.

Scotch Bounty

• 1 shot Scotch whisky
• 1 shot white crème de cacao
• ½ shot coconut rum
• 2 shots orange juice
• 1/8 shot grenadine

Shake ingredients with ice and strain into a martini glass.