Press Club has answered my lazy cry ]]> I rarely leave San Francisco, except by plane, and the occasional trek north to wine country, so being able to get the tasting room experience without actually leaving the city would be a blessing.

Press Club has answered my lazy cry (really more of a grumble), presenting their series of Visiting Vintner events.

Every Thursday evening, they are bringing in pros from different regional wineries (changing monthly) to pour flights of their wares and sample from hard-to-get bottles.

If you haven’t visited, Press Club is probably the sexiest place in SF to drink the grape, and if you just haven’t stopped by for a while, they now have beer, they’ve ditch the odd-ball “deposit your AmEx at the door” policy, and every bartender and server can provide you with a glass of anything on offer (used to be each winery had its own area). These changes have truly transformed the atmosphere and character of the place and make it a destination in the heart of downtown (20 Yerba Buena Ln. – essentially, right off Market on the west side of the 4 Seasons).

September’s Visiting Vintners are Cakebread Cellars and Bonny Doon Vineyard.

For future listings, check out the Press Club events page.

Ted Seghesio, Winemaker at Seghesio Family Vineyards, and an array of bubbles from Domaine Carneros
 

In this age of ]]> Recently released by the Scandinavian Design Center, the Baggy Winecoat is a poorly named purse that holds the internal bag from boxed wine with a convenient pour spout and sturdy base for fashionable picnic drinking.

In this age of Mad Men mimicry, when we can’t all keep a fully stocked bar in the office, I think now is the time for stylish, discrete liquor luggage. Wouldn’t it be great to show up to a party, or invite colleagues into your office on a Friday afternoon, with three bottles discretely stashed in your stylish briefcase with built in taps? I’ll probably have to design and build by own bottle bag, because I haven’t seen what I seek on the market yet.

Please post comments below on the features you would like to see.

Design notes for future project development:

• Classic style in wood and leather.
• Include a secret compartment to hide documents, so nobody realizes I have to do real work occasionally.
• The apothecary bottles common to bourbon would be a great fit; flatter and more square than wine bottle shape most often used for spirits.
• Low profile buttons at base for discrete dispensing.

For most, wine cocktails are what we drank while backpacking across Europe at 19 years old – before we knew better.  ]]> As mentioned yesterday, a shorter version of this article is in the latest issue of Drink Me Magazine.

For most, wine cocktails are what we drank while backpacking across Europe at 19 years old – before we knew better.  No longer relegated to bottomless Bellini brunch specials and champagne cocktails served to octogenarian knitting circles in hotel bars, cocktails made with wine have been making a resurgence on the American bar scene.

While cocktails crafted with wine may be viewed as an recent trend, the technique has a tradition reaching back centuries.  Wine was often the alcohol in the original punch recipes (with sugar, water, fruit and tea) of British sailors in the 17th century.  In fact, many prominent stories of the genesis of the word “cocktail” are rooted in the term first being used to refer to a drink that combined spirits and wine, either from the 19th century tail-cropping style used to designate a good horse of mixed-breed, or all the way back to the Revolutionary War, when American and French officers would pour back and forth between glasses in a show of solidarity, mixing the wines preferred by the French with the gin and whiskey of the locals.  Near one such tavern, a rooster was stolen from a Tory and it’s feathers used to adorn their drinks,  prompting the toast, “vive le cocktail.” American bartenders in the mid-nineteenth century, the golden age of cocktails, utilized wine in mixed drinks rather than waste the contents of bottles opened too long ago to be served, giving cocktails new character, but cocktails made with wine had fallen out of fashion again by the 1870s.

As Pre-prohibition cocktails have been coming back into vogue, new wine cocktails have started showing up on the menus at elite cocktail bars across the country over the past couple years.  When absinthe became readily available again stateside, Death in the Afternoon, a drink devised by Ernest Hemingway in 1935, as a jigger of absinthe dropped into a glass of champagne, became a favorite, but there are so many other superb wine cocktails lacking celebrity endorsement.  The French 75 is a perennial classic, and newer wine-enhanced drinks have emerged, like the (there was supposed to be a drink from Reza at Conduit here, but they shuttered the restaurant while this article was being written) in  San Francisco and the New York Sour at Schiller’s Liquor Bar, which takes a modern twist on the whiskey sour with a float of dry red wine.

Simple reds and whites are less commonly utilized and have always been rarer cocktail components than sparkling wines like champagne and prosecco, late harvest dessert wines, and fortified wines like sherry, port and of course vermouth, the most commonly used wine in cocktails. Sparkling wines add effervescence to a cocktail without diluting it’s potency, while dessert wines and fortified wines have higher alcohol content, rivaling the potency of liqueurs while adding complexity to a drink.

In creating wine cocktails, balance is key, requiring careful measurement.  For contriving your own wine cocktails, start with recipes for your favorite classic cocktails and consider where wine can be substituted for an ingredient, or added to an existing cocktail to alter its profile. Start by substituting or adding wine one tablespoon at a time. You can look abroad for influences as well. Spaniards are famous for their sangria, but infamous for their calimocho and tinto de verano, red wine mixed with cola and lemon-lime soda respectively. When we accept that many spirits are simply wine distilled away from its water, it might be a little easier to accept such bastardizations.  Nobody scoffs at a Singapore sling which is, in essence, only a step away from tinto de verano.

Tip: like crafty bartenders of the 1860s, you can make the most out of wine that’s been sitting around too long by making a wine syrup the same way you make simple syrup.  Combine equal parts (by volume) leftover red or white wine and sugar in a sauce pan.  Over medium heat, bring to a boil, while stirring, just long enough to dissolve the sugar, or longer for more intense flavors. Try substituting this for a fortified wine or liqueur in one of your favorite cocktail recipes for something innovative and new.

Xplorador is sending someone *cough*pick me*cough* to Chile to experience the harvest and production of their wines.   A buddy shot this video while I was standing outside a bar last night, so I’m throwing my gorro into the ring.

I’d been out late with friends, so pardon the rambling, but I still believe that I am the the ideal candidate.  As you can see from the rest of my site, I love to explore adult beverages and share them with the world through my writing, photos and video.  I’m articulate, without being too obnoxious, and above all, I am passionate about what I drink, from harvest to pour. I’d love to be able to tell everyone back in the States what the vineyards and wineries of Chile are like from the everyday normal guy perspective.

Click here to view the embedded video.

As an added bonus. I promise not to use the word “opportunity” ever again, since I entirely wore it out in this video.