Review: Calisaya Liqueur
A bittersweet amaro-style liqueur, Calisaya is made in an Italian style, but not in Italy -- rather, in Cottage Grove, Oregon.
Not nearly as dark as most amaros, Calisaya is a deep orange, in keeping with its orange-inflected flavor. But the base of Calisaya is not distinctly orange but rather cinchona bark, a tree which offers bitter, quinine-type compounds and hails from Peru. Various other (unnamed) botanicals, sugar, and water are added to the blend, offering this 70 proof final product.
The flavor is intense, with sweet orange candies and serious bitterness playing together, with a thick, syrupy body that coats the throat. Secondary notes include brewed tea, almonds, and fruitcake/gingerbread characteristics.
All sounds interesting, and if Calisaya clung together a little better it would be a more pleasant product. It isn't bad, but this concoction is frankly much too syrupy and unbalanced, its bitter flavors knocking out the sweet and spicy without much fuss. I'll take Fernet over this any day.
Reviewed: Lot 93, from production year 2010. Not to be confused with Calisay, a Spanish liqueur.
B- / $NA / calisaya.net
Review: Balcones Distilling Baby Blue and Rumble
The uninitiated may think of Texas as the frontier, a place where whiskey is probably as common as water. Not so: In fact, for years, Tito's has been the state's only legal distillery.
Now a few upstarts are coming out of the skunkworks, and the state has its first whiskey since Prohibition. Operating out of Waco, Texas, Balcones Distilling doesn't just make the first whiskey in the state, it also makes, as far as anyone can tell, the only whiskey made from blue corn -- in this case, Atole, a Hopi blue corn meal. The distillery's first two products -- Balcones Baby Blue Corn Whisky, and an odd offshoot, Balcones Rumble -- are reviewed below.
Balcones Baby Blue Corn Whisky - Wow, intense. Clearly a young corn-based whisky without a lot of time in the barrel. The starchy character ("white dog," in the parlance) is overpowering on the nose alone, with a huge, grainy body and a finish redolent of petrol. Some sweetness makes this drinkable, but like so many younger whiskies, it isn't easy going. Why this wasn't left in the barrel for another three or four years is a mystery to me. Batch BB10-10. 92 proof. C / $45
Balcones Rumble - Perhaps aware that Baby Blue was not made for easy consumption, Balcones created Rumble, not exactly a liqueur (it's a serious 94 proof) but close enough. Made from Texas wildflower honey, Turbinado sugar, and Mission figs, Rumble looks like whiskey but tastes like something else. That Balcones corniness is apparent on the nose, but it's a much sweeter spirit on the whole. Only the fig character really comes through, the rest is mainly a sweeter version of Baby Blue. Batch R10-10. C+ / $36
Review: Harlem Kruiden Liqueur
A new liqueur called Harlem is making a splash in the cocktail scene, its goal nothing less than knocking Jagermeister off its precious perch at the top of the "grimace and swallow" shot category.
That's an awfully tall order: Jager has 70 years of history and sick college students behind it, all unabashedly downing ice cold shots and Jagerbombs as if their lives depended on it.
Similarities -- squared off bottle, dark color, herbal aroma, bittersweet flavor, and syrupy consistency -- aside, Harlem is a quite different experience than Jagermeister.
It's darker in color -- a deep brown vs. Jager's red-hued ochre, and it's stronger in alcohol, 80 proof to Jager's 70. The body is different too, more sweet and less bitter, with a flavor that tastes of root beer and orange peel. Though Harlem looks ominous, the finish is smooth, with light bitterness that is more pleasant than the grimace-inducing finish that Jager invariably leaves on your face.
Meant to be consumed straight from the freezer, I've tried it both cold and at room temperature, and it's actually acceptable both ways, though superior when it comes out of the icebox.
Harlem hails from the Netherlands, by the way, hence the name -- it's not (in theory, anyway) a reference to the Manhattan neighborhood.
For an even more root beer-toned liqueur, check out Root.
A- / $23 / harlemshots.com
Review: St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur
The elderflower trend may be coming to an end as haute bartenders move on to yumberry, acai, and other oddities, but I remain an undeterred St. Germain fanatic. There are simply few cocktails in the world that this golden French spirit can't either improve or twist into something new and exciting.
In fact, you owe it to yourself to give this a try. Except for the most bitter of concoctions, add a drop (1/4 to 1/2 an ounce) of St. Germain to a few of your favorite cocktails before you shake them up, then see what you think. I'm willing to wager that at least half the time you'll find the end result a better cocktail than without it. (Go ahead and take the credit yourself for inventing a new drink.)
Sure, this won't work for everything (particularly whiskey drinks), but it speaks to St. Germain's serious versatility. Sweet but not cloying, the 40 proof liqueur offers a strong lychee character that is balanced with lavender and summer herbs plus a lemon finish, altogether giving it a lightness that you rarely (if ever) find in other fruit-flavored liqueurs.
The only real problem is the price: At $30 a bottle (or more) you spend way too much money since you'll find you use far too much of this stuff, it's that good.
Need St. Germain cocktail ideas? Take a spin through the Recipes category on Drinkhacker and you'll find loads.
A+ / $30 / stgermain.fr
Review: Rum Jumbie Rums and Liqueur
Rum Jumbie (the name refers to spirits allegedly trapped inside the caves of the Caribbean who would possess the souls of rum drinkers) makes several light, flavored rums plus a rum liqueur.
The flavored rums are all uncolored, are sourced from Panama, and are bottled at a scant 48 proof. Flavors are natural but otherwise unspecified.
Here's how they stack up.
Rum Jumbie Mango Splash has a delicate mango nose and moderate tropical flavor. A little bite on the finish, but a fine ingredient in a tropical cocktail if you like a rum with a very mild and light body. B+ / $16
Rum Jumbie Pineapple Splash captures the aroma of fresh pineapple, but the flavor is off. Pineapple notes are pushed aside by out-of-place cocoa and vanilla character, with a sort of woody finish. B- / $16
Rum Jumbie Coconut Splash is extremely sweet, with sugariness that drowns out a lot of the coconut character. As with the other Jumbies, it's heavy on the nose with the prescribed fruit (coconut is a fruit, right?), but the body doesn't totally pan out. (Try Brinley.) B / $16
Rum Jumbie Vanilla Splash has almost no vanilla aroma and what little vanilla flavor there tastes synthetic. Fortunately it's so light it doesn't really taste like much of anything. Not a fan. C / $16
Rum Jumbie Liqueur is a 60 proof concoction of "aged rum and tropical fruit flavors," and it's already awesome from the start because of the bottle shaped like a guy playing a bongo drum and wearing a straw hat that serves as the cap. The amber nectar inside however is not quite as cool. It's got cola and orange notes, apples, and loads of cinnamon and other exotic spices... but it doesn't really come together. Perhaps it's the loads of sugar in the blend that makes this hard to put down more than a few sips of. Perhaps it could make an interesting cocktail ingredient... but how? It's simply too muddy and sweet and leaves a varnish-like coating on your palate that I wanted to scrub off. C / $30
Review: Travis Hasse’s Apple Pie and Cherry Pie Liqueurs
Sweet tooths, rejoice. Someone has indeed taken a pie, liquefied it, added a little alcohol, and bottled it for sale. Behold Travis Hasse's Apple Pie Liqueur and Cherry Pie Liqueur, both of which are absolutely crazy.
Travis Hasse's Apple Pie Liqueur is a hazy gold color. Flavored with apple and cinnamon and a few other spices, what you mainly get from a sip of this spirit is a rush of sugary sweetness. It's possibly sweeter than any other spirit I've ever tasted, although the aroma and flavor are, once you push past the sugar, relatively authentic apple pie representations. But the sweetness is such a killer that it's hard to palate on its own -- in a small dose with a cocktail or, as the label suggests, atop ice cream, you might be better off. 40 proof. C+
Travis Hasse's Cherry Pie Liqueur is a somewhat different animal. Less alcoholic (30 proof) and less sweet, it's a cherry liqueur with a touch of vanilla added. A little less "pie" like on the nose, it still smells pretty good. On the tongue, though, it comes across as medicinal. It's not syrupy in texture, thank God, but one gets the feeling that if you melted down some Sucrets you would get a similar liqueur... complete with the same amount of alcohol. C
$17 each / drinkpie.com
Review: Three New Thatcher’s Liqueurs
Thatcher's is making some of the most interesting liqueurs on the market: All organic, each sold with a little charitable sharing of its profits, and all intensely flavored spirits designed for modern cocktails. (Prior reviews are here and here.)
The company is adding three new flavors to its lineup in the coming weeks. We got samples of each. All are 30 proof.
Thatcher's Blood Orange Liqueur is surprisingly maroon/red in color, but the flavor is considerably more orange in tone. It's not overdone, like many a triple sec, which will slap you in its face with its tart citrus character, instead offering a smooth orange and raspberry spirit with a little cherry on the tongue. Easy to drink, and a good choice for a cocktail where you want a little color and nuance along with the orange flavor. A-
Thatcher's Yumberry Liqueur is made from a new superfruit you're probably going to start hearing a lot about this year. (Acai is so yesterday.) Hailing from China, it looks like lychee but smells like fruit punch. The taste veers toward mild strawberry, though there's a touch of cloying cough syrup character in the finish that keeps it from being a masterpiece. Pink in color. Cute. Try it in a Cosmo. B
Thatcher's Coffeehouse Liqueur you can smell from a mile away, made from a blend of organic coffees selected for balance and character. It's lighter in color and body than most coffee liqueurs I've tried, and considerably sweeter. This makes it extremely easygoing on its own, a liqueur to choose if you want to drop a little natural coffee flavor into your cocktail without overpowering it. B+
each $20 / thatchersorganic.com
Review: Solerno Blood Orange Liqueur
Immediate bummer: Upon pouring a bit of Solerno into your glass, Solerno turns out not to be bright red like the bottle's appearance -- and blood orange juice -- would indicate (the glass is tinted, ya see) but rather nearly clear, like Cointreau, just with a slight yellow tinge.
Solerno is indeed just a spin on a triple sec, made in Italy from sweet blood oranges instead of the usual Valencias and such.
And Solerno is really quite good: Big kick of orange and clearly of the blood variety, but awfully sweet. This would be a great addition to any cocktail where sugar plays a role (in fact, you might throttle back the sweetness in your recipe if you sub this in for any triple sec), but it's a little too sugary on its own as a digestif. And at 80 proof, it runs hot, too.
Overall, a very good liqueur, and worth a try for any orange enthusiast. Love the bottle, too.
A- / $35 / grantusa.com
Review: Herbsaint Original
There is one known use for Herbsaint, and it's a big one: In the classic Sazerac cocktail, in which the glass is washed with Herbsaint before rye, sugar, and Peychaud's bitters are added.
Now Sazerac (the company) is relaunching the venerable spirit with its original 1934 recipe, called Herbsaint Original.
Neither the standard Herbsaint nor Herbsaint Original contain wormwood, so while they both carry a strong anise/licorice flavor, neither is a real absinthe. Nonetheless the liqueur was caught up in anti-absinthe hysteria in the 1930s, and the company was forced to remove the word "absinthe" from its labeling.
I was expecting minimal difference between Herbsaint Original and standard Herbsaint, but boy was I wrong. Poured neat, these are night and day against each other: Herbsaint is electric green and a little scary in its artificial coloring, while Herbsaint Original is a deeper greenish brown (though it too includes artificial coloring). The flavors are different, too: Herbsaint is known for a sharp licorice character and a heavy alcoholic finish, but Original is deeper and richer, still clearly licorice, but less sweet and, surprisingly, less boozy, despite being 100 proof to the standard version's 90 proof.
One surprise: Herbsaint standard actually performed better in the Sazerac cocktail. While the tastes were similar, Herbsaint Original just weighed things down too much.
Both versions will continue to be sold.
A- / $35 / sazerac.com
Review: 1921 Tequila Lineup
From the Jalisco highlands, 1921 is a line of 100 percent agave tequilas... plus a tequila liqueur. I tasted them all while trying to figure out what the symbolism of "1921" was... and failed. The line is unusual in that the agave undergoes a double fermentation process, said to offer more smoothness and a wider spectrum of flavors than other tequilas. True? Here's how they stack up. All 80 proof except the liqueur.
1921 Tequila Blanco is where we should see the most proof of 1921's claims, and true to the marketing material, there does seem to be something unique about this unaged blanco. It's a very creamy tequila, with minimal to no bite at all. Fans of the shoot-and-grimace method of drinking tequila should look no further, since this one goes down so easily. The flavor is a bit strange, though, with cantaloupe, salt, and, a bit further down the list, agave notes. Not unpleasant, but unusual to say the least. B+ / $40
1921 Tequila Reposado spends an indeterminate amount of time in oak, but it's obviously not long. The very pale color offers much of the same character as the Blanco, plus some spicy, Bourbon-like character from contact with charred wood. This makes this tequila more interesting than the Blanco, but also gives it a bit of bite. I like it better; I figure most tequila fans will find it delicious, too. A- / $45
1921 Tequila Reserva Especial Anejo used to just be called Reserva Especial because it was aged for just eight months. Now it's been relaunched as Reserva Especial Anejo, as it spends a full year in casks, giving it the official legal status to be called "anejo" on the label. Overall it takes the Reposado's formula and adds more of that spiciness. The color isn't dramatically darker, but it's clearly smoothed out just a bit more with vanilla, wood, and other whiskey-like notes, leaving, as so many anejos do, the taste of agave behind. Very palatable, but a toss-up vs. the Reposado. A- / $50
1921 Crema de Tequila combines tequila and a touch of coffee to create a 30-proof sort of Bailey's a la Mexico. Quite sweet and milky, it's a dulce de leche kind of experience, with a little peppery kick to it, some cinnamon, and the barest hint of tequila. Cream liqueurs are all over the place now, and this one is a fine entry to that crowded field, and if your tastes run toward tequila rather than whiskey, you'll probably find it's a good alternative to the usual fare out there. Pricey, though. B+ / $30
