5 minute read
Drink Bill Knott
descended through the ceiling, wielding a double-headed axe. As it was, we were begrudgingly refunded £42. Top tip: always ask for the Atlantic Bar wine list, even if you sit in the restaurant. It has cheaper wines. There are some desperate tactics being deployed out there. Caveat emptor!
Things cheered up at Nopi, a welcome addition to the Ottolenghi stable. He can do no wrong. We had raw courgettes and charred leeks, followed by beef and beetroot rendang and octopus with sag aloo. I had my first ever glass of Czech wine, a large Karmazin, for just £10.50.
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Then off to the paradise that is Petersham Nurseries, the very best place for lunch in the summer. And certainly the most bucolic. The walk from Richmond station through Petersham Meadows is the warm-up for the scented glasshouses where tables are strewn on an earth floor, as if in a rapidly assembled Bedouin tent.
We had two salads: a tomato-andstrawberry one and another of zucchini with pomelo and pecorino. Then we shared beef with caponata and a spicy lamb dish. Disappointingly, their cheapest red was £46. It’s £55 for two courses, and worth every penny to escape to Arcadia.
Nopi, 21-22 Warwick Street, London W1B 5NE; www.ottolenghi.co.uk; tel: 020 7494 9584. Small plates from £9 to £15.50
Petersham Nurseries; Church Lane, off Petersham Road, Richmond, Surrey TW10 7AB; tel: 020 8940 5230; www. petershamnurseries.com
DRINK BILL KNOTT MY BEST LOUISIANA PURCHASE
An intriguing premise in Danish director Thomas Vinterberg’s Oscar-winning film Another Round is that humans are born with a deficit of 0.05 per cent alcohol in their bloodstreams. The theory comes from Norwegian psychiatrist Finn Skårderud. Correcting this imbalance with an occasional slug of vodka allows four childhood friends, teachers at the same school, to become more creative and relaxed both professionally and personally.
Until it doesn’t, of course. But I shan’t spoil the plot for you, other than to say that one particular cocktail features at an important juncture in the narrative: the Sazerac. A heady blend of rye whiskey, absinthe, bitters and sugar, it has the distinction of being the official cocktail of New Orleans, where it was invented some time in the middle of the 19th century. It also has a strong claim to being America’s first branded cocktail.
Originally, however, it was made with cognac, not whiskey – specifically the cognac from Sazerac de Forge et Fils, founded in 1782 and imported by a New Orleans ex-bar owner. At the same time, a Creole apothecary, Antoine Peychaud, was making his own bitters, and Aaron Bird opened the Sazerac Coffee House, where the Sazerac was the house cocktail.
A few years later, Thomas H Handy bought both the bar and the recipe for Peychaud’s bitters, but he had a problem: in the 1870s, phylloxera swept through France, destroying vineyards, and exports of brandy more or less ceased.
Handy replaced the cognac with rye whiskey and, before his death in 1889, vouchsafed his Sazerac recipe to William T ‘Cocktail Bill’ Boothby, whose seminal manual, The World’s Drinks and How to Mix Them, was published in 1907.
Handy’s recipe calls for ‘¾ jigger [about 35 ml] of whiskey, 2 dashes of Peychaud, absinthe to wet glass, ½ spoon sugar syrup, 1 slice lemon peel’.
The liquids are stirred with ice, strained into the absinthe-rinsed glass and garnished with the lemon. It is a recipe that – despite the banning of absinthe and the dark years of Prohibition – survives to this day, although many New Orleans bars use Herbsaint, a wormwood-free absinthe substitute.
It is a drink that can easily be tweaked. Some bars have reinstated the cognac. And Handy’s Sazerac Company, now owned by billionaire William Goldring, has recently started distilling and marketing a Sazerac de Forge cognac. Others use a dash of Angostura as well as Peychaud’s bitters. And some bartenders shake rather than stir.
I first sampled the Sazerac at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, during a particularly riotous day at the Kentucky Derby. It was made with Sazerac Straight Rye Whiskey – also made by the Sazerac Company. I barely remember the day’s penultimate race, except that it was won by a horse called British Attitude, a 25-1 long shot on which I could not resist placing my few remaining dollars.
It romped home and I won a packet. I proceeded to spend it on several more Sazeracs, sending my blood alcohol level considerably higher than a Norwegian psychiatrist might consider prudent.
Should you feel the level of blood in your alcohol stream creeping dangerously high, the Sazerac is a fine way to correct it. And I urge you to go and see Another Round, preferably with a flask full of chilled Sazerac to hand.
This month’s Oldie wine offer, in conjunction with DBM Wines, is a 12-bottle case comprising four bottles each of: a classic Muscadet from the Loire, extra complex for being matured on its lees; a spicy St Nicolas de Bourgueil, from further upstream; and a fresh, lightly oaked Chardonnay from France’s deep south. However, if you wish, you can buy cases of each individual wine.
Wine
Château du Jaunay, Muscadet de Sèvre et Maine sur Lie, 2020, offer price £12.49, case price £149.88
Crisp and bone-dry, but with a pleasing richness on the palate. Perfect with a plâteau de fruits de mer.
St Nicolas de Bourgueil “La Martinière”, Domaine Bougrier, Loire 2019, offer price £13.99, case price £167.88
Classy Cabernet Franc: supple tannins, bright, raspberry-like fruit and a long, smooth finish.
Montsablé Chardonnay, Pays d’Oc 2019, offer price £9.99, case price
£119.88 Chardonnay in the Mâconnais style, but from Limoux, south of Carcassonne: clean and bright, with a hint of vanilla.
