I’m new to Pandan. As I’m a white American guy, it wasn’t exactly passed down through my family through the generations. I found out about it a year or two ago when I tried PCH’s fantastic Leeward Negroni cocktail. Pandan is long leafed plant native to Southeast Asia where it’s often used in place of vanilla in cooking. While it has some similarities in taste to vanilla, I find it more nutty, woody and complicated, at least vs. the vanilla beans and extracts we usually get. Pandan is easy to get from most Asian grocery stores, where you’ll find it in the freezer aisle. I’ve tried buying it fre ..read more

A few years back we visited Boston’s Eastern Standard bar and wrote about our experience. The wonderful bar, along with its companion The Hawthorne, closed a few months ago which is a real shame for the city. I haven’t recently been back to Boston, so I didn’t know too much about the cocktail. All I had to go on is that it has a Prizefighter Irish Whisky base spirit, Lillet Blanc dry vermouth, Amaro Montenegro, and a pear brandy rinse. Of that set of ingredients, the Amaro Montenegro was the only one I had handy, so I started a few rounds of experimenting and riffing on the recipe before I had ..read more

My Father’s Day gift to Michael was the Nomad cocktail book. It was a bit less of a gift than the promise that I would make him a lot of the cocktails in it. One thing that we quickly noticed was the omnipresence of Linie aged aquavit throughout the book. The other was that there is a fantastic “dark spirits” section in the middle of the book, which we have frequented in the past few weeks. The Birch Tree’s subtitle is written as a “cognac Manhattan reminiscent of root beer flavors”. This is spot on. Without telling him anything about the drink, Michael sipped and determined it to taste like ..read more

Sylvia received a handful of samples when she visited Big Market, an incredible whisky shop in Berlin that’s not too far from the Berlin airport and allows tastings for nominal fees of the majority of whiskies that the store sells. The mini-bottle was one of the samples given on-the-house from the store, since she walked out with an American-sized haul. The bottling stylistically is a bit strange and features a verse on the bottle: Some conflicts are fought in the heart as well as the battlefield Whisky bottle This is a limited edition bottling of Edradour which was released in honor of the S ..read more

The Sovereign is a sub-brand of the venerable Hunter Liang. I think they originally set it up to start bottling single grain whiskies, but then expanded it to use for some older single malts as well. We tried a few of their single grain line, and I found it best summed up that age and price don’t make a whisky great. If you’re going to age something for 3, 4, or 5 decades, losing a few percent every year, and sell it at the end for several hundred (or thousand) dollars, do yourself a favor and start with malt instead of grain whisky! Anywho, we’re hear today to talk about Laphroaig which is of ..read more

We’re big fans of all things Negroni here at Drunken Diplomacy. The 1:1:1 blend of gin, sweet vermouth and Campari is a classic, and the formula is fun to riff on. We’ve made dozens of riffs on the drink, with every base spirit imaginable. Now that San Francisco is starting to open up again, we’ve been starting to revisit some of our favorite old haunts here in the Mission District in person. The highlight of the last Negroni Week was Wildhawk’s Breakfast Negroni cocktail. The star ingredient is the Cocoa Puff infused Sweet Vermouth. The drink is sweet, but not cloyingly so. It’s light, refres ..read more

It’s exciting to try local products when you travel. It’s one of life’s joys! But I was a bit skeptical when I first encountered Balcones during a business trip. Most of the world finds a way to advertise its local wine and spirits without deprecating the rest of the world, but Texan advertising always seems to view it as a zero sum game – everything is comparative: bigger, better, etc. in Texas. Back to the first encounter. It was a trip to visit a Texan game developer and my dining companion heard I liked whisky – he urged me to try Balcones, which he extolled as an excellent local whisky. T ..read more

I can only judge from the pictures, as I’ve yet to visit in person, but visually, Heaven Hill is a weird place. The distillery sits amidst more than a dozen MASSIVE, 7 story “rickhouses,” conjuring less the image of a “family run” distillery, and more the image of a Soviet apartment block, albiet with grass vs. frozen tundra between each building.  Heaven Hill is one of the world’s largest distilleries. By volume, they’re the United States’ seventh largest distillery, and the largest independent bourbon distillery. They’re based in Bardstown, near the center of Ke ..read more

I make little secret of my love for sherried whiskies. There are few things I appreciate more than a monster that marries sherry and malt. Bunnahbhain 18 offers sherry in spades; the costal distillery combines rich, full bodied sherry with salty sea spray. I got this one a few months back, after I spied it selling for around around $100 at K&L spirits. Bunnahbhain is one of my favorite distilleries on Islay. It’s tucked in the north eastern corner of the island, next to Caol Ila, and near the town of Port Askaig, which offers ferry service to the nearby island of Jura. Most of Bunnahbhain ..read more

The Nikka Coffey Malt comes from Suntory’s Miyagikyo distillery outside Sendai Japan. Coffey Malt is one of the few 100% malt whiskies distilled on a column (Coffey) still, as opposed to a pot still. Coffey Stills were the first continuous stills invented and can run continuously without needing to be reloaded every time. Continuous stills are generally used for making grain (wheat, grain, corn) whisky (e.g., bourbon) but generally not for malt whiskies due to the complexity needed. The whisky has been a mainstay at bars until the recent uptick of whisky consumption (particularly Japanese whis ..read more