Smoke Gets In Your Ryes

A crop of young experimental bartenders are playing with fire.

A few years ago, a foodie friend from New York invited me to Tailor, an avant-garde restaurant in SoHo where a resourceful mixologist named Eben Freeman had figured out a way to “smoke” cocktails.

Smoke cocktails?

Before you could say, “That Eben dude better not bogart my martini, sister," (which, come to think of it, I did say numerous times to the befuddled stranger sitting next to me on the plane) I was on my way to the Big Apple to get smoked out.

And I'm not going to tell you I had the best cocktail of my life when I got there. Freeman’s creation, which he’d dubbed “the Waylon,” used Coca Cola syrup smoked over cherrywood, then run through a soda gun system. Toss in some 100-proof Old Forrester and you've got bourbon and Coke fit for barbecue fiends. Which is interesting, sure, but not necessarily mind-blowing. Little did I know I was tasting the future, and that this man had taken the art of mixology one toke over the line.

“If you want to pinpoint where the smoking trend began in the States, it's what Eben was doing with the Waylon.”” said Josh Durr, a leading mixology researcher and consultant. Today, cocktails with a hint of smoke are cropping up with increasing frequency at upper echelon cocktail spots, from New York's Death & Co., Elixir in San Francisco and the Edison in downtown Los Angeles, and the results are getting more interesting by the day.

Jim Meehan, GM of the East Village cocktail lounge PDT, attributes the savory-flavored cocktail trend to a combination of more sophisticated consumers and the recent rise in popularity of peaty Islay malts and smoldering single-village mescals. Scottish and Mexican distillers have been using smoke for centuries to add flavor to their hooch, but it's only recently that mixologists have started to warm up to marrying those traditionally prickly flavors to others in their creations. In 2004, UK-based bottler Compass Box released a Scotch called Peat Monster that was blended for maximum smoke flavor. Shortly thereafter, trendsetters such as Sam Ross at Milk & Honey in Manhattan started mixing with it.

Today, clever cocktailians are doing everything from adding ingredients like smoked salts, syrups, and meats to classic drinks, to smoking spirits in-house with different woods to offer new and interesting flavors. In Portland, Oregon, Daniel Shoemaker of the Teardrop Lounge has devised a totally chill way to bring the burn – he smokes the ice (freeze, slowly melt in smoker, refreeze). Vincenzo Marianella at Copa d’Oro in Santa Monica routinely blends the scalded spirits with fresh fruits and organic produce from local farmers markets. The key ingredient in one of his smokiest concoctions, however, is Dijon mustard. He pairs it with Martin Miller’s Gin, Cointreau, orange marmalade and lemon juice to make a Sour Kraut, a tangy variation on legendary London barkeep Salvatore Calabrese’s breakfast martini.

Better still, it’s actually easy for regular folks to play along at home. The only equipment you need is a grill and a saucepan. Get your grill going, add some aromatic wood to the fire, then put whatever is it you want to flavor--a mixer or the hootch itself--into your open saucepan and tightly seal the lid. If you have access to a smoker, you can use that too. Adjusting the flavor infusion is a matter of timing--the longer the ingredient is exposed to heat, the more intensely flavored it will be. Experimentation will yield your own discoveries, but you can use these recipes as a jumping off point. The last two require you to do your own smoking, the first takes a short cut by using Sombra Mezcal, which is plenty smoky right out of the bottle.

The Pearl of Puebla, courtesy of Jim Meehan of PDT

2 oz. Sombra Mezcal
.75 oz Lime Juice
.75 oz Yellow Chartreuse
1 barspoon of Ricard Pastis
1 barspoon of Agave Syrup
4 sprigs of fresh oregano

Directions: Add the oregano to a mixing glass and muddle. Add everything else and ice. Shake and fine strain into a chilled coupe. No garnish.

Orchard Smoked Toddy, courtesy of Josh Durr

1 ¼ oz Apple-wood Smoked Rye Whiskey
¼ oz fresh squeezed Lemon Juice
1 tablespoon of Clover Honey
¼ cup of Filtered Hot Water

Directions: Build in an Irish coffee cup. Stir well until honey is dissolved. Garnish with a sliver of ginger.

The Smoking Cat, recipe by Eben Freeman, Tailor, NYC

1 oz. Dubbonet Rouge
1 ½ oz. Bernheim Wheat Whiskey
½ oz. Tobacco-Infused Bourbon
1 dash Gorki Amaro

Stir and strain into a coupe glass.