Hey, folks, you're listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Greg, I do communications at Binny's. Roger, beer, hard cider, seltzer. Smooch. FMVs, anything. Still riding the smooch, trying to... Oh, yeah, yeah. Hey, I'm Pat, I drink vermouth at Binny's. And Pat has been lobbying us and everyone within Earshot for at least five years to drink more aromatized wine. And finally, he got somebody in the room who's going to agree with him. Basically, just... Maybe you guys won't pick on me this time. A friend of the podcast and the Whiskey Hotline, Jake Parrott is here. Jake is the National Sales Director for Haus Alpenz, which has a just gorgeous portfolio of aromatized wines, fortified wines, spirits, all kinds of awesome stuff, Amari. So, Jake, thanks for coming today. Hey, thanks for having me. It's good to be back in Chicago. Yes. Jake is in town for the Independent Spirits Expo, pretty awesome tasting. You may remember Jake from such YouTube series as Fortified and Aromatized Wines, episodes one through nine, or however many of those we did. Wait, we're going to do four more? Man. Between these two, honestly, you would think it's a mainstream category the way these two guys talk about it. And no offense, but what you sell is woefully esoteric. That's wonderful. But the thing is that that means something different these days, where folks who are good at marketing to enthusiasts, yourselves, they figured out how segmented the market is. And there's a very large percentage of the people that listen to podcasts like this, for which AllspiceDram is not weird. That's true. That's true. That's definitely true. Roger's entire circle of friends. It's a wide circle, my friend. But the broader point there is, if you look especially at the spirit-based modifiers in our portfolio, spirit-based liqueurs in our portfolio, they're almost entirely focused around one botanical or one flavor. The idea is that the 77 herbs and a lot of caramel poured in your glass and drink it, the market is very well served. And so things that can be injected into cocktails, so we talked about this in the YouTube series. Things that can be injected into cocktails are things that are a little bit easier for people to understand, but also a little bit easier for people to use in more than one different way. Yeah. So I wanted to bring Jake in today, really. First of all, he was in town and offered, so thank you, Jake. He really thinks about vermouth differently than I do because for me, as a lazy just vermouth lover, I just poured in a glass over an ice cube and drank vermouth like an old weirdo. True. Yeah. But he is really into pairing them with different spirits and how different vermouths and different aromatized wines interact with different spirits, which I've always found fascinating and thought provoking because I don't give it much thought. So on the table today is not just an array of imposing looking botanical liqueurs, but also a bunch of whiskey. Yeah. Some non-traditional whiskeys. So this was inspired by a list Jake had sent me last night of, there was a lot of scotch on the list, which not enough people make good cocktails with scotch, and good scotch should be enjoyed not just in a sniffed or next to your fireplace type of thing. You look skeptical. I made a black bull Rob Roy over the weekend. It was awesome. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. Very old man drink. Yeah. Totally. I think you was just partly surprised that you were suggesting people make scotch cocktails since drinking scotch neat is your go-to. Well, yeah. It's my favorite way to enjoy whiskey for sure. Well, yeah, sometimes out of a bottle, but I don't want to waste all the water doing dishes. Jake, what's your favorite way to enjoy whiskey with one of these aromatized wines? I like to say I'm not very good at math, so all my cocktails are 50-50. I like this guy. There are different cocktails for different times of the day or different ways you feel, etc. I've often said that there are two Manhattans. There's the Manhattan before dinner and the Manhattan that's not before dinner. Branching out just from Red Sweet Vermouth and American Straight Whiskey, bourbon or rye, you can get into a lot of other combinations that might actually be a little more harmonious on the palate, might actually work better as an aperitif, or in the case of making cocktails with very good scotch, have a lot more aroma. Aroma is the hardest thing to get into a cocktail. If you think about how a cocktail gets presented, it's a very cold liquid that tends to fill the glass all the way to the top. It's not like our wine friends who can swirl and sniff and go back and forth, although maybe you should experiment with making cocktails and serving them in glasses, you can swirl. What really good scotch brings to the party is aroma. Aroma is a great way to get drawn into a cocktail, is a great way to really feel like you're tasting the totality of everything that's in the drink. It's just a nice departure. You put more thought into cocktails in that one sentence than I think I ever have in my whole life. Well, you sometimes pour a cocktail into a stemless wine glass because it's a pretty good holder that's better than a rocks glass and it's convenient. Well, it holds more liquid too. I guess we should talk about a couple of the vermouths first in your portfolio. We have spoken at length about both Cokey, vermouth, de Torino and Dolan here. We've had them. Didn't we have them both on the Manhattan episode? I think. Yeah, we had a vermouth off. We converted somebody from one or the other. Was that it? Wasn't me. I think maybe we're just saying that people gravitate too much towards antiques like the Cadillac of vermouth and that Cokey is what we often recommend people try. Because it's not loaded with artificial vanilla. Right, the vanilla is not artificial. Fine, it's not loaded with vanilla. But the Dolan, I think I've always been a big proponent of and some people couldn't get past their herbaceousness of it. Well, pizza pie herbs was getting thrown out a lot. Pizza pie herbs? Yeah. Break down the difference for us, major differences then between Dolan and Cokey, because it is two different styles of vermouth historically, correct? Sure. So we're talking about red sweet vermouth here. So vermouth, wine, bittered with warm wood, that's required under European law. American law is a little bit squishier. And then flavored with other herbs as well, or spices or citrus, etc. And generally red vermouths get their color from caramelized sugar. Caramelized sugar brings some sweetness, some flavor, some color, and some bitterness to the party. Cokey Vermouth di Torino. Vermouth di Torino is a protected name in the world of vermouth. Torino is in the area of Piedmont in northern Italy, kind of the richest area classically in Italy, but also one of the great wine regions of the world. So it stands to reason that Vermouth di Torino should be about its base wine. And in Cokey it very much is. Cokey is a winery. They grow grapes, they make wine, and then they make aromatized wines as well. The base wine is Moscato. Moscato is highly aromatic, nicely orangey and flowery. So that brings a lot of depth to the vermouth that isn't just from the added herbs. So it brings sort of a harmonious character to the vermouth. The Cokey vermouth tends to have a bit more of a spice and citrus profile outside of the wormwood. Wormwood is intensely herbaceous, but the level of wormwood generally used in a nice vermouth is only enough to provide a bitter backbone. If you taste overtly herbaceousness or earthiness in a vermouth, chances are that's maybe too much wormwood. The other thing, of course, with Italian vermouths in general is they are on the sweet side. Italians like very sweet things. This is a very classic trope of the world of drinks. I mean, Americans do too, right? Yeah, of course. But I think actually in the modern day, Americans are much more appreciative of a bitter backbone. Now, Dolan is in Chambéry. Chambéry is in the French Alps. It's where you get off the big train from Paris if you're going skiing. The history there of vermouth and of other herbal things, it's definitely built around the herbs of the hillsides, of the mountainsides. So Dolan Rouge is much less about spice and citrus and much more about flowers and herbs. And because it's French and not Italian, it tends to be a little bit on the drier side. It's still plenty sweet enough for your Manhattan. We do get the occasional folks talking about pizza herbs thing. And my simple message to folks who taste that when they taste Dolan Rouge Neat is I taste that too, but make the drinks. You know, a lot of times something that may be very prominent when you taste it neat by itself, that when it becomes a half or a third component of a cocktail and it gets cold and it's in the presence of other things that might be quite firm on the palate, like characteristics of New Oak, they don't show quite as much. And what they end up being is kind of like that second bass player, that keyboard player that provides that nice little texture to the song. Okay, so are we going to put our money where our mouths is? Are we gonna put our aromatic line where our mouths is? So, Jake, you alluded to earlier, a before dinner and an after dinner Manhattan. Where should we start with? If we're gonna talk Manhattan, we should probably start before dinner then, I guess? Let's start before dinner, the traditional cocktail time. And let me preface this by saying, your mileage may vary. I have very specific thoughts about how I like my Manhattans based on if I'm going to be drinking wine later or things like that. But play around with your proportions, play around with your components. And in a moment, we'll talk maybe about playing around with dilution and temperature as well. Cool. So for before dinner, I want a very mellow whiskey and I want Dolan Rouge. I want something a little bit lower sugar, a little bit less spice and citrus. The spice and citrus in Vermouth de Torino sort of necessitates more sugar because the spice and citrus are more of an attack on the palate. So I like something a little bit drier. Jake, you've got Dolan Rouge here and Makers Mark. Yeah. So I'm going to show you one of my favorite combinations, which is equal parts, Makers Mark and Dolan Rouge. Equal parts, that's not how you make a Manhattan. And that's a very reasonable thing for someone to say. Like I said, this is one of my favorite combinations. I like equal parts because it brings a little bit more wine character into the drink and a little bit less booze character. But the other thing about making cocktails with bourbon and rye is when you make them cold, you accentuate the tannins that come from the oak. And so a little bit lower proportion of whiskey in a cocktail is going to make it a little bit less tannic. And if you're going to have wine with dinner afterwards, and maybe you don't want to be... This is delicious. Tannins are a drag. I highly recommend Angostura bitters in most Manhattan contexts. I also highly recommend playing around with bitters, especially other spice bitters. Like Fee Brothers, all spice bitters. What's the one you like that sucks? Fee Brothers, old fashioned aromatic bitters. The cinnamon red hats of bitters. There's other stuff, but Roger's too sensitive to pick up any other complexities. Bitters are an important part of Manhattan. In general for me, also, Manhattan's work best for me with an orange peel as a garnish. Hey, this is a real good Manhattan. Yeah, it's better than yours. This, I would say people could try it too without the bitters. I mean, being that unique ratio of equal parts, it's got a good bitter kick to it. Well, normally, it's two to one whiskey to vermouth, right? Yeah, that's the classic standard proportion. A lot of times that's great, especially if you're not going to then have dinner with wine afterwards. Okay. We've had dinner and you want to make another Manhattan, where do you go from there? There's a lot of different directions. We could go for a Manhattan after dinner. We could go for something very classical with, say, something like a Rittenhouse-bonded rye and Koky Vermuticharino. But I'm going to go ahead and make a rich Manhattan. So I've got this wonderful New Rift Single Barrel. This is a high rye recipe from? Yes, high rye, Northern Kentucky. Our friends in Northern Kentucky. Then I'm going to go for Koky's Vermouth Amaro. Koky makes a Vermouth Amaro called Dopoteatro. Now, the difference between this Vermouth Amaro and maybe some others on the market is, it's still from Koky, which means it's still driven by the wine base. The wine base here is both Moscato and Nebbiolo. Two very different grapes that bring a lot of different things to the party. Nebbiolo brings a bit of extra structure to the party, and that tar and roses Barolo-Barbaresco thing that adds a lot of depth, especially when cold. Okay. I'm about to get mad. Pat, have we had this one? I mean, I've had this one. Why have I not had this? Once again, why have I not had this? This sounds magic. So yeah, it's awesome. So Vermouth Amaro, generally speaking, Jake, is just a slightly more bittered Vermouth, right? That ED there is doing a lot of work. Vermouth Amaro generally means Vermouth with additional bitter notes, not necessarily more bitter tasting. Interesting. So this one's got some rhubarb root. Those of you who love sfumato out there will love that. It's got a bit of quinine. Quinine is fascinating in a lot of ways in whiskey cocktails, which we can talk about in a little while. It's a little bit sweeter. So you just get this nice extra richness with a very rich whiskey. I did this at two to one. I might do this for myself at one to one, but I certainly understand that people want a little more whiskey in their cocktails after dinner. What's our whiskey this time? This is New Rift Single Barrel. Doboteatro specifically, Ramuth Amaro broadly going to pair well with a Cast Strength bourbon? With bigger whiskeys in general. Okay. Cast Strength whiskeys, of course, are going to have some more astringency and intensity from the extra wood as well as the extra proof. But this is also the kind of thing that can be mixed with a very robust scotch. This is awesome. This is awesome. Yeah. You found a new favorite vermouth. Well, first of all, I'm not usually using this nice of whisky, and the wood and the spice of the whisky really show up. But it's complemented by this totally convoluted over rot spice box from this vermouth, which is great, which is tremendous. With this vermouth amari, it's being wine-based, you'd still want to put it in the fridge once you open it. Absolutely. Then what time period would you suggest as far as trying to? I mean, I'm sure you want obviously our customers to enjoy it a little more quickly so that they pick up another bottle. But if you're going to try to be somewhat honest with us, what are they looking at as far as enjoying it by? A good rule of thumb for that is to consider how sweet, whatever you're putting in the fridge is. The sweeter something is, the thicker the liquid is, and the harder that the fresh high aromatics have to work to blow away. Mainly what happens with an open bottle of young wine or an open bottle of aromatized wine, it's not so much oxidation per se, but more just the loss of freshness and brightness, and the characteristics that are volatile and reach you in the nose. So, for things like Coquivabutiterino, Coquidopoteatro, you're looking at more like three to four weeks in the fridge. For things like the Dolans, the Camos, things that are a little bit drier, more like two to three weeks. Okay. So, Doboteatro is a 500ml bottle that we sell for $19.99. So, to put that in perspective, one liter of Carpano Antica is $39.99. 40 bucks. Yeah, on sale for $39.99. So, this is a very affordable, higher-end vermouth here. You can tell immediately when you pour the classic coquille vermouth de Torino next to the Doboteatro, the Doboteatro pours just thicker and more viscous. I mean, you can tell right away. And redder, because it has red grapes. Darker in the glass. Just nosing the two, I'm gonna tell you a couple of things. So, the Doboteatro smells amazing and complex, and I'm definitely using it in gin cocktails too. Gin cocktails. You're a mad man. We'll put that one in your Boulevardier, right? Not the Boulevardier. Put that one in your Negroni. I would go for a nice high proof traditional gin like Heyman's Royal Dock with that. So, Cokey Vermouth de Torino will continue to be my go-to and classic sweet vermouth, but the southern one has extra herbal complexity, which is really cool. And I can see how it interacts better with the new riff. With a bigger whiskey. Yep. I think that's the thing to keep in mind. It doesn't have to be cast-strength. It doesn't have to be high rye. But you know a more flavorful, bigger bruiser of a whiskey when you taste it. And I think it obviously calls for a bigger vermouth. Yeah. It has just a little hint of those weird and bitter flavors that Roger doesn't like in a full on Amaro. But it's still like wrapped up in this big vermouth blanket. It's been like two weeks since I drank just vermouth. And this is really, I don't know what I've been doing the last couple of weeks. You're getting the itchy skin for a glass of vermouth. I'm just like, wow, I'd really like a big glass of this right now. They make fun of me all the time for just drinking vermouth. It's not meant to just be drank. Do these folks not eat cheese or olives or salumi or? It's not so much that we don't believe in it at all. It's that he'll just constantly imply that that's superior to making cocktails, trying beers, trying wines. He pretty much has two go-tos, drink hams and drink straight vermouth. Yeah, it's weird. It's a little Bonvillain-y. I'm a man living his best life and you guys are just haters. All right. So, where are we going next, huh? Well, Jake, you brought up Scotch in the Manhattan and I got to be honest, I've never played with much Scotch as far as a cocktail standpoint goes outside of a couple of the classics, whether it's a Blood and Sand or Rob Roy has Scotch, right? I mean, so a couple of those. Yeah, it's a Manhattan with Scotch. That's it. Oh, really? Yeah. No, sh**. A Manhattan with Scotch is a Rob Roy? The reason that I had that Rob Roy is because I thought I had a bottle of bourbon and I poured some, and I realized it was Black Bull. I'm like, well, I'm still making it. Okay. But the other reason that you never make Scotch cocktails is because it seems a little precious. It seems a little too nice to mix with other stuff. I don't like that feeling. But what did you buy it for? You bought it to enjoy it. Exactly. You're not paying $28 for it at a cocktail bar. Right. You can drink it in sweats. That is a legitimate concern is that a lot of people might not have the right Scotch on hand for a cocktail, and you do have to put some time and effort into thinking like, what type of Scotch do I want to use? I think Americans have gained a reputation as being a little too snobby with Scotch. They think only single malts are worth drinking and they think only 10 and up your age single malts are worth drinking. I think if you're going to approach Scotch from the mixology standpoint, it opens up a lot more of the shelf to different whiskies you should be thinking about. I think younger single malts, there's a lot of great blended Scotch out there from things as simple as Famous Grouse and Banknote, things like that to the Compass Box blends and things like that. But why do we buy and drink single malt Scotch? I'm convinced- To feel superior. I'm convinced that a lot of what draws people in about single malt Scotch is the aroma. It's that there's just so much more on the nose than there really can be in an American straight whiskey. It's true. With malt and used barrels and often lower strengths, etc. Yeah. Single malt tends to have more personality and precision than a blend, where you get a fuller, fleshed out flavor. No? No, I think that's fair. But I think the aromatic thing is key there with that. They've got a broader palette to paint with. Literally and figuratively. Yeah. The other thing though is Scotch in general is raised in used barrels. The bourbon that have been in those barrels already has leached out all those harsh lignans and wood tannins and leaves just a much more gentle maturing vessel for the Scotch. What that means in a cocktail is when you get it cold, you're not fighting, your tongue is not getting tired from fighting all the tannins in the drink. And so more aroma and less grippiness or harshness on the palate, that sounds like a pretty good combination for cocktails to me. Yeah. Let us consider the before and after dinner Rob Roy. So before dinner, I'll send around, this is Glen Kinchy, 12 year old and Dolan Rouge. That was an interesting choice. Glen Kinchy is a lowland single malt. The distillery is just outside Edinburgh. And it's very just gentle and lightly sweet and floral and fruity. Floral being the thing here. Wow. Very interesting aroma. Yeah. It's all aroma. It smells more like Glen Kinchy than Glen Kinchy does. I think you're right. That's a white zombie song. So, it's real floral and there's like an orange peel underlying fruit underneath it. Wow. I'm not picking up very much notes of the vermouth in this one. I think it comes through a bit on the finish. Yeah. You know, Dolanrush is never going to be highly aromatic. It's not made with an aromatic grape variety, and it's made more with herbs and things that don't jump out of the glass at you. That's why it's such a fun thing to season a whiskey with, because it is just going to sort of fill in almost like a good wood stain does to a chair. That is a terrific metaphor. I just did my window frames, so got stain on the mind. But yeah, it does. It fills it right in. You want to give it three layers? Go ahead and give it three layers. No, this is nice. It's floral and fruity and very, very faintly herbaceous and it's a nice little palate stimulator before dinner. It's good cold, and a lot of whisky cocktails, you don't want to drink them all that fast when they're cold. Yeah. This is really good cold. You're right about the lack of tannin and the fact that it's like a lighter on its feet, more graceful version of basically the same thing, the same cocktail. Yeah. What was the proportions on this? That one was a little more whisky than vermouth. I eyeballed it, probably about three to two. Which given the lower proof of the whisky, Glen Kinchy, 12-year-old is 43 percent alcohol. It makes a lot of sense. Again, if I'm measuring at home, generally I'm measuring because I want to taste it at equal parts, because again, I'm pretty bad at math. I love this style. He's eyeballing it, but he's eyeballing it to compensate for the various ingredients. Well, that shit's thoughtfully made. Yes. That's interesting. What kind of bitters would you use in this? You can go a lot of different directions here. This is one where orange bitters might be right. This is one where a earthy herbaceous bitters thinking like the bittermans, Boston bitters or something like that, which is chamomile driven is great. You've had a lovely dinner and now you've retired to wherever the roaring fire is, and here's a combination that I just adore. This is pretty close to equal parts as well. This is Lagavulin 8-year-old and Koki Dopa Teatro. Wow. Roger, you were talking about younger single malts, and in general, we were talking about, well, you spend so much money on a good single malt scotch, like do you want to mix it up? Lagavulin 8-year-old is $55, and considering that's become the premium bourbon price point, you should be thinking of this in the same way. And this is higher proof, too. I believe Lagavulin 8 is non-chill filtered. 48% alcohol. Nice. So the Lagavulin smoke and iodine pops through on the nose. But it's completely tempered on the palate with that big, rich vermouth. Wow. But it finishes, and it just finishes with a very clean earthiness. Yes, clean earthiness, which is a contradiction. Totally oxymoron. But you're right. But it's just that note, and it's just there, and it's singular on the finish. Yeah. It is. It's kind of a dirty flavor, but it sweeps away everything else. For me, it kind of fades into a cocoa. Sure. There's some cocoa, of course, in dopo teatro. I also can't help but taste smoked ham when I taste this. Yeah. Nothing wrong with that. It's such an inviting aroma. If ever there's something that evokes a time and place, I think the campfire aspect to this is definitely deserved and welcomed this time of year. That cocoa, it's got a s'mores type of character to it. It does have a sweeter thing playing with the smoke here in the earth. It's really interesting. There is fruit too. There's a little wild cherry kind of thing. There's fruit and there's a sensation that is coming from the fruit on the nose to me. That is really, really cool. If you take it next to the Lagervulin by itself, that's a really cool combination. I never thought about mixing Lagervulin 8. Lagervulin 8 is my favorite of the standardly available Lagervulins, I suppose. I think it's fresher and brighter and more interesting than the 16. It's not as bogged down by sherry oak as the 16. And this is awesome. It's a whiskey I have at home, but again, I only just pour it into a Glen Cairn glass and just drink it. I never I never mixed it. Those of you whose tastes run more to iodine and less to smoke, Cookie Doboteatro is also great with Talisker. I'm imagining Pat with one glass of only Scotch and one glass of only vermouth, and the thought never crosses his mind. Two straws? I have indeed double fisted a rocks class of Scotch and a rocks class of vermouth before, each with one giant ice cube in them. You do a little twist and I'm making a Rob Roy in my belly. I never thought to mix them. I'm an a**. Cookie Doboteatro and Lagavulin 8, have them both at home, have exclusively enjoyed them separately. I think that this product is especially cool because the complexity of this cocktail is impressive. You said it's essentially a two ingredient drink. Oh, for sure. That's awesome. We don't even have bitters in this. Would you use bitters in this and what would you use? I think you could. I think this is again where orange bitters might be helpful just to lift the wine character a bit. Maybe even something a little bit floral. Wow. There's also some bitters out there that have a fair amount of hibiscus in them that might be fun in this too to pump up the fruitiness. Yeah. I like Peychaud and a lot of stuff. I could see Peychaud being nice in those. Peychaud is anise, so sometimes it doesn't always play well with others. I tend to like my Sazerac Cognac or Armagnac more than rye because of that. But Peychaud bitters are a staple. I think it just depends on what you like. I just ended up using that a lot. I could see Regan's in this with the orange thing. Yeah. So I wanted to clean up just a couple of special topics here as well. One is, you know, not all sweet vermouth is dark. Some sweet vermouths are pale because they don't have any caramelized sugar in them. Now, that category is known first as blanc vermouth because it started on the French side of the Alps. Bianco vermouths, which tend to be sweeter, came later. The ones who try to mimic the botanical load of a French style blanc, to me, tend to be a little bit too sweet. Like that botanical load tends to be on the subtle side. The ones that want to be sweeter to appeal to the American palate or the Italian palate, tend to have a lot of citrus, which is delicious in its own way, but there's a lot of citric things out there. What I have here today is the Camos blanc vermouth de chamberie. Camos was Dolan's biggest competitor back in the day, but now is owned by Dolan. They were very important in getting the word about blanc vermouth to the world of cocktails. In particular, they did that in Cuba, where Camos was really about the only vermouth sold in Cuba for about a generation. Wow. If you're a fan of the cocktail, the El Presidente, a wonderful stirred white rum cocktail, and boy, aren't there so many great white rums for making good cocktails out there now. The Camos is that vermouth. If you have ever seen a Cuban bartender make a martini by throwing it, by extending between two shaker tins, the liquid and pouring it from one to the other through ice in a strainer at very long distances, those thrown martinis would originally have been made with Camos as well. Camos is different from a lot of other blanc vermouths in that it's quite a bit lower in vanilla. Dolan blanc is a wonderful vermouth. Obviously, I sell it. I'm supposed to say that. I love Dolan blanc. I love Dolan blanc with tequila. I love Dolan blanc with gin. But what I don't love is mixing two things that have vanilla in them together. Dolan blanc does have that nice rich hint of vanilla. Camos is a bit more bitter. It's a little bit drier. This was one of the more frighteningly awesome combinations from some of my investigations. This is with Glen Kinchy. Never thought you'd have two Glen Kinchy cocktails in one day. This is one you definitely want to make. This is one that Pat brought to one of our quarantine episodes, or I don't know, it was around the quarantine, and I subsequently became a huge believer in Camos Vermouth. I was making equal parts gin martinis with this, with orange bitters and loving them. Yeah, that's a great combo. I like both Dolan Blanc and Camos with gin, but different gins, maybe more intense gins with Dolan Blanc. But this stuff is really, really killer. It's still great with strawberries, it's still great with watermelon, it's still great with cheese as well. So this never had caramelized sugar added to it. Now, I was under the impression the Italian Bianco's were, their color is filtered out. Am I incorrect in that? I don't know. I don't work with anyone who makes a Bianco Vermouth. Okay. I've never really explored the subject. I mean, the color in pale aromatized wines, certainly there has to be at least a little bit of filtration involved just to get the brown from some of the macerations out of it. But most of them tend to be golden, yellow, orange. Wow. This is interesting. Even lighter, fresher Scotch cocktail. Yeah. But I think there's a more pronounced bitterness on the finish here. Yep. Camosas on the bitter side, especially for a Blanc Vermouth. There's some nice spice bitter in there as well as quite a bit more Wyrmwood than is in the- I was going to say a woodsy or bitter almost. Yeah. I think this could benefit from some citrus aromatics, would lift it up a little bit. I totally agree. Brighten it up. Like a lemon peel spritz kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Or even like a white grapefruit peel. That'd be cool. Grapefruit peel is a great little cocktail trick, especially for bitter drinks. Grapefruit oil reduces the perception of bitterness. When you smell it, the aromatics are so pronounced that they actually go through your nose, down onto your tongue and start to burn off bitter receptors on your tongue. So when you drink the drink, you don't feel quite as much bitterness. Tongue map. This is a great combination though. There's this real savory thing to it. Oftentimes, folks taste lowland whiskeys and they just find them to be kind of soft. But if you sort of meet that softness where it is, you can often get some very, very savory and intricate things out of them. I mean, what's available now for lowland single malt tends to be written off as just like, it's mildly sweet and a little bit floral, and it's just really mild and it's meant for the English palate. Serious whiskey drinkers don't want to deal with lowland whiskies anymore. That's totally not true with these amazing flavors that can be coaxed out of them. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. That was really good. What else would you recommend people, if they're going to invest in a bottle of that, how else would you play around with it? Of Kemosh? Yeah, because I think everybody should. Sure. A variety of things. Kemosh is a great vermouth for cocktails with multiple sweeteners. Of course, the El Presidente is a great example of that. Another one is a more general class of drinks with a mellow whiskey and Kemosh and a little bit of a high caramel Amaro. At Haus Alpenz, we don't really deal in high caramel Amari, but things that are a little bit more mainstream, maybe for the Italian palate to drink by itself or next to an espresso. There's a lot of them out there. Follow the color. Essentially, take a little bit of that and Kemosh, and you're making an extra botanical sweet vermouth out of the two together. That can be a lot of fun. I really love Kemosh with Heyman's Old Tom and Saler's. We call them blonde Negronis. The Heyman's Old Tom adds a little bit of not just the sugar, but more of the spice richness. That's definitely a cocktail that could take a grapefruit peel. But Kemosh is also great with cranberry juice. Kemosh and cranberry juice. Very cool. Also, any of you who like cheese out there, Kemosh and ice is really an awesome way to pour one thing to go with a variety of cheeses. As long as nothing is so intense, something like Cabrales that will literally burns the skin off of the roof of your mouth, Kemosh will go with virtually any cheese. What is this? Skin burning cheese? Cabrales, it's a Spanish blue cheese. I'm going to make a note for that. Try that. It's more blue than cheese. Nice. Nice. That's my kind of blue cheese. Intense blue cheeses like that are great with beer ground quinkina. Kind of like refreshing port. Interesting. Yeah. Again, the botanicals do a great job of scrubbing those really strong flavors off the palate. Wow. It's a big world. I'm staring at that walnut liqueur. Roger's staring at your walnut liqueur. He doesn't want it to be a tease. So let's call this the lightning round, perhaps. Okay. I've got a couple other things here with me. I've got Capcourse Matei Rouge Conquina. This is the more bitter and intense of the two Conquinas out there from Capcourse, or from Louis Napoleon Matei in Corsica. That's another one that's great with Lagavulin 8. Nice. We've already gone nuts with Lagavulin 8 today. Let's go a little more nuts with Lagavulin 8. Matei Rouge is relatively dry and relatively bitter and relatively high acid for these sorts of things. It uses Corsican grapes which have a lot of acidity and a lot of ripeness of Vermintino and Muscat grapes. It's bittered with quinine, bitter orange, and then a little guy called Brudenois. Brudenois is walnut husk tincture, which is sometimes used in small quantities to color cognac. Here, it's used actually as a little bit of a supplemental bitter. So this is about half, one to one. Yeah, because of the relative dryness of the Mate Rouge and the high acid, you need a little more to get the sugar in. And the note you sent me on this was you thought Lagovulin 8 played particularly well with a higher acid aromatized wine. Sure. There's so much in Lagovulin 8 that is very firm on the palate, especially when it's cold. So you need that acidity to kind of keep the drink moving around your mouth. Cap course Mate Rouge is also fabulous with Calvados. Interesting. Oh, this is awesome. It's Lagovulin with a bitter finish. So this mixture in particular, I very much like to... Oh, there is a nuttiness. I very much like to finish this as a highball rather than as a stirred cocktail. Really? Yeah. Long with soda, lemon peel. Basically, it's taking everything you like about that acidity and spreading it across and making it even more refreshing. Who thought you can make a refreshing cocktail with Lagovulin? Not me. The cocktail is good. I really like this quinkina. It's really good with Coca-Cola and Peixot bitters. What? That's so funny you say that. Cap course Mate Rouge, Coca-Cola, Peixot bitters. Because it reminds me of some really good root beers, like not just any or supermarket root beer. Talking stuff with real sassafras. Real sassafras, living on the edge of root beer. I'm sending around the same mixture, Moorlach and Mate Rouge, but I've heavily diluted it with water. I didn't have any soda water handy, but this is to mimic the idea of taking a mixture like this and making it into a highball. It's not going to be as intense, but it's just going to glide across the palate. Glide is a good word for it. This is really easy to drink. I take that to pound town. Then last but not least, I did bring a bottle of the walnut liqueur that we import. Nux Alpina is a walnut liqueur from the Perkart distillery in Steyr, Austria. The Perkarts have been making traditional liqueurs, mainly fruit liqueurs, but also traditional herbal liqueurs for four generations. Nux Alpina is a standout in the world of walnut liqueurs. It's a little bit drier. It doesn't have any citrus like a lot of Italian nocini do, and it has a real sappy character from the nuts. I brought it for this conversation mainly as an example of something that isn't a dashing bitters, but that can provide a lot of depth to a Manhattan type cocktail. Maybe we will do. This was a pleasant surprise to see. I didn't know he was bringing this, and it's an awesome liqueur. Now he really is just spitballing with a bunch of bottles on the table. Yeah. What else are you going to do with a bunch of bottles? I do this in my basement. So we talked about Moorlach and Cokie Vermouth de Torino, but I didn't let these guys taste it. So maybe what I'll do is I will send around Moorlach and Cokie Vermouth de Torino just so we can drink the rest of this bottle of Moorlach. And I'll do it more like two to one. And then I'll send around a little bit of Nux Alpina for folks to, after they've tried it by itself, to add just a couple of drops. And then this must be the last thing we're doing because now I've run out of cups. Moorlach and Cokie, holy hell. Wow, that is good. Yeah, that is pretty good. It sure would be a shame if we ended up right where I started at the beginning of the show, really liking Cokie to remove the Torino. There's a lot to like about it. Wow, holy smokes, that's good. All right, just a drop of the Nux Alpina here. A cherry in there, something like that. Well, the cherry is really coming. Wow, that changes it. The cherry in this mixture is coming from the whiskey. It's the vestige of the cherry coming in. Yeah. It's almost highlighted when you add the nocino to it. It really changes it. Wow. I really truly just put a drop in. Yeah. It really darkens it up and brings in a lot of baking spice. Yeah. I do want to say one thing here as we're wrapping up. We've done a lot of stuff with scotch here and that's a personal palette bias of mine for certain. I think one of the lessons of the pandemic is that if you have a nice set of good bottles of scotch around, making the odd cocktail with one is a really good idea. That said, bourbon and rye make great cocktails as well. We've talked a few ways about playing around with temperature and dilution to maybe make the drinks pop a little bit more. But there's also another thing you can do is take a look at slightly lower proof bourbons and ryes, especially lower proof ryes for mixing some of these drinks. I have always been a big fan of the lower proof wild turkey rye, the old Overholt 86 proof has incredible texture and makes really good traditional whiskey cocktails. So don't necessarily think that proof is your friend when it comes to making these drinks because proof may bring flavor, but it also brings tannin. We've never had anybody advocate for lower proof. Whiskeys on the podcast before. Also, did we just let our special guest do the I learned something today's part? Yeah, maybe. Could you talk about this walnut liqueur because it's, I think, one of the hidden gems of your portfolio. Did you sneak some? I snuck some. Oh yeah. It's super good. I mean, there's no mystery as to the traditional recipes or process for making nocino or nussenschnaps as it would be called in Austria. You get the green walnuts, so immature walnuts in the summer, put them down in brandy, take them out a little bit before Christmas. About the last month of that maceration, add whatever you think your favorite side flavors are. In Italy, a lot of times it's citrus. Here with Nux Alpina, it's more spices and gentle other bitter notes. Then sweeten to what you like or what you think your market likes. That's again one of those things where a lot of Italian producers want to make things a bit sweeter because that's what their market likes, whereas in Austria, there's certainly a sweet tooth, but even a subtle lowering of sugar will really tell when you're working with something that has as much inherent texture and dare I say bitterness as walnuts do. This is a little bit lower sugar and it brings a little bit more of that tactile character from the menstruation of walnuts. All right. I've learned something today, which is that I should make more cocktails with Isla and other esoteric scotches that has more complex flavors, instead of just leaning on the mellowed out, whatever blended or easy drinking stuff because you can get some really interesting cocktails there. Pat learned something today, which is he should mix both glasses in either hand, and drink two of these things that he's been all like elitist and about not mixing them. It takes this much effort. Pat, watch this. Oh, I made a cocktail. I had to tip one hand slightly and raise it. But this is the fun of drinking great stuff at home, and this is the fun for us as an importer working with a company like Binny's, is those of you out there drink great stuff at home, and so if you want to try something, it might only be a half ounce. If you don't like it, the sink is right there. If you like it a lot, you don't have to drive home afterwards. If you order a designer cocktail at a bar, you're getting whatever pre-packaged concept that they have come up with, and that is hugely respectable. But here you can experiment in a way that you can't if you're showing out 18 bucks or whatever for a drink. Yeah. I often expound on the beauty of your portfolio, and I will say that during the pandemic, a lot of my friends are asking for cocktail help, and I pointed more than a few people to your website. I think Haus Alpenz is a phenomenal job, not only explaining the relevance and why their products are superb, but your cocktail resources are exceptional. Gosh. Thanks for the tea up there. For more information on everything that Haus Alpenz imports, including a line of very interesting oxidized wines called Soda Loan Selections, please visit our website at alpens.com, A-L-P-E-N-Z. Also check us out on Instagram, at Haus Alpenz and at Soda Loan Selections, S-O-T-O-L-O-N. And check us out on YouTube. Search for Haus Alpenz. For all your Harka Veloš needs. That's right. Search us out on YouTube where we have absolutely cut and pasted those great Binny's videos that I did with them last year. Wait, are you getting the clicks? He's getting our clicks, man. No, one of ours, Vermouth 101 got more clicks than anything. Yeah, Vermouth 101 had like 5,000 clicks before we put it on our page. Yeah, now it's got like 33,000. Nice. Yeah. Way more than our podcast listenership. Good thing we gave you carte blanche to do these wacky episodes. And now, okay. Well, hey, send the listeners to the Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I bring that up because I want people to try these and I want them to not feel like I don't want to invest in this because I don't want to just make one drink with it. So I think that we've proven here today from the format of this, you made us some excellent cocktails with the same products. But I just want to reassure people that you can brophy a lot of these and just drink them out of a coffee mug, or you can make really simple, awesome cocktails with them too. And that's a hallmark of how we select products and select suppliers. We don't want to sell unitaskers to borrow an Alton Brown word. And you should also mix the Walnut Liqueur with PX Sherry and put it on ice cream. So I would get that in there because I've done that before and it is phenomenal. My name is Jake and I approve this. He's talking about ice cream. It's time to wrap. Jake, thanks for bringing the good stuff. It's pretty good stuff. People, there is a whole world out there. Get out and taste it. It's really not that intimidating. Thanks for listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. If you like this, go ahead and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Tell your friends. If you don't have Apple Podcasts, install it and leave us a review and then uninstall it. Tell your friends, tell your mom. Until next time, I'm Greg. I'm Roger. I'm Pat. And I'm Jake. Keep tasting.