A Dutch Point of View

I’ve been in Holland for a few days for meetings with our client Canei wine and next week with the folks from deKuyper.

Jean Erickson and I did some busman’s holiday work and checked out a bunch of retail wine and spirits stores as well as on premise accounts for a sense of what’s going on here.

Door 74 looks like it would be at home on the lower East Side, 

Door 74.  We were directed (actually got a great cocktail bar recco sheet from the Bols Experience, see below) to one of the top cocktail bars in the world, right here in Amsterdam.  Door 74 was a finalist in last year’s TOTC best international bar competition, and now that I’ve been there…I’d have voted for them. It's got a PDT-like vibe in that the entrance is an unpreposessing door, with no signage to indicate what's there.

We met mixologists Remco Babay and Bas Verhoeven and partner in crime Frederico Fusco

Simon Difford doppelganger Bas Verhoeven

and had a couple of wonderful evenings talking bidness.  First item was my request for somethign special with Mandarine Napoleon.  Remco did great, but for the life of me, I can't remember the recipe.

Bas explained a drink concept he came up with for one competition that involved real smoke, wood chips and shaved chocolate in a two layer glass…it takes molecular mixology to a whole new level.  He also treated me to his signature drink, the Martila:  

½ shot Reposado Tequila

1 Barspoon of lemon rind scrapings (not a zest, but scrapings with a serrated knife)

2.5 Barspoons of Maraschino Liquor

1 shot of dry white vermouth.

Stir, garnish with lemon twist and voila…

We talked at length about Pisco which they were somewhat familiar with.  I gave the 5 minute version of  Pisco 101, told them all about Pisco Portón and the mosto verde process, and promised to get them the first bottled that exports to the Netherlands. (Johnny and Andrea…you’ll have to help me with delivering on that promise)

The Wine Side

I’ve seen more presence of Chilean and Argentinian wines than I had anticipated.  I expected to see French/Italian and Spanish wines, which I did, but there is surprisingly noticeable distribution of New World wines, according to my unscientific retail review in Amsterdam, Delft and The Hague.  Pricing seems to be a bit lower than the U.S. and in fact I saw a bunch of entry level wines at the €6.99 /€7.99 level…translated into dollars that’s still below the $10 price point.  Valdivieso from Chile was especially noted as having good floor stacks in stores that had very limited real estate allocated for displays.  Canei was pretty well distributed by commonly on the bottom shelf with just one or two facings.

Spirits:

We had stopped by the Bols Experience, a mini-exhibit that was very well done.  The location can’t be beat…right across the street from the Van Gogh museum.  There were some good displays of atomizers with flavors used in their liqueurs and real samples of the various botanicals used as well.  They end the exhibit in a real bar (albeit stocked only with their products), but you can design a drink or choose one of their cocktails and have it hand-made and served with a flourish by bartenders trained upstairs at the Bols Bartending Academy.

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Reflections on Tales of the Cocktail

Having spent a necessary few days detoxifying from Tales of the Cocktail, I once again raise the rhetorical question of why we so rarely see spit buckets at spirits events, when they’re de rigueur at wine tastings?

I attended this year’s event in the company of Stephanie Jerzy who manages social media marketing for spirits at BAT, along with my daughter Lindsay Raye who is a brand ambassador in the New York market.  We were also joined by several clients including Johnny Schuler from Pisco Portón and Marc de Kuyper, Albert DeHeer and Arno van Eijmeren from Mandarine Napoleón.  It was interesting to see the event through the eyes of these folks, several of whom were Tales virgins.

My observations, in no particular order:

-New Orleans was cooler than CT…figuratively and literally that week.
-You can’t walk five feet in the Monteleone hotel (or on Royal or Bourbon St. for that matter) without seeing someone you know and REALLY want to talk to.
-It’s great to meet people in person whom you’ve only met via blogs or online
-The camaraderie and sense of community was outstanding…and it’s pretty cool when regular consumers are so interested in our business that they pay to come to what’s really a trade event.
-I’ve GOT to get my partner Jeff Grindrod to attend next year.
-the Faulkner bookstore was a pretty groovy place (and I saw a real pirate in Pirate’s Alley)
-Paul Pacult is a great presenter and guide to tasting spirits in a manner that makes the subjective, objective.
-Paul Clarke really knows his stuff or did his homework…or both.
-Darcy O’Neil always brings something new and interesting to Tales (but he does have some pronunciation issues, and I’m not talking “aboot” the Canadian accent.)
-I missed Camper English’s social media session and really wished I’d made it. 
-Spirits blogging is evolving…rapidly.  It’s no longer just a singular channel; Facebook, Twitter and the plethora of new media coming down the pike are magnifying our reach.
-Johnny Schuler has really nice manners (he stands when a woman arrives or leaves the table), and his passion for Pisco is palpable.
-Marc de Kuyper is the 11^th generation of his family in the business, how cool is that!
-Francesco Lafranconi and Diego Loret de Mola are the Blues Brothers of booze, only wearing guayabera shirts and Panama hats instead of sunglasses and skinny ties.
-Sandro Bottega of Alexander Grappa is one crazy dude, and he makes some fabulous grappa.
-The Mixoloseum house was great fun, and having the shuttle van was a super idea.
-Tales is growing every year and more of the bigger brands and companies are exploiting it.  It will be important for the organizers to maintain the sense of fraternity and shared passion that has characterized the event in the past.
-Call me a Philistine and a Luddite, but I don’t think cocktails go with dinner.
-The Carousel bar at the Monteleone is a royal pain…it’s impossible to keep a conversation going when one person is moving and the other isn’t. (And the quality of drinks and bartenders there should really be top drawer at Tales showcasing what cocktails really can be and how they should be prepared and served.  I had too many mediocre drinks, but the Bloody Mary was killer.)
-I’d like to know who stole my bottle of Mandarine Napoleón XO from the Summer in Paris lunch at Antoine's. Sphere: Related Content