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Furnishings & DecorBRANDY COCKTAILS RAISE THE BAR
To celebrate the revival of the cocktail culture, the custodians of the Alchemy of Gold specialty brandy portfolio have released a new generation of brandy-based cocktails with the accent on contemporary flavours.
Thought to have originated in the US at the turn of the 19th century, cocktails have waned and waxed in popularity over the past two centuries but have been enjoying a sustained resurgence for more than a decade. Initially made from a combination of distilled spirits, sugar, water and bitters, now more than 200 years later, they encompass virtually any mixed alcoholic drink.
Entrenched as a symbol of urban chic, the cocktail has captured the imagination of a broad public. A cocktail museum in New Orleans in the US attracts an international audience and World Cocktail Week is celebrated annually, beginning this year on May 8.
Alchemy of Gold’s new collection of brandy-based cocktails has been created by renowned celebrity chef Peter Goffe-Wood, who calls himself a food alchemist. “His approach to combining aromas, flavours and textures made him the obvious choice for developing these easy-to-make but dramatic to look-at and delicious-tasting mixes,” says Siobhan Thompson, who heads the Alchemy of Gold team that manages the portfolio of award-winning, connoisseur brandies.
“He has used fresh fruits, herbs and spices with the focus on seasonal ingredients. They are a fun, romantic and cost-effective way of entertaining in style.”
She adds that brandy cocktails are well suited to the South African climate and culture. “With our long tradition of drinking brandy with mixers, we’ve discovered that brandy makes a great base for contemporary cocktails.”
One of the most famous brandy cocktails is Brandy Alexander, supposedly created for the celebration to mark the wedding of Princess Mary and Lord Lascelles in London in 1922. Originally made with cognac, crème de cacao, cream, ice and a dash of nutmeg, it was considered the epitome of sophistication and it is still regularly called for in cosmopolitan style bars worldwide.
Thompson says the strong influence of Asian, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisine has impacted on today’s mixes, with ingredients such as fresh ginger, cloves, cardamom and chili making their appearance in brandy cocktails, highlighting the natural fruit and wood spice characters of South African brandies.
“Adventurous mixologists are echoing brandy’s fragrant fruit flavours with the inclusion of fresh fruit and herbs like our own indigenous prickly pear, and even buchu, as well as figs and berries.”
Even the traditionalists have entered the milieu of muddling, she says, with the Bureau National Interprofessionnel du Cognac staging a major initiative in Cognac, last year, inviting the world's leading mixologists from the US, the UK and Europe to develop a cognac cocktail for the modern era. The result, says Thompson, is the Summit, a brandy and lemonade combination, spiced with fresh ginger and lime zest, garnished with cucumber, and which is proving a spectacular success from Milan to Mellville.
There are more theories as to how the cocktail got its name than there are ingredients in some of today’s trendy spirits-based mixes, she contends.
“What is generally agreed is that cocktails are an American invention with the use of the word “cocktail” first recorded in the early 1800s. A publication appearing in 1806 in Hudson, in the state of New York, called Balance and Columbian Repository, described the cocktail as ‘a stimulating liquor composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters — it is vulgarly called a bittered sling and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion, inasmuch as it renders the heart stout and bold, at the same time that it fuddles the head.’”
One theory holds that the word “cocktail” owes it origins to the fact that barrel taps were known as cocks, while the term “tails” usually referred to the dregs of distillate left at the end of a run in a distillery or at the bottom of a cask. Leftovers from various barrels would be combined by taverners and offered to patrons as "cock tailings".
“This is a far cry from the luxury cocktails of today!” says Thompson, adding that another possible origin for the name could be the fact that in Mexico, local bartenders used wooden spoons carved from a native root known as cola de gallo (cocktail) to stir the local spirits and punches before serving.
In New Orleans, spirits were sometimes served in an egg-cup called a coquetier, a word which may have been corrupted into cocktail. Others contend that the varied colours in the cock’s tail may have given rise to the name of the drink. “There are other, more outlandish stories suggesting how the cocktail got its name, involving spies, armies and lovers. No-one knows for sure the true origin of the word but the myth and lore add to the mystique.”
Thompson says The Museum of the American Cocktail has given the brandy cocktail its due, honouring Antoine Amadie Peychaud, a 19th century Creole apothecary, who used a combination of brandy and his own Peychaud's Bitters. “The tradition of brandy cocktails is well established but Alchemy of Gold has taken the ritual and enjoyment to a new level.”
Click here to go to the recipes.....
DATE MAY 13, 2009
ISSUED BY DKC (DE KOCK COMMUNICATIONS)
FOR ALCHEMY OF GOLD BRANDIES
QUERIES SIOBHAN THOMPSON, ALCHEMY OF GOLD, (021) 809 7000 or 082 828 0348
TESSA DE KOCK/MARLISE POTGIETER, DKC, (021) 422 2690
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