Mouthing Off

I just spent a few days at home in Minnesota, where I was surprised to find the excellent Grateful Palate Airwines 2005 Boarding Pass Shiraz on the list at Beaujo's Wine Bar & Bistro in sleepy Edina, a suburb of the Twin Cities. The bottle's ingenious label, brainchild of wine importer and F&W contributing editor Dan Philips and designer Chuck House, mimics an airline boarding pass. Fittingly, while on my flight back to New York, I read an article in The Economist on the Midwestern winery boom, another indication of how wine-savvy the region has become. A few astounding facts:

- The University of Minnesota is developing grape breeds that can survive at -36 degrees Fahrenheit.
- The first annual Chicago & Midwest Wine Show will be held in September (officially Illinois Wine Month).
- The Midwest’s biggest producer is Michigan, with 112 wineries in 2007, up from 28 in 1995.
- Most intriguing name for a Midwestern wine: Michigan's Stone Temple Pinot (oddly enough, the band Stone Temple Pilots got its start in California).

When life gives you lemons, make... limoncello? That's what the bartenders over at Flatbush Farm & Bar(n) in Brooklyn are doing, anyway. When I recently went to celebrate a friend's birthday, the bartender sent her a mystery drink that was all lemony smoothness, mixed with lemon rind-infused vodka, Prosecco and a hint of St-Germain, an elderflower-based liqueur. Here, some more refreshing limoncello cocktails that will help you weather the mid-August swelter:

Citron Shake: A spin on the White Lady cocktail that Harry MacElhone served at Harry's New York Bar in Paris in 1929. Limoncello replaces Cointreau.

Limoncello Collins: The characters in my favorite J.D. Salinger novella, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, cool off with gin-based Tom Collins. Consider this drink a Tom Collins lite, with less gin, more limoncello. 

Smith & Thomas: Bartender Regan Smith and bar manager Curt Thomas of Emeril's Atlanta created this limoncello-and-black-tea cocktail for a party in honor of local celebrity Tom Houck, who was Martin Luther King, Jr.'s driver.

Bitter Queen: From the Martini Bar at the Raleigh Hotel in Miami, this drink, with equal parts Campari and limoncello, rightly lives up to its name.  

Pink Panther: This limoncello-spiked twist on the Sea Breeze, served at Delmar Restaurant & Lounge in St. Louis, gets its pink hue from fresh red grapefruit juice.

I can think of a dozen reasons why Bruichladdich (pronounced brook-LADDIE) is the most exciting distillery in Scotland. For starters, it’s one of only two independent distilleries left in the country (and the only one on Islay, where it’s helping to revitalize the local economy). Secondly, it’s shaking up the Scotch industry, creating a huge portfolio of lightly peated, floral Scotches that challenge the idea of regional styles and traditional distillation techniques. Thirdly, it’s reinventing the idea of barrel-aging: Head distiller Jim McEwan (who spent 40 years at Bowmore before helping Bruichladdich CEO Mark Reynier relaunch the shuttered brand in 2001) has created a system he calls “Additional Cask Evolution” (ACE), wherein he finishes his Scotches in select barrels from the world’s top wineries, including Chateau d’Yquem, Chateau Haut-Brion, Gaja, Ridge and Guigal. These barrels add a completely different body and flavor profile than traditional bourbon and port casks do, making Bruichladdich’s bottlings unlike anything the Scotch world has tasted before.

And now Bruichladdich is applying its ACE program to, of all things, rum. I recently had my first taste of its Renegade Rum at Manhattan’s Elletaria restaurant,  and the stuff is as aberrant as its whiskey. Reynier had the idea to produce the rum a few years back, when he noticed certain disheartening parallels between the rum and whiskey industries: Both are dominated by a few enormous companies with deep marketing pockets and a penchant for blending and consistency. Reynier picked out a few select barrels from the Caribbean’s oldest, family-owned distilleries (some now defunct) and shipped the rum back to Scotland, where McEwan ACE’d them in ex-d’Yquem and Latour barrels, among other things. I tasted all four of the mind-blowing, limited-edition rums in Renegade’s current rotation: an earthy 15-year-old Jamaican rum finished in ex-Latour barrels; a clean, fruity 10-year-old port-finished Panama Rum; and two rums from Guyana, one a robust 12-year-old ACE’d in d’Yquem oak and the other a lighter, fruitier 16-year-old enriched by Madeira casks.

The rums run from $80 to $110, which is pretty reasonable, given their cult status. Look for them online at K&L Wines, Morrell and Garnet.