You know the rest of that line, right? Well, it's with some small amount of sadness that I am saying that about this blog: It must come to an end. I've had a terrific time writing it, but we've decided that in the end it's a bit strange, for a magazine that's all about bringing together food and wine, to have separate blogs on those topics.

So, from here on out, any wine blogging that I (and Megan Krigbaum, Kristin Donnelly, and various other stalwart folks) do will instead appear in F&W's primary blog, Mouthing Off. No less wine coverage, just a different venue. See you there.

Ray Isle

Our May story on Bonny Doon and the brilliant chef behind their new Tasting Room, Charlie Parker, inspired me to try pairing vegetarian dishes with big red wines at home. If only I had the professional finesse of Bonny Doon. Earlier this week Ray Isle gave me half a case of big reds from the F&W tasting room for the experiment, which I was about to take on the subway when it started to pour. Since I had to hold an umbrella with one hand, I could only grab two of the six bottles with the other: a 2007 Praxis Lagrein and a 2006 Masi Campofiorin. Then, once I was at home I discovered the Campofiorin was corked.

I made my stuffed red bell peppers anyway, filling them with cooked red quinoa and feta cheese, and simmering them in a tomato sauce spiked with a pinch of chile flakes. Finally I tried them with the Lagrein. They tasted just how you'd imagine stuffed bell peppers would, if they'd been garnished with blueberry jam. I had much better luck with the 2009 Hofer Grüner Veltliner in my refrigerator: the faint floral notes married well with the juicy bell peppers, while the white pepper and zippy acidity lightened the rich stuffing. But there is nothing big nor is there anything red about Grüner-Veltliner, though it may be one of the most vegetable-friendly white wines out there. So I'm going to take a page out of Randall Grahm's book and try again.

Meanwhile, enjoy these brilliant vegetarian pairings from Charlie Parker:

• Savoy Cabbage and Sunchoke Pizzas with a Dolcetto

• Smoky Ribollita with a Sangiovese

• Roasted Turnips and their Greens, with a Syrah

Bartender extraordinaire, friend to F&W, and general all-around good fellow Jim Meehan of NYC's PDT came up with this cocktail a few months back for a wine-vs-cocktails smackdown held at NYC's Nios Restaurant. I attended the event, drank the drink, and at the time thought to myself, well, that's about the best Valentine's Day cocktail I've ever run into. It's gorgeous to look at, tastes terrific, and also packs a reasonable punch. (Note: It might not be the thing to stir up for a crowd of longshoremen; it's a very pretty drink.)

Raspberries Reaching
recipe courtesy of Jim Meehan

1.5 ounces Clear Creek Framboise (or other Framboise—the eau de vie, not the Belgian beer)
1 ounce Royal Tokaji 5 Puttonyos Red Label (or other 5 Puttonyos Tokaji)
1/2 ounce Pama Pomegranate Liqueur
3 drops Rose Flower Water

Stir ingredients in a cocktail shaker and strain into a chilled coupe glass. Garnish with a rose petal, particularly a peach-colored one if you can find it...

Muscle-head Ronnie on MTV's Jersey Shore is the last guy I'd expect to see drinking a girly cocktail, but surprisingly, his pre-partying drink of choice is his "Ron Ron Juice," a fuchsia-colored concoction of watermelon, cherries, cranberry juice and copious amounts of vodka blended with ice, which he always prepares bare-chested. "It gets the night going," he says. "Whenever that stuff [sic] comes out, it's always a filthy night."

Ah yes, Ron Ron Juice does often serve as fuel for one of Ronnie's many bar fights.

"It's the root of all evil," says DJ Pauly D. Plus, there's nothing like a little Ron Ron Juice to provide the energy to "beat up the beat" of house music at da club. "First, we start off by banging the ground, we're banging it as the beat builds 'cause that beat's hittin' us, so we're fightin' back. It's like we beat up that beat," says DJ Pauly D.

Here, a more refined selection of watermelon cocktails to get fists pumping:

Watermelon-Tequila Cocktails (pictured)

Watermelon Sangria

Watermelon Coolers

I've always thought Mai Tais were kind of campy, something fun to have with roast pork shoulder and pineapple. Now I know better. Recently my friend Joe Raffa, a Hawaiian native, mixed the world's greatest Mai Tai from his extensive rum collection. He calls it the $100 Mai Tai because it would cost $100 to buy bottles of all the necessary ingredients. But the drink itself costs much less. And with last week's news about the growing GDP, it seemed ok to post. Especially because it's just so good: caramelly yet tart, smooth yet bright, perfectly balanced — and supersmart (case in point: instead of Cointreau, Joe uses Rhum Clement Creole Shrubb, an orange liqueur made from rhum agricole instead of neutral spirits. "It keeps the rum with the rum," Joe says. And in place of ordinary simple syrup, he uses Depaz cane syrup, a Caribbean sweetener gives the Mai Tai a richer maple note.) The best part, Joe is José Andrés' chef de cuisine at Oyamel in DC, and has been dropping hints that his boss should open a Hawaiian restaurant in DC serving roast pork and really good Mai Tais. All I can say is, José, please, listen up. Recipe after the jump.

[More]

When angry colonists threw tea into Boston Harbor in 1773, they had no idea that their rebellion would eventually lead to the American Revolutionary War in 1775, or that it would inspire the creation of another kind of beverage in 2009: Absolut Vodka Boston, a limited-edition vodka infused with black tea and elderflower.

Recently, mixologist Jamie Gordon hosted an Absolut Vodka Boston Tea Party at Food & Wine's New York City office. He gave the editorial staff a taste of some fantastic cocktails he created with the spirit, such as the juicy and aromatic Absolut Boston Blackberry.

ABSOLUT BOSTON BLACKBERRY
Makes 1 Drink

4 large blackberries
1 ounce agave nectar
4 ounces Absolut Boston
1 1/2 ounces fresh lemon juice
4 dashes rhubarb bitters
Ice

In a cocktail shaker, muddle 2 of the blackberries with the agave nectar. Add the Absolut Boston, lemon juice, bitters and ice. Shake well and double strain into a chilled large martini glass. Garnish with the remaining 2 blackberries.

The third season of the AMC series Mad Men, which revolves around a cast of hard-drinking ad execs in the 1960s, debuts Sunday night. What to expect, according to the New York Times: more historically accurate booze. For a Mad Men–themed cocktail party, we offer the following drinks:

Vanilla Old-Fashioned A muddled vanilla bean adds a twist to creative director Don Draper's drink of choice.

Limoncello Collins This updated take on one of tortured housewife Betty Draper's favorite cocktails calls for limoncello, an intensely flavored Italian liqueur made from lemon peels.

Mai Tai Department store head Rachel Menken drinks the classic rum cocktail when out with Don. This version borrows from the recipe by Ernest Beaumont-Gantt (a.k.a. "Donn Beach," the father of tiki culture), and calls for dashes of Pernod and Angostura bitters for complexity.

 

F&W reported on the trend of punch replacing bottle service at bars and lounges months ago, and now the New York Times' Style section has caught on with Sunday's piece, "Drink, Dance, but Don't Say 'Club.' " For those of you playing at home, we offer 8 punch recipes, including the 1732 Philadelphia Fish House Punch, plus $12-and-under wines that would be  delicious in a bowl of punch, or on their own.

Barring wildly eventful news, I'll be on the Early Show tomorrow (Saturday the 23rd) at around 7:50 AM, mixing up some great summer cocktails—particularly pitcher drinks—for people's Memorial Day weekend parties. Tangerine Collinses, Aphrodisiac Margaritas...all from our new book, Cocktails '09. It's that lawn-party time of year... —R.I.

I stopped in the other night at the Macao Trading Co., which occupies a desolate block of the Tribeca landscape (or at least it seems desolate at 11 PM when there's sleet blowing in your face). It's a neat trick, then, to walk in and abruptly find oneself transported back to some fanciful version of colonial days in Macao; Somerset Maugham may have spent more time at the long bar at Raffles in Singapore, but I still wouldn't have been surprised to find him lurking in a linen suit somewhere in a back booth.

The restaurant brings together the disparate talents of David Waltuck, Chanterelle's longtime chef-owner, and Dushan Zaric & Jason Kosmas of the West Village cocktailian watering hole Employees Only. Waltuck handles the food end, which splits somewhat oddly between Portuguese-influenced and Chinese-influenced dishes (a nod to Macao's colonial history, but—like that history—a somewhat conflicted relationship). For my part, the winning dishes were mostly on the Chinese side of the menu, like an appealingly earthy-briny bowl of Manila clams with black beans and chilies, and a whole sea bass with a ginger-scallion sauce that was fun to pick at and expertly cooked.

But the real reason to head here is the cocktails. In the interests of scientific inquiry, I felt it incumbent on me to try all nine or ten of the house cocktails. They were uniformly excellent both in concept and execution, the sort of cocktail experience that's becoming oddly easy to come across in NYC these days (think Clover Club, Tailor, Pegu Club, PDT, and six or seven other places) and that tends to make one think we're living in a kind of cocktail golden age—an excellent thing, since every other aspect of our age seems rapidly to be turning into some base metal, say lead, or brass.

Anyway, here are two of my faves, recipes courtesy of Mssrs Zaric & Kosmas:

Esmeralda
3 cubes of fresh honeydew melon
1 heaping demitasse spoon of cubed ginger
2 demitasse spoons of sugar
3/4 oz. fresh lime juice
1/4 oz. Luxardo Maraschino liqueur
1 1/4 oz. Esmeralda Cachaça
 
Directions: Muddle the melon, ginger and sugar in the bottom of the mixing glass. Add the rest of the ingredients and ice. Shake and pour unstrained back into a rocks glass. Garnish with a honeydew cut as a "sharks fin."
 
Kaffir Jimlet
3 oz. Kaffir leaf infused Plymouth gin
1 oz. fresh lime Juice
1/2 oz. agave nectar
Green Chartreuse
Kaffir leaf
 
Directions: Wash the inside of a cocktail glass with Green Chartreuse. Pour Gin, lime juice and agave nectar into a mixing glass. Add ice and shake vigorously for 7-8 seconds. Strain into the prepared cocktail glass. Garnish with a Kaffir leaf.

I'll add as a final note: go for the Esmeralda, if you can find it; it's a great aged cachaça, and has more depth than run-of-the-mill white cachaças (for more on artisan cachaças, see my F&W article here). And if you don't feel like infusing your own gin with kaffir leaves, Hangar One makes a kaffir-lime vodka that would probably work as a good substitute.