Eggnog is all well and good, but this year it’s time to branch out with your holiday libations.
In Japan, when it’s cold, people drink saké to stay warm. In fact, I spent a day at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre of Montreal washing bucket after bucket or rice and then shaping the pounded cooked rice into mochi rice cakes. But there were a lot of smiling, red-cheeked Japanese men downing saké at the outside rice steaming setup to stay warm! Have you ever seen three drunken Japanese men trying to swing their hammers in rhythm onto a big blob of rice dough without hitting each other?
Marked that one off my bucket list…
All that to say, saké is a great warm-you-up winter drink. Too bad we don’t have a good selection in Montreal. There’s one import agency – Hana Vin et Saké – that brings it in. And the demand for new and better products just isn’t there like it is in Vancouver or even Toronto. For a long time, we couldn’t get any unpasteurized sakés and only a handful of Junmai Daiginjos (the version made with the most refined rice, and usually the most expensive).
The owner of Hana Vin et Saké is lovely, though, and very passionate about saké. I met her at the Grande Dégustation where I tried a couple of her new products. When I was in Toronto and San Francisco recently, the new trend in fermented rice alcohol is saké in a can. Actually, this was an epiphany for me when I was on a Japan Airlines flight and the canned saké was free. I thought it would be junk but it was delicious.
Turns out that the can helps keeps the freshness. See-through glass bottles sitting on SAQ or liquor store shelves don’t keep the flavour as well. (Like wine, you should store your saké in a dark place).
The other nice thing about saké in a can is it’s inexpensive! You’re not buying a whole bottle. The downside is you’re going to want to finish the can in one sitting, whereas you could just have a little from a bottle and store the rest for later. For some, this is not a downside…
Hana is bringing in two canned sakés, both of which are “nama” or unpasteurized “draft” sakés:
Sakari Undiluted Draft Saké Honjozo and the Sakari Undiluted Draft Saké Daiginjo
The Honjozo means there’s alcohol added, which makes it a little sweeter, a little sharper and boozier feeling but also a little smoother than the Daiginjo. I mentioned above Junmai Daiginjos being, to some, the top of the line, but Daiginjo isn’t the same as Junmai Daiginjo. For more info on saké nomenclature, check out Saké Confidential. The Daiginjo is much lighter than the Honjozo and is much more dry. Both should be served cold. These are not your rice-steaming sakés. If you want something hot, buy a huge $11 bottle of Hakutsuru. It even comes with a headache for free!
Because of the import price and because there isn’t a lot of competition here, these aren’t the cheapest canned sakés around. But at 19% and 18% alcohol respectively, they’re good bang for your buck. They’re private import only, though, so you have to order through Hana Vin et Saké and pick it up at your local SAQ.
Order by emailing Kachiko Hanano, the owner, at hanavinsake@gmail.com. Old-school. No website. You can also call: 514-276-8151. I have a feeling this is another reason why we don’t have a great selection of sakés in Montreal…
I should mention that both of these sakés won silver medals at the TEXCOM International Wine Awards in 2016.
But the four cocktails below were even bigger winners.
AWARD-WINNING COCKTAILS
World Class, sponsored by Diageo and Ketel One, presented the cocktails of two Canadian winners last month in Montreal. Shane Mulvany won this year with a Princess Margriet and a Tilting at Windmills.
Jenner Cormier joined him for the cross-Canada cocktail tour for the winners. He won the competition in 2013 and was spending the week mixing his The Wise Man & the Fool and The Clansman cocktails. These guys basically spend a week mixing the same drinks across Canada, breaking up the evenings behind the bar with afternoon workshops and late night speakeasies in each city where they stopped.
You can recreate the experience at home with the recipes below, but if you ever get to be served by these gentlemen, it’ll be a much better experience. Because who stocks dulse and hibiscus bitters?
None the less, best of luck with these:
The Wise Man & the Fool
by Jenner Cormier, World Class Canada Winner 2013
1 1/2 oz Ketel One Vodka
Dulse & Hibiscus bitters
1/2 oz Bianco Vermouth
3/4 oz Tanqueray No. 10
Combine all ingredients in a chilled mixing glass, fill with ice and stir for 15-20 seconds. Strain into a chilled stemmed glass and garnish with an orange zest expressed over the surface of the drink and dropped into the cocktail.
Comments: This seems easy, right? Four ingredients, stir, strain. But it’s not. If you’ve never “expressed” an orange before, that could be a little intimidating. And Tanqueray 10 is a bit different than regular London Dry Tanqueray. There’s some grapefruit, lime, orange, chamomile in there. So you could sub it out for the regular stuff, but it’s not the same.
The Clansman
by Jenner Cormier, World Class Canada Winner 2013
1 1/2 oz Ketel One Vodka
1/4 oz dry amontillado sherry
4 dashes Cynar
1/2 oz red bell pepper juice*
1 oz fresh lemon juice
1/2 oz thyme simple syrup
*Red bell peppers, cored and juiced through a vegetable juicer.
No instructions on this one, and I’m afraid I didn’t take a video, but it’s probably another shake and strain scenario. That bell pepper juice was strong! And it’s a whole lot of work juicing all those bell peppers every night for this cross-Canada tour. Good thing there were helpful people to take care of that for Jenner along the way.
Princess Margriet
by Shane Mulvany, World Class Canada Winner 2016
1 1/2 oz Ketel One Vodka
3/4 oz Drouin Calvados
1 oz lemon juice
3/4 oz grenadine
5 drops Bittered Sling Plum and Rootbeer Bitters
Shake all ingredients in a boston shaker. Double strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.
Comments: This was my favourite cocktail of the night. It was fresh and sour (some people thought too sour but I thought it was balanced). But when you put your bittered sling plum and rootbeer bitters in your carry-on, they don’t make it through security, it turns out…Mulvany had to replace it with other bitters. So I guess I didn’t have the real deal. The upside is you can make the drink at home with other bitters and it’ll still be good.
Tilting at Windmills
by Shane Mulvany, World Class Canada Winner 2016
1 1/2 oz Ketel One Vodka
3/4 oz Cocchi Americano
1/2 o Tio Pepe Sherry
3 dashes orange bitters
Stir ingredients over ice to dilute and chill. Strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.
Comments: It’s pronounced coke-y. This is a super floral cocktail thanks to the sherry and fruity from the orange. should you find yourself near windmills while drinking a couple of these, you’d be tilting too.
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