Good Morning! As I continue to scratch my head over where the time actually went this summer I am holding on to one of my favorite things about the season: plants. Don’t worry I swear this newsletter hasn’t suddenly become some version of homes and gardens, it’s actually all about cocktails, garnishes, and homemade liqueur. For those who are new, I mentioned my micro-farm in my first newsletter but it is still in the development phase and not anywhere near the profitable one (if it ever will be).

Choosing which crops to plant has led me down many rabbit holes but has also inspired some of the topics I hope to cover in this and future newsletters. What brought you to this newsletter is spirits, cocktails, and the industry behind it. All of that relies on agriculture at its roots. It feels good for my ADHD brain to be able to merge two of my favorites and give you some (hopefully) helpful and entertaining content.

But before we get to how gardening meets bartending I wanted to talk about my love/hate relationship with savory drinks.

Savory Cocktails On The Rise

Hits and misses that we’ve seen lately

I am both fascinated and (on occasion) offended by the number of savory drink recipes I see online. At this point my bartender friends send them to me just to make me angry. Don’t get me wrong, I love a savory cocktail every now and again but some things might be left better undone. I’ve seen everything from a pesto martini to a ramen martini in recent memory and that’s not including all the tomato drinks making the rounds online.

The creativity that goes into these drinks is honestly incredible and I have to applaud the minds that make them. I’m not entirely sure however, that I want to drink the liquid form of all of my favorite foods. Despite my hang-ups it seems that savory cocktails are not only here to stay but they are having their moment.

A video I keep coming back to is this one by The Educated Barfly on TikTok:

@theeducatedbarfly

Of course this is from Chicago! Hot Dog Daiquiri 3/4oz (22ml) lime 3/4oz (22ml) mustard simple (2tbs mustard:750ml simple 1:1) 1/4oz (7.5m... See more

I want so badly to make and try this but I think with two kids 3 and under it would take me over a week to source and make all the components needed to build it. My initial reaction to this “Hot Diggity Daiquiri” or “Hot Dog Daiquiri” was one of absolute revulsion. Morbid curiosity kept me watching and I was glad that I did. The cocktail itself has no actual hotdog in it (other than the garnish) and I am absolutely fascinated by the idea of a mustard simple syrup.

I think overall, as with any other cocktail, savory cocktails can be wonderful when they are well constructed and balanced. Other times savory cocktails might just be born out of rage bait and a bid for engagement (looking at you Caesar salad martini).

Saving the Environment One Lime Wedge at a Time

How becoming more environmentally aware is shaping garnish trends

The days of mile-high garnishes are certainly not completely behind us but bars are starting to rethink what decorates our cocktail glasses for a multitude of reasons. I don’t mean to remind you how insanely expensive literally everything is right now but: things are really ^%&#%@ expensive right now. In the bar and restaurant industry where profit margins are almost laughable it is critical to look for industrious ways to save money without sacrificing the quality of the menu.

Think about most of the garnishes you’ve had in your drinks lately. I would venture to guess that a majority of those garnishes made their way directly into the trash untouched. Other than the drinks that come with garnishes that are like a little bonus snack - dirty martini drinkers, you know what I mean - the majority of garnishes are meant for flair not flavor.

The biggest waste item when it comes to garnish is usually citrus. If you’ve ever worked at a high volume craft cocktail bar you know how much citrus gets used up at the bar every night, but is it all being used efficiently? Citrus that is used for peels and twists can later be used for juicing which optimizes the usefulness of the fruit. This article cites a statistic given by Calum Fraser that claims “one kilogram of waste from lemon garnishes (or approximately 64 lemon wedges, at 8 wedges per lemon) can create roughly the same amount of carbon emissions as a 20-minute journey in a car.” For all of us working in parts of the world that aren’t suitable for growing citrus that carbon impact can be even higher when you consider the distance that fruit must travel before use.

So what can anyone do about that? Some bars are focusing on being more mindful about the types of garnishes used for drinks and others are opting to let the drinks go naked.

A movement after my own heart is growing your own garnishes. There are increasingly more bars and restaurants that are dedicating time and space to maintaining their own garnish gardens to cut costs and reduce waste. Some bar staples are things that are hearty across a huge range of temperate zones. Mint, for example, used as an ingredient and garnish in countless classics, is super easy to grow. In fact, it might just take over your whole yard if you aren’t careful. For bar programs looking for something beautiful to get them that “wow what’s that drink?” kind of appeal, nasturtium flowers are just the thing. Not only are they gorgeous, they are completely edible and come in a wide variety of colors. They also are much easier to grow than the very popular orchid garnishes that are a standby for many.

That’s not to say there aren’t other ways to elevate the presentation of drinks, sometimes a unique ice cube (or cubes) is enough to impress the guest. Holding the garnish completely means much less waste and brings the attention back to the cocktail itself. For bold and complex creations I think this is an especially suitable switch. If the garnish doesn’t offer the drink or the guest an added level of flavor why add clutter? Making beautiful ice cubes can be a bit time consuming depending on the desired outcome but if it comes hand in hand with less pre-prepped fruit wedges it’s not a horrible trade off.

Nocino: A Drink You Can Forage For

How to make the delicious black walnut liqueur with foraged ingredients

One of my favorite content creators Alexis Nikole (@blackforager on instagram, youtube, and bluesky) is known for making delicious food and drinks of all kinds across her platforms. She emphasizes the historical misinformation around foraging for wild food, a practice that colonialism has worked hard to demonize. Alexis has a recipe for Nocino that is made entirely from foraged ingredients (save the high proof spirit used as the base) that I have been dying to make myself.

Black walnuts grow all over the neighborhood that I live in and most people consider them more of a nuisance than anything else. They fall from the trees and litter the roads and walkways from late summer into the fall. Extracting the ripe nut from the outer fruit is also laborious and messy, so few people find it worth their time. The beauty of this Nocino recipe is though, you only need the unripe fruit/nuts. After plucking the green nuts from the tree they are then soaked alongside spices and other foraged goodies in a neutral high proof spirit. With a little patience the end product is both a standalone sip or a unique ingredient for cocktails.

Here’s Alexis’ video from 2021 detailing her process for making her foraged Nocino:

@alexisnikole

NUT DRINK SEASON 🌰 #LearnOnTikTok #TikTokPartner #Nocino

Since I’ve been wanting to make this for years and somehow always forget until the walnuts are literally hitting me in the head (and then too ripe to use). I finally gathered the nuts from the trees and made some for myself. I can’t report back for a little over six more months on how it came out so I guess you’ll have to stick around to see if it was worth the wait. Here’s what mine looked like immediately after assembling it to be tucked away in the pantry to do it’s magic.

The unripe walnuts have not yet formed their hard outer shells so they are relatively easy to cut through and they actually smell very aromatic and bright. After one month of infusing I will strain out the solids, add water and some sweetener (either maple syrup or sugar) and then let it rest for six months before drinking.

Best Video We Saw This Week

craighillcompany

347K followers

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Although this is technically an ad, the product in the ad was made using the insight and recommendations of André Hueston Mack, an award winning sommelier and winemaker. It shows how this industry continues to polish and refine itself through experience and struggle. Something so seemingly simple and unchanged for so long is being remade in a way that makes the most sense to the people who actually use it.

Quick Hits:

• In an effort to bring awareness to the spirit and make it more appealing to the health conscious consumer demographic, baijiu distillers are thinking creatively.

• This Kentucky Bourbon brand just ranked number 1 in Kentucky and 14th in the U.S. food and beverage sector as the fastest growing private company.