Cocktails in the Time of COVID-19: Support Small Businesses, Show Your Neighbors Some Love, and Drink Well

To me, one of the best things about cocktails is the way they bring us as humans together. I love bellying up to a bar, watching the bartenders do their thing, and striking up conversations with the other people around me. I love having friends over and mixing drinks, chatting and laughing as we while away the hours over delicious tipples. A solo cocktail is a fine thing, to be sure, but for me, the whole experience is so much better when it’s shared.

But right now, my friends, that sharing is on hold. As communities across the US (mine included) and the globe deal with sheltering in place and physical distancing, we need to press pause on raising a glass together out in the world.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that there are some easy ways you can partake of the joy of cocktails, support your local small businesses, stay connected with friends and neighbors, and level up your drinks game in the process, all while staying safe. Here are a few ideas to get you started.

Seek Out Small Businesses for Cocktail Supplies and Inspiration

Here in Oakland, and throughout California, non-essential businesses are closed until at least early April, which is a real blow to the wallet for many small, local companies.

In addition to supporting your favorite local bars and restaurants by buying gift certificates you can use once things are back in action, or by ordering food (and here in California, cocktails!) for pick-up, here are a few ideas for how to show small businesses some much-needed love.

• Spice up your simple syrups, tinctures, and infusions by buying fresh spices from small spice shops. If you’ve gotta be cooped up inside for a few weeks, why not take this opportunity to experiment with making your own flavored syrups, cordials, and other cocktail ingredients? You might not have a spice shop in your area, but Oaktown Spice (based right here in Oakland) and Skordo (based in Portland, ME) are two fab options that deliver throughout the country.

• Hit up your local bookstore for a new cocktail tome. Yes, Amazon will bring nearly anything right to your door, but please consider buying from a local bookseller instead. Stores themselves might be closed right now, but many are offering free delivery or no-contact pick-up options. I just ordered David Lebovitz’ new Drinking French from East Bay Booksellers, an awesome local shop here in Oakland; it’ll be in my hands tomorrow, and I have the satisfaction of knowing that I’m contributing to keeping a store I love afloat.

• Go local with your booze buying. Even if you normally stock up on liquor at Costco, a chain supermarket, or a store like BevMo, consider spending a few extra bucks to grab a few bottles from your corner store, a nearby independent grocer, or a local bottle shop that offers delivery or no-contact pick-up.

Raise a Glass with Friends and Neighbors

Even if those around you still look and seem hale and hardy, now’s probably not the time to get the gang together for drinks. But that doesn’t mean you need to drink alone.

If you live somewhere that makes this feasible, how about coordinating with your neighbors to all open your doors, step out onto your stoops, or poke your heads out the windows at the same time one evening to enjoy happy hour together from a safe distance? The same idea holds for far-flung pals: have everyone make a drink, hop on a video chat, and enjoy a temporary escape, a good cocktail, and the company of friends.

Want to take it a step further? Arrange with nearby neighbors or friends to do a batched cocktail “chain letter”: each person mixes up a batch of their favorite drink and leaves it in a bottle on another participant’s doorstep. Make it a one-time thing or keep it going for several evenings to get the chance to mix up and taste multiple different drinks. (Of course, it’s extra important to follow safe handling and safe prep procedures now, and to bow out of the round robin if you or anyone under your same roof feels at all unwell.)

Have Extra Time Right Now? Use It to Branch Out with Your Cocktails

Finally, if you’re sheltering in place or simply spending a lot more time at home than you normally do, you might find yourself with extra time on your hands. (You might also find yourself needing to keep any young ones who might be at home with you entertained and safely occupied for way longer than usual, in which case you’re quite possibly ready for a drink.)

How ‘bout devoting an hour or two (or forty-two: no judgment!) that you might’ve spent doing…well, anything out of the house to diving deeper into cocktail making?

I for one typically tend to breeze right past any cocktail recipe that involves anything homemade that’s more complex than simple syrup, especially in the midst of a busy week. But now, friends? Now is the time to make those multi-ingredient syrups, to delve into cordials, maybe to make a tincture or two.

It’s also the time to experiment with the bottles gathering dust in my bar (lookin’ at you, cachaça!) and to find creative ways of finishing off those with a lingering inch of booze remaining.

Make your own ice! Get fancy with the garnishes! Bust out the vintage glassware (ahem) instead of the plain glass tumbler! Master your shaking technique, or get in a mini workout by shaking up a Ramos gin fizz! The options and adventures are endless.

We’re in This Together

When the worst of this pandemic is behind us, things have stabilized, and we can once again get together in person (responsibly!), it’ll be so very awesome to physically clink glasses again.

In the meantime, let’s do everything we can to stay connected even though we’re keeping a safe distance. Cocktails can bring us together with our friends, our neighbors, and our local businesses, and can help keep us united and sane during these immensely uncertain times.

I raise a glass to you and yours and wish you health, happiness, and some new cocktailing skills.

Booze School: Brandy 101

Class is in session! Welcome to Booze School, a new occasional series dedicated to demystifying spirits, sharing some fun facts, and giving you enough smarts about booze that you're confident in your ability to pick out a bottle or order a glass you'll dig.

Because it's the spirit that most befuddles me, I decided to start with brandy.

OK, What Exactly Is Brandy, Anyway?

There are so many things that fall under the brandy umbrella that, if you're anything like me, it's easy to become baffled by what the spirit actually is. In the most basic terms, brandy is a spirit distilled from fruit, and occasionally from herbs. (And without re-muddying the waters, I also tried a nettle brandy while in Croatia last year, but let's ignore that for now and stick with the fruit thing.)

The most common fruit used in brandy, by a mile, is grapes. Cognac, Armagnac, grappa, pisco, and many American brandies are grape-based. There are some differences in how different grape-ish brandies are distilled (grappa uses the skins, seeds, and stems left over from winemaking, for instance, while pisco, cognac, and Armagnac use grape juice or wine), in the grapes used to make them, and in how they're distilled and aged—hence the vast differences in the end products.

There are plenty of other brandies that rely on other fruits: Armagnac comes from apples, kirsch from cherries, slivovitz from plums, and Hungarian palinka from apricots, to name just a few. I've yet to hear of brandy made from bananas, pineapples, mangos, or other tropical fruits, but otherwise, if it's a fruit, there's a solid chance there's a brandy (or eau de vie, or schnapps, or rakia) made from it.

When Is a Cognac Not a Cognac?

Though the whole world of cognac can get complicated quickly (more on that in a moment), one aspect of it is pretty straightforward: cognac is simply grape-based brandy from the Cognac region of France. In the same way that all Champagnes are sparkling wines, but not all sparkling wines are Champagnes, all cognac is brandy but not all brandies are cognac. 

Same basic deal with Armagnac: it's brandy from a particular area in France, so not every brandy can be called Armagnac, but all Armagnac can be called brandy. Because it is. Capice?

VS, VSOP, XO, WTH?

Unlike other brandies, cognac has a grading system that indicates how long the youngest bit of brandy in each blend has been aged. (Like non-vintage Champagne, cognac from different years is blended, so a barrel of cognac will contain brandy that ranges in age.) Those abbreviations you see on cognac bottles? They tell you things.

• V.S. (Very Special): A cognac blend in which the youngest brandy has been aged for at least two years in an oak cask.
• V.S.O.P (Very Special Old Pale), also sometimes called Reserve: A blend in which the youngest brandy has been cask-aged for at least four years.
• XO (Extra Old) or Napoléon: A blend in which the youngest brandy has been cask-aged for at least ten years. Prior to 2016, the requirement here was six years of aging, so presumably if you were to go out and buy a bottle of XO cognac right now, chances would be decent you'd be buying a six-year, not a ten-year.
•  Hors d'age (Beyond age): The national cognac bureau in France (yes, there's such a thing) officially says that Hors d'age is the same as XO, but in practice, distillers sometimes use it to indicate cognac that's been aged beyond the ten years at which the scale tops off.

There are other bits of potential bafflement on cognac labels, just as there are on many wine labels, but we're sticking with the basics here. Want to nerd out? The Wikipedia entry on cognac is happy to oblige.

How to Drink It

Brandy is delicious in cocktails (but of course); stay tuned for an upcoming blog post in which I dive into that very subject. Perhaps the most famous of this lot is the Sidecar, with cognac, triple sec, and lemon juice, but if you do some digging, especially into older cocktail books, you'll find plenty more.

Some would argue that where brandies—and cognac and Armagnac in particular—really shine is sipped on their own. Do you need brandy snifters, with their big, balloon-like bowls and narrow mouths? Not necessarily. Their shape is designed to warm up the spirit a bit as you hold the snifter in your hand, thereby releasing more of its aromas, and then preventing those aromas from escaping by narrowing the glass toward the top. So while something like a coupe wouldn't be great if you want to sit down and slowly sniff and sip your brandy, a stemless wine glass would totally work. 

There's a delicious and incredibly varied world of brandies out there. Get sipping!

Read This: The New Cocktail Hour by André Darlington + Tenaya Darlington

Although I consider myself a fairly skilled home cook, one of my favorite cookbooks is Keys to the Kitchen by Aida Mollencamp, which, although aimed first at people who are just learning their way around the kitchen, has plenty to recommend it for those of us who've been cooking for years. Mollencamp covers the basics, serves up straightforward (but never boring) recipes, and then explains how to build and riff on them.

I get the same vibe from the awesome and accessible The New Cocktail Hour: The Essential Guide to Hand-Crafted Drinks, by brother-and-sister duo André and Tenaya Darlington. The driving force behind the book is the desire to make the idea of mixing up your own craft cocktails at home an appealing and approachable one, whether you're starting from scratch with the three basic bottles the authors recommend or already have a fair amount of experience as a home bartender.

A little education to go along with your tipple

The first part of the book is divided chronologically, with recipes for classics from the earliest days of the cocktail (think cobblers and crustas) through the modern day, followed by a section dedicated to seasonal and thematic cocktails—tiki drinks, Champagne-based drinks, and dessert drinks, for example.

Once they've covered the cocktails, the Darlingtons move on to recipes for mixers and accompaniments—from simple syrup to, kid you not, méthode Champenoise ginger beer. Don't want to brew your own ginger beer? No worries: they recommend their favorites that require no more work than popping a cap, and also include comprehensive notes on what to look for in all kinds of spirits, with their brand suggestions for each.

You're getting thirsty...

If I had to pick the one thing I like best about The New Cocktail Hour, I'd say, Nope: can't choose just one. Here are two: I love the fact that each recipe includes a flavor profile, a la wine tasting notes, and I also love the interesting, fun, and fact-filled intro to each recipe. I read this book as my bedtime story for several weeks, so awesome and engaging was it. (Also? So much more cheerful than the bedtime book I'm currently reading about Soviet prison camps.) 

Whether you're new to mixing drinks at home or are an old hand who's ready to try new things, The New Cocktail Hour has a lot to recommend it. And if you'll forgive me for raising the specter of the holidays already, I'll just say that it—perhaps along with, oh, I don't know, some amazing vintage cocktail ware—would make a seriously fantastic gift for your fave cocktail lover.