By David Rosario

"There is a real revolution going on in Los Angeles," proclaims Eric Alperin, co-owner, general manager, and head bartender of The Varnish in the city's historic Downtown district. Instead of Jack and Coke or vodka and tonic, a growing number of bars in la-la land are concentrating on the craft of the cocktail. It took some time, but LA is finally catching up to the likes of New York City, London, and San Francisco. A new crop of LA bartenders have spent time in other cities and brought their cocktail knowledge, including a firm grounding in the classics, to the City of Angels. They have been hired by the best new joints and are serving up new takes on classic recipes.

Craft Revival This isn't LA's first foray into the classics. During the 1920s and 1930s, there were plenty of speakeasies and great cocktails. In fact, the Moscow Mule and an abundance of Tiki drinks came out of LA, and, according to Alperin, the margarita and La Paloma got their legs there, too. But as recently as a couple of years ago, LA bargoers weren't asking for the classics and bars weren't featuring them. Seven Grand was one of the first to raise awareness of sophisticated, complex, and balanced libations of the Golden Age. Around the same time, Sona Owner and Chef David Myers traveled to New York City, London, and Tokyo, and was blown away by the cocktails he sampled. He immediately realized Sona's cocktail program didn't measure up. Myers brought in a New Yorker, barman Sammy Jay Ross, to create a cocktail program that, Myers explains, "focused on excellent technique, professional attitude and dress, and crafting the perfect cocktail." Beginning late last year, more cocktail bars began sprouting up, including, in Downtown LA, The Doheny (a members-only bar), The Edison, and The Varnish (the West Coast outpost of New York City's Sasha Petraske's cocktail empire, which includes Milk and Honey, Little Branch, and White Star); Michael Mina's XIV on Sunset Strip; and Copa d'Oro in nearby Santa Monica. While Alperin admits that he is still fighting to push LA past branded bottles and Red Bull and vodka, LA bar patrons are beginning to understand and are willing to wait for a well-made drink. "It's like pizza," says Vincenzo Marianella, head barman at Copa d'Oro. "Is it better fast-food style or from a wood oven?" After a year in business, people rarely come into Copa d'Oro and ask for a vodka and soda.

By Fred Minnick

Fuse, a nightclub in the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center, is not your typical Nashville honky-tonk. Designed by acclaimed hospitality architect Jeffrey Beers, Fuse burns, with its posh decor reminiscent of a flashy Las Vegas lounge. But looks alone don't cause Fuse to sizzle. Original and interactive top-quality cocktails, scintillating finger food, and a dance-crazy music vibe draw droves of merrymakers to this dazzling space.

Haute Hip-Hop

Clearly Fuse's Vegas-like ambience is irresistible to the nighthawks of Nashville. Tiger-striped throwback pillows adorn long, brown-cushioned benches in sections separated by shimmering gold curtains. Red and yellow rays of light bathe the modern red leather sofas and simple black barstools between the dance floor and the enormous horseshoe-shaped, blackgranite bar. The 14,000-square-foot, $10 million nightclub features go-go dancers, restrooms with see-through one-way privacy panels, VIP covers with concierge service, and a misting vodka locker filled with more than 60 brands. The club's July 2008 opening featured Kid Rock spinning records in the DJ booth, as well as celebrities Kim Kardashian, Ty Herndon, and Nick Carter. And the Bravo TV network held a casting call at Fuse for its show Make Me a Supermodel. On any given night, waitresses in red dresses and black or white high boots serve a diverse multitude of guests from 75-year-old grandmas to professional athletes to country music singing sensations.

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By Kyle Branche
iSanté Featured Blogger

Grains of Paradise—Lavender
Pomegranate—Rose
Sasparilla—Sweet Marjoram
Tamarind—Watermelon
A look at the origins and medicinal backgrounds of the plants, shrubs, and trees of our planet, and the herbal extractions that lead to the concoctions and decoctions in various liquors, liqueurs, cocktails, and tonics for culinary use— today and yesterday.

Grains of Paradise Aframomum melegueta (Zingiberaceae) Part used—seeds Native to tropical West Africa. The seeds are gathered when ripe. They have been traded as a spice since the Middle Ages. A perennial growing to 8 feet, with reedlike stems and narrow leaves. Single mauve flowers bear scarlet fruits. The seeds are small, reddish-brown, with a distinctly pungent, aromatic taste. The volatile oil in the seed, called paradol, is related to gingerol in ginger. This is also one of the botanicals used in Bombay's "Sapphire" gin. Actions – Primarily used as a condiment, the seeds are also a stimulant that strengthens and warms the stomach, and is very helpful with indigestion. Blog>>

By Marnie Old

Modern restaurants have embraced staff training programs as an essential tool of the trade. Ongoing front-of-the-house training can improve sales, smooth service, and raise morale. But opinions vary on the effectiveness of including bar staff in mandatory trainings. Bar schedules pose logistical challenges, and few managers find the performance benefits to be as pronounced among bar staff.

Stiff resistance from bartenders has an influence as well, as trusted senior staff plead years of experience or long hours as rationales for skipping "basic training." The truth is, they have a point. Training sessions designed for servers are not as effective for bartenders; however, that's not a reason to let bartenders off the hook. Rather, it's a solid reason for implementing bar-specific staff training.

By Francesco Lafranconi

In this country, bartending is often considered a transitional job while employees work their way through college or pursue some other career goal. Once, when an arrogant "fill-in" bartender was asked to smile behind the bar by a Morton's executive, the bartender told him that his true career was acting, not bartending. The executive looked him in the eye and said, "Well, then why don't you act like one?" The Morton's manager was right to expect professionalism.

Demanding higher standards of service and professionalism behind the bar is a responsibility of every employer or manager who runs a beverage operation. Providing bar staff with the tools and opportunities it needs to expand its knowledge will result in effective service. And by establishing credibility as professionals, bartenders gain not only the trust of their employers but also the respect and loyalty of their patrons.

By Rob Costantino
Santé Managing Editor

At a handful of restaurant bars around the country, you're likely to find the bartender in the kitchen—well before prime bar time—using a Vita-Prep or a Cryovac. He or she may be taring a laboratory scale to weigh out precise amounts of gelatin or xanthan. Or maybe the bartender is rolling out a liquid-nitrogen tank to perform a spherification or clarification technique for a component of a libation in progress. What's going on here?

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The bartender formally known as Gary Regan has followed The Joy of Mixology with another gem. Gin may never reclaim the white spirits best-selling crown, but the elixir is again the darling of skilled mixologists, establishment and artisan distillers, and a growing cadre of consumers. Regan is a clever chronicler of gin's history, iterations, and cocktail recipes, and of his own deeply infused, rollicking relationship with the spirit. This is an indispensable addition to the professional bartender's library.
Gaz Regan

Xlibris.com, $30.99

nydailynews.com – Next time you order a Bloody Mary, you may want to specify whether or not you want the vegetarian version. A smoked-salmon-flavored vodka made by Alaska Distillery in Wasilla is shaking up the cocktail scene with a variety of savory drinks. It joins another meaty spirit not for the fainthearted: bacon-flavored vodka, from Black Rock Spirits in Seattle. Although both vodkas originally were meant to flavor Bloody Marys, mixologists are getting creative and finding more innovative uses. "I think there was some madness and some drunkenness involved, honestly," said Alaska Distillery partner Toby Foster, who's assigned to come up with new vodka flavors with Alaskan themes. "I was trying to think of something Alaskan," Foster told the Associated Press. "What's more Alaskan than smoked salmon? It was one of those epiphanies, I suppose." The key to a great smoked-salmon vodka is the smoking process, a trade secret. Once the salmon has been smoked, employees remove its skin and crush the fillets. Then chunks are put into a vat, mixed with highly concentrated ethanol, and eventually strained out. Original Source>>

press-citizen.com – In keeping with its trend of Iowa firsts, Cedar Ridge Vineyards in Swisher also is debuting the state's first bourbon whiskey. On the same estate as its award-winning winery, Cedar Ridge hosts Iowa's first licensed distillery where the bourbon is distilled and bottled, manager Jamie Siefken said. Using a base of corn whiskey, barley and rye, the blend goes through a process of charcoal filtering and aging before it is barreled. Bourbon must be made from 51 percent corn in order to be considered bourbon, Siefken said. "Obviously, being in the corn state, we thought it was ironic that no one in the state of Iowa had done a bourbon," he said. "We thought it would be a good fit...to produce a bourbon." Cedar Ridge's bourbon is 75 percent corn and barrel-aged for about two years, he said. Original Source>>

foxnews.com – Once the weather warms up and the patios at local bars start to fill, the drinks start to run clear. And of all the clear spirits, gin tends to be the one that spikes hard during hot weather. It's no wonder—the light-bodied spirit flavored with juniper berries and other botanicals pairs amazingly well with citrus and plays the starring role in a huge number of crisp and refreshing cocktails. As the liquor that got us through prohibition, produced in bathtubs across the country during those dark years, we owe gin a far greater debt than can ever be repaid. Gin comes in a variety of styles—from London Dry Gin to Old Tom Gin, which is lightly sweetened and rarely available since its popularity tanked in the 19th century. And yes, gin has really been around that long. By the 11th century, monks were using juniper berries to flavor distilled spirits. But gin in a recognizable form wasn't produced until the 17th century in England and was named for either the French or Dutch words for juniper. No one is really sure on that count. In the end, it doesn't matter much, because for most people's money, gin didn't really come into its own until some mad, thirsty genius paired it with tonic. Original Source>>

sciencenews.org – A certain secret agent's preference for martinis that are shaken—not stirred—might be all about the bonds. Scientists who have zoomed in on the molecular structure of several brands of vodka propose that differences in water-ethanol interactions may account for drink preferences. Some of vodka's water molecules form cagelike structures around molecules of ethanol, a research team reports online May 21 in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Disrupting these cages—via impurities or perhaps even shaking—may affect taste, says study coauthor Dale W. Schaefer of the University of Cincinnati in Ohio. Schaefer cautions that no data link such structural differences to brand preferences. But with more research, a measure of vodka's microstructure could serve as an all-purpose quality control measure, he says. Original Source>>