I´ve just been enjoying Jay Hepburn´s
The Great Oh Gosh! Orange Liqueur Showdown.It´s a frustrating experience for me though as hardly any of the products talked about are available to me (five out of 23) and these five only at a prohibitive price. Imported alcohol seems to cost the same here as in the UK. For instance we use Bols triple sec -not the Dutch but argentinian produced - which costs AR$10 a bottle. I think it´s pretty decent - certainly the best of the local ones. We also have had Cointreau and Gran Marnier ($90 and $110 respectivly). So using a shot of gran marnier instead of triple sec (as we do for our gran cosmo and margarita) has a very big cost implication. And of course that means that buying the stuff in the first place has to be thought about carefully - I wonder how many bars in the UK would stock Cointreau if it cost 80 pounds a bottle?
I find this frustrating as, although I think I´ve learned and can continue to learn a great deal (see above) about balancing and combining flavours and different techniques for making different drinks, a large part of the barman´s art - that of having a wide range of each different spirit available for different tastes and drinks is closed to me...
So strawberries are in season here,now. I´ve been doing a search for interesting cocktails using them and not coming up with much. I guess they´re a bit girly or fruit cocktails a bit unsophisticated to feature in the cool cocktail blogs. They are also of course by far the easiest cocktails to sell! everyone loves strawberries... So I´ll be reviving 6 strawberry cocktails from last year - martini, daiquiri, martini with balsamic, caipiroska, margarita and electric pink lemonade. But I´d like to experiment and add some more...
