Forget vintage wine, the latest craze in drinking to sweep America are aged cocktails.
Some bartenders there are storing classic cocktails in barrels for several weeks to produce what they say are drinks with deeper, more nuanced flavours.
“What the barrels do is soften everything out and integrate the flavours,” said Hugh Reynolds, bar manager of Temple Bar in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
He does not use fresh ingredients, which could spoil. And spirits that can stand up to the flavours of charred oak, like gin with its botanical aromas are favourite.
With vermouth, a staple in many cocktails, there is a little oxidation, but that is not necessarily a bad thing, he said.
One of his classic cellared cocktails is a whiskey barrel-aged Negroni, a cocktail made of gin, sweet vermouth and Campari, that was aged in cured whiskey barrels.
He has also made a cherry valance – dark rum, blackstrap rum, cherry heering (a Danish liqueur) and chocolate bitters. “That came out wonderfully,” said Mr Reynolds, who generally ages cocktails for about seven weeks.
In the constantly evolving world of cocktails – culinary cocktails, cocktails with special types of ice, even cocktails with meat – barrel-aging is part of the quest for the next and the new.
“It’s a great selling point. It’s a great headline,” said Benjamin Schiller, mixologist for the Boka Restaurant Group in Chicago. But it is also a chance to explore new flavour combinations says Schiller, who was drawn to barrel-aged cocktails by his appreciation of another aged product, single-malt scotch. He’s been ageing Manhattans – whiskey, vermouth, bitters.
Mr Schiller has been experimenting on the barrel side, too, following the single-malt scotch method of using different types of barrels – bourbon, port, sherry – at different points in the ageing process.
“You’re looking for depth and contrast of flavour,” he said. “Even if the product is not remarkable, you can very easily make it remarkable.”
The drinks proved so popular that “we really were unprepared for our first batches,” he said “They sold out in a matter of weeks”.