… if you drink too much. Which I did a couple of nights ago. Waking (if we can call it that) in the morning feeling as if several IEDs had gone off in my cranium. I had only myself to blame for several million of my brain cells being carried off in body-bags and being slipped into shallow graves in the Potter’s Field of Hopes and Dreams. Instead of sipping sparingly, sensibly, I just kept pouring shots of Amaro Nonino Quintessentia into my cunningly-wrought and delicate little liqueur glass. Master, as usual, of my own destruction. Of the product itself, I have nothing but delirious praise.

Amaro Nonino Quintessentia is produced by the Distilleria Nonino in Italy’s northeastern-most province of Friuli-Venezia-Giulia, hard by the borders of Austria and Slovenia. The company was founded in 1897 and is still family owned, the present members being mother and father Giannola and Benito and daughters Cristina, Antonella and Elisabetta, and a damned fine-looking bunch they are, as you can see in the accompanying image. Giannola and Benito Nonino revolutionized Italy’s grappa industry in 1973 by producing the first single-variety grappa from the pomace of picolit grapes. (Grappa, as the French marc, is distilled from pomace, the residue of grape skins, stems, seeds and pulp left after pressing white grapes or, for red grapes, after fermentation.) This innovation shifted the emphasis in grappa-making, as other distilleries followed the lead of Nonino is making a variety of single-grape grappas.

In 1984, Nonino was the first to distill whole grapes, marketed as a line called ÙE. These single-variety products cannot be called grappa, because they’re not, and are instead designated as “Distillates.” In 2003, the family added a unique line of distillates called “Gioiello,” distilled directed from honeys derived from a number of different fruit blossoms and flowers. I tried several of the Gioiello distillates when they were first released; they’re spectacularly seductive.

But back to Amaro Nonino Quintessentia, which I adore and which taken to excess was my recent downfall. The term “amaro” — Italian for “bitter — refers to any number of liqueur-like digestifs composed of a neutral alcohol base infused with roots, flowers, herbs and spices and intended for after-lunch or dinner sipping to settle the stomach and aid digestion. European monks produced such concoctions for a thousand years, but the notion of making the products commercially emerged in the mid 19th Century. Companies that make amaro place a great deal of value (tradition, on one hand, marketing on the other) on their secret formula. The website for Terlato International, Nonino’s importer (formerly Paterno), gives us some clues. Amaro Nonino Quintessentia, we are told, is made from “cereal alcohol, grape acqua vitae aged five years, roots of gentian, saffron, rhubarb, sweet orange, bitter orange, quassia wood, tamarind, galenga, licorice, cinchona.” The producer’s website, nonino.it, mentions that the base consists of ÙE distillate and prune distillate.

Quassia, by the way, is a tree that grows in Surinan or Jamaica, which is a bitter tonic or “stomachic,” as they used to say, and is slightly narcotic. Galenga (or galengal) is also known as “Thai ginger,” though it is more aromatic than regular ginger. Cinchona is a South American shrub or small tree that is a source of quinine.

Of course we don’t know what proportions of these substances are used in Amaro Nonino Quintessentia, and those mysteries should not concern us. The point I’m making is that being a fan generally I have tried numerous other amaros, Fernet-Branca, Averna and so on, and none of them is as deep, as complex, as darkly resonant, as harmonious, as medicinal yet amusing and gratifying as Amaro Nonino Quintessentia. Most of them make the mistake, to my palate, of keeping the licorice element too high and bright and of emphasizing their amaro’s sweetness over the bitterness, leaving them unbalanced.

Anyway, it’s about 12:30 on a Sunday afternoon. I’m finishing this post. Surely it’s not too early for a nip of Amaro Nonino Quintessentia to celebrate another job well done. Well, it is?

This just in: According to The New York Times, the European Parliament decided that “traditional vodka can be made only from grain or potatoes.” Countries with a heritage of vodka-producing, including Sweden, Finland and Poland, “had pushed for rules that would have included molasses among the ingredients allowed.” The parliament reached a compromise — which only Poland voted against — that vodka may be made from other ingredients than grain or potatoes “if their composition and origin are clearly indicated on the label,” the implication being that vodka producers in Poland want to use molasses in vodka without indicating it on labels.

Molasses! Think of it. If you ferment molasses and distill it, what do you get? Bad rum! The best rums are made directly from pure cane juice, not cane juice rendered into molasses. Why does Poland want to get into that business? And how are vodka aficionados going to feel when they pick up a highly hyped new vodka named something like “Iconic Snow” or “Icy Freeze” and the label states: “Made from Molasses in Krakow”?

One feels similarly funny about Ciroc, the French vodka made from grapes, and not just grapes but “fine French grapes” (they’re from Gaillac) and not just “fine French grapes” but “snap frost” grapes picked, we are told, just after the first “snap frost.” (What?) But think of it. Vodka made from distilled grapes? Isn’t that, like, you know, grappa? (A highly refined grappa, to be sure.)

Technically speaking, vodka is defined as an odorless, flavorless white spirit. You could make it from rutabagas, but traditionally and practically and now by law in Europe, vodka must be made from potatoes or grain, unless stated otherwise on the label. What’s next for those accommodating madcaps in the EU? A ruling that says that sherry can only be made from real grapes in Jerez unless stated otherwise on the label? That Calvados can be made only from apples in Normandy unless stated otherwise on the label?

Ironically, the EU recently honored the Napa Valley as the only protected American appellation in Europe, unless, I suppose, otherwise indicated on the label.

The picture of grain is a Getty image taken from nattierosewrites.com. The molasses label is from clendening.kumc.edu.

We all have dreams, right? Some people dream of success in politics or sports; others dream of winning Nobel Prizes in literature or medicine. Some people dream of reaching the pinnacles of romance and love and desire or of starring in films and becoming household names. And then there are the people who dream of being famous for no discernible reasons.

Paul McCann’s dream was to make potato vodka in Richmond, Virginia.

And why not? If Pritchard can make rum in rural East Tennessee and Anchor can make gin in San Francisco, why shouldn’t Paul McCann be able to make vodka in Virginia. And so he did.

His company is called Parched Group and the vodka is Cirrus.

Now I will be the first to admit that I have never seen the point of vodka, except as a chaser to caviar, and there a thimbleful of ice-cold vodka is far superior to even the finest Champagne. But vodka, originally distilled from potatoes but legally made of any sort of grain or combination of grains, was for centuries the bath-tub gin of spirits, the fiery stuff distilled in the backyard or the back room or the barracks to satisfy the alcoholic needs of desperate hordes. How vodka became the iconic symbol of sophistication and the main prop of the Cocktail Nation is beyond the comprehension of one who prizes the infinite nuances of gin and the fathomless depths of scotch. Vodka’s advocates tout its mixability, a trait others may call mindlessness.

Still, vodka cannot be ignored, as new labels seem to be introduced every week, each one rigorously emphasizing aspects of frigidity, purity and perfect transparency. The texts on the bottles frequently boast that the vodka inside was distilled five times and filtered five times, sometimes through such materials as diamond dust or virgins’ blood. (I made that one up.) The idea is that the best, the most expensive, the so-called “super-premium” vodkas should have no nature whatever except for smoothness.

Cirrus, I’m happy to say, actually displays character. Rather than being made in a continuous still, the process by which most vodkas, even so-called super-premiums, are made, Cirrus is made in a traditional copper pot still, in which it is distilled three times. I don’t know how to describe its scent other than to say that it smells like snow; if you live in the North (I spent the first 10 years of my life in Rochester, N.Y.,) you’ll know what I mean. Then there’s a touch of citrus, a whiff of black pepper, a hint of some astringent white flower. In the mouth, the texture is smooth, to be sure, but almost cloud-like in softness and volume. The main thing is that Cirrus neither smells nor tastes like a doctor’s office, which is the flaw of many vodkas.

Suggested retail price for Cirrus Vodka is about $22, but inevitably production and distribution are limited. Check the company’s website — Cirrus — and ask Paul McCann when Cirrus will be available in your state.

Bad news, booze hounds, but it’s official — The New York Times said so — the capital of Cocktail Nation has migrated from New York, specifically Manhattan, to London, where the swinging set indulges in swank Mayfair bars presided over by mixologists — and notice that we use the word nowadays without the irony of an arched eyebrow or raised fingers making invisible “quotation marks” — I say, where the mixologists tender their art in a style combining the best of British tradition with the most avant-garde of world beat concepts and ingredients.

No fair!

The cocktail revival started in Manhattan, was nurtured and practiced fervently, obsessively on that heady island of hopes and delusions and head-bumping realities, of glitter and glamor and gore, and now to come to this state of decadence and decline? My god, it sounds like a night of watery $25 drinks and stale Goldfish crackers, doesn’t it? Like a long taxi ride with a non-English-speaking driver that starts at 4 a.m. and ends where the Boulevard of Broken Dreams empties into Britney Spears’ underwear drawer.

But don’t despair, former Celebrity Mixologists of Manhattan — and there has to be a guild, right? A club? At least a debating society or choral group? — I have an idea.

Here I propose the names of drinks with which you may conjure the cocktails of the future. I don’t create the recipes; I merely give you the titles of the artful blends that will bring fame back to its rightful place in bars and watering holes of Manhattan, if you are clever — and visionary — enough to handle them. Here are the concepts; now you must let your imaginations run riot and create the cocktails that will send those Brits running for their muddling spoons and lemon zesters.

1. Sit, Boy

2. Mere Immortals

3. Absolutely, Positively One Night

4. Anger of the Modernists

5. The Dangers of Tyranny Lurk in Utopian Dreams, Yet Idealism and Decency May Survive in a Police State

6. Jane Eyre

7. The Rage of Abandonment

8. Happy Birthday, Sheryl Suzanne Crowe!

9. Self-Immolation of Developing Economies

10. Sexy Mousy

One stipulation. Please, don’t use squid ink or pickled okra, especially in the same drink.

For No. 5, apologies to separate stories in The New York Times.

Readers familiar with BiggerThanYourHead know that I am — damn my eyes! — a purist through and through, a position that isn’t always fun because it lets one in for a great deal of disappointment.
But in reading the new “Platinum Edition” of Mr. Boston (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., $19.95), the bartender’s guide that’s been around in many editions since 1935, I was struck by this assertion by Anthony Giglio, who revised the book for this recent printing. He is recounting recipes for martinis as they existed a century ago and includes a recipe for what he indicates is a more authentic version of the martini than we consume so avidly today, that is too say, the dry martini, for among all other matters to which the 20th Century can lay claim, one, of certainty, is that the martini became progressively drier.

Giglio’s recipe is this: 1 oz. gin. 1 oz. dry vermouth. 1 dash orange bitters. Stir with ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

Giglio says: “Another difference you’ll see is what appears to be a massive amount of vermouth being used. The result is a drink that bears little resemblance to today’s Martini. Push your prejudices aside and instead focus simply on the overall taste of the drink itself, and you’ll find the vermouth is not only enjoyable but in perfect balance with the gin.”

Wow, I thought, this guy is as much a purist as I am!

So I did that. A couple of days ago I made LL and me each a martini following Giglio’s recipe. The result: Gack!

Sorry, I’m just a four (or 3.5) parts gin to one part vermouth person and there’s no getting over it. Is anything else in the world as clean as this nun of a cocktail, as pure, as chastening? We do use the lemon twist. I agree with Giglio, that “the olive brine affects the delicate balance of the drink.” Longtime devotees of Tanqueray, we also like the Scottish gin Hendricks, though some criticize it as too floral, and Junipero, from Anchor Distillery in San Francisco.

And it’s strange that Giglio, along with every other writer on cocktails and their history and preparing, insists that a martini be stirred, not shaken. Shaking is for fruity cocktails, all the experts agree; stirring is for cocktails that combine spirits. Yet go into any bar between the shining seas and order a martini and the bartender will put the gin and vermouth in a shaker with ice and shake the holy crap out of it, breaking up the ice, so that the moment the martini is poured into your glass it’s already diluted. You don’t have to be Werner von Braun to understand that this procedure is counter-productive.
When you ask bartenders why they do this, they inevitably reply, “So the martini will be cold.” No, the way for the martini to be cold is to do what I do at home: keep the gin in the freezer and the vermouth in the refrigerator. And it is, of course, of utmost importance that the martini be achingly, bone-chilling cold, because if it isn’t, in five minutes you just have a cute little glass filled with warm alcohol. Yum.

As to all the seemingly hundreds of variations on the “martini” that adorn “martini lists” through out the land, the less said of them the better. Vermouth exists for a higher purpose in life than to give an echo of character to vodka.
By the way, my favorite recent cocktail books are Cocktail: The Drinks Bible for the 21st Century by Paul Harrington and Laura Moorhead (Viking, 1998) and New Classic Cocktails by Gary Regan and Mardee Haiden Regan (Macmillan, 1997), each in its way a model of history, lore, wisdom and imagination.

Dear friends, it’s Christmas Eve, and I want to tell you a story.
In the early 1990s, we met Jack Mayer. He was originally from Memphis but had long been away, operating art galleries, first in Paris and then New York. Elderly and ill, he had returned to Memphis, where he now lived alone in a garden apartment filled with books and art; a few relatives lived in the city and took care of his needs. He no longer drove and led essentially a solitary existence.
We visited Jack a few times. He was intelligent, witty, self-deprecating, lonely, a little irascible and largely, as far as we could tell, stoic about his fate, because he knew or suspected that he did not have long to live. Though his doctors had put him on a limited diet and he was forbidden alcohol, Jack clearly appreciated fine food and wine. We decided to have a small dinner party, with Jack, the two of us and two friends who had also gotten to know him.

Because of Jack’s strict regimen, we planned a simple menu: roasted chicken, scalloped potatoes, a salad. For those who could partake of wine, I had a bottle of Leroy Bourgogne 1989 on the table. Our friends picked Jack up and brought him to our second-floor apartment, helping him slowly up the stairs.

As usual, Jack regaled us with tales of the art business in Paris and New York, artists he had know and worked with, meals he had eaten. He was a gifted raconteur. He kept glancing at the bottle of Bourgogne, and finally, about halfway through the meal, he said, “Let me have a sip of that wine. Just an inch or two.” LL and I looked at each other and she nodded and I said, “Of course, Jack, I’m sure that a sip of wine wouldn’t hurt.”

I poured what he had requested, an inch or two of deep ruby wine that glinted in the candlelight. Jack held up the glass and gazed at it for a moment, sniffed deeply of the bouquet as a seasoned imbiber would, and drank the wine in a single, throbbing swallow.

There was a long silence, and then he said, “God in heaven, that’s good. Bless you.”

Jack Mayer died not long after that dinner, to which he brought us, as his hosts, the funny bottle of Armagnac you see pictured here. Does anyone make such an eccentric product as this anymore? Rustic, individual, earthy, old-fashioned, endowed with jollity and savoir-faire and history? I mean, I can see Moliere pouring himself a swig of brandy from just such a bottle in a tavern in Paris.
We have had this Armagnac for 12 or 13 years. I forget about it for stretches of time, it has moved with us to a second apartment and then a house and now another house, and occasionally I will discover it again in the liquor cabinet, usually when I’m looking for something else, as happened recently. The bottle is dusty and holds about an inch of brandy.
LL and I are having Christmas Eve dinner tonight. Beef rib roast and Yorkshire pudding and roasted potatoes and Brussels sprouts with a bottle of Chateau Leoville-Barton 1996 and, with the cheeses, the Quinto do Vesuvio Porto 1990. Yes, the whole Merry Old England thing.
I think we’ll finish things off by finally emptying this funny old bottle of its last remains of Armagnac, toasting to a man who knew how to live and how to die.

And that’s why we drink wine.

Let’s nip this little trend in the bud right now.

Our January issue of Food & Wine magazine arrived Saturday. The main feature is “100 Tastes You Must Try in 2007,” an extension of the magazine’s annual attempt at “hip and happening” that’s so pathetic it’s almost cute. They actually write about “groovy” restaurants and “power couples” and “the next baby lettuce.”

I couldn’t help focusing, however, on Trend No. 14: “House-Infused Bourbon.” The writer says: “Bartenders have been infusing vodka for years; now they’re joyfully” — joyfully? — “infusing bourbon with everything from black cherries to bacon. Chris Beveridge from 12 Baltimore in Kansas City, Missouri, favors apples, cinnamon and vanilla.”

I guess everything’s up-to-date in Kansas City.

The recipe that follows calls for “3 cored and quartered medium Granny Smith apples, 4 cinnamon sticks and 2 whole vanilla beans.” The bourbon? A bottle of Woodford Reserve. That’s where I say, “Say what???”
There’s a reason why vodka manufacturers create and sell millions of cases of fruit or spice or herb-infused vodka. The whole point of vodka is that it possesses no distinguishing quality except pure, glacial characterlessness. You can distill vodka seven times if you want, make it from the finest mountain waters never lapped by humans or animals and filter it through an Escalade packed with diamond dust and it will reflect nothing except high alcohol and formidable neutrality. So sure, hell yeah, go ahead, stuff it with rose petals, mangos and truffles for all I care.

But Woodford Reserve is one of the finest of the hand-crafted bourbons that appeared on the market over the past 10 or 15 years. Reading this squib in Food & Wine led me to break out my bottle, pour out a couple of fingers of the golden-amber ambrosia and have a few sips of smooth, mellow, sweet liquid naturally tinged with wood, orange rind, toffee and allspice from its time spend meditating in oak barrels; it rolled over the tongue and down the throat like warm money.

O.K., infuse a bottle of Heaven Hill if you want, but the last thing my Woodford Reserve needed was a soul-destroying infusion of apples and cinnamon and vanilla. I mean, we’re not talking about a Thanksgiving pie here.

I will say, just to be nice, that we use recipes from Food & Wine constantly, often going back to favorite dishes we cooked from the magazine years ago.