The new 25% Case Discount Corner at Spirits Middletown

By SOMDATTA SENGUPTA

Store Manager Ray Kimble and Manager of Liquor Operations Stuart Keats have brought to you another great offering from Spirits Unlimited Middletown.

It's the new 25% Case Discount Corner offering great wines from Agrentina, Spain and Italy. These include three from Agrentina — the Sangre De Vina line featuring torrontes and malbec and an El Guardado syrah. The Italian wines include the Saladini Pilastri Falerio and the Vasari Montepulciano d’Abruzzo. The Spanish red is the much talked about Viña Borgia old vine grenache from the Campo de Borja region.

Vina Borgia: The Vina Borgia Grenache from Spain comes from the Campo de Borja region that lies between the plains of the river Ebro and the mountains of the Sistema Iberico. The color is ruby-purple, with lots of fruit aromas, deep color, a little bit of smoke and has a pepper finish. It's all stainless steel, no oak. A great wine for making sangria.

It goes well with pasta, chicken and anything that's spicy.

Price per bottle: $6.99
25% Case (12 bottles) Discount price including tax: $63.73


Saladini Pilastri Falerio: A medium bodied white wine from Italy that goes very well with fish and seafood. It is from the Spinetoli region of Italy which has gravelly soil. The grape varieties used in the wine include Trebbiano, Passerina and Chardonnay. The vineyards are grown using biological farming systems, according to the official Web site. Saladini Pilastri, has been making organic wine since 1995, says snooth.com and this white wine is lemon oil and fennel-scented, and is crisp, dry, intriguing and compelling.

Price per bottle: $8.99
25% Case (12 bottles) Discount price including tax: $86.52



Vasari Montepulciano d’Abruzzo: It has incredible amounts of forward fruit according to WineExpress.com. It has intense color, the nose has a rich black cherry and hints of cedar. Great with pasta.

Price per bottle: $8.99
25% Case (12 bottles) Discount price including tax: $86.52





El Guardado Syrah: This is a new line of Argentine wines that Spirits Unlimited Middletown is introducing at the store this fall. According to Rick Allocca, the local wine consultant at the Middletown store, the El Guardado syrah really delivers. Coming from the San Juan area of Argentina, this wine is ruby-red in color and exhibits aromas of leather, graphite, dry fruits and plum, Rick said. It is dry on the mid-palate with a long graceful finish, fine tannic structure and hints of smokiness, according to him. The wines goes well with grilled meats as well as veggies, but it is excellent with beef stew, Rick said.

Price per bottle: $10.99
25% Case (12 bottles) Discount price including tax: $105.84


Sangre De Vina Torrontes: This is a very crisp and light wine, according to Rick, the local wine consultant at the Middletown Spirits Unlimited store. It has floral overtures but is not sweet like the riesling. Rick ranks this wine high on texture, acidity, fruit. Overall, a great drinking wine all year long, he said.

Price per bottle: $8.99
25% Case (12 bottles) Discount price including tax: $86.52





Sangre De Vina Malbec: This wine is rich in color with spice notes to it, Rick said. It has good tannins and fruit characteristics with blackberry and dark cherry. It is another all-year drinking wine, he said, and goes great with barbecue.

Price per bottle: $8.99
25% Case (12 bottles) Discount price including tax: $86.52

Wines and cooking made easy with Spirits Middletown

By SOMDATTA SENGUPTA

Use your imagination and let your creative instincts take over. That's all you need to win this recipe contest organized by Spirits unlimited Middletown.

Chef James Conroy is here again to point out to you how easy and simple it can be.

Just take a moment to look around you and figure out what's in season. Then combine the freshest ingredients with quality wines and produce unique flavors in your own kitchen.

And send us your recipe at spiritsmiddletown@gmail.com.

Be inspired. Join our recipe contest for some Fall fun this season.

On Sale: A liqueur that dates back 300 years

By SOMDATTA SENGUPTA

It was first made by monks in the Piedmont region of northern Italy about 300 years ago, according to the official Frangelico Web site.

In the Piedmont hills where wild hazelnuts were abundant, the monks used their skills at distillation to produce one of the world’s finest hazelnut liqueur. The modern Frangelico carries on that tradition in looks, presentation and quality.

The name is reportedly an abbreviation of Fra. Angelico, a hermit monk believed to have inhabited the magnificent Piedmont hills during the 17th century, according to the Web site.

Spirits Unlimited sale price: $19:99 (750 ml)

The liqueur is produced through a four-stage distillation process. After the hazelnuts are shelled, toasted and crushed they are then infused in a solution of alcohol and water. Next, the infusion is distilled to produce a natural hazelnut distillate. In the following step, a number of natural extracts including cocoa and vanilla are blended with the hazelnut infusion and hazelnut distillate to create the Frangelico concentrate. Finally, the concentrate is blended with pure alcohol, sugar and water to achieve the required bottling strength. It is then laid down in vats for 6-8 weeks to allow the blend to marry together and mellow.

Produced with such care the resulting liqueur tastes of toasted hazelnuts combined with cocoa, vanilla berries and a host of other natural extracts that make up its complex flavor.
The color is pale gold, the smell has intense hazelnut aromas in it, while on the palate it makes it mark with pronounced but delicate hazelnut flavor and hints of vanilla and dark chocolate. Smooth, long finish with fragrant back-note, the Web site says.

Try this over ice, in coffee or in cocktails.

For more information visit: www.frangelico.com.

Spirits Unlimited sale price: $19:99 (750 ml)

Join the recipe contest now!!!!

WHAT

OUR FIRST EVER RECIPE CONTEST

HOW

1. Come up with an original or altered recipe

2. Recipe MUST contain some use of wine, beer, liquor or fine spirits

3. E-mail your recipe to spiritsmiddletown@gmail.com by September 30th

WHO
Recipes will be judged by

JAMES CONROY, EXECUTIVE CHEF of Food Circus

WIN
Nintendo Wii
Beach Cruiser
and many more prizes

Getting in the mood for Oktoberfest with Fall beers

By SOMDATTA SENGUPTA

No one can beat Germans in celebrating Fall. As the first dew drops of the season sparkle in Autumn sunlight, the mood is set for Oktoberfest and Fall beers. In Munich, the countdown is on.

Historically, Oktoberfest originated in Germany and is celebrated as a 16-day festival each year, according to Wikipedia. In 1994, the schedule was modified in response to German reunification so that if the first Sunday in October falls on the 1st or 2nd, then the festival will go on until October 3 German Unity Day. Thus, the festival is now 17 days when the first Sunday is October 2 and 18 days when it is October 1. The festival is held on an area named the Theresienwiese (field, or meadow, of Therese), often called d’ Wiesn for short.

Traditional festival fare includes Hendl (chicken), Schweinsbraten (roast pork), Haxn (knuckle of pork), Steckerlfisch (grilled fish on a stick), Würstel (sausages) along with Brezel (Pretzel), Knödeln (potato or bread dumplings), Käsespätzle (cheese noodles), Reiberdatschi (potato pancakes), Sauerkraut or Blaukraut (red cabbage) along with such Bavarian delicacies as Obatzda (a fatty, spiced cheese-butter concoction) and Weisswurst (a white sausage), according to Wikipedia.

The festival is usually celebrated during late September and early October. This year the 176 Munich Oktoberfest will be held from September 19 to October 4, according to the official festival site.


Reportedly, it is claimed to be world's largest fair, with some six million people attending every year, Wikipedia reports. In a news release, this year’s special attractions are listed as the brand new The Tower.

Designed by Charles Blume, The Tower is like a big playground with a numerous spectacles inside. One can feel the forces of nature as one will see a volcano erupt and get the feel of space travel with special 3-D glasses.

The Tower also has traditional elements like spinning wheels and rocking conveyor-belts. However, the most notable feature of The Tower is the view of the festival and the city of Munich from the top.

The next fun ride is billed as the Silberturm, that is also a tower but smaller, which one usually rides up on the side, according to the news release. The trip includes experiences ominously named as Free Fall or Jumping Effect.

If you are not planning to travel to Munich this fall, then just a short trip to the Spirits Unlimited store in Middletown will get you there virtually.

Our huge selection of Fall beers is easy to spot and will be brought to you online through this blog. Today, our feature beer is the Spaten Oktoberfest Beer, which was created in 1872.

It is the world's first Oktoberfest beer, the company claims, and was brewed for the greatest folk festival in the world. It is amber in color, medium-bodied, and its flavor is achieved by balancing the roasted malt flavor with the perfect amount of hops. It has a rich textured palate with an underlying sweetness which is true to tradition, according to the brewing company.

For more information, questions or your comments, write to us at

spiritsmiddletown@gmail.com

or visit our blog at

http://spiritsmiddletown.blogspot.com

Image Sources for this article http://www.oktoberfest.de/en and http://spatenusa.com/6_what_new/6_3_promotions/index.htm

The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks: A must have for all connoisseurs of spirits

By SOMDATTA SENGUPTA

As we have the first few entries for our recipe contest come in, I would like to suggest a “must have” for all those who love to cook with wine and spirits.

It’s a book. “The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks” by David A. Embury. It’s got nothing to do with our recipe contest but is a must have for any cook and a good read for those who might not like to cook as well.

Also, chances are it’s out-of-print unless you are well connected with authentic bartenders who will always have a copy. The next step is to persuade them to sell it to you. Good luck with that! Or you can keep tuned in to the Spirits Unlimited Middletown blog where we bring you the latest news on things of interest to you and to us.

The book published in 1948, is a collection of cocktails from an attorney by trade. Interestingly, Embury was always at the “shaking-things-up” end of cocktail making while he entertained his guests. But it came upon him to shake things up with his pen and humor as he embarked on this project to categorize and catalog the cocktails of his time. Notably, according to Wikipedia, he was born on November 3, 1886 in Pine Woods, New York and died July 6, 1960 in New Rochelle, New York.

The book is noteworthy for its witty, highly opinionated and conversational tone, as well as its categorization of cocktails into two main types: aromatic and sour; its categorization of ingredients into three categories: the base, modifying agents, and special flavorings and coloring agents; and its 1:2:8 ratio (1 part sweet, 2 parts sour, 8 parts base) for sour type cocktails, according to Wikipedia.

However, you manage to read or buy a copy of this book for your possession or pleasure, here are some interesting facts.

According to Embury, a cocktail must have a visual appeal. One that is not attractive suffers from the “failure to launch” itself syndrome. The presentation, the color and the first sip are supposed to ignite passion in the consumer of the drink.

The next sip should tingle your imagination. The curiosity and the hint of something that you “can’t quite put your finger on” are all aspects of the cocktail’s very nature and reason for its existence, Embury said. It’s supposed to tease and excite without giving itself away.

A classic cocktail is one that increases your curiosity about its contents rather than indulge you in too much of any one taste, whether it’s sweet or fruity, according to Embury. In fact, he said a quality cocktail is never too sweet and never too strong on the alcohol end of things. Last and most important, good-quality, high-proof liquors make for good cocktails. And, don’t forget the ice please.

Robert Hess, author of The Essential Bartender’s Guide, is a sort-of modern day Embury himself as far as love for cocktails goes. Hess has been an employee of Microsoft since 1988, according to Wikipedia, and a co-founder of the Museum of the American Cocktail. Further, Hess, along with several other well-known cocktail personalities, founded The Chanticleer Society, a "Worldwide Organization of Cocktail Enthusiasts," Wikipedia states.

Hess qualifies Embury as someone who “with a deep passion for, as well as an opinion about, what it took to make a proper cocktail.”

Hess’s review which appears online on The Spirit World further states: Books which attempt to cram within their pages as many different cocktail recipes as possible are almost a dime a dozen, and can often be seen behind many bars. As a simple reference, I suppose they have their place, but Mr. Embury’s book isn’t a simple reference book. While it does contain a fair number of cocktail recipes, this is a book that is intended to be read. Its recipes, and more importantly the information and opinions around those recipes, are intended to be educational, and that is what sets this book apart from almost any other.”

Interestingly, Hess said if you were looking to buy the book some 10 years ago, you could get one around $40. Now, it’s gone up by a few hundred dollars.

Hess also chronicles how Mud Puddle Books, New York, came out with a reprint of this 1948 book: “A reprint was clearly in need, the problem was that not only was the book new enough as to still be covered under copyright, but nobody seemed to know who actually held the copyright to the book now that Mr. Embury himself had passed away. Enter Gregory Bohem, owner of “Mud Puddle” a New York publisher, as well as an avid collector of old cocktail books. He decided that he really, really, needed to come out with reprint of this book. Diligently he followed various leads, many of them dead-ends, until he finally located Mr. Embury’s only surviving relative, his daughter Ruth Embury. Mud Puddle was quickly able to arrange to do a reprint, and an excellently executed one at that.

Hess says the reprint is now available on Amazon.com, or can be ordered from Mud Puddles: www.mudpuddlebooks.com.

Chef Tips: What to cook with and what to drink?

By SOMDATTA SENGUPTA

Sometimes cooking with wines look so easy when you watch chefs do it. But try it on your own, the result is less than appetizing.

Chef James Conroy wanted to share his tips for cooking with wine with Spirits Unlimited Middletown customers today.

His advice: Don't use a cheap wine. Use a "middle of the road wine," something that you can drink with the food you are preparing.

As you listen to him, don't forget to send in your recipes or questions to us at
spiritsmiddletown@gmail.com

Happy cooking!