Last night was the kick-off event for cocktail week. It took place at the Starlight Room, where many of SF's best and brightest (like Marco Dionysus, pictured below) got behind the bar, making drinks for the masses.



As a fitting gesture to launch the week, local bartenders honored Tony Abou-Ganim (below), the opening bar manager of the Starlight and one of the people who really got the SF cocktail scene rolling. Now Abou-Ganim is a Vegas bigshot with books and videos and consulting projects all over the country. But his spirit still infuses the mania for creative cocktailing in the SF bar world, which reveres him as a tribal elder. One of the drinks being mixed last night was the Cable  Car, Abou-Ganim's signature drink of his San Francisco years.



Visit the San Francisco Cocktail Week website for the event schedule; there are great things going on every day until next Monday.

Here's the recipe for the Cable Car from Abou-Ganim's own site:

Ingredients:
    •    1 ½ ounce Captain Morgan Spiced Rum
    •    ¾ ounce Marie Brizard orange curaçao
    •    1 ½ ounce fresh lemon sour *

To an ice-filled mixing glass add Captain Morgan, orange curaçao and fresh sour; shake until well blended. Strain into a chilled sugar-cinnamon frosted cocktail glass* and garnish with an orange spiral. (Orange spirals can be easily cut fresh using a citrus zester, also known as a channel knife.)

Hint: To sugar-cinnamon frost a cocktail glass, first chill the glass, rub the rim’s circumference approximately ¾ inch in depth with a lemon wedge, then dip into a bowl of superfine sugar (regular granulated sugar does not adhere as well).

*Mixing 2 parts fresh squeezed lemon juice with one part simple syrup will easily make fresh lemon sour.

I recently had the good fortune of taking my first trip to the famed Pisoni Vineyards of the Santa Lucia Highlands, above the Salinas Valley. Gary Pisoni was the visionary vineyard planter who put the region on the wine map. He's also a legendary wild man, part Dionysus, part Loki, Pan, you name it. Let's just the man knows how to have a good time.



No time at Gary's property is evidently complete without a bouncy jeep ride over and around his scattered small vineyard plots with such names as Tina's, Mommy's, Elias', and Trap. Many great producers buy fruit from those vineyards: Siduri, Patz & Hall, Peter Michael, etc. But nothing tasted better to me while I was there than the Pinot being made by Gary's son Jeff under the Pisoni label. Gary's other son, Mark, is now in charge of the vineyards. Together the two have made a wine that's large on both fruit and on grace. I couldn't recommend it more highly. Sometimes the Pisoni Estate can be hard to find at retail, though, so I also recommend their second label, Lucia, which can easily be had at K&L.

This is how the p.r. query read for this summer's release of the 10 Cane rum mojito kit: "This summer, 10 CANE presents a limited-edition 10 CANE Mojito Kit that allows aspiring mixologists to enjoy fresh notes of mint, sugar cane and lime juice at home without the hassle of muddling, cleanup, and embarrassing mint stuck in their guests’ teeth. Just fill glasses with ice, add contents, stir and ... remove shoes."



Now, this is a lovely idea, as the mojito is a lovely drink. And a "kit" to make one on the fly is an attractive idea too--keep one in the glove box in case your car breaks down in the middle of a desert. You don't need to have fresh mint or lime and all the cleanup involved in that. The trouble is that I tried making the drink (and I think I did it right, by following the instructions to dump both the rum and the Stirrings mojito mix into an ice-filled glass) and the drink just wasn't that good. Now, I know that we don't expect the freeze-dried turkey tetrazzini that we might take on a backpacking trip to taste as good as the roast chicken at Zuni. But a mojito just isn't that hard to make. The problem was the mojito mix--it was too sweet and didn't have enough fresh mint flavor. Ultimately, I'd rather just drink the rum solo on the rocks.



In an emergency, you might want to keep the mojito kit around. But in a bigger emergency, I'd just recommend a full-sized bottle of 10 Cane.

This is probably the coolest thing ever. A PBR coffin makes so much sense, providing during the guy's golden years a sense of security that he'll be buried in style and, that after he's gone, he'll be the envy of all the corpses who just got regular old coffins. I'm thinking I might have to get a coffin in the shape of one of my favorite drinks, perhaps Campari, Chartreuse, or maybe even a bottle of Champagne Salon.

While wandering through Japantown in search of big ice cubes for an upcoming 7x7 column, a friend and I found ourselves in Ikkyu, a lovely little room on the ground floor of the easternmost building of the Japan Center. An oddly festive place, it wasn't open when we first stopped by, so we returned after 7 p.m., and it was open, though mostly empty. This was a good thing, as it allowed us to chat with Kako, the spirited owner, who had come over from Japan to take over the bar (which, it turned out, had been previously owned by a man with a big ice cube machine … must have taken it with him when he left). Anyhoo, Kako clearly has the knack for entertaining, as did the other bartender, also female. She had all the traits of a good bartender--sense of humor, wit, a little attitude and great hospitality.



We drank an Orion (from Okinawa--one of my favorite Asian beers) and ordered from the surprisingly measly selections of sakes. Before I had the opportunity to embarrass myself by complaining about the dearth of options, Kako pointed out that I was missing the point. This was a shochu, not a sake, bar. I should have known better, as it's fairly well known that shochu has overtaken sake as the beverage of choice in Japan. Kako generously took us through a tasting of her many shochus, however, and I did find them pleasing. Stronger than sake, but weaker than whiskey, shochu is capable of having delicate flavors and aromas, though I wouldn't say that I've tasted one as fine as a good sake.



While Ikkyu was dead during the early evening, when we were in there, Kako assured us that within a few hours it would be cranking. Taking measure of its narrow, shotgun space, I could see how this could be a fun place to hang out, no matter what you like to drink.

Samuel Adams, the Massachusetts-based brewery, runs a really cool competition each year called Longshot in which home brewers from all over the country submit their beers for judging. The winning beers are then brewed by Sam Adams for national release and feature a portrait of the brewer on the label. I recently tasted a Weizenbock from a Chicago-area winner--delicious, as was a grape ale made by the winner of the Sam Adams employee homebrew competition.



Interestingly, the overall winner was a guy named Mike McDole, from nearby Clayton, CA. His Double IPA took first place and by all means should be included in the winner's six-pack (available at BevMo). However, it seems that due to a global hops shortage, Sam Adams is completely unable to purchase the seven varieties of hops needed to make this man's beer. Jim Koch, Sam Adams' founder, explains the situation in this letter. The long and short of it is that they're waiting until next year, when they can order some of these hops, to brew McDole's beer. I look forward to tasting it, and kudos to McDole for winning and to Sam Adams for running such a fun competition.

I hadn't been to a true happy hour in years, but the other day I stumbled into the one at O Izakaya. Beers, well sake and well drinks were each $3, which seemed like a pretty good deal (I drank Sapporo). What was a great turn on, though, was the food, priced on a special happy-hour $5 list. We sampled the seaweed salad, ultra-fresh hamachi and the tempura/beer-battered onion rings and loved all of it.



Izakayas in Japan are drinking establishments with more-sophisticated food than the snacks you'd find at just a regular bar--sort of a Japanese gastropub, I guess you'd say. O Izakaya certainly qualifies as this, even if the atmosphere seems a bit generic (besides the wonderful window shades painted with comic-book style renderings of Japanese baseball stars). Put it on your list of places to go in Japantown, especially at happy hour.

This new invention might just have legs . . .