The Final Twist

Nearly everyone has their go-to cocktail and for me it’s a Gibson. Gin – cold and a little dirty, with that savory round onion at the bottom. In truth, for me it’s really all about those gin-soaked onions. Mildly put, I love them. A few years ago, I went for a liquid lunch at Absinthe and sunk my teeth into the best onion I’ve ever devoured. A little sweet, slightly salty, and with a hint of something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on – pine needles in icy air or some nostalgic wintertime taste, like the sage in holiday stuffing.

I swear to Christ, this thing had me rolling back the eyelids and waxing poetic, as if I’d grown up in a John Cheever novel instead of sunny Southern California. When pressed, the sweetheart of a waitress let on that the onions are made in-house with Absinthe’s own recipe, and sadly, she couldn’t pass me a jar under the table. She did, however, bring me three more, delicately speared on a toothpick, and I’ve thought about those onions ever since.

While talking to my pal Kleinman sometime later, it came out that she’d had a similar experience with a gin and tonic. When served her drink, its bourbon color led her to think there’d been a mistake, but the first sip told her that no, Madam, this was no mistake but pure genius. The color came from real tonic water, the kind made from ingredients not found in a Schweppes bottle, and the flavor had a body of its own.

All of which got us to thinking: In both instances it wasn’t the complexity of the cocktail that made it so incredible but the simple components that went into it. So, why not have phenomenal cocktails at home by stocking a bar with homemade ingredients that will make the cocktails themselves phenomenal? That’s a mouthful in more ways than one, and with a flurry of holiday parties on the horizon there was no time to lose.

Our first experiment was to emulate a batch of Kleinman’s storied tonic. We ran down an online recipe from Portland-based bartender Jeffrey Morgenthaler and started amassing ingredients, the most worrisome of which was a mess of cinchona bark, also known as quinine powder. While Rainbow Grocery was able to supply the citrus, lemongrass, and allspice (you didn’t know tonic was that complex, did you?), they fell short on the elusive powder. Enter the Internet again, this time in the form of one of those slightly suspect herbal stores, and a week later we had a half-pound bag gracing the kitchen table.

The rest was like a scene from the Wonka Factory: bubbling cauldrons of brown liquid, coffee filters and makeshift strainers clogged with earthy-looking pigment, bottles lining every imaginable surface. After an hour of squeezing the solution through giant squares of old bedsheets (a process not in the recipe, but quite effective for keeping the powder behind while the liquid moves on), we were left with almost three gallons of beautiful, clay-colored tonic water.

Truly, this tonic is like magic. Add a few tablespoons to a glass of gin and ice, fill the rest with bubbly water, and it’s the best gin and tonic I’ve ever had, hands down. It’s earthy and citrusy, with just enough bitterness to give it a kick. Everyone loves it. It’s wowing friends and enemies, addicting everyone with its rusty-colored power, and I can’t keep enough on hand (well, I could but I’ve got a coworker practically mainlining it and he’s run through a gallon jug all on his own).

It’s not just the unique taste that people are getting into, but something more; I swear it’s giving me the most surreal dreams and a strange feeling of lucidity when I drink it. I’m relaxed and yet my brain and senses feel extra sharp. Now it dawns on me that it’s the quinine connection. Sure enough, while the dreamscapes may go unexplained, it turns out quinine is also a muscle relaxant. No wonder we all feel so damn incredible. I figure it’s going to be a long, cold winter, and mix up another two-gallon batch just in case.

Back to square one. Those onions continue to haunt me, and in other cocktail conversations I’ve also been counseled about the use of a proper cherry when making Manhattans. Now, I’m generally not one to scoff at something with whiskey in it, but I’ve avoided Manhattans since my mother informed me that maraschino cherries contain formaldehyde – whether true or not (google, anyone?) the sickly-sweet taste of the little red cadavers never much appealed to me, nor did their waxy artificial texture. Of course, one always wants to be a good hostess, so with a solid whiskey foundation it seemed only natural to offer up something a wee bit classier cherry-wise.

In the test kitchen once again, I’m testing out two cherry recipes, both of which are incredibly simple: the first, a maraschino version which literally calls for heating Luxardo (a moderately expensive maraschino liqueur) and adding dark sour cherries – about as idiot-proof as one can get. The second is nearly as easy, with brandy as a replacement and the addition of cardamom, cinnamon, and cloves.

I’ve also managed to wrangle Nopa’s recipe for pickled onions from my friend Matty who tends there and claims they’re the best, and after a previous unexciting (unless you find salt exhilarating) recipe I cooked up on the fly, I’m hoping he’s right. While a smattering of cloves, allspice, and bay leaves simmer in a small pot of vinegar, pearl onions are getting peeled down to proper cocktail size.