TO BEGIN WITH, I love infusing. To infuse vodka with a fresh ingredient  is to simply turn your favorite food into your favorite cocktail. For instance, if  fresh apples go into vodka, in time the vodka will taste like fresh  apples. This goes on and on with spices, vegetables, herbs, and various combinations of  unlikely suspect.

 For instance:

 

JUNE--Granny Smith Green Apple Vodka

This is the best vodka I've ever made.

If you work at McDonald's and go home at night to make yourself a quarter-pounder for dinner, then you really love McDonald's. When I go home, I infuse vodka using organic, natural  green apples. By far my greatest success (so far) is Granny Smith Green Apple Vodka.

I can make any cocktail I've ever heard of at home. I have the ingredients to make any cocktail from any era going back to ancient Babylon—seriously. But at the end of my Friday, this is what I reach for.

Virtually no vodka on the market uses fresh ingredients. If they did, then they would shout it from the highest rooftop. ALL NATURAL, ALL ORGANIC, NO SUGAR ADDED! NO PERFUMES, DYE OR ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS! They can't say this because it's not true. I can say it.

No sugar is needed and the tartness balances naturally. Purists value clarity of color over flavor. I value flavor over anything else. And while some bartenders grimace at the thought of a vodka martini on the rocks (because vodka snobs think of this as diluting) what I make myself hold bright, authentic flavors whether straight up or over ice. 

When my workweek—finally!!!--ends, I come home to kiss my wife, I look in on my baby boy asleep, and then I can relax. She and I sit and talk. I mostly listen as she tells me about her day, her work, our baby boy, over two glasses of Granny Smith vodka.

 

JULY—Cilantro Vodka

Too hot and too much rain: bad for summer weather but good for rich, green cilantro. Local farmers in upstate New York and New Jersey (don't judge) hail their best crop in a decade. Crisp, sharp, delicious. Natural earth notes and a finish of light pepper.

My family caught some good weather and adjourned from the sweltering concrete jungle to celebrate pastoral pure sunshine on the Harlem Meer in Central Park. Heirloom tomatos and carmelized onions on French bagette. Crisp kale chips. Gourmet sausage. 

Washed down with glasses of dry, fresh cilantro vodka. As my son chases pidgeons and we threw a ball around. We took a break and I joined the rest of my family for a cilantro vodka on the rocks. My best day in Central Park.

 

AUGUST--Montauk Spiced Rum

One month ago, I saw Montauk for the first time. I was raised in a quiet meadow of a southern beach town, so this felt like getting back to my roots. Sand dunes and open water deserve respect and get it here.

Astonishingly, from jaded, harried New Yorkers. In a small downtown square, my wife and son and I find a small seafood house. My son ate fish, which is rare, a snow-white piece of scalar. She and I had a thick stew made for a man's man. Blocks of potato, crushed carrot and celery in the stock, along with all manner of shellfish.

After I finished a pint of local micro-brew, the sun had gone down and the breezes blew cooler and as slow as the waves. I asked the bartender if there was a fisherman's rum or local night-warmer for flasks out on the seas.

Wrong question. He glared at me, looking down through thick eyebrows pulled low. No professional fisherman, I was corrected, drinks on the job.

Oh, I said.

Further, I was asked, if I drank when I was working; I replied that I was a bartender in Manhattan, so drinking IS my business.

On the drive home my mind started building an idea for a spiced rum to capture my trip to the Hamptons, a culinary scrapbook of Montauk for the first time. It was a perfect day, old and new. Land and sea. New England's traditions mixed just right with Manhattan's cocktail iconoclassicism. Cranberries, cinnamon sticks, citrus zest balanced with allspice berries, sweetened only slightly with fresh pear.

 

(I sure think all these are good as they are, but if you’d like a cocktail recipe for any of these, then all you have to do is ask.)

 (If you enjoy mixology, and think you know a good cocktail for any of these liqueurs, then let me know.)

           

 

A HUMBLE INTRODUCTION

A HUMBLE INTRODUCTION

By Paul Johnson

How far can any artform go?

Always a knotty problem, but particularly vexing if you're a bartender. How far out can you go with a cocktail? And what makes a great bar into a great bar?

I'm suppose to say that there are no limits, but I really don't know. The web is full of blogs, and I doubt it needs one more, but here I am. For me Booze of the Month is about how far something can go, and when do we say "Wherever our limits are, they are not here."

Please remember: I'm no defeatist. I keep thinking of old painters with their portraits in 1912, just before they saw "Nude Descending A Staircase." What a mind-bender that must have been!

What must it have been like to see Jackson Pollack in the 50's, if you were a conventional painter? One would have thought the avant just became much less guarded. 

I've never thought of myself as a conventional bartender. I used herbs before most, fresh ingredients for a long time now, and truly enjoy what I do. I love taking it as far as I can. But even my fellow bartenders who are used to flying at Icarian heights often fall for the same old tricks: like basil and cucumber in gin. Basil leaves and a slice of cucumber muddled into gin makes for a yummy cocktail, but it stopped being the cutting edge more than a decade ago.

Ever seen two white spirits with lime juice and simple syrup? Sure you have, not an idea with the dew still on it. So why is this the tail end of most cocktails on a drink list? Did the bartenders of the Big Apple get rid of all their sour mix (finally!) only to replace it with the fresh version? Is that good enough? 

Even for those of you who mix a juice or two with vodka, please realize that sooner or later (in two years? in five years? ten at the latest?) you'll grow tired of the same-old-same-old. Then your palate with develop and yearn for more. You'll want more flavor, Earth will run out of different kinds of juice to mix with your Absolut, and finally want something new and more satisfying. Something better and more exciting. 

It's just around the corner. A few years away. You'll want it.

More.

This is what Booze of the Month is all about: authentic flavors, real innovation, for a mature palate. Look for some great infusions, some great recipes, and words of wisdom from some of the best bartenders in New York City.