French 75

Original oil on panel, 12" x 12". $595. Click to buy.

"Death, Gin and Lemon Juice" was the theme for our last recipe test night. For the first half, we offed ourselves with the French 75, named for early French artillery. This is normally a champagne cocktail with a bit of gin. Ours ended up more of a gin cocktail with a bit of champagne. Is that bad?

I'll get to part two next week. In the meantime, I'm happy to announce that I have a venue for the Mixology Book Release Cocktail Party: it will be at Mizuna, a wonderful Spokane restaurant committed to delicious cocktails and an exceptional vegetarian/vegan menu (in addition to the regular menu, don't worry). It's happening the first Friday in November.

This is getting real!

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Bijou

Original oil on panel, 12" x 12". $595. Click to buy.

Bijou is a painting I have been looking forward to for a long time. The word bijou means "jewel" in French, after the jewel colors of the three main ingredients: Gin represents diamonds; Chartreuse, emeralds; and Vermouth, rubies. I knew I wanted to put in a giant cocktail ring just for fun (this one thanks to Finders Keepers here in Spokane). 

By now I had a great set of perfect sparkly, jewel-y props: multi-colored glasses, a faceted-stem cocktail glass, the silver tray. I arranged them together and it looked really, really dull. The colors of the glasses are faint, so to punch it up I actually mixed the drink to add color. But the drink somehow erased the delicate blue of its glass. 

I decided to push through it anyway, and punch up the glassware colors in the painting itself. Before long I realized this was going to work out better than expected. I ended up capturing the sparkly, jewel-like quality I wanted in the end. Hooray!

For the next few weeks, I will be at an Artist Trust conference in Port Townsend, then off to the Sausalito Art Festival with a load of pastels. I look forward to painting more drinks in September!

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Daiquiri

Original oil on panel, 12" x 12". $595. Click to buy.

I'm not sure I had ever tasted a daiquiri before making them for this recipe. Maybe once, long ago, and the memory of the cloyingly-sweet slushee of a drink was enough to deter me until now. Turns out daiquiris, made properly, are really good. How can light rum, lime juice and sugar (a small amount of sugar) be bad? 

Oh, by the way, there is something even better than light rum, lime juice and sugar. DARK rum, lime juice and a little less sugar. Still a daiquiri. Mmmm.

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Vesper

Original oil on panel, 12" x 12". Sold.

Born in a 1953 Ian Fleming novel, Vesper is the "newest" drink featured in my book. I decided to include it because 1. it is a delicious drink and 2. it gave me an excuse to paint Paul's awesome mid-century-esque rocket shaker. 

Just like its namesake in Casino Royale, Vesper the painting proved a bit treacherous. The Lillet label was a beast, but since it looks like it hasn't changed in 100 years and I like that, I persisted. I even switched out one of the shot glasses in frustration halfway through. The new shot glass ended up looking much better in the end. I love how it reflects the lemon's cute little pointy butt.

We tested this recipe at the home of our friends Richard and Kate Vander Wende. They are both artists with a fascinating history in the film industry. Kate inspired me to start daily painting, and went with me to the Carol Marine workshop that kicked this project off.

Richard made the drinks for Vesper and Martini night. He got it all right the first time, no tweaking required. Since they provided the drinks, I made dinner. I had no idea what to make for martinis, so I started looking up appetizer pairings. Naturally, everything was olives and salty, so I made a puttanesca. Not a great puttanesca, mind you, but the pairing was solid.

Richard, Paul, Kate and Tom enjoy a Vesper Martini

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Martini

Original oil on panel, 12" x 12". Sold.

First of all, I owe a big Thank You to our friends Richard and Kate Vander Wende. They graciously hosted Martini and Vesper night. I was a bit nervous about testing these recipes, since I have never particularly enjoyed martinis. But now all that has changed.

Here's how Richard did it: he chose the gin well (Sun Gun Club Gin). He set a bottle of vermouth on the counter, shook the gin with ice, poured it into glasses, and garnished with a delicious Picholine olive. Perfection. We did try a version where vermouth actually went into the glasses at about a 10:1 gin to vermouth ratio. It was slightly different, but no one could really see the point.

There are those who say that a Martini must contain vermouth to qualify as a Martini. But there are many creative ways to handle this… Richard's proximity method is one. You might also hold up the bottle of vermouth so that light shines through it onto the drink, look at the vermouth from across the room, or just catch its reflection in the shaker as I've done here. 

Richard selects the perfect Picholine olive.

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Whiskey Sour

Original oil on panel, 12" x 12". $500 (unframed). Click to buy.

The best whiskey sour I ever had was at a speakeasy-like bar tucked away behind a crepe shop in downtown Portland. Sadly, Central has closed, but not before greatly raising my standards for an already-favorite drink. Not only was it my first scratch whiskey sour, it was my first one with egg white. So good!

My own recipe is a work in progress, but the ingredients are simple enough to go ahead with the painting. The egg was a refreshing new challenge to paint. Cheers!

Me making a big mess testing whiskey sours on… me.

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Embassy

Original oil on panel, 12" x 12". $595. Click to buy.

One September I went to Boots vegan bakery and lounge with a friend. It was the first cool day in a long while, and I asked the owner, Alison, to make me a drink that "tastes like Fall." I've known Alison long enough to know she would pull it off, and she did not disappoint.

The drink she made was the Embassy, and it was about to become my new favorite drink. The Embassy is richly layered, warming and a bit spicy. Basically, Fall in a glass. It has three different liquors and liqueurs, plus citrus and bitters.

As I debated how to represent so many ingredients, I had a stroke of luck. Raising the Bar, a vintage travel trailer filled with old-school barware goodness, appeared in my neighborhood. Just inside the door was a fantastic set of multicolored cordial glasses, three of which appear here with dark rum, Cointreau and brandy.

To top it all off, the fall theme gave me the perfect excuse to use some leftover wallpaper from my parents' old house. All of this added up to a fun challenge, and I'm happy with the result.

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