Fall is the time to drink bourbon with abandon. The cooler weather invites heavier cocktails like the hot toddy, mulled cider and everyone's favorite wild whiskey wonder, the Manhattan.
Pasco Kitchen and Lounge, 820 E. University Blvd., makes a Manhattan that's actually worthy of the name. (Despite the fact they use bourbon rather than more-traditional rye.)
After the bartender mixes the ingredients — Buffalo Trace bourbon, Italian vermouth, bitters — the cocktail embarks on a long, solitary process called barrel aging. The mixture goes into a small oak barrel for about a month and a half before it comes out, smooth, mellow and incredibly trendy.
The process is all-the-rage in big cities like San Francisco and New York, but Pasco is the only place I've seen doing it in the Old Pueblo. (If you beg to differ, please let us know in the comments!) The aging process is almost like cooking a stew on low for several hours: The ingredients begin to coalesce and harmonize, softening and enriching the layers of flavor.
To prepare the drink, owner Ramiro Scavo — adeptly working the bar that day — pours the liquid into a fancy measuring jar, adds ice, stirs, and then strains into a martini glass. The elixir is crisp for something so boozy, with warm vanilla notes underscoring an almost herbal quality, perhaps from the vermouth. For an encore, a syrupy, almost wine-like Maraschino cherry that coats your mouth with a devilish sweetness. The cherries have been marinating in jars across the room, on a shelf above one of the tables.
The barrels can go through three rounds of Manhattans before they're tapped out. (But lucky for us, he's got four more barrels on backup.) After that, they're used to make Negronis, another spirit-based cocktail that lends well to barrel aging. And after that, Scavo will put in beer that he brews himself.
And on a whole different note, Scavo is also aging a barrel of grog made with German spices, sugar and Everclear. It's from a recipe obtained during a student's trip to Germany, and will be ready at the end of October.
