Liquor and Spirits

Drink of the Week: Hunting with the Woodsman at Bloodhound

When Bloodhound opened in 2008 (making it 36 in dog years), that stretch of Folsom was a rather lonely one with a few outlier clubs and leather shops. The bar's success and longevity is certainly due in part to the bartending skills that owner Dylan O'Brien honed over the years, but also because it ... More >>

Whiskies of the World Takes Port in S.F.

Where: SF Belle, Hornblower Yacht (remains docked), Pier 3 Embarcadero When: Sat., April 6th, 6 p.m.-9 p.m. Cost: $120, tickets available online The Rundown: Perhaps it's a reaction to the Atkins Diet era, a slingshot effect that took our national focus from avoidance of grain products to a fetishi ... More >>

Drink of the Week: The Viceroy at Cantina

Few spirits that have the potential to incite the kind of heated debate that pisco, the South American unaged grape based brandy, is capable of. Should you ever have the misfortune of asking a Chilean and a Peruvian about the origins of pisco, you would quickly find yourself with no answer and in th ... More >>

Drink of the Week: Puttin' on the Bix

Veering off Montgomery onto Gold Street, a little, almost nondescript alley, feels like slipping into a hidden passageway. Walking along it I get the thrill of being in on a secret, what I imagine was half the fun of prohibition era speakeasies. The tidy little street doesn't stand out for any parti ... More >>

Fall Cocktails: Two Exceptional Drinks at Presidio Social Club

Drink of the Week: Apple Brandy Sour at Presidio Social Club

With apple season in full force, and the weather kicking its final throws of Indian Summer, the cold weather cocktail season officially begins. At Presidio Social Club, bar manager Tim Stookey is adding two new drinks to the line up designed to unfog our lenses for a bit. The fall leaf red Picante ... More >>

Boozy Events for WhiskyWeek and Fleet Week

Since this week is the perfect storm of events and happenings, we're making sure you don't miss a sip. Here is our guide to all the booziest and best events that this crazy, everything-happening-at-once week has to offer. See Also: - Off The Pier Celebrates Fleet Weekend With Street Food - The Best ... More >>

Drink of the Week: Cool Hand Luke Fizz at Txoko

Some drinks are natural born thirst-shakers. At Txoko, bar manager Jason Brown's Cool Hand Luke Fizz ($11, Fighting Cock Bourbon, Mexican Coca Cola, egg whites, Peychaud's bitters) is a perfect blend of soda fountain nostalgia and whiskey & coke's bracing simplicity. The cocktail tastes like a cro ... More >>

Drink of the Week: Golden Gate 75th Celebration in Cocktails

With the official 75th Anniversary of the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge this weekend, the festivities will also come in cocktail form.* At Aurea inside the Stanford Court Hotel on Nob Hill, they're serving the St. Charles Punch ($12, Pierre Ferrand Ambre Cognac, Fonsecca Terra Bella Organic Rub ... More >>

Tres Times the Charm For Barman Joel Baker

​Two months ago Joel Baker, formerly bar manager at Bourbon & Branch and the Burritt Room, was brought on to enhance the bar and cocktail menu at Tres. Baker explained that, "The aim is to get the bar back to where it was when they opened, when Jacques [Bezuidenhout], Ryan [Fitzgerald], and Ma ... More >>

Drink: Wild Spirits: Small-Batch Bay Area Distillers Take Big Risks

Drink of the Week: A Flight Through Cocktail History

​In a brilliant effort to showcase the significant differences spirits can have on a cocktail, Locanda's new bar director Gabriel Lowe (formerly of Beretta and Delerosa) has been quietly adding cocktail flights to the menu. Taking a classic recipe, he presents a triptych of sorts, swapping out bas ... More >>

Happy Goat's Scotch Caramel Sauce

Happy Goat's Scotch Caramel Sauce is a revelation. The caramel first woos you with a sweet hit of fragrant Madagascar bourbon vanilla bean. Next comes the seduction of 12-year-aged single malt Scotch whiskey from Aberlour. The finish is a subtle twinge of earthiness. No sign of cloying over-swee ... More >>

Robert Burns Night: Pairing Haggis and Whisky

drewleavy/Flickr"But mark the Rustic, haggis fed/The trembling earth resounds his tread"​The culinary feast known as Burns Night, a dinner punctuated with poems from Scottish poet Robert Burns for his birthday (the 253rd one) today, is clearly not for the uninitiated. Aside from sourcing or making ... More >>

Encanto Pisco Stars Tonight at Bar Adagio's Free Cocktail College

​Where: Bar Adagio, 550 Geary (at Taylor), 775-5000 When: Thurs., Sept. 8, 6:30 p.m.-8 p.m. Cost: Free! but you must RSVP: baradagio@jdvhospitality.com The rundown: Bar Adagio's Cocktail College, the popular series held on the second Thursday of each month, happens tonight spotlighting loca ... More >>

Starlight Room Cocktail Preview

Lou BustamanteJoel Teitelbaum serving up a couple of Pisco Crustas​Opening tonight at 6 p.m. (until midnight) is the revamped incarnation of Harry Denton's Starlight Room sporting a new dance floor, plush furniture, and an inventive cocktail menu. We caught up with bar manager Joel Teitelba ... More >>

A Liquid Preview of Jasper's Corner Tap

Lou BustamanteKevein Diedrich, bar manager at Jasper's Corner Tap​Jasper's Corner Tap, the gastropub project in the hotel section west of Union Square, opens tonight with an impressive list of beverages. The tavern will feature 18 cocktails, 18 beers and six wines on tap. We were able to get ... More >>

Scotch and Cheese? Try It at Quince

​We've had a lot of cheese and a lot of Scotch, but we've never thought to try them together. That's because we lack the imagination of Quince general manager Katrina Parlato, who is running a bar special this week: a Scotch and cheese pairing flight.It's not cheap, at $36. But these are not cheap ... More >>

Two New Gins to Shake Your Thirst

​Gin can seem like a simple, juniper-focused spirit, but two new gins illustrate how it can be more sweet or savory, and that it doesn't always have to taste like a hangover -- er, pine. Just delicious. The No. 3 London Dry Gin ($39.99/750ml) by Anchor Brewers and Distillers, in conjunction ... More >>

Secret Negroni Menu at Orson

Lou BustamanteNegroni variation 5: Hard to Make a Living​While the Pisco Punch might have undisputed San Francisco heritage, the Negroni often feels more like the official cocktail of San Francisco. The equal measures of gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari said to have been invented in Florence by Co ... More >>

This Saturday: Make (and Drink!) Gin Cocktails with Scott Beattie

Lou BustamanteOld World Distillers' Davorin Kuchan will help Scott Beattie school you on gin.​Where: Ferry Building Marketplace, 1 Ferry Building (at Embarcadero)When: Sat., May 28, 2 p.m.-4 p.m.Cost: $50 online via Eventbrite; 21 and overThe rundown: Scott Beattie returns to the Ferry Building to ... More >>

Glimpsing Locanda Through a Cocktail Glass

LocandaBrian MacGregor.​Locanda Cocktail Preview at Blackbird Where: Blackbird, 2124 Market (at Church), 503-0630 When: Sun., Mar. 27, 8 p.m.-1 a.m. Cost: $9 per cocktail The rundown: Anticipation for the Delfina sibling Locanda (expected sometime this spring) is building as fast as a con ... More >>

Drink 2011: Cocktails, Let's Go Bowling

Pisco Sour, a Peruvian Celebration at La Mar

​La Mar Cebicheria Peruana's Pisco Sour (Pisco Quebranta, lime juice, simple syrup, egg white, and regional bitters) has felled us on more than one occasion. Though Pisco is a brandy (i.e., distilled from grapes), the foamy egg white fills us with nostalgia for (don't judge) the Orange Julius. ... More >>

Three Events to Keep You Drunk for New Year's Weekend

​New Year's Day is all about fresh starts and optimism, but don't make the mistake of believing you can say goodbye to a whole year with one night of drinking. Our extensive studies have shown that a full 24-hour period of carefully paced cocktails is required for that. With that in mind, here ... More >>

Local Pisco Expert Signs Books, Gets Wonky at Pisco Latin Lounge

Guillermo Toro-Lira has penned a history of Peruvian brandy in California.​Every movement needs a historian, someone who can frame events with the trajectory of inevitability. For Barbary Coast cocktail cultists, that historian is Lima-born Guillermo Toro-Lira. Like some early Christian saint, ... More >>

DIY for the Holidays: Homemade Liqueurs

Sean TimberlakeInfused spirits are among the easiest gifts to make and some of the nicest to get.​ The first of SFoodie's weekly guides to food-crafting gifts you can make. Giving booze for the holidays always reminds me of my grandfather. It's not that he was a big drinker, quite the contrar ... More >>

Going to SF WhiskyFest? Brush Up with This Whisk(e)y Primer

jrodmanjr/FlickrAmerican whiskies like bourbon are typically made from corn.​So what is whisky and how does it differ from whiskey? The difference is usually regional. The Scots, Canadians, and Japanese prefer to spell it whisky, while the Irish and Americans like to add an 'e' and spell it wh ... More >>

Don't Call It Peppery

Comstock Saloon: The Savory Coast

SFoodie Recommends: Taking Liberties on St. Patrick's Day

The Carton is Crap. Mix Up a Batch of Real Eggnog

norecipes/FlickrCheer bomb.​Sure, you can spike some store-bought eggnog with a pint of Old Grand-Dad and serve it in plastic tumblers at your next holiday soirée, but it won't be nearly as impressive as a big punch bowl of the real thing, made from scratch and proffered in festive tones of g ... More >>

What to Stock Your Bar with for That Holiday Cocktail Mixer

gibneb/FlickrSee? Easy.​When you get right down to it, the holiday season is all about lighting a candle in lieu of cursing the darkness during the gloomiest, coldest time of the year. From the Druids' burning yule log and Hanukkah's glowing menorah to the bulb-bedecked pine tree and the flami ... More >>

Don't Wait for 2012 to Shake Up a Batch of Leap Years

robertr2006/FlickrThe Leap Year might just make you put a ring on it.​A few weeks ago we made mention of The Savoy Cocktail Book, Harry Craddock's seminal bar guide published in 1930. Craddock, a willing refugee from Prohibition-era America, presided over the lobby bar at London's Savoy Hotel, ... More >>

Early Warning: WhiskyFest S.F. Bringin' the Brown to SOMA

cactusthesaint/FlickrA blur of Glenmorangie at last year's WhiskyFest.​Bourbon is America's native spirit. That's not editorializing on the part of a prideful Kentuckian, just fact -- and law, seeing as a 1964 Act of Congress officially declared it exactly that. Furthermore, on August 2, 2007, ... More >>

Straight-Up Classic or Rainbow Slushy, the Margarita is Timeless

Tequila Photos/Flickr Reposado tequilas on the bar at Tommy's.Remember when the family would head out to that Mexican joint on the highway with the racetrack-shaped cocktail lounge and the three-foot bartender and the Miwok skeletons under the floorboards? And your father would give you a tas ... More >>

Sangria is as Cooling and Variable as the City's Summer Weather

JonnyGdeCA/FlickrScore a prime example at Ramblas on Valencia.Sangria is as delectable and as open to experiment and interpretation as paella, its great culinary cohort of the Spanish table. This fruity, sparkling concoction is the perfect light-spirited libation for the summer months and is malleab ... More >>

The Rob Roy: A Wee Dram, Hold the Cherry

dseang via FlickrBarrel-aged Balvenie: Steel yourself to do the unspeakableThe Broken Record saloon (1166 Geneva at Edinburgh) not only serves exceptional pub grub, their whisky selection is breathtaking: well over a hundred different ryes, bourbons, and scotches, most of it from the top of the shel ... More >>

Hard-Times Hero: Americano's Champion Bartender Shakes Up Depression-Era Classics

SanFranAnnie via FlickrThe Sidecar: A classic for shaky timesOn Monday we blogged about Ronaldo Colli, the Americano bartender who walked away with both the technical and overall awards locally in this year's US Bartenders' Guild Association contest during Cocktail Week (he won another technical awa ... More >>

Road Trip Pit Stop: Beltramo's

... has one of the broadest selections of liqueurs anywhere.

Weird-Ass Beer of the Week: Allagash Curieux

This pricy brew has a definite bourbon aftertaste.

Puffing Stogies With The Suits At Palio D'Asti

Best Sissy-Drink Bar

Best Bourbon Selection

Cannery Wine Cellars

Best Place to Sip Kuo Kung Chiew

Rosewood

Pirate Cocktails

Best Place to Sip Single Malt

Edinburgh Castle

Best Place to Find a Latvian Liqueur

Cannery Wine Cellars

Club Car

Gold Coast

Absinthe Makes the Heart Grow Fonder