Shaken And Stirred - Shaken and Stirred - Drinks as Light as Air
THE current housing variety aside, Americans love bubbles.
Andrea Mohin/
We guzzle upward of 15 billion gallons of soda annually, and we gave the world bubble wrap, bubble gum and Alka-Seltzer. Jeffrey Eugenides, in his novel “Middlesex,” put the best metaphorical spin on our national bubble-love, when his narrator pondered the blue bubbles percolating inside the edges of a jukebox in a Detroit diner: “bubbles representing the effervescence of American life,” Mr. Eugenides wrote, “of our postwar optimism, of our fizzy, imperial, carbonated drinks.”
Now add vodka to our list of fizzy, imperial, carbonated drinks. And whiskey, and even absinthe. Because bartenders and drinks-minded mad-scientist types have lately been pioneering methods of adding bubbles to booze, not by mixing them with carbonated soft drinks, à la rum and Coke, but by carbonating the liquor (or the entire cocktail) itself.
At Momofuku Ko, the chef David Chang’s newest restaurant on First Avenue, they’re injecting bubbles into Banyuls, the French dessert wine.
At WD-50, on the Lower East Side, the bar manager Tona Palomino has been carbonating cocktails since late last year.
Two featured drinks are the Cabo San Lucas, a fizzy purple mixture of Level vodka, hibiscus tea and yuzu juice; and the Son of a Preacher Man, an alluringly prickly combination of rye whiskey, ginger liqueur and lime juice, all of which Mr. Palomino charges with carbon dioxide. A carbonated vodka, an import from England called O2, hit the city’s liquor stores in February.
Why all the bubbles?
“Take a gin and tonic, which seems like it should be a really great drink but rarely is,” said Dave Arnold, the director of Culinary Technology at the French Culinary Institute and a profound bubble fan. “There’s usually not enough gin flavor and not enough bubbles.”
By carbonating it, a process with which Mr. Arnold has been experimenting for the last three years, “you get a nice, punchy gin taste with an alcohol level I like, and the effervescence I like.”
Avoiding dilution was a goal of Mr. Palomino’s as well. “I guess that’s No. 1, which makes me sound like a complete alcoholic,” he said. “But it’s all kind of fun. It adds an element of sparkle to the cocktail.”
The process may sound like too much work — Mr. Arnold uses a proportional gas mixer, a breadbox-size machine not common to American kitchens — but Mr. Palomino said the equipment he uses, a simple carbon dioxide charging system, was easily available online. (Such systems, often called home soda makers, run about $250.)
He levels one warning, though: “Something about the bubbles makes the drink go to your head faster. Which, depending on how you look at it, is either a good thing or a bad thing.”
SON OF A PREACHER MAN
12 ounces rye whiskey
8 ounces Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur
2 1/2 ounces freshly-squeezed lime juice
Finely-grated lime zest, for garnish
Special equipment needed: home soda maker.
Combine the ingredients in a clean 24-ounce plastic soda bottle. Following the instructions on your soda maker, carbonate the mixture and refrigerate one hour. Serve in a rocks glass over ice and garnish the top with the lime zest.
5 servings
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