Brightest Young Things

Wine News That Won't Give You Da Flu

• On Friday May 1, The Pug is hosting "Hefeweizens for Habitat", a beer happy hour with 100% of proceeds going towards Habitat for Humanity. $20 gets you in for all the Hefeweizen you can drink!
• Beefeater Gin with grapefruit and sencha tea? It's here.
• Definitely not new but for those who didn't know: Room 11 has a blog where they are charting their progress towards opening, and beyond! Even if you don't care for the soon to be wine bar in Columbia Heights, you'll still get a kick out of it if you're the renovating-home improvement-Bob Vila-eat-your-heart-out type.
• Boys and girls, break out those sundresses: Wonderland (which magically turns into a slice of Clarendon on the weekends after 8:00pm) is having Sundress fest this Sunday, May 3. From 4:00pm-close anyone wearing a sundress, male or female or something in between, drinks up for happy hour prices until close. Proceeds go to Columbia Heights Initiative. There is a pig roast involved and many, many jokes at the expense of transgendered folk and swine flu victims. If I wasn't going here I would probably be there.
• From the Going Out Gurus: To break in its new outdoor patio, The Gibson is having Tiffany's Tiki Night on Sundays, where bartender Tiffany Short will feature three cocktails each Sunday. These range from $8-$12 and are plucked from an old Trader Vic's bartending guide (so you know they'll toe the line between classy and trashy. Sign me up).
• Also aforementioned in the Going Out Gurus post: Tabard Inn has updated their cocktail menu and will feature springtime cocktails with such flavors as Lillet and one of my all-time favorites, would-take-this-to-a-deserted-island liqueurs, St. Germaine. Check it out on Wednesdays and Thursdays when Chantal Tseng is behind the bar (per the Post).
• For Svetlana: the world's largest Mint Julep premieres this weekend at Churchill Downs, featuring 206 gallons of minty goodness.

This past Tuesday yours truly went to check out the new cocktails over at Sova on H Street NE. Sova might not update their site that often but their offerings sure have changed. The cocktails are a mix of inspired newbies and stone cold classics (reposted from Frozen Tropics):

$8 Andes’ Sangaree – Carmenère, Crème de Cassis, Sugar, Lemon Peel
$11 Formosa – Ramos Pinto White Port, Hou Hou Shu Sparkling Sake, Orange Peel
$10 Vieux to a Kill – St. Remy XO Brandy, Old Overholt Rye, Coffe-infused Vermouth
$9 Original Sazerac – St. Remy XO Brandy, Sugar, Peychaud Bitters, Kübler Absinthe
$10 Red Lion – G’Vine Gin, Grand Marnier, Orange Juice, Lemon Juice
$12 Champs-Élysées – Hardy VSOP Cognac, Yellow Chartreuse, Sugar, Lemon Juice
$10 Coffee Cocktail – Ramos Pinto Ruby Port, St. Remy XO Brandy, Sugar, Egg
$10 French 75 – G’Vine Gin, Lemon Juice, Sugar, Charles de Fère Sparkling Wine

In addition to these they also offer a flight of brandies (including pisco, which is a brandy):
$14 Peruvian Pisco Tour with El Sarcay de Azpitia Pisco Acholado, La Caravedo Puro Quebranta Orgánico,
Viejo Tonel Moscatel

$16 European Brandy Tour with Poli Traminer di Poli Grappa, Castarède VSOP Armagnac Aged 10 years,
Hardy XO Cognac

They also offer a daily cocktail, and I was in luck - Tuesday featured the Radar O'Reilly, an incredibly original, incredibly fragrant cocktail. The drink is so named for Radar from M*A*S*H, who must have left an indelible impression; Radar's favorite drink was Grape Nehi, and this drink combined Surreal Grape Vodka, lemon juice, Creme de Violette (which in a strange coincidence is going to be featured in Friday's post) and Sprite in an effort to recreate that taste. A lovely lavender in color, this photo does not do it justice (which is why I need to start bringing a real camera on these jaunts):

My fiancee got the French 75, which had such a perfect lemon-verbena scent. These cocktails at Sova are so fragrant that I found that just by sitting at the bar you could smell a host of delicious scents wafting from other people's cocktails. The taste was phenomenal: it's a classic cocktail and the Gin makes all the difference. What could easily be lemon-scented Pinesol was instead a delicious and fragrant drink with flowery notes.

Then it was time to get to business. I had to know if their Original Sazerac was up to snuff. Ladies and gents, it was: I could smell the bitters and absinthe a mile away. You'll notice it used brandy instead of rye whiskey, which gave it a slight caramel taste. Only slightly: the bitters and absinthe take center stage.

The last but not least we sampled was the Red Lion: don't expect anything red or a splash of grenadine. Instead find what I suppose I could only describe as what a Mimosa wants to be when it grows up. It's fragrant, overwhelming citrus taste, without any pulp or flat fizz. I think if you're unsure of any cocktails on this menu and don't want to take a chance, try the Red Lion: it's not going to change the world but it's a friendly reminder that cocktails can be fruity and slightly sweet without being a Orangetini Surprise Blossom from Applebee's.

In short, the cocktails at Sova are most definitely worth the trip and remind me of what cocktails should be: fragrant, complex, nuanced, and clever. It also didn't hurt that the upstairs wine bar is cozy and quiet, two things that most places in DC (ahem, Gibson) lack not because of some inherent flaw but because of their popularity. Go to Sova while you can still get in without a reservation.

And now for a friendly PSA: I have never had such an experience in a DC cab as I did that night. Now, I've heard it said before: don't get into a cab that doesn't have its license displayed. If there's no license, it's not a true DC cab and you can be taken for a ride (literally and figuratively). Unfortunately it's kind of hard to tell sometimes if a cab has a license if 1.) you get in on the left side (it's displayed on the right, on the back of the front passenger's seat) and 2.) you've had the four cocktails detailed above.

So we climb into what looks like a normal cab. Immediately something doesn't seem right: there's no license displayed, the meter starts off at $4.00, and the additional meter displaying extra fare (say, the $1.00 for extra passengers) reads "$2.534". The drop is not $4.00, and there were two people in the cab (not say, two people and 1/8th of a piece of luggage in the trunk or whatever it would be to get that fare) so the additional fare should only have been $1.00. In the words of my old southern Grandaddy, "This shit don't smell right".

It doesn't make much sense to say "Stop right here, you illegal, overcharging cab driver!" on H Street NE and 8th when we finally put all these pieces together, so we ride to Gallery Place. The slurring driver (I am not exaggerating: DC lockup contains more eloquent, less drug-addled men than this guy) turns off the meter and says the fare is $10; most of you reading this knows it doesn't cost $10 to go from 12th and H NE to Gallery Place. An argument ensued and culminated with my fiancee yelling "We're not going to pay and you can feel free to call the cops if you want to."

The lovely evening ended with me and my fiancee running across four lanes of traffic to get to the Metro, not wanting to wait around for a pissed off (and probably high) cab driver to come out to collect his overcharged, illegal fare. The night was truly electric, featuring two popular elements of DC nightlight: a well crafted cocktail and a drugged out illegitimate cab driver. Truly magical.