Monday Tasting Notes

St. Marks Place

Some of us write about what was great during a certain period of our lives. The wine that we could have bought cheaper (didn’t feel cheap then—it’s why I don’t have any Lynch-Bages), the restaurant that welcomed you no matter what (Zoe and Jean Claude).

Recently I made a drink that reminded me of a walk on St. Marks on a Saturday. It was a lemonade with some rose water in it. It was from a place that I’d also ordered some falafel. The lemonade stayed in my mind waiting for the right moment to be recalled like a librarian pulling out a Dewey Decimal card that had not been touched since July 2, 1946.

I like gin. I like gin and tonics. I don’t like a lot of canned cocktails but I do like the Long Drink. My husband asked if I could replicate it and the efforts have been average at best but my own bartender’s sauce has been this Yuzu sake liqueur. It makes everything better.

I work in a shop and sometimes if some inventory goes out of date my very kind boss will ask if I want it…lemon tonic was one of those.

As for the Giffard Rose liqueur…well…it didn’t sell and he gave it to me. Also roses tend to remind people of their grandmothers but in a way that is overwhelming. Straight out of the bottle it might make you think of that intense aroma. It takes some work to not have it take over like absinthe does in so many things (that’s another story).

So I have been making gin and tonics with a healthy splash of the yuzu—an adult lemonade if there ever was.

What was I gonna do with the rose liqueur? And just like that the memory of walking down St Marks one Saturday afternoon in the summer long ago came strolling out of the catalog like it had been waiting for the researcher’s hand to stumble upon the card.

New ingredients and old memories can sometimes create new experiences.