Yes, J.Crew, Women Drink Whiskey, Too

I really don't want to hate on J.Crew. I don't usually have a lot of die-hard brand loyalty, but an embarrassingly large percentage of my wardrobe is from there.

"J.Crew knows my soul," I once told an incredulous friend of mine. I was dead serious.

But sometimes even the things we love disappoint us.

For the second year in a row, J.Crew has included whiskey and cocktail paraphernalia in the men's section of the holiday gift guide, and only in the men's section. 

Last year it was a flask. This year it was an emergency cocktail kit. 

Sigh. 

When people ask me about the discrimination women face in the whiskey world, I tell them it's rarely something explicit or actively exclusionary. I've never been refused service, or been straight up laughed at. Usually we face micro-aggressions: being offered the wine list instead; or being asked if we think we're sure we can handle the strong drink we just ordered. 

These at least are instances where, however subtle, the discrimination is apparent and can be corrected then and there. A polite, yet firm, "No, I'd rather see the whiskey list," or, "Yes, I'm quite sure," will put any condescending server in his place, at least for the evening. 

More insidious are instances of discrimination that we're not even aware of, and that's where selective marketing comes in. How am I supposed to know that I'm being denied the opportunity to purchase something if I don't even know it's for sale because it's not in the section targeted to me?

I get that some things are for women, and some things are for men (although even this is debatable). We do usually wear different clothes and accessories, so it makes sense to put those in different sections for more streamlined searching.  But a lot of things are for all people! Why not have a general gift guide section, for non gender-specific items, and then within it tag things as women's or men's apparel and accessories?

Last year J. Crew even had different names for the different men's and women's gift sections. 

We get throw pillows, they get flasks.

As you can see, I - and others - were rightfully indignant about it. (Urban Outfitters was guilty of it too, although I have seen a flask emblazoned with the words "Hot Mess" in purple glitter for sale at UO, so at least they're targeting both sides, however tackily.)

 Apparently J.Crew didn't get the message. 

Sigh. 

Honestly, it's not even about the stupid cocktail kit. Frankly, paying $24 for a miniature bottle of bitters, a napkin, a spoon, and two sugar packets is highway robbery. But just because I wouldn’t buy it from J. Crew doesn’t mean I don’t want to be offered the chance!

I've written before about gendered marketing, which in almost all cases like this is pandering and condescending. But at least Heaven Hill acknowledges that women drink whiskey, even if they think we can only handle it watered down, fruit flavored, and infantilized. 

This is one more instance, one more data point in the sea of micro-discriminations. And it's especially frustrating to see it coming from a company that has in other instances been on the forefront of dismantling gender stereotypes. 

Just when I think that maybe Women Who Whiskey is starting to become superfluous, little things like this happen and remind me that our work is nowhere near done.

Fall #AF Punch

A couple of weeks ago I was up in the Hudson Valley with a group of friends to celebrate a birthday and visit the Tuthilltown Distillery, where Hudson Whiskey, among others, is produced. Now, I’m from Massachusetts, so I’m well familiar with fall foliage, and the gorgeous explosions of color that graces New England during autumn. I have years of childhood memories of sweet, pillowy apple cider donuts, and I grew up thinking it was perfect normal to climb up precarious ladders to spend half an afternoon picking apples off trees, and then paying $25 for the privilege of bringing home a bushel’s worth of your own manual labor. This was all routine to me.

While I appreciate the autumnal wonderland that takes over New England in the fall, I’m not as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed about it as a lot of tourists who travel from far and wide to see the leaves change.

But you guys—this weekend was fall AF!

Maybe I had become a little bit fall-jaded over the years, and all I needed was a whole weekend fully immersed in the Hudson Valley—gorging myself on, yes, apple cider donuts, everything pumpkin (basic be damned), and of course, lots of whiskey—to become reacquainted with the technicolor display that nature puts on for us every year. Whatever it was, it worked.

We took the whole New England Fall thing to its extreme, infusing the entire weekend with its essence. We kicked our way through damp leaf piles in the woods, visited antique shops and flea markets, and bought way too many pumpkins, apples, and donuts at the neighborhood farm stand.

Yet after stocking up on all kinds of Hudson Ryes, Bourbons, and even barrel-aged maple syrup at the distillery, I turned to an old friend to make the Fall #AF Punch that we mixed up for the birthday party: Canadian Club.

Canadian Club was my gateway whiskey. I started drinking it when I lived in Canada for university, and I’ve had a soft spot for it—and rye—ever since. Its blend of rye, rye malt, and barley gives it a distinctive taste that’s smooth, but not underwhelming. It holds up to being mixed, but doesn’t overpower the other flavors.

At first glance, this just seems like a cold version of hot spiked cider. But the sparkling wine and lemon juice give it a bit of a kick, and once it mellows all together, it’s much more multi-dimensional than your average hot cider. And it packs a bit of a punch (depending on how much whisky you add). Enjoy responsibly, with friends, preferably while sitting on a pile of orange leaves.

Fall AF Punch Ingredients

• 6 cups apple cider
• 1 bottle of sparkling wine
• 2 cup of orange juice (preferably fresh squeezed)
• ½ cup lemon juice
• 1 apple, sliced
• Canadian Club or other rye whisk(e)y to taste
• ¼ tsp each ground cinnamon and nutmeg
• Ice

Combine cider, sparkling wine, orange juice, lemon juice, spices, and whiskey in a large lunch bowl. Stir and let sit 20-30 minutes. While punch is resting, slice an apple into rounds. Float the apple rounds in the punch bowl. Serve over ice.

Espinheira Com Uísque

Two weeks ago I went on a very short, very last minute trip to Lisbon for work. I don’t recommend flying to Europe for just a couple days, but the disadvantages—exhaustion, never really knowing what time it was, a very high plane time to destination time ratio—were overwhelmingly outweighed by the delights that I discovered there!

My mother was born in Lisbon, and while I grew up hearing stories about it, I’d somehow never been as an adult, so I was really excited to get a chance to visit, however briefly.  And brief though my stay was, Lisbon is quaintly small, so I managed to see quite a bit of it in the day or so I had to walk around and explore. I also managed to come up with some first-glance reactions:

Cons: Everything is uphill! Spanish fluency, while helpful in reading Portuguese, is absolutely no help in conversation. Very fast drivers on very narrow streets!

Pros: All the beautiful hand-painted tiles! Hidden Art Deco details everywhere you turn. The bounty of exquisite seafood… and pastries… and sardines… all the food, really! But mostly: the wine.

Oh my, the wine. I’ve always loved Port wine, but there’s something about enjoying a (criminally cheap) glass at a sidewalk bar in a charming little alleyway that just elevated the experience. I popped in from wine shop to wine shop, lusting after vintage bottles selling for pennies compared to how much they would cost in New York. After agonizing over the choices (with limited luggage space, I had to be reasonable) I finally settled on a Tawny Port to bring home.

And then my eye fell on a beautiful Art Nouveau-style golden label on a bottle of ruby liqueur. I didn’t know what it was, but for only ten euro it was impossible to leave without it.

I chatted with the shopkeeper who told me a bit about it: Espinheira Licor de Ginja, a sour cherry liqueur made by soaking cherries and in aguardente (a Portuguese brandy). It’s a national favorite, and the Espinheira brand is still family owned by the fifth generation.

It also happens to be delicious!

While it’s meant to sipped, served in small cups with boozy cherries in the bottom, I wanted to try it in a cocktail. A whiskey cocktail of course! Enter Espinheira com uísque, or Espinheira with whiskey.

While cherries might evoke summer, this cherry liqueur has a richer, more autumnal flavor, which pairs beautifully with the woodsy, caramel notes of the bourbon. The lemon and club soda make it more of a light, refreshing cocktail, but a more Manhattan-like variation could skip the lemon and club soda, and instead include a couple of dashes of bitters—essentially substituting the Espinheira for the more traditional (but not dissimilar) sweet vermouth. I haven’t tried that version yet, but it’s next on the list.

Saúde!

Espinheira Com Uísque

Adapted from Food & Wine Cherry Soda

• 1 ½ oz Bourbon
• ¾ oz Espinheira Licor de Ginja (substitute Cherry Heering if you can’t find Espinheira)
• ¾ oz of freshly squeezed lemon juice
• ¼ oz of simple syrup
• 2 oz club soda
• Ice

Combine the Bourbon (I used Buffalo Trace), Espinheira Licor de Ginja, simple syrup, and the lemon juice in a shaker with some ice. Shake vigorously and strain into a highball glass over ice. Top with club soda, and garnish with lemon.

Bourbon Berry Bramble

One of my favorite childhood memories is going wild berry picking with my grandfather in the south of France. Papie Roger—Grandpa Roger—was a life-long lover of the outdoors, and knew more about edible plants than anyone else I’ve ever met. While my brother and I reveled in the berry-laden bushes—stuffing more blueberries into our mouths than into our little baskets, putting raspberries on our fingers like little hats before biting them off—my grandfather would forage for wild mushrooms, which would often end up featured at dinner in a delicious cream sauce in escalopes à la crème.

Whatever berries we ate in the woods were our treat, but the berries that managed to escape the clutches of our little fingers and make it all the way home would be whisked away by my grandmother, Mamie Madeleine, who would promptly boil them down into jars and jars of sweet and tart jam. They would get labeled, in her elegant, slightly shaky script—Framboise été 1994 or Mirtille été 1995—and then stashed away on a shelf in the cellar, to be unearthed the following summer for tartine and petit déjeuner.

Though we were always sad to see our harvests confiscated and vanished to the pantry, it was probably for the best; left to our own devices, we always indulged to excess, invariably resulting in a pair of whiny children with belly aches.

As an adult I love berries no less than I did as a child, and it seems that I have no more discipline than I did then either.

As soon as summer rolls around and those little pints of gems start popping up at grocery stores and on the corner fruit stands, I start stocking up. 3 for $5 pints of raspberries is too good a deal to pass up! Blueberries go in everything from cereal to smoothies to pancakes! When they’re ripe and sweet, blackberries are like little juicy bites of heaven.

The problem (a common one for single people unwisely buying in bulk), is that inevitably I can never get to them fast enough! And it breaks my heart to throw them away, as much as it did to have my hand-picked raspberry harvests end up in inaccessible jars.

So what can a berry lover do when you can’t stand to see another blueberry smoothie, but still have a fridge full of berries? A bramble!

The original bramble “brings together dry gin, lemon juice, sugar syrup and crème de mûre,” but this is a whiskey column and September is National Bourbon Heritage Month, so try making a Bourbon Berry Bramble instead! I didn’t have crème de mûre, and since I was trying to use up leftover berries anyway, I substituted the liqueur for fresh fruit and a little bit of raspberry jam, which also serves to replace some of the sweetness of the simple syrup. To give it a floral note, I muddled in oh-so-fragrant Meyer lemons, and kept it light with a splash of sparkling water.

I used Larceny Bourbon, a wheated bourbon made in the Old Fitzgerald tradition. A delicious, very affordable alternative to Pappy Van Winkle (the unicorn of the Bourbon world), Larceny is approachable, floral, and sweet, yet buttressed by some more structured tobacco and cinnamon notes.

It’s wonderful neat, but the perfect price point for guiltlessly mixing into a batch of Bourbon Berry Brambles.

This jewel-toned cocktail is perfect for the changing seasons—honoring those last berry-filled days of summer, while easing in the autumnal spice of the bourbon.

Bourbon Berry Bramble

• 2 oz Larceny Bourbon

• 4-6 fresh berries (blackberries and raspberries work best) plus 3 berries for garnish.

• 1 tsp berry jam

• Meyer lemon (sliced and zested)

• 1 tsp simple syrup

• Sparkling water

• Ice

In a mixing glass, muddle berries, jam, and 1-2 slices of Meyer lemon. Add simple syrup and bourbon, stir. Pour everything (berries, lemons and all!) into a tumbler over ice. Top with sparkling water, garnish with lemon zest and a few berries skewered on a stirrer.

The article originally appeared on the Whiskey Reviewer on September 4, 2015.

Camp for Grownups

I never went to summer camp when I was a kid. I occasionally went camping (very rustically, as my dad thought that carving our own cutlery out of sticks, and other such activities quite unnecessary in the modern era, would “build character”), but I never had the classic, crafting, canoeing, capture-the-flagging, whispering-secrets-to-your-bunkmate after lights out, overnight camp experience that so many American kids have growing up.

From my friends who did go to camp, I heard a mixed bag of stories. The freedom was intoxicating, the nature walks were a welcome change from city life, and they could cannonball into lakes to their little hearts’ content. There was also horrible cafeteria food, cold showers, and swarms of mosquitoes. All of that I could take or leave.

But the stories that always made me so envious—the stories that made me wish I could trade my wonderful summers in Europe visiting family for a month at a lakeside camp in Maine with my friends—were the stories I heard about sitting around the campfire at night, roasting marshmallows, making s’mores, telling ghost stories, and melting into those endless, indigo summer evenings.

Naturally, I’ve sat around my fair share of campfires (mostly as a teenager, drinking cheap booze and pilfering rolled cigarettes from my older cousins). I know how mesmerizing those dancing flames are, and how everyone’s illuminated faces form a golden circle against a vanishing backdrop. I love the distinct sound of crackling wood, and its radiating warmth. And mostly I love that rich, earthy smoke that clings to your hair and clothes, so that when you smell it the next morning you get a wave of nostalgia for the night before.

But there’s something so special about living those experiences as a child, at an age when everything is still magical; I wish I could recreate that feeling.

So I tried! Enter the Campfire Old Fashioned. Camp for grown ups, if you will!

While an Old Fashioned isn’t typically a warm-weather cocktail, this one—with the sweet smokiness from the High West—evokes the summer scent of a smoldering campfire, bringing you straight back to those summer camp days.

High West Campfire is an unusual blend of Bourbon and Scotch, resulting in a beautiful harmony of peaty and caramel notes. For a unique twist, I replaced the traditional sugar with a Kampot pepper infused simple syrup. The pepper brings out the spice and smoke of the Scotch, while highlighting the floral sweetness of the Bourbon.

So while we may be too old to go back to summer camp, thankfully we’re old enough to drink! And this way we can enjoy the taste of campfire nights, with none of the cold showers and mosquitoes.

Campfire Old Fashioned

• 2 oz High West Campfire
• 1/2 teaspoon of Kampot Pepper simple syrup
• 2 dashes angostura bitters
• 1 dash Regan’s orange bitters
• Lemon peel and/or orange peel for garnish

In a mixing glass (preferably chilled in the freezer), combine the High West Campfire, Kampot simple syrup and bitters. Add ice and stir gently for 20-25 seconds. Strain into a frozen rocks glass, over a single large ice cube. Twist the lemon and orange peels over the drink to release the citrus oils.  Gently run the peels along the rim of the glass and then garnish.

Kampot Pepper Simple Syrup

• 1 cup water
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 tbsp whole fresh black Kampot peppercorns*
• 1 tbsp cracked fresh black peppercorns

In a medium saucepan, combine sugar, water, and pepper. Bring to a boil, stirring regularly, until the sugar has dissolved. Reduce heat to a simmer, and cook for 20 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature. Strain out pepper. Store in the fridge with a tight-fitting lid; keeps for up to one month.

* Kampot pepper is an especially fragrant varietal of black pepper from Cambodia, and our Owner-Editor swears by it. Yet if you can’t find it, any fresh black pepper will work just as well.

This article originally appeared on the Whiskey Reviewer on August 7, 2015.

Women Who Whiskey Read "Unintentionally Celibate" at Whiskey Stories!

Better late than never, right? 

Our April New York event was a super fun collaboration between Women Who Whiskey, Whiskey Stories, and author Olive B. Persimmon on her new book, Unintentionally Celibate.

Rachna Hukmani, of Whiskey Stories, organizes whiskey classes with a twist: in addition to the tasting, there's also a cultural element to the event, whether artistic, musical, literary, culinary - or something else! 

We had the pleasure of doing an event around Unintentionally Celibate, a book "for everyone who has ever done something ridiculous and was too embarrassed to talk about it." The book is hilarious, honest, and a little more familiar than was sometimes comfortable - a true homage to the 20-something's sex life in New York. 

Rachna paired six flights with six chapters, as well as tasty treats, and Olive read us excerpts from the book as we tasted the whiskeys. 

The pairings were strategic - the names of the chapters paired with the dominant characteristics of the whiskeys - which also made it a blind tasting and guessing exercise! 

Whiskey Pairing Flight

1. Highland Park Dark Origins Single Malt Scotch + Whiskey Stories Signature Chocolate and for those who are willing, Smoked Salmon
2. W.L. Weller Bourbon with orange slices and strawberries
3. Black Grouse Blended Scotch with blackberries
4. Cutty Prohibition Blended Scotch with smoked salmon and black pepper chips. Also Whiskey Stories chocolate
5. Spice Tree Blended Scotch with cardamom and almonds
6. Hibiki 12 Single Malt Japanese Whisky with mint, Whiskey Stories chocolate, and as a surprise,
7. Orange infused Cutty Sark in the end.

After we were three drinks deep or so, she asked for volunteers from among the guests to read the rest of the excerpts out loud. At first the volunteers were a little nervous, but eventually they embraced their stage presence! It even got to the point where we donned Rachna's hat collection to give the dramatic readings a theatrical flair! After the readings concluded, we voted for the best dramatic reading, and awarded the winner some of Rachna's amazing homemade Whiskey Stories chocolates. 

All in all, the night was great fun, and we all ate, drank, and learned a lot! 

Check Whiskey Stories for information about upcoming events pairing whiskey and creative endeavors. Special thanks to Rachna, for hosting, Olive, for sharing her delightful book with us, and Mary, for so beautifully photographing the event. 

An Illustrated Guide to 30 Cocktails

Tales of the Cocktail kicks off today, and although I couldn't be there in person (I sadly had a work conflict), I feel like I'm still there in spirit!

And this handy dandy illustrated guide to 30 cocktails, from Food Republic, will certainly help us mix up something to drink away the sadness of missing this epic event. 

Covering pretty much every classic you should have under your belt (and more), this list is as educational as it is lovely to look at! Enjoy!

Illustration by Mike Houston.

Women Who Whiskey Launches in Boston!

Photo Credit: Lucas Ritz Toffoli

We are thrilled to announce the launch of the Women Who Whiskey Boston Chapter, which held its inaugural event on Tuesday, June 30, 2015, at Saloon in Davis Square, Somerville. 

The launch party was hosted in conjunction with Whistlepig Rye Whiskey, featuring two kinds of rye sampled neat - the 10-year Straight Rye and the limited-edition 12-year Old World Rye - as well two cocktails specially designed by the Saloon mixology team. 

Whistlepig Steward of the Brand, Gregory Gatti, spoke to us a little bit about the different whiskeys, and led us through a guided tasting of both spirits. wWw Boston Chapter President Ilana Weiss spent the evening making the rounds of new members (and there were many!), getting to know as many people as possible, and fielding ideas for future events. 

I was just so thrilled to have been able to make the last-minute whirlwind trip up to Boston for the event, and blown away by the enthusiasm and support, that I spent most of the evening going around thanking everyone for coming. 

Having been born and raised in Boston, this launch was particularly special for me. Getting to see what started as a tiny group of friends in New York blossom into something making it all the way back to my hometown has been truly amazing. 

We knew that Boston was excited to get its own wWw Chapter, but we didn't know how much until we announced the launch! Over sixty ladies came to the inaugural event, and our membership is already two hundred strong. 

We're really looking forward to seeing where this new chapter is going to grow, and so excited to get to know all the ladies that are going to help us take it there. 

A huge thanks to Saloon, for being such gracious and welcoming hosts, and to Whistlepig Rye, for being the best partners we could ask for in launching wWw Boston. 

Cheers,

Julia Ritz Toffoli
Founder & Principal

Are you a delicate lady flower who can't handle regular masculine whiskey? Well now there's a special fruity pink whiskey for you and your vagina!

Every once in a while, I start to feel like Women Who Whiskey's mission is starting to come to fruition. 

When I tell stories of condescending bartenders these days, I get more raised eyebrows than recognition; it seems that--thankfully!--my past experiences aren't so common anymore. Women are going to bars and being embraced rather than ostracized as whiskey drinkers. It's great! 

But juuuust when I'm about to sing the praises of progress, something like this happens:

Heaven Hill Brands Launches Raven’s Lace PeachBerry Whiskey

"BARDSTOWN, Ky. – Raven’s Lace PeachBerry Whiskey is a flavored whiskey with both a wild and sweet side. Offering an alternative to masculine dominated flavored whiskeys, Raven’s Lace is a one-of-a-kind whiskey with a vibrant attitude and feminine touch with the juxtaposition of a darker side.

Available in June, Raven’s Lace PeachBerry Whiskey infuses juicy peach and sweet strawberry flavors with the smoothness of Bourbon whiskey at an approachable 60 proof. Raven’s Lace PeachBerry Whiskey primarily appeals to the growing segment of female consumers for whom traditional whiskey is not necessarily their drink of choice but are interested in the sweet taste of flavored whiskeys. By all accounts, flavored whiskey is growing tremendously and makes up 12% of whiskey sales according to the Wall Street Journal. And women are playing an increasingly important role in the whiskey category with about 40% of flavored whiskey consumed by females.

“We see tremendous opportunity for consumer diversification in flavored whiskey,” said Hannah Venhoff, Brand Manager for Raven’s Lace PeachBerry Whiskey. “Many of the flavored whiskeys on the market take a macho and assertive approach. Raven’s Lace features a trend-setting flavor profile targeting females looking for a sweet flavored whiskey with a bold color and package that is made for them.”

Raven’s Lace PeachBerry whiskey packaging features an intricate feminine lace design coupled with the Raven’s mysterious side incorporated in a unique label which dramatically contrasts the vibrant peach whiskey in the bottle."

I will stop there, because, well, I think that's all we need to read to see how obnoxiously condescending and pandering this kind of marketing toward women is. Bold emphasis mine, by the way. 

"A vibrant attitude and feminine touch"

"At an accessible 60 proof"

"A trend-setting flavor profile targeting females"

What in the actual fuck? Apparently nothing over 60 proof is accessible to us delicate flowers. Our arms would probably snap in half under the weight of a glass of regular, manly whiskey! And apparently anything that doesn't have bold day-glo packaging is just to subtle for our girlish taste. Only pink drinks for me, please!

I'm having uncomfortable flashbacks to the Bic Pens for Her fiasco. Thankfully, the internet came through then with some of the most delightfully snarky responses, as it did in this case:

Juliet and Alex, of Glitter Kitten Industries, made this hilariously (tragically?) on point parody video in response to Heaven Hill's press release. 

Raven's Lace: Whiskey Your Way? More like whiskey your vagina's way.

Thank you, ladies, for helping us get through the rage with some laughter.

Now who wants a Scotch? 

Announcing the wWw Toronto Chapter Launch, Fall 2015!

We're thrilled to announce that Women Who Whiskey will be launching our first Canadian chapter in Toronto this fall! 

Kate Simmie, Toronto Chapter President, will be leading the effort to launch and establish the new chapter. 

Our upcoming launch was featured in the Toronto Star this morning,  where Diana Hall talked to Kate about her plans for wWw Toronto. We're including an excerpt below, but you can read the full article here! 

Toronto chapter president Kate Simmie hopes her club — which she said will advertise largely through social media and word-of-mouth — will inspire women who didn’t know they could like anything other than vodka sodas to try new cocktails, like a well-crafted Manhattan.

“I do think it's important to offer a safe, fun, supportive environment for women to go out and try something. Maybe they hate it, and maybe they don’t want to drink it again, but maybe it opens their eyes to something new,” she said.

Donna Wolff, owner of The Caledonian, a Scottish pub and whisky bar in Little Italy, said women have been traditionally ignored as consumers.

“It’s all advertised to men. It’s a male-dominated drink,” Wolff said. “You never see whisky being (advertised) to women, but women love whisky, drink whisky, buy whisky, and it’s not ever advertised for us.”

But within the last five years, Wolff has seen women drinking whisky in droves. The pub offers monthly tastings and crams 60 eager attendees into her Women and Whisky tastings each month, she said.

In fact, Wolff says the monthly ladies’ tastings — at which a group of women informally test a variety of whiskies with a female distiller — have become so popular, The Caledonian has had to start a wait list for the events.

Both female-oriented and female—-driven whisky groups offer an element of education to their itineraries, but to Women Who Whiskey’s founder, changing condescending attitudes about women who order a whisky on the rocks is a secondary goal.

“First and foremost, I think it’s a social club,” Toffoli said. “Whisky is the glue that sort of holds everything together.”

Anyone interested in joining the ladies’ experimental whisky club can join the Women Who Whiskey mailing list for updates at womenwhowhiskey.club/join, or by emailing the Toronto chapter at wwwtorontochapter@gmail.com.