Jan. 29--It's easy to be bitter these days if you're a bartender.
Very easy.
It's all the public seems to want from you. Whether it's classic angostura bitters, fancy Italian amaro, or some herbaceous, hand-crafted digestif formulated by a cult of monks living in a cave on some remote hilltop, bitter cocktails are having their day.
"Eight years ago, when I started, no one wanted Campari," says Eden Laurin, managing partner at haute cocktail lounge The Violet Hour in Bucktown. "Now people will ask 'What's the most bitter drink you have?'"
But with Valentine's Day right around the corner, you'll be happy to know that Laurin hasn't given up on the sweet stuff -- and thinks you should embrace your sweet side, too. Just as long as you proceed with caution. "Sweet drinks in general are tricky," she says.
The line between sweet and sickly sweet is an easy one to cross.
Putting sugar in cocktails was originally used as a way to cover up the flaws in the early rock-gut people consumed in the pre-prohibition days. And that's why -- although the quality of alcohol has come a long way from those dreary days -- you'll see a lot of high-end cocktail bars like The Violet Hour using demerara, a type of unrefined sugar with caramel notes that was around before the simple white stuff. Their goal: To recreate the exact flavors of yesteryear.
Not that Laurin's a sugar snob: She uses plain white sugar with citrusy, bright flavors and isn't above the occasional chocotini, provided it includes top-shelf ingredients, not artificial ones. It's all about balancing sweetness and flavor, she says.
To that end, Laurin helped develop a line of pre-mixed sugar syrups to bring together the best of both worlds -- the sweet and the bitter. It's called Violet Hour + and blends demerara syrup with botanicals like wormwood, cassia root, Saigon cinnamon, vanilla and bitter orange and other bittering agents. It's available at The Violet Hour, Binny's or Publican Quality Meats, but you can also make a basic version at home by mixing demerara simple syrup with a couple drops of good old angostura.
Either way, it's an idea that's tailor-made to reconcile your bitter side with the sweet.
Chris LaMorte is a freelance writer.
