Yeah. What the hell? Sometimes weird things happen that aren’t supposed to. There’s deep sea animals that live not only in extreme depths but also alongside hydrothermal volcano vents. Each time a rule appears, nature breaks it in some way. Same goes for the Rustic Canyon Bar Program apparently. On my way into work this past Tuesday, Angel texted me and said “The passion vermouth fermented. I opened them yesterday and two were bubbly.” Odd. Not only is there a cup of pisco in each batch, but the passionfruit skins the vermouth is made with are cooked. Any residual yeast left on the skins would die. Yet, I opened the suckers and they popped and were fizzy. An initial flavor a bit like lambrusco with a bitter, unpleasant aftertaste.

I don’t know what’s going on. There’s no explanation…Yet it happened. Sometimes the laws of physics and reason go awry. So strange and it’s hard to wrap my head around why. The bottles were sanitized, and like I said the skins were cooked with sugar to extract their flavor, so any yeast would have been killed…Unless the yeast survived…Which is the only real explanation. It somehow resisted being cooked, or some small amounts did, and so once it the skins and orange peels were placed inside the jar, it began to regroup. Somehow, some way, some thing got in there.

I’ve been a little lost concerning the passionfruit peel vermouth. It’s…Just ok. I ran a Martinez cocktail with it and Barr Hill gin to mixed results and to tell the truth, my heart wasn’t in it so much. That happens from time to time. I’ve had a lot less energy as of late to do R&D, I also don’t feel like tasting a ton of new drinks at the moment, so there’s that too. Most of the time, putting a new cocktail on the menu requires a ton of tasting, but unlike the back of the house with food, alcohol is a drug and you’ve got to be damn careful lest ye be hammered during service. But the only way to really taste a cocktail is to taste the damn cocktail.

Not much else to report. Off the top of my head, I can’t seem to think of any vermouth cocktails that are shaken. Boy, almost none actually. Odd considering the counterparts to sweet vermouth, bitter aperitivi, amari, and dry vermouth, are in a ton of shaken drinks. Hmm. Maybe it’s the new thing. The new trend. I’ll have to work on it.

This whole unpredictable secondary fermentation is a great metaphor for life, if you’re into that sort of thing. You know, you can be going for days, weeks, years, and then something unpredictable just happens. Most of the time it’s due to a choice we made either consciously or subconsciously, but sometimes the cruel hand of fate or just plain chaos gives us a little reminder of who is really in charge…It’s not you or me…