four

Things are on my mind. This will be the first of my drinking posts, and it will likely be long. Just a warning.

Firstly, the poems I wrote the other night are mediocre and frustrating - the ideas are strong, or at least feel strong(er than I), but I can't pin them down. The one is about escaping familiarity and memory, the other about being born not in the wrong place or time, but in the wrong life. Neither is a strong poem, neither is a complete poem, neither is worth duplication even on this blog. Maybe soon.

Secondly, cucumbers in drinks. My first experience with cucumbers in drinks, actually, was as basic as possible: cucumber slices in the water pitchers at Orchard Bistro in downtown McMinnville. It was odd; there was something to the water that didn't quite match up with all my memories of drinking, smelling, or otherwise interacting with water. I think it was Laura who said it made the water crisp. I think it was my dad who said it was "strange." I liked it.

From water, my cucumber moved to Hendricks gin (which should, now that I think of it, replace water in all taps and wells, as well as rivers, lakes, and oceans). Gin is as clear as water, and has in fact always seemed to me to be somehow more clear. There is a physical clarity to gin that I do not see elsewhere, not in water, vodka, glass, or thin blue air. No matter how many red berries, pink flowers, brown spices, or even green vegetables you add to the mix, gin is beyond transparent. Hendricks, distilled with a handful of interesting botanicals, was either the first gin to include cucumber or the first gin I noticed that included cucumber. Hendricks being the reason I got into gin in the first place, its inclusion of the green vegetable set it apart from the various gins I tasted subsequently. In the UK, Marty and I searched endlessly for a place that would serve us the Scottish gin with its suggested garnish-from-the-garden. We found it, surprise surprise, in Scotland. It is strange, the Hendricks and tonic with cucumber. A sip of it feels like biting through a slice of cucumber with the peel still on - it is hard but not tough, it stabs you between the teeth, it shocks you at first with a splash of something white and airy. All of that in the first second, and then a smooth settling on the tongue and throat, until the liquid is nothing at all and the feeling inside your mouth is unlike emptiness but unlike a mouthful of drink. The cucumber, in this case, lends even more clarity to an already confusingly overclear drink.

Bear with me, please, as we move from clear Hendricks gin in the grey rain of Scotland to dark bourbon and ginger in the dry snow of Bend, Oregon. At the Astro Lounge (a bar not nearly as terrible as its name might suggest), in downtown Bend, they serve a drink they call the Wall Street (named, presumably, neither for Wall Street in New York City or for the classic Wall Street cocktail, a gin and creme de menthe drink with champagne, but rathe for the street in Bend itself). It is a tall, dark but shining drink served, to me at least, in a pint glass; it is bubbly with ginger ale, stirred with bourbon, ginger syrup and, surprisingly at least to me, a few slices of cucumber. By this time, I knew the trick of the Presbyterian (of the drink, scotch and ginger ale, that is - none of the various devious and cunning tricks of the Presbyterian church, of which there are no doubt many, but of which I am, alas, ignorant): ginger ale cuts the burn and bite of a whisk(e)y but pushes up its fundamental flavors and, with bourbon especially, enhances that sweetness that may just be why you drink bourbon instead of scotch. The ginger ale used was heavy on the ginger, the syrup sweet, and the cucumber light and crisp and airy as ever, but just like a wisp around the edges. Shape up the sweetness a bit with a lash of the tiny cucumber whip. Or perhaps, rein in and replace the burn of bourbon with the cucumber's own subtle bite. Match the cucumber with the ginger? That initial onset of sensation when you bite a cucumber, in fact, seems to me to be a subdued version of the harsh spice of biting a piece of ginger. Bourbon, ginger ale, and ginger syrup make for a thick, heavy drink, and cucumber lightens it considerably. Whatever the specifics, it results in a rounded, full-feeling drink, surprisingly complex for something in a tall glass.

Of course, there are numerous gins now that include cucumber in their botanicals (locals like 12 Bridges and Rogue's Spruce Gin to name a couple). The cucumber has popped up in a lot of cocktails (the bartender at Split, in Bridgeport Village, used to throw some in a Pimm's Cup, to no real positive or negative effect), and I don't know if it's Hendricks' fault, but I'd like to think so.

All of this to lead to one statement: I think I'm going to try to make some cucumber-infused vodka. And when it's done, you're invited to come try it. I don't know the process very well (although, it seems to be 1. put some cucumbers in some vodka 2. wait), and I don't expect a complete success, but vodka is praised for it clarity, and the cucumber could only add to that, right? Well. I'm going to try. (I'm also considering some pineapple-infused bourbon. Uh oh.)