Spirits: Knock off the chill

Smith Mountain Lake is known as a summertime paradise offering all manner of exciting water sports,\ tasty foods and refreshing cocktails. Once winter starts to exert its chill over the area, some folks migrate to warmer climates. However, many hearty souls who call the lake home year-round know how to warm up with a toasty beverage intended to knock the chill off a frosty nose.
    What makes for the perfect drink on a blustery lake day? Some local restaurant owners and bartenders think a dark beer produced with copious amount of heavily-roasted malted barley fits the bill. Others recommend warming martinis or customized concoctions made from a variety of liqueurs. And, of course, there’s always the wintertime standard: Irish coffee.
    Tiffany Silva, co-owner of The Landing Restaurant and Bruno’s GastroPub, rotates her draft beer selection to reflect the vicissitudes of the season. Winter selections include items such as milk stout and high-gravity ales with amplified alcohol content. High-gravity ales are brewed using up to two or three times as much malt as a standard beer. During the brewing process, fermentable sugars are extracted from the malt and the yeast converts the sugar to alcohol. More malt means more alcohol in the finished brew.
    Craft brewers such as Michigan’s Founders and Delaware’s Dogfish Head ramp up the hop quotient accordingly, resulting in richly flavored beers with profound aromas and lingering hop bitterness on the palate. Milk stouts contain lactose, a milk sugar that cannot be fermented by beer yeast, so the brew has a rich, warming sweetness. While these beers are not what you would want to drink after mowing the lawn, they are quite warming and satisfying on a cold winter night.     
    Bartender Matt Pruitt honed his skills at a martini bar in Phoenix that offers more than 200 varieties of the cocktail before joining the Silvas’ staff two years ago. He’s concocted a drink sure to warm from the inside out – a Peppermint Patty Martini composed of vodka, coconut and mint liqueurs and served in a glass with powdered chocolate dusted around the rim. He said customers also enjoy the Espresso Martini made with vanilla vodka, coffee liqueur and fresh espresso served warm in a coffee mug.
    One of the most popular wintertime beverages is Irish coffee. The invention of this relatively recent concoction is generally attributed to Joseph Sheridan, a chef in western Ireland who devised the drink in the 1940s to warm shivering passengers who had just completed a cold seaplane flight. Sheridan added Irish whiskey to hot coffee and carefully floated local Irish cream on top. A passenger asked if the drink was Brazilian coffee, but Sheridan informed him that it was Irish coffee. A few years later, Stanton Delaplane, a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle brought the beverage to the U.S. and popularized it by frequent references in his travel column.  
    Today, Irish coffee is the most popular wintertime drink at The Blackwater Café.  John Gordon, the lake restaurant’s general manager, said he uses Seattle’s Best Coffee (regular or decaf) to improve the quality. Gordon said he also offers a Raspberry Truffle made with hot chocolate, Raspberry Schnapps and a warming chocolate liqueur.
    Another popular winter drink at the restaurant is the Hot Scotch Cocoa, which is composed of butterscotch liqueur, hot chocolate and whipped cream. Gordon also recommends the Steaming Toasted Almond, which contains Amaretto, Kahlua and coffee topped with whipped cream. The Blackwater also rotates its beers to feature seasonal selections such as Sam Adams Winter Lager, a rich and spicy brew.  
    Cindy Rexrode, who has tended bar at Jonathan’s Restaurant since it opened in 2009, said a customer favorite in the colder months is a Key Lime Pie Martini. The drink contains fresh Key limes, vanilla vodka and two secret ingredients I couldn’t persuade Rexrode to divulge. She also makes other fresh-fruit martinis, including the Pineapple Upside Down Cake, another customer favorite. Chocoholics will also want to try her Chocolate Martini, which is made up of four different chocolate liqueurs garnished with fresh chocolate shavings on top.     
    So Lakers, don’t go around cold this winter. Give one of these toasty libations a try and then, when summer rolls back around, you can switch back to frozen Margaritas and cold lager beer.

Gordon Kendall has more than 20 years of experience in the wine business and is the wine, beer and spirits columnist for The Roanoke Times. He teaches wine classes and enjoys educating people on all things related to the industry. If you have a question or an idea for a future column, please e-mail editor@smithmountainlaker.com.