Colorado vodka: it’s as if Red Dawn happened, and the Russians whupped the Wolverine insurgency. Two decades after that fictional infiltration, premium vodka’s percolated the American zeitgeist as its most popular liquor. While giant multinationals pump out the bulk of mainstream product, small batch distillers push the vodka vanguard forward from unlikely places like Palisade, Colorado.

Why Palisade? It’s an agricultural oasis in the otherwise arid high desert near the Utah border. Ask any Grand Valley native about Palisade peaches, or the sweet corn from nearby Olathe, and you’ll uncork memories of summer treats that stretch back to childhood. For many years, local artisans have turned those fruits into wine, honey into mead, and more recently produced vodka, bourbon, and brandies.

While long coal trains rumble just outside their converted warehouse, the alchemists of Peach Street Distillers turn sacks of Olathe sweet corn into handcrafted hooch. Just inside the entryway, barrels of bourbon await the day when charred oak and the unwavering march of time yield a mature, tawny elixir. While their bourbon ages, this fledgling company sells two flavors of their Goat brand vodka, and brandies made from local fruit: apple, apricot, peach, cherry, pear, plum and grape.

Olathe sweet corn lends a rounded and faintly sweet character to a “plain” vodka unlike any mainstream high dollar brand. Their peach flavored vodka doesn’t screech with shrill artificial flavors produced in a New Jersey laboratory. Goat’s flavored vodka is to Norah Jones what Absolut is to Kelly Clarkson. Real peaches play a decrescendo of subtle fruit and nut notes during its fading moments in the mouth.

Despite the steamroller of conventional marketing that claims good vodka is supposed to lack any flavor or color, I prefer a vodka with character. Fifteen years ago, I tasted a bootleg bottle of Lithuanian potato vodka wrapped in plain brown paper that hid the pale golden hue of its magical contents. Its deep flavors upended my understanding of how a great vodka should taste.

With a blatant disregard for pretty packaging, that humble, unlabeled bottle held the best vodka I’ll never taste again. That kiss from a Soviet bloc supermodel in babushka’s clothes ruined me for any vodka after that.

Until now, that is. American microdistilleries are sprouting up in all corners of the country, echoing the micro beer revolution of the 1980’s. Small producers put out distinctive liquors from the verdant hills of Vermont, to the dusty Texas hill country, from Los Angeles to Bend, Oregon. If we could overhaul the archaic morass of liquor laws that stifles this burgeoning industry, we’d have a spirited revolution in grown up drinks. Unlikely? Probably. But stranger things have happened. Perestroika, anyone?

Peach Street Distillers
144 South Kluge #2
Palisade, CO 81526
970-464-1128

Across town from the Peach Streeet Distillers, Fred and Connie Strothman own the Meadery of the Rockies, Confre Cellars, and St. Kathryn Cellars, a consortium that produces an unusual range of fruit wines, hard ciders, port-like fortified wines, and mead. Examples of the fruit wines include cranberry, pomegranate, and sour cherry, all of which feature fruit forward flavors and high residual sugar. I’ve had good success using them in cooking applications like a Montmorency cherry sauce, and they pair well with spicy foods where their fruity sweetness is a welcome partner.

Mead occupies a microniche within the wine industry, with home brewers far outnumbering commercial producers. With very few commercial examples worth buying, its obscurity remains sadly assured for those without a home brewing buddy. Some commercial brands I’ve tasted are sickly sweet, and sometimes spiced to distract from off flavors produced in their fermenting tanks. In contrast, Meadery of the Rockies produces award winning meads in four sweetness levels. The bone dry version resembles an oaky Chardonnay, and the sweetest shows its honey origins clearly. I prefer the two products in the middle of the sweetness range. Their fruit wines are blended with mead to expand the line with six more products.

Brewing honey into wine presents some unique technical challenges. Honey’s antimicrobial properties have been known since ancient times, when Roman soldiers used it in a poultice to heal battle wounds. Those same properties require special strains of brewers yeast and some fermenting techniques specific to mead. Heating the honey is a brute force measure to defeat it’s antiseptic properties, but it cooks off subtle aromas and flavors. Strothman developed a secret cool temperature process, which results in pleasantly multilayered, clean tasting meads that are fun to introduce to suprised first time drinkers.

These days, wineries from Iowa to North Carolina chase visions of becoming the next Napa or Sonoma regions. With a global wine glut driving down retail prices, do we need more generic merlot crowding the field? So far, the Grand Valley has avoided the pitfalls of that me-too-ism. Maverick artisans here have rekindled the Colorado pioneer spirit by creating trailblazing products unlike any other on the market.

Meadery of the Rockies
3701 G Road
Palisade, CO 81526
970-464-7899

How do you adapt an incisive book into a 114 minute film with a cohesive story line and compelling characters? Fast Food Nation’s author changed his style from carefully annotated, investigative journalism into a character driven fiction piece in his own screen adapation of the 2001 best seller. With the successes of Super Size Me, and Farenheit 9/11, why not craft a documentary?

Santa Monica public radio station KCRW aired this interview with writer Eric Schlosser and director Richard Linklater on today’s The Business. The film makers describe the creative challenges of the adaptation, and those of financing and distributing a controversial fim through a Hollywood machine so closely allied with fast food corporations.

Fast Food Nation premiers in the US this Friday, November 17 with a cast of lesser known leads and star studded appearances by Bruce Willis, Greg Kinnear, Patricia Arquette, Luis Guzmán, Ethan Hawke, Kris Kristofferson, and Avril Lavigne to name but a few.

Pulled pork (top) and brisket (bottom)

Pork ribs (top) and chicken (bottom)

The Four Q BBQ team finished its rookie year of competition this past weekend at the Beachside Barbecue contest in the San Diego suburb of Imperial Beach. Following the contest rules set by the Kansas City Barbecue Society, ten teams each submitted entries in four categories: chicken, pork ribs, pork shoulder, and beef brisket. Four Q took top honors in pulled pork, second in brisket, third in chicken, and missed taking second place overall (known in contest jargon as “Reserve Grand Champion”) by a scant four point margin.

It’s been a great year of learning, teamwork, and camaraderie. For that, I’d like to thank my food blogging teammates Big Mista from The Survival Gourmet, Big Lu of The BBQ Junkie and Sylvie from Soul Fusion Kitchen. I’d also like to recognize James Beard Award nominated authors Mike Mills and Amy Mills-Tunnicliffe and their inspiring book about life on the BBQ contest circuit, Peace, Love, & Barbecue. I interviewed the authors, and reviewed the book earlier this year.

Prior to this season, I’d only read about the contest circuit and witnessed the 2000 Memphis in May event as a spectator. I can now say we’ve notched some good results in a handful of contests and note with pride that our rookie team has walked to the awards podium in each contest this year:

BBQ’n at the Autry contest (Los Angeles, CA): fourth place in ribs.
Silent Valley BBQ contest (Banning, CA): second place in brisket, fourth in chicken, fourth in ribs.

Each contest presented different cooking challenges, and that’s part of the fun. Because cooking starts the night before judging, overnight weather conditions greatly affect the fire in the smoker. At the Autry contest in April, we faced temperatures in the high 30 degree range, but no wind. The Banning contest was held on a high desert mountaintop campground at 3500 feet of elevation. The very dry air and altitude made it difficult to keep temperatures low enough, and the meat cooked much faster than expected. At this weekend’s contest just steps away from the beach, overnight temperatures in the high 40’s were below the dewpoint. At 100% relative humidity, water collected on every surface. This wet, cold air combined with a steady breeze made it difficult to hold cooking temperatures hot enough.

If you’ve thought about competing, there’s a number of ways to go about it. Some folks jump right into competition. Others take a more measured approach by assisting teams that’ll take them under their wing. Some take a sanctioned judging class to learn the judging criteria first. Online forums at the California Barbecue Association, Kansas City Barbecue Society, and the BBQ Brethren are places to make your interest known, and find a contest near you. In any case, it takes time and dedication to dial in your cooking technique to meet judges’ expectations, and a substantial amount of smoking equipment to prepare four kinds of meats. For our team, pooling equipment, dividing effort, and good teamwork make solid results possible.

Best of luck if you choose to compete, and say hi to our ragtag team of bloggers if you run into us at your next contest!

Whatever happened to Sam the Butcher, the sort of old fashioned, service oriented guy who’d gladly deliver Alice her meat? How did that archetype fade so quietly that we hardly missed his demise? As recently as the`80’s, hanging sides of beef were common sights in the back rooms of retail markets in America. The guy who handed your steaks across the meat counter processed the entire carcass into retail cuts, and dispensed sage cooking advice, too.

“Making pot roast? Buy the 7 bone chuck roast instead of the tenderloin. Rack of lamb? Let me french the bones for you.” Try getting that kind of expertise or selection at a Wal-Mart supercenter.

Across the street from one such Wal-Mart in Colorado sits a one year old butcher shop, run by a soft spoken man with fourteen years of meat cutting expertise in his hands. While you’d think that the big box neighbor would help to kill his business, it ironically highlights the differences between Sam the Butcher and Sam Walton. That juxtaposition drives discerning customers to House of Meat.

The best steaks in Grand Junction aren’t served in a dark, clubby restaurant with plush red leatherette banquette booths that smell of ancient cigar smoke. That sort of place doesn’t exist in a restaurant landscape dominated by casual dining chains. No, the best steaks in town are grilled at home, supplied by independent butchers like Jason Hicks.

Start with quality meat, and you can make your own great steak. House of Meat sells only the top two USDA grades of beef: Prime and Choice. Most supermarkets sell only the next lower grades, and tag them with misleading marketing fabrications like “Butcher’s Choice.” Hicks sent me home with two of the thick, well marbled ribeye steaks he’s slicing in this photo. Seasoned simply, grilled quickly over blazing oak coals and finished with a compound butter, it made a phenomenal dinner (ahem - if I say so myself). If only I can remember what I blended into the improvised butter mixture: anchovy fillets, freshly grated Pecorino Romano cheese, smoked Spanish paprika, and what else, what else?

The display case tempts busy customers with ready to cook meats like fajitas, bacon wrapped filet mignon, and andouille stuffed chicken breasts. But Beef Wellingtons caught my eye because these pastry wrapped, mushroom and veal demiglace topped tenderloins take forever to make from scratch. There’s two types of cooks who’ll take time to finely mince a mountain of mushrooms and reduce it with shallots and butter into a classic duxelles: home cooks who want to impress their loved ones with this old school classic, or the rare professional like chef Tim Dougan willing to prepare this labor intensive dish for you.

In the House of Meat kitchen, Dougan cooks heat-and-eat specialities like white chili, Palisade peach pulled pork, beef stews and a rotating menu of braised dishes sold by the quart. We took home the spicy, fruity stewed pork made with regionally famous peaches from the neighboring town of Palisade. It’s a delicious pulled pork, albeit different from the hickory smoked Carolina barbecue style I’m accustomed to.

If the products and expertise described here don’t immediately remind you of a similar shop near you, perhaps you ought to seek one out before it’s too late. Supermarket butchers across the country are being driven to extinction by the next meat industry trend. “Case ready” meats come prepackaged in trays ready for stock clerks to unload directly from a truck into a display case. I object to the disappearance of knowledgeable experts from supermarkets squeezed to cut costs. Their replacement with increasingly prevalent plastic trays of “flavor enhanced” meat isn’t a value-added improvement in flavor for the consumer, but a profit-added proposition for producers selling salt water at meat prices.

In a retail environment where local supermarket chains battle Wal-Mart by laying off their skilled meat cutters, independent butcher shops have an opportunity to thrive, provided that consumers care enough to demand honest, high quality meats. Which Sam will you choose?

House of Meat
2546 Rimrock Avenue, Suite 200A
Grand Junction, CO 81505-8666
970-243-6111