MINTY
FRESH
The
Eugene origins of a trendy cocktail
by
Molly Templeton
On an unremarkable night last year, I was at Luckey's,
and I was bored with my drink. "I don't know what I want," I said
to the bartender.
"Have you had a Richmond gimlet?" he asked.
"No," I said. "What's that?"
 |
| Jeffrey
Morgenthaler at El Vaquero |
Simply delicious was the answer: A gimlet made with
Tanqueray No. 10, fresh lime, simple syrup and mint, it tasted like
summer, bright, herbal, sweet and tart. I Googled it later, thinking
for sure it was some secret Southern cocktail that had just recently
made its way to the Pacific Northwest.
I was wrong. The Richmond gimlet, though certainly
not the only gimlet variation in the world to use mint, is the particular
creation of Jeffrey Morgenthaler, a bartender at El Vaquero whose
blog turned up on that Google search — complete with Richmond
gimlet recipe and sightings in other Eugene bars. I clearly had to
try more. And I had to take Morgenthaler with me. Who better to try
a migrating, evolving cocktail than the guy who mixed it up in the
first place?
We met up at the Turtles bar, where owner Kate Boney
made us a pair of sweetly wonderful Richmond gimlets. At Turtles,
they replace simple syrup with sweet and sour and add Rose's lime
to the recipe; Boney said, "I found our clientele likes it with a
little more sweetness to it." She was also the first of many people,
that evening, to say "I don't like gin, but I like this."
"It's really good," Morgenthaler said of Boney's version,
before giving me the short history of the drink. "In 2001, I was working
at Bamboo, which was where Vaquero is now," he began. "I had this
guy that was the head waiter at Marché who would come up after
work every night and have a Tanqueray 10 gimlet. We'd fool around
with Beefeater gimlets and he'd always want something different."
One night, mint went in the drink. "He loved it," said Morgenthaler,
who later named the drink after the waiter, Daniel Richmond, and put
it on the menu "kind of as a joke."
The drink took off at Bamboo. Later, when Bamboo closed,
Morgenthaler took it with him to Red Agave, Marché and Vaquero,
but recently it's turned up at several other bars in town. "It's really
exciting for me to see this dumb drink I came up with years ago spreading,"
he said over mild, limeade-like Richmond gimlets at Luckey's. "I mean,
people go crazy — we make like a hundred of them in a night."
Morgenthaler's fellow Vaquero bartender Scott Butler,
along for the tasting ride, said, "On a busy Friday, I'll easily do
50. We go through three fifths of Tanqueray 10 on a busy night, easy."
"On a busy night, we go through four," Morgenthaler
said. "We sell more Tanqueray 10 than any other bar in the state."
"Tell her about the olive jar," Butler said.
"Sometimes we get so many Richmond gimlets in one
order —"
"If someone orders eight —"
"We have an olive jar —"
"A big Costco lookin' thing that we cleaned out —"
"Like a pickle jar. We'll make eight of them in that,"
Morgenthaler finished. Butler added, "It's like you're making a pitcher
of something for a party. We just need a giant strainer to go with
it."
The Luckey's concoction, Morgenthaler said, was pretty
good for a Richmond gimlet, but really good "as far as just a drink
is concerned." Glasses drained, we headed to Café Soriah, where
we encountered Erin Carlin, one of the drink's first fans. "We were
addicted to them, just a little bit," she said, laughing. "They're
just the perfect summertime drink." At Soriah, Morgenthaler noticed,
the Richmond gimlets are "a lot drier." Still delicious, though.
We left Soriah to end the night at Marché, where
Butler and Morgenthaler agreed the Richmond gimlet whipped up by bar
manager James West was most like the drinks they make upstairs at
Vaquero. "The way I like them," Morgenthaler said, "is when they ride
the line between sweet and sour just perfectly, like your mouth doesn't
really know where it's at."
The Marché Richmond gimlet certainly did that
— but ultimately, though every gimlet we drank was very good
and slightly different, the best place to get a Richmond gimlet is
Vaquero. A week later, I tried one mixed by Butler and one by Morgenthaler,
who had said, "I always tell people that Scott doesn't make the second
best Richmond gimlet in town, he makes the other best Richmond
gimlet in town." He wasn't wrong — the drinks were both perfect.
In fact, I think I'd like another. Now.
The
Richmond Gimlet,
from
www.jeffreymorgenthaler.com
2 oz. Tanqueray No. 10 gin
1.5 oz. fresh lime juice
1 oz. simple syrup
Large sprig mint
Shake
ingredients well over ice and strain into a chilled 9 oz. (at least)
cocktail glass.
