The espresso martini has made a return to the cocktail zeitgeist from its late-’90s heyday, the trend gaining strength with home mixes at the start of the pandemic, then emerging afterward onto cocktail lists where you wouldn’t expect to find the sweet buzz-on-buzz communion of coffee liqueur, vodka and espresso.
The espresso martini might be taken more seriously today in Las Vegas than it was, say, a decade ago, but there remains about the drink the flavor of bachelorette party, with flecks of party brunch and reality TV. But not always.
Consider the espresso martini at Las Vegas Distillery, which has settled in nicely in Henderson six months after reopening in retooled digs with a new team, a full distillery (raw grain to bottling), a tasting room paying homage to classic Vegas, craft cocktails, bites and bottle sales.
Quality continuum
Master distiller Jonny Ver Planck creates the spirits for the espresso martini.
The coffee liqueur proceeds from a white rum base that offers more depth than the neutral grain spirit often used. “We don’t cut any corners. It’s distilled as if it were going to be drunk as a white rum neat,” Ver Planck said.
Colombian beans roasted and cold brewed by local Dark Moon Coffee Roasters, cacao from Belize, Mexican vanilla and unrefined Louisiana cane sugar complete the liqueur.
The vodka, for its part, is distilled from hard white winter wheat, so called because of the firm texture of the grain, and from the unrefined cane sugar.
“The wheat adds a nice mouthfeel, and the unrefined Louisiana cane sugar brings up the proof quite a bit. The two of them together make a nice creamy vodka,” Ver Planck said.
Out in the tasting room, chief mixologist Cody Fredrickson mingles the liqueur, the vodka and freshly brewed Dark Moon espresso to fashion the martini.
“My goal was, I don’t want Jonny to have this painstaking process of quality and it doesn’t continue in the bar. I want to take the same care with the cocktails. Let the spirits shine,” Fredrickson said.
As in: an espresso martini even a whiskey drinker might like.
Distilled rock
In a previous life, Ver Planck was a sound engineer and tour manager for rock acts — everyone from local bands to Linkin Park and Sublime.
“I’ve been making booze as a hobby my entire life,” he said. “Distilling and making music are both putting raw ingredients together. If there’s a flavor I don’t like, I try to get rid of it. It’s a lot cleaner result.”
The distillery’s seven current releases are available only at the tasting room, not through distribution to stores, bars and restaurants. “We’re looking to see what resonates with the community,” Fredrickson said.
The bourbon distilled from 75 percent blue corn, then aged one year, certainly resonated. The single-barrel release — baking spices, lush complexity from the corn — launched in November. It quickly sold out.
“People are always waiting for the whiskeys. When is the brown stuff coming out?” Fredrickson said of the bourbon’s popularity.
Current and future releases
The distillery has also introduced a new make bourbon and a new make single-malt whiskey — “new make” being the term for the clear unaged spirit from a fresh distillation, a spirit that offers a window onto the progress of whiskey production. Makes are released about every six months until the spirits have reached maturity.
“You can follow along,” Ver Planck said.
An American single-malt whiskey, its grain smoked with cherry wood instead of peat like a scotch, is scheduled to be released this summer, while the distillery’s first gin is planned to launch in March.
Ver Planck has an affinity for rum. An overproof rum, a special release, was double distilled from 100 percent molasses, coming in at a kicky 126 proof. Spiced rum, one of the mainstay releases, calls on blood orange, vanilla, allspice, nutmeg, peppercorn, clove, canela (a flaky variety of cinnamon) and a touch of agave syrup sweetness.
“It’s our first flavored spirit. It’s delicious in cocktails,” Fredrickson said. “On the tasting room side, I can choose how to sweeten it,” in keeping with Ver Planck’s use of less sugar in his spirits.
Old Vegas, new cocktails
Presley (as in Elvis), a sculpted golden leopard, balances a tray table on his head in the moody dimly lighted tasting room. The space features walls in desert terra cotta, quilted high-top chairs, vintage-style table lamps, sunburst fixtures, and what Fredrickson called “legendary Vegas moments” on TV loops, or in photographs like a Rat Pack trio, Mae West encircled by musclemen in loincloths and Britney Spears performing with a giant snake.
A sleek bar provisioned with Las Vegas Distillery spirits stretches almost the width of the room. The estimable espresso martini issues from the bar, as does an old-fashioned made with new make bourbon, cherry bark vanilla bitters, angostura bitters and spiced demarara sugar, with maple chip smoke.
There’s also an Eastgate Sour, a reference to the distillery’s address, 7330 Eastgate Road, Suite 100, and to the Spring Mountain Sour that Fredrickson created when he was at Sparrow + Wolf on Spring Mountain Road in Chinatown. The cocktail harnesses the distillery vodka, prickly pear, lemon matcha green tea foam and a flurry of raspberry dust.
Some say that another sour — the glowing green Midori Sour — is due for a return engagement, like the espresso martini. Imagine what Las Vegas Distillery could do with that ’90s standard.
Contact Johnathan L. Wright at jwright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @JLWTaste on Instagram.
