Peach cocktail bitters at Sam's

Some of you may have seen my post at eGullet.com about peach bitters. The gist of it is that I hadn't seen Fee Bros. Peach Bitters in Chicago so I placed a special order with Sam's Wine & Spirits. Their distributor required that they buy at least a case and, initially, Sam's was reluctant to do so. I certainly didn't need an entire case so I played the internet BB card and suggested that some of the places I hung out were chock full o'cocktail fanatics, many from the Chicago area, who might well jump at the chance to pick up a bottle of hard-to-find bitters. They relented and, as of yesterday, now have eleven bottles on the shelf. If you live in the Chicago area and have been wanting to try peach bitters but didn't want to pay s/h, well, now's your chance.

I have no affiliation with Sam's except as a customer, yadda yadda yadda. I will say, though, that I have been extremely pleased with the friendly and helpful service I received from David Soto at Sam's. He's been great about looking into all of my special requests.

FYI, if he can get Gary Regan's Orange Bitters #6 he's going to pick some up...

Kurt

Sam's Wine & Spirits
1720 North Marcey Street
Chicago, IL

Hi! Thanks for the information. I am a lover of fun and interesting drinks but have yet had a need for peach bitters. Can you throw out some of your favorite recipes requiring this ingredient? Also, how much and for what size bottle are they selling it for?

Thanks!

Christine

Christine, my next experience with peach bitters will be my first so I can't offer any advice or recipes based on anything other than "research", which is to say, hanging out at eGullet.com's Fine Spirits and Coctails page and DrinkBoy and perusing my ridiculously large collection of cocktail books. There are a few recipes I've seen that added to my interest in peach bitters (follow the link to eGullet in my post above for some of those) but mostly I'm going to do what I do with my other bottles of bitters: experiment.

As you may know there used to be a tremendous variety of cocktail bitters to choose from. As far as I know the only remaining bitters available in the US are Angostura, Peychaud's, the just-released Regan's Orange Bitters #6, and the four available from Fee Bros.: old fashioned, orange, peach and mint. Some are tied to certain drinks like Angostura and Manhattans and Peychaud's and Sazeracs but that doesn't mean you can't substitute one for another.

Take the Old Fashioned, for example. There are two remaining styles of Old Fashioned, the simple and the fruit salad. I prefer the simple: sugar, Angostura, splash of water to help muddle the sugar and bitters, whiskey and a nice slice of lemon peel. I don't mind the fruit salad style: sugar, Angostura, 1/2 or full orange wheel (muddled with the sugar and bitters), whiskey and another orange wheel and a cherry to garnish. Sometimes, though, I'll make a simple OF but add orange bitters and dash of Maraschino liqueur too. It's more like the fruit salad style but without all the pulp mucking up the drink. Peychaud's also goes very well with whiskey so one could substitute that for the Angostura or do whatever else comes to one's mind while mixing up a drink...

Well, enough of that.

I haven't picked up my bottle at Sam's yet but I assume it's the 4 oz bottle and will cost around 4 bucks. Sam's also has Peychaud's and the Fee Bros.' Old Fashioned and Orange bitters. I recommend all three.

Kurt