Voila! Travis serves a whiskey sour

Travis Nass is the new bartender at Rancho Pinot, and already this sweet, self-effacing guy is shaking things up . . . in a manner of speaking. He makes a fresh sweet and sour mix so bright and delicious it’s otherworldly. Seriously, I think it may well be the elixir of life and I could easily drink his coral-colored nectar straight (okay, maybe with a little ice and a splash of soda) and by the gallon.

“What could possibly be so extraordinary about one component of a cocktail,” you might well ask, “especially when it’s just going to get all mixed up with a bunch of other stuff?” Members of the Cocktail Culture Club already know the answer to this one:  cocktails have gone the way of food in recent years. The quality of the finished product depends entirely on the quality of the ingredients with which it’s made. Any bartender worth his or her margarita salt is using fresh juices — not fake tasting bottled swill — these days.

Winter Citrus Negroni

Travis was itching to make a good mix last summer, but citrus either wasn’t available or wasn’t of good quality, so his potion-making was put on hold until winter. Now he’s got bushels of in-season citrus to play with — lemons, Meyer lemons, pink lemons, limes, Key limes, navel oranges, Valencias, Sevilles, Clementines, blood oranges, tangelos, white grapefruit, pink grapefruit, red grapefruit — and he’s using them all, creating layers of sweet, tart complexity by combining varieties.

He tastes every fruit before he juices it, explaining that sometimes a particular citrus might be too watery, thereby diluting his concoction, which is boosted with a little simple syrup.

Because he believes an electric juicer adds a slightly bitter taste, Travis juices by hand, making a fresh batch every single day. I was in Rancho last night, and he gave me a taste of the sweet and sour mix he’d made the day before for the sake of comparison. It tasted good, I thought. Then he gave me a taste of the batch he’d made that day. The difference was unbelievable! The fresh juice was much more vibrant.

Now it was time to try the sweet and sour in some cocktails. We started with a margarita, pictured here: Oops! Forgot. Drank this one right down! It was made with Patron tequila, Cointreau, Clement Creole Shrubb (an orange brandy), the sweet and sour and orange bitters.

Pisco Sour

Then we tried  a Winter Citrus Negroni. Travis made it with Hendricks gin, Aperol (an orange-flavored Italian aperitif),  Carpano Antica (a premium sweet vermouth) and sweet and sour.

And then to my favorite — the Pisco Sour, a Peruvian-born cocktail made with pisco (a brandy distilled from the muscat grape), sweet and sour (usually lime juice) and  a top layer of creamy egg white dashed with Angostura bitters. Yum!

But now I’m worried. Once we’re hooked on this stuff, how will we get through a summer without it?