One of the opening drinks on our menu that’s been a mainstay for our first few months has been a concoction we call “Not Another Word.” While it’s a drink we can (and will) always make for customers, we just pulled it off the list in favor of a more seasonal drink and thought it might be worth sharing the recipe for home bartenders.

The cocktail’s name is, of course, an unsubtle reference to The Last Word, a classic drink featuring equal parts of gin, chartreuse, maraschino liqueur, and lime, with origins at the Detroit Athletic Club. Over the past few years, there have been countless variations. Some swap a single ingredient (e.g., the Pete’s Word swaps out gin for Laphraoig) and others remake the whole drink with the same equal-proportion approach. Our version, gently bitter with a bit of tartness, falls into the latter category.

Not Another Word

• .75 oz Rittenhouse rye
• .75 oz Cocchi Rosa
• .75 oz Aperol
• .75 oz lemon juice

Combine all the ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake aggressively until the shaker is frosted, then double strain through a mesh strainer into a cocktail glass.

Selden Standard is the Detroit Free Press restaurant of the year! We’ll keep doing our best to earn that honor every day. But in the meantime, thank you to all our customers, all the other new restaurants helping to build our great dining scene, everyone who has supported us, and especially all our colleagues here at the restaurant — a talented, dedicated crew of great people.

When we look for wines to carry at Selden Standard, we generally ask ourselves a few questions: Does this go well with a wide variety of foods on the menu? Are the aromatics beautiful and the flavors interesting? Is it a good value?

Delicious but nuanced, elegant and affordable, the Santenay “Cuvee S” from David Moreau was an easy bottle to add to our selection.

Ignoring, for a moment, the excellent work of Moreau himself, Santenay is worth a quick examination. A (relatively) unheralded sub-region of Burgundy, it produces mainly reds, all pinot noir. These are widely regarded to be a bit more rustic than the wines produced not far too the north, nearer to the city of Beaune. But it might be more accurate to say that the wines are simply a touch earthier than some of its leaner regional counterparts. The less celebrated pedigree makes for some outstanding values.

Moreau himself is a young winemaker, his first vintage coming in 2009, but he learned his craft from his grandparents, and the vines have been in his family for years. The “Cuvee S,” named for his grandmother Simone, comes from 50 year old vines in a vineyard called Les Cornieres.

While a lot of young burgundy can be austere and difficult to drink in its youth, this is a rather expressive bottle with ample fruit. Before even tasting the wine, there are plenty of clues that this is a concentrated bottle: The vines are reasonably old. There is a high percentage of millerandes, a term referring to smaller, more concentrated grapes. Depending on the vintage, he uses up to 15% whole clusters of grapes (versus individual, de-stemmed grapes), creating an oxygen-free fermentation inside the berries, ultimately yielding a concentrated, ripe fruit flavor.

Despite the concentrated fruit, there’s plenty of balance, typical earthiness, and acidity. The Cuvee S is a beautiful purple-ish red hue, and this is the sort of wine where even an empty glass will present beautiful aromatics for hours.

At the moment, the only other place we’re aware you can get this wine in metro Detroit is one of the area’s finest retail shops – Elie Wine Company in Birmingham. Join us for a bottle with your next meal, or stop in and see Elie and Todd to pick some up. It’s delicious.

For obvious reasons, 2014 was a pretty big year for us, so now we’re excited to see what 2015 has in store. We thought about a few ways to ring in the New Year, but really, just running our restaurant is celebration enough for us.

If you’re interested in dining out on New Year’s Eve, we’ll be offering more reservations than normal to accommodate people’s party plans. Here are the details:

New Year’s Eve at Selden Standard

• Just for NYE, the dining room is reservation only starting at 5pm with the last seating at 10pm
• The bar will be available for walk-ins
• Reservations via phone only; we will ask for a credit card number to reserve your spot.
• Parties of 7 or more should email events@seldenstandard.com to see how we can best accommodate your request
• We’ll be offering our standard menu with a few special dishes available
• We’ll also have a special drink or two – gotta have a festive punch for New Year’s, right?
• Optional champagne flight: We’re offering a flight of three full glasses of different champagnes to accompany your meal for $40/person. (Quantities are limited, so you may reserve your flight when making your dinner reservation)

Happy holidays!

A big thanks to Sylvia Rector of the Detroit Free Press for all the kind words in her recent review of Selden Standard. We try to lend careful thought and consideration to every item on our menu, and it’s always a pleasure when people — critics or otherwise — appreciate and enjoy what we’ve put together.

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