You'd better sit down for this: Shoemaker's mixing drinks

Can someone, anyone, keep Daniel Shoemaker away from the liquor cabinet for just one week?

The mixologist extraordinaire from Portland apparently has never met a cocktail ingredient he didn't want to deconstruct, reinterpret or just tinker with. And that includes water.

He makes his own tonic water and cherrywood smoked ice.

Making his debut in Seattle, Shoemaker will serve as guest bartender at Vessel downtown next Monday through Wednesday, where he will mix some of the exotic concoctions that have earned him a reputation as one of America's most innovative mixologists.

His brief appearance in Seattle is a break from playing mad scientist in the kitchen and running Teardrop Cocktail Lounge in the hip Pearl District in Portland.

Shoemaker's fans have come to expect complex, multilayered cocktails with a lingering finish that stays on your palate after the last sip.

He makes his own dry vermouth to create "a more herbaceous ... more intense martini."

He makes three dozen bitters and tinctures including a habanero-green tea bitter. You may not detect the green tea but it "adds earthiness, and the habanero provides a slow heat that holds for a long time" on the back of the palate.

And about that smoked ice. He lays a block of ice into a perforated pan, over another pan, and into a smoker with cherrywood chips. The ice melts over low temperature. Then he refreezes the melted ice and uses it to give cocktails a cool, smoky note.

Shoemaker, 37, admits to a certain obsessiveness with his craft. But the truth is, he said, he's been making cosmopolitans and lemon drops for the past 16 years, mostly in San Francisco.

The recent cocktail renaissance helped Shoemaker see cocktails in a different light, one with roasted pecan syrup and smoked pear chips.

Tan Vinh: 206-515-5656 or tvinh@seattletimes.com