The opening of a new restaurant in the Napa Valley always brings about bit of a ripple in the foodie community. In this case, it's the new Goose & Gander, which opened last week on the same spot in St. Helena where the former Martini House once stood. With a focus on locally sourced ingredients in both the dining room, overseen by Partner/Executive Chef Kelly McCown, and in the artisan cocktails concocted by Bar Manager Scott Beattie, those seeking a quintessential farm-to-table experience in Napa should be pleased. If you're interested in toasting the opening at home, Beattie was kind enough to share his recipe for the Cucumber Collins. Even better -- wait until Memorial Day, when you can enjoy a summer cocktail in the restaurant's newly renovated garden.

Cucumber Collins
1 1/2 oz. Square One Cucumber Vodka
1/2 oz. fresh lemon juice
1/4 oz. yuzu juice (with no sodium added)
1/2 oz. 1:1 simple syrup
1-2 oz. seltzer
4 to 6 slices of cucumber, pickled and non-pickled (recipe below)

Add the vodka, lemon juice, yuzu juice and simple syrup to an empty 16 oz. mixing glass. Add enough ice to fill the mixing glass completely with ice, seal it up, shake hard a few times to mix, unseal, leaving all the contents in the metal half of the shaker. Add the seltzer to the metal half of the shaker, and then dump the contents into a 12 oz. Collins glass. It should fit in nicely with ice filling the glass from the bottom to the top. Using a straw of the back end of a stirring spoon, carefully slide several slices each of the pickled and non-pickled cucumbers down the sides of the glass, so that the ice pushes the cucumber slices attractively up against the glass.

Pickled Cucumbers Stained with Blueberries
12 oz. unseasoned rice vinegar
4 oz. mirin
4 oz. unfiltered cooking sake
6 oz. white granulated sugar
1 cup frozen wild Maine blueberries
1 large English cucumber

Add the vinegar, mirin and sake to a medium-sized pot and bring to a boil. Add the sugar and stir to dissolve. Next add the blueberries, bring back up to a boil, and summer for 2 minutes to bleed out the color. Allow the mixture to cool to room temperature. Using a mandolin, slice the entire cucumber up to about the width of a quarter, not paper thin, not too thick. Reserve half of the cucumbers for pickling; the other half will stay non-pickled. Stain the blueberries out of the pickling liquid, and then pour the liquid over half of the cucumbers and let them rest for about 2 hours or long enough to stain them purple. They will last about two weeks in the fridge.