Musings on Cocktails

Opal

2011-11-05T00:13:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you look at a recipe and think, this can't possibly be good. Then you taste it and realize in some sort of epiphany from a supernatural power that you were dead wrong. In this case, it just so happens to be monks and green faeries. The Opal, a horrifically pungent and strong cocktail, is just that, a fantastic libation that whets the tongue and inebriates the mind.

Made with two ingredients, this is a rather simple cocktail. Well, to be totally fair and correct, three ingredients, but ice is almost common place in drinks now a days, that the dilution of the water and the chill from the ice makes for a rather normal drinking experience. But this drink features Chartreuse and absinthe. Sounds mighty fine, doesn't it? Shaken with crushed ice, this is essentially a frappe, and instead of shaking, it is easy enough to just churn the mixture with crushed ice in a glass, chilling it as you swizzle the shards of frozen water around, observing the crystal as it becomes more opaque from the rapidly decreasing temperature, witnessing the colors of the absinthe changing as you see the louche.

This drink relies heavily upon dilution. Without it, the absinthe would be rather strong on its own, and the drink would not be palatable to most; the small shards of crushed ice help increase the surface area ratio between the ice and the liquid, increasing the rate of dilution. Or so logic would indicate. Yet, even though the drink works well with dilution, too much and it eventually becomes flavored water, almost like extremely watered down pastis. Embury categorizes the beverage under that of a short drink, and I presume in many respects that this is a wise decision, since the drink does fall apart.

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure how the drink was meant to be served. On one hand, Embury classifies the drink as an after dinner cordial, meaning it should probably be served in a cocktail glass strained, but unlike most other drinks, he writes about using crushed ice, which he goes on a few pages earlier with regards to the frappe style of drinks. In the frappe, he writes that there are two methods to serve the drink, one of which is straining into an "Old-Fashioned glass, adding ice water, if necessary, to fill the glass" (Embury 231). On the other hand, Embury himself prefers to pour "ice and all, into a saucer champagne glass and serve with short straws" (ibid). When thinking about this drink, I think that it represents and is extremely reminiscent of the absinthe frappe in terms of construction, so personal preference is the choice here, but I prefer to lean on the side that strains the ice and all into an old fashioned glass for sipping. Actually, I don't even like shaking it, and prefer to churn the drink with a swizzle stick. To each their own.

There are multiple cocktails all of which are named Opal. I figure that I ought to mention two of them, the first being in Craddock's works, and the second being a drink in Crockett's Waldorf-Astoria. The former is a gin, orange juice, triple sec combination which is reminiscent of an Orange Blossom and even has some orange flower water added into it. The second version is an aromatic gin cocktail, with gin, orange bitters, dry vermouth and absinthe, making it for rather interesting Martini. Both of these versions are quite good on their own, but regardless of that those gin based variations I prefer this drink mainly because it is stronger, but also because it exudes a sort of fascinating herbal aroma. Furthermore, I am not exactly sure why the version Craddock provides would be called Opal, considering it isn't even the color of the gemstone. Well, rather, orange tints in opals are extremely rare, compared to the commonplace colors of white or green, both of which are the colors of absinthe after it becomes cloudy on account of the louche.

The choice between which Chartreuse to use really makes this drink: do you want to provide a bit more sweetness or a bit more herbal bite. It really depends on the palate and aim when making the libation, but also what type of absinthe is being used since each have their own characteristics, and some are sweeter than others. When I make this drink, I'm using Vieux Pontalier, so I choose to utilize yellow Chartreuse because of the sweetness, and because Vieux Pontalier seems rather dry compared to quite a few other absinthes, such as Absente.

Opal (Craddock):

1 1/2 oz gin
1/2 oz orange juice
1/2 oz Cointreau
1/4 tsp simple syrup
3 drops orange flower water
Combine the ingredients in a shaker tin with cracked ice, shaking to chill, and strain into a cocktail glass.
Opal (Embury):
1 1/2 ounce absinthe
1/4 - 1/2 ounce yellow or green Chartreuse
Mix the ingredients in a shaker tin with crushed ice, shaking well, and straining the entire mixture into an old fashioned glass.

-----

Craddock, Henry. 1999. The Savoy Cocktail Book. Originally published 1930. London: Pavilion Books.

Crockett, Albert Stevens. 2003. The Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book. Originally published in 1935. United States: New Day Publishing.

Embury, David A. 2009. The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. Originally published 1948. New York: Mud Puddle Books, Inc.

White Velvet

2011-10-31T18:41:00.000-07:00

Another older drink, this is quite easily a White Lady with pineapple juice in place of the lemon. It works as a wonderful replacement to a gin sour.

The color truly fits for this drink, which is almost a slight cream color, only given a sort of hue thanks to the use of lemon juice. Furthermore, the name invokes characteristics of a soft texture, which actually is quite the case with this drink, thanks to the incorporated textural element of foam from the pineapple juice. I'm not sure where this libation first shows up. However, on the bright side, we know who created the drink, seeing as a few sources actually cite the creator of the drink as Tony O'Connor (Craddock; Tarling).

The drink also shows up in Embury's work, under the same name. Embury, as the fine cocktail connoisseur that he is, believes firmly that the drink is an off shoot of the White Lady, specifically in this case the White Baby, seeing as how the White Lady, which is a cocktail with a few variations, is a cocktail featuring egg whites, and the White Baby is the same drink without the egg whites (Embury 278). In such a relationship, the White Velvet is the White Baby with a replacement of pineapple juice for the lemon juice. Not too complicated, save for the fact that very few people will refer to a White Lady or a White Baby as distinct cocktails. But here again, we get into esoteric knowledge which really doesn't help most imbibers, nor bartenders, and is just a good fact to know that there are names for the various minutiae of difference, even if such distinctions and changing ingredients are conflated more commonly into one drink.

Just like all citrus juices, Embury is fairly strong minded about using freshly squeezed juice for cocktails, and this extends to pineapple juice as well. This means, muddling, pressing, or pureeing pineapple and running the juice through a sieve. Of course, the end result is fantastic, and the lack of intense cloying syrup-like characteristic of a lot of pineapple juice provides a more subtle and rounded fruit flavor, as well as increased amounts of foam when shaken. I have been trying to do research into why pineapple juice foams, but from what I can tell, it is a combination of air mixed in from shaking and a reaction with the enzymes found in pineapple juice, that being the proteolytic enzyme bromelain found in pineapples. However, until I find a biochemist to ask, this will be a question left to another day.

Tony O'Connor is someone who doesn't really show up in many bar books. I can't find a history of the guy. Yet I can find other recipes attributed to him: the Silver Shower and the "25." Both of these are also obscure drinks, more obscure than White Velvet, and feature ingredients such as Van der Hum and Żubrówka, both two not so common ingredients in the United States. The fact though, that recipes were attributed to him, compared to the majority of the recipes in the book, probably is indicative that the recipes and Tony O'Connor are both related directly to the united Kingdom Bartender's Guild-for it seems likely that Tony might have been another UK based bartender, or at least a friend of the guild. The other drinks in both the United Kingdom Bartender's Guild list of approved cocktails as well as those showing up in the Café Royal are cited as creations of members of the UK guild (such as Craddock).

However, once again, that is speculation however, and uncertainty reigns supreme. I feel it is necessary to problematize these ideas, even if they might be grounded in some sort of discursive logic, since while there might be a reasonable truth to them, there is never any certainty. Cocktails in that respect, or history rather, is just like an atom: the Heisenberg uncertainty principle suggests that we know about the composition of the drink, but we aren't really sure ever about the position of the drink in the historical canon. And even if we put it into perspective, we can't be sure about whether or not there is accuracy here, since there are not a plethora of sources. As such, for posterity, we really need to keep up the excellent job of cataloging the efforts of contemporary craft bartenders.

The drink works fairly well with dry gin, which is what the original recipe calls for ("a high and dry gin") but a slightly more fruit-driven or summer-driven gin works just as well in this drink. For instance, G'Vine comes to mind as a nice summery, floral, fruit-like and strong dry gin. The grape gives a nice complement to the already distinct flavor of the pineapple juice.

White Velvet:

2 ounces dry gin
1/2 - 3/4 ounce pineapple juice
1/2 ounce Cointreau

Combine the gin, pineapple juice and Cointreau with cracked ice in a shaker tin. Shake until frothy, and serve up.

-----

Craddock, Harry. Approved Cocktails: authorized by the United Kingdom Bartender's Guild. London: Pall Mall LTD.

Embury, David A. 2009. The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. Originally published 1948. New York: Mud Puddle Books, Inc.

Tarling, William. 1937. Café Royal Cocktail Book. Pall Mall LTD: London, 1937.

East India

2011-10-24T21:42:00.000-07:00

A fantastic and true cocktail, the East India cocktail is a rather old concoction with several variations.

Found originally in Harry Johnson's Bartender's Manual, this cocktail appears in many different places, including but not limited to Meier's work, Embury's and Craddock's. The drink has several variations, all of which are interesting spins, but I will concentrate on the version using pineapple syrup, which I find to be one of the most original and quaffable variations. Ted Haigh writes that the drink was named for the eastern part of India, meaning the entire geographic space that is what we might refer to as the Indies, specifically for the colonial acquisitions of the British Empire (Haigh 116).

In many respects, the cocktail is a generic Brandy Cocktail with a few modifications to increase the palatability of the drink. As Wondrich writes in Imbibe!, the cocktail was named for location in which the cocktail was quite often imbibed, that being the "English living in colonial East India" (Wondrich 210; Johnson 62). This establishes that the cocktail was known to the English, and was a widespread cultural phenomenon, but it raises a question as to how the native population, id est the colonial subjects, received the cocktail, especially considering quite often that the colonial subjects worked in these environments and clubs, and might be familiar with the tastes and distinctive past times of the English colonists. We know for instance that the rise of the cocktail as a strong cultural phenomenon in Japan was the result of American occupation after the Second World War. In such a way, it brings up the question over how drinks such as the Singapore Sling, which originated in Singapore, an English colonial possession, are in many ways cultural byproducts, syncretic objects, established due to the result of the import of cultural phenomena.

Likewise, you see this drink using pineapple syrup, a flavor which is somewhat common, but at the same time, rare. The pineapple is an interesting study of physical exchange of agricultural products, and the syncretic import of objects into new environments, creating new uses. Pineapples, which originate from the New World, were brought back to the Old World thanks to Columbus' trip to the "Indies." In other words, the drinks that we take for granted now a days, the flavors and profiles, are the results of colonial and thus, globalist expansion. Originating from South America, the pineapple was grown in India due to the climate. But in order for it to even arrive, it had to be imported. This simple fact probably can explain the use of pineapple syrup in the East India cocktail, in the sense that the drink is a product of colonial trade networks and availability of products.

In any case, the cocktail versions there are a few versions that use pineapple juice instead of pineapple gomme syrup (these being Craddock and Embury, and I'm sure others). I think it is interesting that these versions are from American authors. Even if Craddock was located in London when the book was published, he had learned drinks prior to the advent of the Prohibition, and still had pineapples available to him. In a sense, the American's love of pineapple and this cocktail coincide temporally with American interests in Hawaii (the land of the king of all fruit-pineapple). While the cocktail in its' syrup version predates this interest, the versions provided by Craddock and Embury do not. Pineapples were an interesting colonial trade commodity, so it seems likely that there is something going on in the consciousness of the creators to change to pineapple juice rather than cordial. However, it is likely that pineapple juice though, used during this time frame, was sweetened and canned, similar to a cordial; yet the insistence that Embury and others has on fresh juice (even in the case of a pineapple), puts that into a dubious light.

One of the variations, despite having in earlier sources a different name, id est the East Indian cocktail, is sometimes referred to as the East India cocktail. Made with sherry and dry vermouth, this is a very different, but yet quite excellent cocktail with a very light flavor. Furthermore, there is a variation that uses Jamaican rum, which I find fantastic. Essentially, just add in a touch of rum to finish off the drink. The major other variation is rather common, which is found in Craddock's and Embury's versions, which I think make for a fantastic, if not more fruit driven, cocktail. In their versions, there is no maraschino, and the pineapple gomme syrup is replaced with juice. Also of note is the variation Meier gives, which loses the curacao and uses only the pineapple syrup as a sweetener.

The cherry adds little to this drink, so feel free to skip it; but the lemon twist is somewhat essentially, especially if you up the sweeteners for Johnson's version. Wondrich notes that Peychaud's bitters may be appropriate, since the drink calls for Boker's bitters, which are not readily available everywhere.

East India (Johnson's style):

2 ounces of brandy
1 teaspoon pineapple syrup
1 teaspoon Maraschino liqueur
1 teaspoon curacao

2 dashes Peychaud's or Angostura bitters

Combine the ingredients in a mixing glass with ice; stir until chilled. Strain into a cocktail glass, garnish with a cocktail cherry (optional), and express the aromatics of a lemon peel over the drink.

East India (Embury / Craddock):

2 ounces of brandy
1/4 ounce pineapple juice (you may substitute Maraschino)
1/4 ounce curacao

1 dashes Angostura bitters

Combine the ingredients in a shaker with ice; shake to chill, straining into a cocktail glass and garnish with a twist of lemon or cherry.

-----

Clarke, Paul. 2009. "30/30, #16: the Saratoga Cocktail." The Cocktail Chronicles. Originally published May 1, 2009. www.cocktailchronicles.com/2009/05/01/3030-15-east-india-cocktail/.

Craddock, Henry. 1999. The Savoy Cocktail Book. Originally published 1930. London: Pavilion Books.

Embury, David A. 2009. The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. Originally published 1948. New York: Mud Puddle Books, Inc.

Johnson, Harry. 1888. Bartender's Manual or How To Mix Drinks of the Present Style. New York.

Meier, Frank. 1934. The Artistry of Mixing Drinks. Reprint of original. Paris: Fryam Press.

Wondrich, David. 2007. Imbibe!: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar. New York: Penguin Group.

Chartreuse Swizzle

2011-10-23T21:04:00.000-07:00

Swizzle featuring the vegetal elixir Chartreuse, the Chartreuse Swizzle makes a fantastic long drink.

More of a summer sipper, the drink is not something that makes a lot of sense as we move into the fall. However, living in Houston, and previously in California, seasons are more a sense of the year than a change in climate. As such, the best thing about Houston is that I can enjoy a Chartreuse Swizzle, and many other drinks, year round without feeling too terribly out of season. Still at some point, you want to switch to a different flavor profile, because of the psychology and perception about what comprises the seasonal palate. Yet, I'll wait until it gets closer to the holidays to do just that.

Created by Marcovaldo Dionysos, the drink is a contemporary version of the, what was and still is, popular libation trend known as swizzles. The swizzle, as a drink category, is something that most would assume originates in the middle of the 20th century, coming out of the Rum movement with the Rum swizzle specifically, which just so happens to be the national drink of Bermuda. However, it probably originates earlier than that: for the forefather of the modern swizzle, you have the Queen's Park Swizzle showing up in the 1920s, being a libation from Trinidad. Even earlier than that, you can find swizzles in literature in the 18th century, as a drink made with rum, spruce beer, sugar and water, and doesn't necessarily look a lot like the contemporary swizzles of today, which in many cases are heavy in citrus and juices.

While some might call swizzles effeminate or more dainty in terms of the flavor, at least in the sense that the drinks are usually called "light and refreshing," when you look at the concoction from an aesthetic perspective the concoction takes on a truly classic and strong cocktail-lover persona as soon as you look at the ingredients which go into most swizzles. In addition to the ingredients, the complex and fascinating flavors which come out of the swizzle genre of drinks reminds the imbiber that these can be serious libations in terms of palate distinction. Drinks it seems, just like cuisine, take on a sort of gendered connotation depending on the aesthetics and palate, but also in the ways in which someone is supposed to engage with the drink.

No one can argue that a Zombie has an inherently masculine bent, just like a Sazerac. But look at the composition of those drinks: strong, alcoholic monstrosities (very good monstrosities befitting of origins of the word monster, id est monstrum) which through nomenclature, taste or form scream booze, something that is still in many cases linked to spheres of masculinity. Since the swizzle, at least form the perspective of form, resembles a julep, it borders on a somewhat liminal zone, leaning in many cases towards the masculine, in terms of gender. Yet, regardless of the gender dimensions of an object, the distinctions of taste matter more, especially since libations are something to be imbibed, consumed and enjoyed. In other words, the decision over what is a good or bad drink comes down to the palate and the distinctions of taste that someone might exhibit. Of course, that doesn't mean that there isn't a way to determine what is a good or bad drink, especially if you use abstract measures informed from conceptions of cultural capital, but when effort and technique is put into a cocktail like a swizzle, it is harder to say it is a bad drink, since the majority of people making one, especially in this country, would be well informed about cocktails as a whole.

This drink, originating in San Francisco, is like Fernet and Pisco Punch, in that it is pretty notable in that area, and is quite commonly consumed and popular during the summer months. Marco, as the creator, is a well-known proprietor and cocktail aficionado in the area, helping to establish the cocktail movement within the bay area. Marco was working at Clock Bar, creating the beverage program for the hotel bar, and was also one of the founders for the San Francisco Chapter of the USBG. He launched in 2009 a cocktail catering service with Scott Beattie and Joseph Ehrmann, also greatly appreciated bartenders of the area. Currently he works as a bartender at Smuggler's Cove, one of the best bars in the country, especially for rum drinks.

The Chartreuse plays fantastically with the acidity of the lime and the pineapple, and I cannot recommend enough using freshly made pineapple juice. However, unsweetened works fairly well, since you don't want to overpower the character of the liqueur. To increase the sweetness makes the cocktail one which would require increased spirit or acidity to balance it out, and then you just keep adding on to the overall volume of the drink. There are some variations on the Chartreuse Swizzle that you can find online using yellow instead of green, but the drinks use other spirits in addition to the rum, which changes the entire style of the libation.

Chartreuse, being one of my favorite ingredients, makes this just a great, all-around drink. However, there has been one interesting variation on the drink I have seen, which was done by Frederic of Cocktail Slut. Adding in some bitters and J. Wray and Nephew Rum, the drink takes on more spice and winter-spice notes, which is definitely something I can do to give myself the illusion of a winter cocktail during the summer-winter that is encroaching in Houston.

Chartreuse Swizzle:

1 1/2 ounces green Chartreuse
1/2 ounce falernum
1 ounce pineapple juice
3/4 ounce lime juice

Combine the ingredients over shaved/crushed ice in a highball glass. Using a swizzle stick, or a bar spoon, swizzle the liquid to get the glass nice and frosty. Garnish with fresh mint and freshly grated nutmeg.

-----

Berry, Jeff. 2010. Beachbum Berry Remixed: A Gallery of Tiki Drinks. San Jose: SLG Publishing.

Grose, Francis. 1788. A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. Printed for S. Hooper. (accessed August 31, 2010).

Morphy, J. 1863. Recollections of a Visit to Great Britain and Ireland in the Summer of 1862. Publisher: W. Palmer. (accessed August 31, 2010).

Robold, Matt. 2010. "Cocktail Recipe: Queen's Park Swizzle." RumDood.com. Originally published April 14, 2010. http://rumdood.com/2010/04/14/queens-park-swizzle/ (accessed August 31, 2010).

Wondrich, David. 2007. Imbibe!: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar. New York: Penguin Group.

--. 2010. Esquire Magazine. "Queen's Park Swizzle." Esquire.com. http://www.esquire.com/drinks/queens-park-swizzle-drink-recipe (accessed August 31, 2010) .

Greyhound and Salty Dog

2011-10-07T14:15:00.000-07:00

The Greyhound and Salty Dog are two interesting highballs, featuring a spirit and grapefruit juice.

With either a Salty Dog or Greyhound, you rarely see someone ordering it and even more rarely does it appear in a menu; yet bartenders are expected to know what this drink is, and that is quite possibly because in terms of ingredients, it is a rather simple and quaint long drink. Both of these drinks have appeared rarely within popular culture, and honestly, both make me miss the good old days of the internet (Kingdom of Loathing anyone?), and remind me of the way in which certain drinks and objects get sort of a following and cult, quite often in terms of the media.

Appearance and representation for any sort of cultural object, any sort of phenomenon, places a sort of importance upon the object and allows it to take on qualities outside of the specific and immediate expectations from the actual components of the artifact, outside of the ingredients put into the glass. For most drinks, potions which are short lived, the awareness of status is one thing that comes into play when choosing what to imbibe during these moments of conspicuous leisure. The Martini is quite easily the most common appearing drink in the public imagination, with the iconic glass ascribed the same name as the libation. And in the United States, these cultural presentations, through advertising and the like, help inform the consciousness of most consumers, situating their preference structures in ideas gathered from media representations and the rhetorics and images of the media, structures which are positioned over what is in "good or bad" taste specifically along the axis of "fashionable."

So removing ourselves from the axis fashionable and then juxtapositioning ourselves as imbibers of a Salty Dog or Greyhound because we want a simple yet high quality drink, it is quite likely that these drinks are related considering the ingredients each has as the principal components: looking at the drinks, from a cocktail taxonomic representation based upon similarities in styles, it makes quite a bit of sense to lop the drinks in with other highballs such as the Screwdriver, as Gary Regan does. However, I'm not so sure to what degree these drinks are related or when they first appear, since as usual, there is contradictory information, and unfortunately objects which are not blazing successes are oftentimes ignored in terms of writing a history around them.

If you glance around online, lots of people are suggesting that the Greyhound is a gin based drink from the prohibition. This is highly unlikely in many respects, with some of the first appearances of the Salty Dog being in the late 50s early 60s. And the style of drink makes quite a bit more sense in that context, especially seeing as how grapefruit as a commodity was becoming more and more common during this period with the greater amount of shipping and refrigeration available.

Strangely, looking at Difford's Guide to Cocktails, you can see the Salty Dog listed as a short drink, shaken and served up. In order to sweeten the drink ever so slightly, they use a touch of maraschino liqueur which actually is somewhat a stroke of genius for people who appreciate the flavor of grapefruit juice, but not the tartness. Obviously, there are differences in the taste and flavors of each type of grapefruit, and so when using grapefruit juice, you can go either exceedingly sharp, bitter and sour (by not filtering out any the pulp on a drier grapefruit), or sweeter and more round (with a ruby red grapefruit for instance). And if you want a touch more complexity, throw in a tad bit of Aperol, which already works well with grapefruit juice, but brings out a bit of interesting finish to the drink.

A stronger pour of gin works well in this drink, and more dry gins work well, such as Beefeater. When using vodka, personally I prefer a vodka that is not as filtered or retains a bit of its' unique backbone, but of course this is personal preference, and if choosing to use vodka, there are obvious desires or preferences to just taste principally the grapefruit juice.

Greyhound:

2 ounce vodka or gin
4 ounces grapefruit juice

For a traditional Salty Dog, rim a Collins glass with salt. Pour the mixture over ice into a Collins glass and give it a quick stir. Optionally garnish with a slice of orange.

Modified Salty Dog (modified from Difford's Guide):

2 ounce vodka or gin
3/4 ounce grapefruit juice
1/4 ounce maraschino liqueur

Rim a cocktail glass with salt. Combine the ingredients and shaketo chill, straining into the cocktail glass.

Between the Sheets

2011-10-06T23:28:00.000-07:00

A spin on the Sidecar, Between the Sheets is a fantastic drink.

While I could subscribe to all the topical choices made by earlier cocktail bloggers and historians, id est, a mention of the sexual connotations of the name, I feel that is somewhat trite for a drink that is quintessentially a classic and a well-made and strange drink at that. It is uncommon for older drinks to feature two spirits, especially in equal proportions. To give such weight to the liquor means that the bartender was most likely confident in the taste, or in the fact the cocktail itself is unique with respect to that, and the name, suggests the mingling of these two spirits. Contemporaneously, we see quite often drinks that combine various spirits in order to produce new and exciting flavors. Both the differences in consumption habits, as well as ways in which we conceive of spirits as another tool in craft cocktail repertoires, probably help to explain this phenomenon of change in production habits among bartenders. With craft cocktails that have a myriad of various ingredients to produce one libation, in the name of "mixology," there is little hesitation to use a spirit with a characteristic flavor (such as an Islay Scotch) as another aspect to the overall potation.

Between the Sheets cocktail was most likely created by Harry MacElhone, bartender at the eponymous Harry’s New York Bar in Paris, in the 1930s. However, there are a few who subscribe, still, to the idea that the drink was a product of the 1920s and originated in London (this reference is apparently sourced from Classic Cocktail Club, Published in Milan, Italy). Yet, it seems quite likely that the drink is from Harry's, as well as the relationship the drink bears to the Sidecar, which most likely originated several years earlier in Paris at the Ritz Hotel. The Sidecar, which expert cocktailians like Embury consider to be one of the quintessential cocktails, is tremendously similar, save for that it focuses principally on the brandy. The Sidecar was also reputedly popular in Harry's Bar, which continues to give credence to the idea that this drink stems from that bar.

Regardless of the origins, we know the drink was popular, because it shows up in the guides for bartenders at the time, as a drink that bartenders, especially those in the UK, should be aware of and be able to produce. Thank Craddock for his efforts with the United Kingdom Bartender's Guild.

Recipes vary from as much as equal proportions of all four ingredients, to two parts spirits to one part lemon juice. Personally, I prefer this on a slightly less acidic side, making the spirits work more side by side, to produce something unique. In this case, I also cut back on the amount of Cointreau that I use. However, this drink is one which definitely requires Cointreau, since other orange liqueurs tend to be either two sweet or overpower the rum in ways that limits the drinks' balance. Concerning the choice of r(h)um: really the preference is yours and thus the decision in the end is yours as the creator, but the drink works well in almost all cases with lighter rums. However, giving or using either a rhum or a darker, aged rum gives a fantastic and very different approach to the cocktail which seems just a bit more removed from the Sidecar ancestor.

You can also see variance built across cultural preference structures of taste: for instance, Difford's Guide gives a version of the drink that includes mineral water, and simple syrup, in order to make the drink "more approachable." And while there is nothing wrong with these styles, it is not necessarily the type of drink which most individuals who have a sense of acquired taste concerning liquor would want. As you, imbiber, may very well know, generally the more you acquire a taste for finer liquors, the more you want those spirits to come through, and thus the less you want to sweeten or tamper with them.

Between the Sheets:

1 ounce rum
1 ounce brandy
1 ounce Cointreau
1/2 ounce lemon juice

Combine the ingredients with ice, shake to chill well, and strain into a chilled c glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

Combustible Edison

2011-10-05T22:07:00.000-07:00

If you are familiar with the band Combustible Edison, then you know this drink.

There are not a lot of good drinks which revolve around the use of fire. The Combustible Edison may be one of the few exceptions, depending on your palate. It is definitely a cocktail aimed at cocktail-lovers, and is a rather strange concoction. A mixture of lemon juice and Campari are mixed, shook to chill, strained into a cocktail glass, and then topped up with flaming brandy. And while the drink itself might turn a few heads, especially at the time during which it is being made, the history of the drink is far more interesting in this case.

I first learned, being newer to the cocktail scene than those good old veterans like Brother Cleve, of the Combustible Edison from Cleve himself. Not necessarily something I felt I would try from description alone, since it came off as a novelty drink, the history of it was fascinating, especially hearing it firsthand from a venerated cocktail historian and forefather of the craft cocktail movement in Boston. When told by Cleve, the story is an interesting interpretation of the intersections between various egos, marketing, aesthetics and the rise of a new cocktail movement.

According to Cleve, the Combustible Edison is tied intrinsically with music, seeing as how the cocktail was created and named after the band of the same name. Thought up by the Millionaire, who was the guitarist and composer and founder of the band, the recipe was first on the back cover of the band's first album "I, Swinger," which was released in 1994. The cocktail was actually a success, and was used at many venues where the band was playing; the most particular spaces in which this occurred were the cities revolving around both "cocktail culture" and "thrift store culture," which included New York, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle.

The first album actually sold fairly well considering the specialty nature of the band. At 175,000 units, the album gathered the attention of the Campari marketing representatives, who, at the time were advertising in many of these cities where the new cocktail culture was developing. Cleve remarks that because of interests in marketing, Campari struck a deal with Combustible Edison, where they would provide swag at various shows in hopes to bring more awareness to the brand. In return, the band members were expected to drink the spirit onstage. He points out this was not necessarily a big commitment, since the majority of band members already drank it onstage, and Cleve himself used to keep a bottle on top of his keyboard.

Paul Harrington, also known currently as "the Alchemist," had started to write his column on drinks in Wired Magazine around the same time that Combustible Edison was coming into the spotlight. The band's drink was covered in one of these issues; similarly, the spread of cocktail culture was becoming more dominant, since Cleve first established his relationship with Ted Haigh and Beachbum Berry around the same time. It seems interesting that cocktail culture, at least through the framework that Cleve presents it, is an assemblage built around music and other forms of sensory experience outside of taste. While changes in consumption habits are truly present and prevalent for helping the cocktail movement to reach the full force it has right now, as well as changes to preference structures among middle and upper economic classes, sensorial phenomena still play an important role in determining the rise and fall of specific movements that are ingrained specifically with politics of aesthetics and distinction making. In other words, music or other arts are a way to inform the consumption habits (through explicit or not so explicit marketing).

Outside of the cocktail, Combustible Edison is somewhat famous in the history and development of internet phenomena. The band performed, if not the first, one of the first live simulcasts online in the mid-90s. The simulcast was presented by Apple and Wired jointly, and was a broadcast of their show at Bimbo's in San Francisco. Cleve can't recollect the exact date, and I've been hard pressed to find this date, but he believes it is around either 1995 or 1996, which would coincide with the start of simulcast phenomena online.

For those of you interested in finding some Combustible Edison to listen to, there are a few videos on YouTube of fantastic works (Cleve's channel is here). They classify themselves as "easy listening." Combustible Edison, as a band, was inspired by early instrumental recordings from the late 1950s through the 1960s. Cleve writes that among their influences were film soundtracks from the same period, especially Blaxploitation soundtracks and library music of the late 60s. The works on their first album was inspirited by several films and thematic elements, including Fellini, Spy vs. Spy, and other selections which were rearranged and adjusted to a new style.

The last album Combustible Edison did was in 1998; over the years, they changed how they engaged with music in order to demonstrate through their music what they thought their inspirations would do contemporaneously. Cleve notes that in the end, they drew more heavily upon synthesizers and that their aim, throughout all their efforts, were to modernize and present the music of what they conceived as a "lost." Because of the relative popularity of their music, other lounge music bands started appearing and popping up in record stores, and varied quite widely from fairly good to piss poor in quality: mostly, it depended upon, from how I understand it, the engagement that the listener has with music to distinguish good or bad qualities of the song, which requires a specific body of knowledge, much like distinguishing what is good or bad cuisine.

The drink doesn't have to be made with a flaming brandy pour, and can be made without, in which case it is known as the Edisonian. In which case, the temperature is a bit more along the lines of a contemporary chilled cocktail; however, there is something interesting and enticing about the drink when consumed at the strange intermediate temperature which it has. It seems to be a sort of liminal cocktail, between both the popular and trite, but framed in a form where it has an interesting end result, especially in terms of flavor.

Combustible Edison:

1 ounce Campari
1 ounce lemon juice
2 ounces Brandy, heated

Combine the Campari and lemon juice in a shaker tin, shake with ice, and strain into a cocktail coupe. After heating the brandy, ignite it and pour the flaming brandy into the cocktail glass. Serve.

Devil's Own

2011-10-04T13:56:00.000-07:00

A cocktail comprised of rum with Fernet, Gran Gala and a demerara vanilla syrup? Awesome.

Nostalgia is a funny thing. From Greek, the word nostalgia means a pain to return home; in many respects, while we use the term to designate a desire for returning to earlier or past times, the word connotes in English a desire to return to those times which are happier than present. Yet, in reality, a nostalgic yearning is more just a return to the familiar, to the home. Memory constantly comes into play in our daily lives, playing a part not only in terms of remembering facts and figures, but also in terms of the emotive and affectuous aspects in our lives. We yearn for things we remember, we learn from things we remember, we regret things we remember, and yet we constantly are engaged in that continuum of past and present and future, juxtapositions of time and memory, life and choice.

Right now, I can say I am a bit nostalgic for home: for my friends, for fun times, for the familiar. In that, I'm craving this cocktail, the Devil's Own, which sounds like something one would requisition from Satan himself, in a sort of Faustian bargain for the past. While the Devil's Own is also a cocktail created by Colin Symons which consists of equal parts gin, dry vermouth, and Cointreau with a dash of bitters, I am interested in the drink created by a friend of mine (Tarling). Jason Schiffer, of 320 Main (which has recently created a blog that you can see here) created this drink to showcase Zaya Rum. It seems common that we see drinks made to showcase a specific spirit, as is the case with many high-end bartenders, which only helps to illustrate the economic-politics behind the craft cocktail movement, which helps reaffirm both marketing aspects in the industry in addition to the norm setting rhetorics established by these industry representatives in alignment with distinction making practices about "taste."

The configurations of how we engage with artifact and memory are fascinating. Certain objects, which we fetishize, can give us a sort of socio-economic status. For instance, Edward Green shoes. On the other hand, objects which serve as fetishes can have localized centers of power rooted in personal phenomenological experience. A fetish along this axis grants power to the local, provisioning an understanding of the past in behavior and memory, and takes on value based upon our own experiences. With regards to a cocktail, the visible and aesthetic function of the drink from an outsider's point of view is rooted in external practices of fetishization, while for the imbiber, in many cases, the cocktail takes on localized experience based forms of understanding. The ways in which we configure our understandings and the appropriation of quality to food is rooted in memory: to drink something that reminds you of your past; to eat an apple pie that tastes like good old "Grandma's home cooking." Plus, while there is always the sociological dimension to these processes of high end cuisine, and the determination of what is good based upon the insights of others; but in reality there is less of a personal investment in the concerns and tastes of others, meaning that we cannot often experience truly profound moments, at least along the line of memory, with something in which we have no investment.

For the Devil's Own, there is a vanilla demerara syrup. Make it as you would with an infusion of Madagascar vanilla bean in a simple syrup. However, for an added twist, change the simple syrup to an orgeat syrup, which gives it a nice nuanced flavor that contrasts just ever so slightly against the already strong flavors of vanilla that are present in Zaya rum. If you want to switch out the Zaya rum, go for another strong vanilla oriented rum, although the drink works surprisingly well with some Jamaican rums (with a bit of funk).

Jason's cocktail is a drink which reminds me of home and good old times, seeing as how I first experienced it. However, that doesn't mean it is a bad drink (far from it). Most other imbibers will not have a vested memory in this cocktail, seeing as it is new to them. But at the same time, we all have our favorite drinks, and memories of our first cocktail or first memorable experience with liquor. For me, I started good: a Sidecar made by a friend who was a bartender. And Sidecars, because of my vested interest in them, are still one of my favorite drinks.

Devil's Own:

1 1/2 ounce Zaya rum
1/2 ounce Fernet Branca
1/4 ounce Gran Gala
1 barspoon demerara vanilla syrup

Stir the ingredients with ice and strain into an absinthe rinsed cocktail glass. Express the aromatics of a lemon twist over the drink, and discard the lemon twist.

-----

Tarling, William. 1937. Café Royal Cocktail Book. Pall Mall LTD: London, 1937.

Norwegian Wood

2011-10-03T21:03:00.000-07:00

A drink featuring Aquavit paired lovingly with Applejack, this is a quintessential fall drink.

"'Letters are just pieces of paper,' I said. 'Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish.'"

- Haruki Murakami in Norwegian Wood

To most people, the name Norwegian Wood would invoke the Beatles. To me, it invokes two things: a wonderful novel by Haruki Murakami, and this cocktail. The drink, made by Jeffrey Morgenthaler is a few years old now, but still is a fantastic fall potation. Created as an experiment and response to a challenge by a brand representative, the drink pulls out the best flavors of the Aquavit, specifically the anise and fennel, and pairs it lovingly with Apples, making it somewhat like an apple tarte tatin in a glass. The use of the sweet vermouth cuts back the harshness, and helps give it a nice rounded flavor. For the longest time, I had searched for a satisfactory cocktail that uses Aquavit, which is not necessarily a good spirit with which to mix. Morgenthaler's drink fits the bill, and is fantastic.

I'd like to think that the quote above, by Haruki Murakami, about memory and artifact works just as well for a cocktail. Cocktails, as libations, can invoke nostalgia as well as demonstrate cultural capital and class distinction. In that the cocktail, as an artifact, is short lived and but only in the moment, the act of enjoying the drink provides it a sort of symbolic value in terms of its quality. Likewise, if the drink is bad, and is not consumed, then it will just cease to be a part of your cognitive thought processes and past. And quite often, the choice to determine whether a drink is good or not is not just the quality of the beverage, which does play an important objective role in addition to processes of distinction making, but also the company or atmosphere in which the drink is imbibed.

If you look at the proportions for the drink, it reaffirms that certain volumes and ratios just work better than others. The drink is rather reminiscent of a Vieux Carre, with substituted ingredients. But in the end, most drinks are the same, and merely are variations on what has already been created, in order to produce new flavors and experiences.

In case you are not aware of what aquavit is, think of a variation on gin produced in Norway and the Scandinavian regions, in which the juniper is replaced with caraway (or sometimes dill, which is from the same family of herbs). Like most spirits, the name translates to water of life. Grain based, it has other herbs, quite often fennel and anise, and in some cases, lemon or orange oils. The color of Aquavit is quite often of a yellowish hue, but can be clear or darker, depending on how long it has been aged; in the case of clear Aquavit, there is a specific nomenclature, that being taffel. Because of the caraway, the spirit is sometimes thought to have medicinal properties (like many spirits), and can help ease the digestion of heavier or richer foodstuffs, making it work well as a digestif.

In Norway particular, there is a tradition of sending Aquavit across the equator and back again on ships, as a means to age the liquor. Known as Linje Aquavit, the spirit is constantly churned in the casks on the boat, and experiences changing temperatures and higher levels of humidity, which cause the spirit to age across a wide spectrum of environments, making the journey humidity levels. Denmark and Sweden tend to have Aquavit which is not aged as long as the Norwegian styles, and do not feature anything as spectacular as shipping the spirit around for aging.

While Morgenthaler, and others, call for the use of Applejack, I personally find this works better in some respects with a Calvados. Applejack makes the mixture taste as if it has been reduced to a spirit, while on the other hand an aged Pays d'Auge Calvados produces a fantastic flavor in the drink, combining and adding to the spice notes that are present in the yellow Chartreuse. Of course, this is personal preference, and I would recommend a Pays d'Auge because of the fact they are double distilled, while in many cases certain other Calvados could be column distilled, which does not lend itself to having the level of complexity that one might find in an alembic controlled distillation. Plus, to me, the heavier vanilla flavor usually associated with American oak aged spirits (like Applejack), doesn't seem to work as well as the addition of other flavors characteristic of French oak. For instance, to some individuals, French oak is believed to give more of a tannin character to the aging liquid: the inclusion of tannins into this drink helps make this libation fantastic because it augments the mouth-feel in a way that works well to make it savory winter cocktail.

Norwegian Wood:

1 ounce applejack
1 ounce aquavit
3/4 ounce sweet vermouth
1/4 ounce yellow Chartreuse
1 dash Angostura bitters

Stir ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail coupe. Garnish with a large twist of lemon peel and serve.

Carbonating Cocktails and the Perlini

2011-10-02T23:54:00.000-07:00

What is better than a well-made cocktail? To many Americans, a carbonated one.

The obsession with carbonation in the United States is nothing new. For the United States, quite often the obsession can be linked, at a superficial level, with soda and soft drinks, but as a Western phenomenon of consumption, carbonated beverages have been imbibed for many years prior to that, thanks to the natural occurrence of mineral waters. Marketed soda, or the idea of a sweetened flavored water, can be traced back to the 17th century in Europe. In many cases, they were made with water and lemon juice, sweetened with honey (looks like a Toddy, save the spirit). These were not carbonated, and the move to carbonated drinks starts in the 18th century with the efforts of Europeans to create artificial sparkling water. Joseph Priestly, in 1772, published a text called "Impregnating Water with Fixed Air" and created this water by infusing water over a fermenting mash that would give off CO2 (O'Neil 7-9). Compared to that method, the soda siphon looks easy.

Soda, while its' origins in scientific praxis come from Europe, took off extensively in the United States, and were tied into chemists, pharmacists and the "soda jerk." The soda fountain, as a physical space, functioned similarly to a bar, with perceived health benefits taken from the carbonation of the drink, as well as a way to make tonics more palatable to the imbiber. Tied into rhetorics of nutrition, health and medicine, the soda fountain also served as a space for conspicuous leisure at an affordable price. And in many cases, the leisure included liquor: alcohol based medicine was quite common, and so mixed into a soda, it was not taxed, and served quite easily as a pick me up (O'Neil 10). Soda took a place through consumption as a primary aspect of the American culture, and has remained that way.

With cocktails it has been common to top up a drink using a soda siphon. Carbonation in Fizzes and Rickeys comes from the addition of seltzer water, and is not integrated into the drink. The addition of this as another ingredient dilutes the beverage, and helps lower the concentration and strength of the drink. While drinks such as Mojito or Fizz work fantastic, a lot of bartenders have an interest in trying new flavors and textures in their potations, and so the next logical step is to carbonate a short drink directly without dilution of flavor.

The Perlini is a cocktail carbonation system created by Evan Wallace, a physicist turned inventor who created many years ago a system for re-carbonating sparkling wine, most often Champagne, which had lost most of its' carbonation after being open. The precursor to the Perlini, the Perlage, was aimed at both restaurants and private aficionados of Champagne, with the sole purpose of making it viable to have one glass at a time. You can hear Evan doing some tests and talking about the pressurization and design of the Perlini here on Vimeo.

The idea behind the Perlini is to have a single chamber that functions as a cocktail shaker. The Perlini can be filled with ice just as a cocktail shaker would, and can be closed so that the creationis able to be shaken. In the physics behind forced carbonation, gases are more readily absorbed into liquid at lower temperatures and by increasing the surface area, or the amount of the liquid which comes in contact with the pressurized CO2. In other words, these two requirements are brought forth harmoniously when shaking a cocktail: the art of shaking chills a drink (while also diluting it to a good taste), and shaking increases the surface area to a theoretically infinite space within the sealed container. In principle, the solubility of gas decreases as the temperature increases, which means that beverage should be as cold as possible to ensure the carbonation methodology works efficaciously.

Made of a clear acrylic cylinder, the Perlini has a top valve through which pressurized gas is charged into the container, and the system unscrews both along the acrylic container (for adding the ice), and the top (which serves as a loose strainer and funnel). When straining, since I prefer to remove fine shards of ice, I fine strain through a tea strainer: while this might sound as it would decrease the overall carbonation, I find that it has a negligible impact. The downside with the Perlini is that to maximize the carbonation, you have to slowly open the top gasket, to depressurize the system slowly, so that the carbonation remains. However, this is the same as if you were working with any carbonation system...

For bartenders and restaurants of high volume, the Perlini is sold with a special CO2 regulator, hose and nozzle attachment that goes onto a tank. Since I'm not using it for commercial consumption, I only get a nice little hand tool with button an nozzle into which a CO2 cartridge is placed and has a built in regulator. This is my biggest gripe with the device: that the hand held pressurizer doesn't feel as sturdy or as functional as I like it to be. It does work, but just seems while you are using it, even after acquiring a feel for the device, to be a bit strange. For a bartender however, the biggest concern would be hearing whether the carbonation from the nozzle (in either case) has finished reaching the correct pressurization point for the system. Bars tend to be quite loud, and having showed the device to a few bartender friends of mine, they concurred about the impracticality of the Perlini in just certain bars, especially high volume ones, because of the waiting involved to produce the best quality carbonation.

Flavor wise, the carbonation is fantastic. If you look around through research articles, there are many which argue there is little impact of carbonation on flavor, and that it is mostly a textural element. However, there is something distinct about the carbonation of a cocktail which works magnificently in favor of a cocktail. Quite possibly, the aroma which wafts through the air upon opening the Perlini to depressurize it is the best feature of carbonating a cocktail. When combined with fresh juices, you can't beat the overall intensified burst of aromatic pleasure.

Back to the articles about taste: CO2 is commonly attributed to provide intensity of both salt and sour stimuli. The idea here is that CO2 solutions stimulate trigeminal nerve endings, which means that the carbonation "may alter the quality profile of a stimulus without producing substantial changes in overall taste intensity" which is similar to the idea behind combining and juxtaposing differently flavors in a cocktail (Cowart). When mixing a cocktail, you create a new taste that is a combination of the different flavors, and carbonation, heightening specific elements, modifies the taste further. As such, the best drinks I have had with the Perlini, with carbonation, have been drinks that have citrus. That isn't to say cocktails without citrus, juice or fruit flavors do not work well, but rather that they are quite a different experience.

Furthermore, a lot of people will think, to bring the balance of the drink back into consistency with the heightened perception of sour, that the addition of a little bit of sweetener would be a good thing. This is not the case. Sweetener in carbonated beverages can have minimal impact upon the sour taste of the drink, and also the higher the sugar solution in the liquid, the less there is a perceived effect of carbonation as a textural element (Yau and Daniel). So be hesitant about adding in more sweetener when carbonating a beverage, especially if you want that clean feeling of fizz on the tongue.

Overall, the Perlini is a fantastic system. I would recommend it as a good method for carbonating small, individually sized drinks. And once you have the taste of a carbonated Mai Tai or Sidecar, it is hard to go back to the good old ways. But carbonated cocktails still have a place and time, and that has to be understood when mixing the drink and serving it. In many cases, the carbonation can brighten up the drink, but if pairing with food, it becomes much more dangerous; plus the carbonation seems to be more of a summer trend than a winter one, and doesn't work as efficaciously with spirit-only based beverages, especially those built around whiskey or other grain based spirits.

-----

Cowart, Beverly J. 1998. "The Addition of CO2 to Traditional Taste Solutions Alters Taste Quality" in Chemical Senses 23: 397-402.

Yau, N. J. N. and M. R. McDaniel. 2006. "Carbonation Interactions with Sweetness and Sourness" in Journal of Food Sciences 57, 6: 1412-1416.

Belle Normandie

2011-10-02T00:25:00.000-07:00

And, the last drink from the spirited dinner at Feast, the Belle Normandie is a fine drink that is reminiscent of a Marconi cocktail.

The Belle Normandie, or "beautiful Normandy" cocktail is another one of Jackson's creations. Featuring Calvados, which is an appellation d'origine contrôlée liqueur from France, specially the southern Normandy region known as Basse-Normandie, the drink is befitting of its' name. With strong apple flavors, the cocktail has a bit of anise and other herbal flavors on the account of the house made rose vermouth that Jackson uses, as well as the small amount of pastis to rinse the glass.

Since the cocktail is one that uses Calvados and rose vermouth, it appears quite a bit similar to the Marconi cocktail, a drink that uses a two to one ratio of Calvados to vermouth, similar to a more classic Martini (save the orange bitters). However, the Marconi is a strange beast, and is quite likely an offshoot of the Star Cocktail, a classic vermouth drink, along the same lines of the Rob Roy, Manhattan and Martini, drawing out the use of equal proportions of apple brandy and sweet vermouth, with the addition of Angostura or Peychaud's bitters (and in some cases a dash or two of gomme syrup). The Belle Normandie is replacing the sweet vermouth with a lighter rose version, and replacing the bitters with pastis, as well as the apple brandy with Calvados, which in many respects is producing a French version of the Star.

Rose vermouth is a style of vermouth similar to vermouth rouge, but is lighter in terms of the sweetness as well as the body. In many cases, rose vermouth has a lot more citrus notes, such as orange, and flavors such as vanilla are easier to pull out because there are less of the bitter flavors that are found oftentimes in vermouth. It is a style of vermouth that is not often found in cocktails, nor is it popular in the United States (much like rose wine): yet, rose vermouth does have a following in both Italy and France, the two historical vermouth producing countries after which red and white, sweet and dry styles are respectively referred.

Jackson's own Eastern Standard rose vermouth is fantastic, and does very well to capture the nuances that are characteristic of this different style. The vermouth does have a bit of the bitter component characteristic of sweeter vermouth, but also conveys it well when juxtaposed and balanced against citrus driven notes and other flavors. Honestly, I have a desire to fly to Boston just to get some more of the stuff. Since it is a rare breed, if you want to make this cocktail yourself, you could perhaps use a smaller proportion of sweet vermouth touched up with a dash or two of gomme syrup, but your best bet would be to execute the drink with Cinzano rose vermouth, which while not fantastic, is generally widely available.

For mixing the drink, it would probably be better to rinse the glass with the pastis, in order to assure the minimal amount, but adding it into the mixture prior to chilling works just as well. The trend to rinse cocktail glasses with vermouth, something which is quite popular among crowds who do not like vermouth, has one thing going for it: control over the direct proportion of the ingredient with respect to the size of the glass and volume of the overall drink. The surface area of the cocktail glass chosen for a specific cocktail limits the amount that can be present, and in many cases, that works nicely in keeping a specific proportion to the volume of the drink (think about the shape of cocktail glasses). This is the same principle behind spraying a glass with bitters, or measuring out specific amounts of droplets of bitters rather than using arbitrary dashes. Control over the volume of ingredients allows for control over a cocktails' taste.

Belle Normandie:

1 1/2 ounces Calvados
1 1/2 ounces Rose Vermouth
Bell ringer of Granier mon pastis

Shake over ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass, garnished with an orange twist.

L'Alto Stallone

2011-10-01T20:28:00.000-07:00

Another drink from the Feast spirited dinner, this one is quite overdue. Featuring gin, the high stallion is a fantastic drink featuring maraschino and Amaro Abano.

A gin highball-style long drink, the L'alto Stallone, or high stallion in Italian, is sweetened with maraschino liqueur, and uses grapefruit juice instead of the more traditional citrus of lime or lemon. The use of the maraschino and the grapefruit juice are seen in play in things such as the Hemingway Daiquiri, and as such, has a strong background. Yet, the flavor profile is really pulled together by the inclusion of Amaro Abano and orange bitters, which bridge the former of which helps pull the maraschino and grapefruit into a strange sort of funky but excellent alignment, while the latter simultaneously moves the gin into a more bright and vivid finish. Jackson Cannon, the creator of the drink, chooses to use Regan's orange bitters here as a supplementary flavor profile, and the slight spice notes from the Regan's play nicely with the amaro.

Surprisingly easy on the soft-palate, the drink is an exceptional summer time cooler, and would work well even in the winter months, if you tweaked the ratio of ingredients slightly. Because abano is quite sweet, using a different amaro will help pull out sharper flavors, and in the end provide quite a different sipper. But because of the sweetness, a London dry gin is almost a requisite, especially with the inclusion of the maraschino.

Showcasing the Preiss / Anchor Distilling portfolio, Amaro Abano by Luxardo is fantastic, and is made with wild grown herbs and an infusion of cardamom, cinnamon and bitter orange peel. The orange is extremely prevalent, and the cardamom gives it a sort of green, fresh vegetal note, a flavor which goes wonderfully with gin (seeing as how it is common for some gin brands to use cardamom as a botanical). Not as bitter as other amari, the Abano is plenty sweet on its' own. Traditionally, amari are used as after-dinner digestif, and are popular in Italy (the name amaro means bitter in Italian). There are several styles of amari, including fernet (a more sharp bitter amaro), alpine (which uses alpine rather than Mediterranean herbs), carciofo (artichoke based) ,rabarbo (rhubarb based), china (made with cinchona), among other more sweet or light styles. Certain versions are oftentimes served hot (such as the rabarbo or china based varieties).

Made through maceration of herbs, roots, citrus peel and bark in alcohol, the filtered substance is mixed with a bit of simple syrup to add sweetness and bring it back into a sort of balance with the overall flavor profile. In most cases, the amari are then stored and aged in barrels or in the bottle, which helps to let the flavors mingle and come to the satisfying conclusion.

L'Alto Stallone:

1 1/2 ounces London dry gin
1/2 ounce Luxardo Maraschino
1/2 ounce Luxardo Amaro Abano
2 ounces fresh squeezed grapefruit juice
4 drops Regan's orange bitters

Combine the ingredients in a shaker tin, chilling satisfactorily and serve as a highball.

Storm Port Old Fashioned

2011-09-30T23:08:00.000-07:00

A drink from the spirited dinner at Feast, the Storm Port Old Fashioned is a rum based old fashioned using a "compound" bitter orange component and two types of bitters.

Another one of Jackson's drinks made to showcase the line of spirits offered by Anchor Distilling / Preiss Imports, the spin on this cocktail is two fold. While most people avoid using lime twists, Jackson pulls the lime off as an interesting aromatic influence upon the drink, especially since it juttingly stands against the ingredients-of which there is no lime juice. Secondly, the drink uses the idea of blending liqueurs prior to mixing, in order to create compound liqueurs. The drink takes its' name from the inclusion of an English style rum.

While lime twists are not uncommon, they generally are added to rum drinks, and quite often drinks with a citrus component to extrapolate the aroma from the oils of the lime into the aroma of the drink. Without the lime juice, this makes the Storm Port Old Fashioned quite interesting with regard to this, since it treats the lime as one would use a lemon in making something such as a Martini. The expression of the lime upon the rim of the glass and the top of the ice keeps the ingredients above the surface of the libation as well, providing a sense of longevity to the overall aromatic experience of the potation.

The drink calls for specifically compound bitter orange, or a mixture of two parts Fernet to one part curacao. While this could be made a la minute, the creation of this prior to the actual drink helps to alleviate the stress of measuring out one third ounce of Fernet and one sixth ounce curacao. Seeing the rise of compound mixtures behind the stick is common, especially as a way to cut back on the time consumptioin for readily made drinks: how often do people want to make up a Zombie adding in each ingredient separately, rather than just performing the combinatorial exercise with a fraction of the motions by mixing up drink ingredients earlier in the evening or week. When behind the bar, the need to be efficacious is quite important, since it is an industry, and quality is not sacrificed in this way, especially if the drink is a repeat seller.

The only other thing to note is that Jackson, instead of using a simple syrup, uses sugar for this drink. While it is personal preference, Jackson ensures that the sugar is dissolved more readily by working with it at room temperature rather than after adding in ice or chilling the drink. Sugar, as you knwo if you are making a syrup, more easily dissolves in liquids at high temperature, and the inclusion of the soda water helps ensure the smoothness of the cocktail.

Storm Port Old Fashioned:

2 ounces English Harbot 5 Year
1/2 ounce compound bitter orange (2 parts Fernet to 1 part curacao)
A sugar cube
Dash of Angostura
Dash of Peychaud's bitters

In the bottom of a mixing glass, add a sugar cube, and the bitters. Add a touch of soda and stir / muddle the sugar cube to get it to dissolve. After that, add in the rest of the ingredients, stir at room temperature, add ice, stir to chill, and strain onto the rocks. Garnish with a twist of lime.

Pink Shimmy

2011-09-30T22:00:00.000-07:00

Another Boston Cocktail Experience drink, the Pink Shimmy is a fantastic blend of Chinchon dry and sweet, with additional flavor coming from Peychaud's bitters.

Created by John Gertsen of Drink, the Pink Shimmy is a bright pink cocktail, served in a frappe style. Frappe, for those who are not aware, is a classic style, quite often done with absinthe, in which the drink, diluted through a method of stirring or shaking depending on the strength of dilution desired, is then served over crushed or shaved ice and churned lightly. The most quintessential version of this is the absinthe frappe, which is done through previous dilution by means of a hard shake to chill the drink satisfactorily, prior to adding it into the shaved ice. However, to someone who drinks coffee, of which I am not, the word frappe might invoke images of a frappe coffee, which is a foamed and chilled coffee drink.

The idea of the frappe in coffee however dates back only to 1957, whilst the earliest appearances of the absinthe frappe in cocktail books are in the late 19th century. The drink probably originated in the Old Absinthe House bar in New Orleans, during a time that absinthe was quite popular. Created in 1874 by Cayetano Ferrer, the drink was exceedingly popular up until the ban of absinthe in 1912. It is not common to find the drink in most 20th century cocktail books, and has recently started its' comeback thanks to the reversion of the ban on absinthe in 2007.

The name of the drink has its' origins in both the color, obviously, but the methodology found in serving the drink: a shimmy is a dance move that involves moving the shoulders of the body whilst keeping the corpus of the dancer still. This style of movement is very characteristic and unique, and as such, is somewhat reminiscent of the frappe, in which the shaved or crushed ice is churned with a spoon in a manner that is moved back and forth similar to the physical motions of the body.

Chinchon is an interesting liqueur. As an anis-anisette, the liquid, named after the region it is produced, originates from the village Chinchon in the Madrid area of Spain. Referred to as anis de Chinchon, after its' origins, the tradition originates in the 16th century, where wine alcohol had been infused with green anise and redistilled as a spirit. Famed in the anisette world, Chinchon has won several awards on account of quality, and is a perfect digestive.

For those of you who are curious, there is a difference between Anisette and Pastis, as well as Absinthe. Absinthe contains wormwood, green anise and sweet fennel macerated in a spirit, which makes it rather similar to gin. Absinthe is not a liqueur, and has a classic place in 19th and 20th century cocktails. Anisette and Pastis are different: the former is an anise flavored liqueur that originates in Spain, Italy, and other European countries, and is colorless. A true anisette is made through the distillation of anise seed, but in many cases, and like Steinhäger, the majority of the anisette you will find on the market is a simple infusion. Anisette, in the Chinchon region, is just referred to as Chinchón dulce, or sweet Chinchon. The latter, pastis, is flavored with both anise seed and licorice, and is made through maceration of the ingredients.

Pink Shimmy:

1 oz Chinchon Dry
1 oz Chinchon Sweet (we didn’t have this so we upped the simple to taste)
2 dashes peychaud’s
1/2 oz simple syrup

Frappe with crushed ice.

La Dolce Vita

2011-09-28T23:54:00.000-07:00

The sweet life, truly is sweet in the metaphysical sense, but not in the cloying sense.

Putting off writing for a while, partially because of writers block, but also a hectic schedule with changing projects, I hopefully will start covering cocktails again, and not just using them to cover my tongue.

Long overdue, this article is on La Dolce Vita, which is another one of those drinks from the Boston Cocktail Experience at the Tales of the Cocktail show late in July. Obviously, rather overdue. The drink, crafted by Brother Cleve is a fantastic blend of Kentucky bourbon, Verveine du Velay Verte, orange bitters, and amaro. Of course, sponsored by Anchor Distilling Company, the drink makes use of Anchor's extensive liquor selection-and does it rather well. However, that doesn't mean you cannot recreate the drink using your own preferences. Personally,t he drink works rather well with a heavier rye based whiskey.

Since the drink has little or no history, besides the fact it was made to showcase a specific spirit portfolio, which makes it in many respects a brand cocktail, I feel I should talk a bit about Brother Cleve who created the drink. Cleve is a fantastic fellow, and a pleasure to speak with: he is considered, by Jackson and other Boston bartenders, the "godfather of the craft cocktail revival in Boston." Considering himself musician first, then bartender, Cleve is a talented artist who was part of cocktail culture music of the 90s, which would be classified as "easy listening" according to Cleve. I'll talk more about this music in another soon to follow article on a cocktail called the Combustible Edison, which is eponymously named for the band of which Cleve had been a member.

Concerning the nomenclature of this drink, however, Cleve wanted to capture the irony in the name "since the drink is more bitter than sweet, much like the 'Sweet Life' in the Fellini film of the same name." And it works, the drink does have elements of sweetness, but it is not overwhelming or cloying, and the sweetness just helps to balance out the drink while leaving the bitters at the forefront of the flavor profile. Furthermore, Cleve, pictured above mind you, is quite a character, and informed me that he saw himself drinking this on the Via Veneto while crowd watching, which is another tie in to his personality and idea behind the cocktail being linked with a Fellini film.

Memory and invoked longing or imagined activity seems to be quite common with cocktails: the fact we can get from a bar a specific ethos that is inscribed upon the act of drinking a particular cocktail in that space is a reminder of this. Drinks and cocktails such as these help us to establish groundwork in which to frame the world through a specific aesthetic and libation. Ideas about space and memory are invoked in films such as Fellini's and a link can be made between the cultural performance of bartenders and chefs in creating high end cuisine, as well as the efforts of skilled artisans within the more traditional forms of art.

La Dolce Vita:

1 1/2 oz Hirsch Small Batch Reserve Kentucky Bourbon
3/4 oz Pages Verveine du Velay Verte
1/2 oz Luxardo Amaro Abano
2 dashes Regans Orange Bitters

Stir the drink over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

Flip Royal

2011-08-04T15:10:00.000-07:00

Probably my favorite cocktail at Tales, this Jackson Cannon created flip features a salted rooibos syrup, a fantastic three spice garnish, based off of King's Ginger.

This drink was offered in two places: one as the closing pairing with the traditional bread and butter pudding from the spirited dinner at Feast, and secondly as Jackson's offering at the Boston Cocktail Experience, the tasting room for Anchor Distilling. And in both cases it was exquisite, but the former version, as a replacement for coffee with dessert, was bloody fantastic. The drink uses the rich body created by the egg to give it a bit of a strong mouthfeel, which works really well in juxtaposition to cut back on any sweetness, and plays off of the flavors of ginger and rooibos really well.

For the rooibos syrup, it is actually a simple syrup that is salted and infused with rooibos. Following the recommended steeping time for the individual rooibos, which usually is within the five minute range, Jackson steeps the tea in near boiling hot water, and uses twice the amount of tea per water ratio in order to get that strong earthy flavor. He then strains it, measuring it, and combines equal proportions of water and sugar, prior to it cooling to make the syrup. At the end, he adds in salt to taste, but as a general guidelines, for each quart of tea, he uses slightly less than a tablespoon of salt. The addition of the salt is fantastic, since it is a play on sweet and salty things, such as candied bacon: bacon with the salt and savory component pairs really well with brown sugar; in the case of this syrup, rooibos with its' savory and earthy components draws a lot from that salt.

The use of tea in cocktails seems to have been a prevalent thing at Tales this year, both with Cynthia Gold, a tea sommelier, showing up to showcase her book book signing panels, but also with the large amount of punches featuring tea, which draws upon the historical past of the punch, as well as he whiskey and tea libation tasting room sponsored by Diageo, featuring cocktails created by Robert Sickler, a "master of whisky." While people such as Cynthia are concerned with pure tea in cocktails, and not necessarily tisanes or rooibos, the inclusion of these ingredients seems to be a common trend and movement in cocktails, especially as they strive to create new found complex flavors through the use of more complex syrups (as evidenced by the salted rooibos syrup), or uncommon herbs, mixers, bitters, et cetera.

King's Ginger is relatively new on the American Market, but not a new product by any stretch of the imagination. Created originally in 1903 for Edward VII, the drink was formulated by the Berry Bros with a rich, yet spicy flavor. It was supposedly created to stimulate the King on his walks. The liqueur could probably serve that purpose, especially because of the wonderful spiciness on the tongue, but the question is still in the air over whether or not that is marketing (good marketing at that), or truth; I'd put my money on something in between. Supposedly it was his physician who commissioned the apothecaries to produce an elixir to vivify the life of the monarch. In comparison to the other ginger liqueur on the market, Canton, the flavor is less vivid and floral, having a bit more depth with honey and earthy notes and in addition a character of lemon: the liqueur is made through macerating lemon zest and ginger.

To finish it off, it has a spice mixture that is sprinkled across the top, to add to the warming sensation and provide a bit more desert notes. The mixture is an equal proportion of coffee, nutmeg and cinnamon. The nutmeg and cinnamon are common and make sense on such a drink, but it is the coffee that sets it over the top. The coffee addition was suggested by Tom Schlesinger-Guidelli to Jackson.

Flip Royal:

1 egg
1 ounce salted rooibos syrup
2 ounces King's Ginger
1 dash of angostura bitters

Dry shake the mixture, then combine with ice and shake again. Strain into a chilled highball glass, and top up with two ounces of seltzer. Garnish with a shaved spice mix of cinnamon, nutmeg and coffee.

Aperitivo Verano

2011-08-04T12:22:00.000-07:00

This drink by Jackson Cannon of Eastern Standard was the opening aperitif for the Spirited Dinner at Feast, sponsored by Anchor Distilling, in an attempt to showcase their product line and cocktails that come out of that line in relationship to continental European fare.

Meaning summer appetizer in Spanish, the drink as designed to pair with a chilled almond soup with grapes, which also was Spanish based. Seeing as each course was designed to pair with a specific cocktail, what better way than to capture the cocktail and the essence of it by using products from Preiss Imports (now Anchor Distilling), to showcase European liquors and spirits.

Created by Jackson Cannon, he drink really looks to me to be a riff on champagne cocktails like the French 75, replacing the lemon juice with Verveine and Regan's bitters, and the gin with brandy, as well as raspberries with salt to bring out a bit of flavor. The use of the berries is somewhat a throwback to smashes and coolers, with the berry as a garnish, bu the inclusion of it in the drink through muddling is a common occurrence now a days.

The drink was fantastic: light thanks to the effervescence, the bubbly mixture soared high with the sharp acidity on the tongue from the Cava and the tartness of the raspberries, while retaining bright fruit notes on the finish. And while the drink could have probably used a bit more effervescence, a problem that plagues a lot of drinks, but was a result of the fact so many were made at once here, the levity created by the sparkling wine was not lost, and its' function as an aperitif was fulfilled. It also worked surprisingly well as it warmed up, giving it a bit of a more savory finish rather than that tart acidity from the Cava. This might be in part due to the inclusion of salt in the drink, something which I have noticed from a couple of Jackson's drink recipes.

You know how grapes can have a tartness about them that bites on the tongue? That tartness was what was really emphasized and supplemented through this cocktail: grapes in the soup were fresh and bright and contained that sharp flavor, while juxtaposed to the drink itself, because of the tartness of the raspberries, a supplementary note came through. In addition, the fact that there is brandy in the drink helped in a completely different way. The use of brandy was less about augmenting the grape notes in the soup, so much as helping to pair between the savory components of the almond base; good brandy has a light sweetness, but also a bit of complexity that can lend itself a sort of savory component.

A caveat about the drink: it was originally designed with Verveine do Velay, specifically the verte one, but in the format I had it, it was substituted for the amber version. Verveine do Velay is a French liqueur that is similar to Chartreuse, except instead of the longstanding history of being made by Monks with 130 different herbs and plants, Verveine was made by an apothecary Joseph Rumillet Charretier in the Auvergne region in 1859 with only thirty-two plants. There is a notable difference, but it is a wonderful herbal liqueur, that uses cognac as an additional element in order to provide a more complex finish. It is a fantastic way to bring a more subtle layer of complexity to drinks when compared to Chartreuse, but simultaneously not losing all the depth that is Characteristic of Chartreuse when mixed as an accent in cocktails with a lot of strong flavors.

Apertivo Verano:

5 raspberries
Pinch of salt
1/2 ounce simple syrup
1/2 ounce Verveine do Velay verte
1 ounce brandy
1 dash Regan's orange bitters

Muddle the raspberries with a pinch of salt, and then combine the rest of the ingredients in the tin. After a moderate shake, strain into a flute, and top with 3 ounces of Cava and a light twist of lemon.

Sips of Spirits, or Tasting Rooms at Tales

2011-07-31T23:02:00.000-07:00

So of the free things at Tales, that are officially sanctioned, the primary events are those of tasting rooms; having spent quite a bit of time in quite a few tasting rooms, I thought I'd point out some of the more interesting ones this year, and what they were doing well.

So beyond he piles of tasting cups inscribed with either Tales insignia or a brand logo, he preponderance of liquor bottles throughout each tasting room provides a sort of familiarity between each room despite the differences in label or type of liquor. There is just something comforting about finding yourself in a room with tables set up, little plastic cups, and drinks being poured in the smallest, yet quite satisfactory, volume. The diversity in products, as well as the frenzy and hordes of imbibers at tasting rooms, makes them both a pleasant and unpleasant space to be in, depending on whether or not you know anyone, or can find yourself a little bit of something to sip and about which to ponder.

Tasting rooms varied from more formal seminar style environments, to the informal, yet familiar, pours and measures of liquor from bottles with representatives dispensing liquid euphoria to the masses. In the case of the former rooms, while lots of information was presented, there was a problem of access, in terms of which the parties curious about the liquor or spirit were not necessarily allowed to taste what they wanted, and quite a few people were refused at the doors for a couple tastings (no names will be mentioned), because there simply wasn't enough space. While this orderly format does allow for a more controlled tasting environment, the idea behind a tasting room is to simply sip and sample things, and while information, which is duly appreciated among many liquor enthusiasts, the types of questions and information desired differs depending on the imbibers' background, and as such some information is clearly too much for quite a few people. Having met a myriad of native residents of New Orleans, who were attending Tales mainly for the liquor and not for the information, the tasting rooms offered the primary source of fun and delight, but demonstrated a set of problems for quite a few people who wanted to move on through and try as much as they possibly could, especially since multiple tasting rooms ran simultaneously. Even I am guilty of that, but in reality, it is a common trait to go taste the things that interested you; and as such, for many of those who wanted to taste and get drunk, the tasting rooms with the names that provided specific contexts to their favorite spirits were the first tasting rooms to be visited, and quite often the ones which were flooded with a plethora of imbibers. The tequila or rum tastings this year were exacerbated by the sheer masses of people trying to get tastings, and for the early morning tasting rooms, the rooms with hors d'œuvre and small bite offerings had quite a few people gathering around the foodstuffs, as was the case for the Pierre Ferrand tasting.

As such, since there is a traditional format to tasting at larger conventions, one which allows people to come and go as they please, seeing what interests them, I can say that the open access or more informal tasting rooms were the best to attend; Haus Alpenz was fantastic, with knowledgeable staff behind each station, willing to provide information which was asked of them, as well as give a both interesting and short analysis of the product that you were about to be sampling; in other words, they were acting as excellent salesmen, appealing to a sense of demand in the imbiber and consumers' subconscious that the expert knowledge and plethora of minute details could very well demonstrate a quality product. At the Haus Alpenz tasting room, perhaps the best thingswere the Champagne Lanson, which was just fun and fresh wih a lot more tart acidity and sharpness than usually found in Champagne, specific o heir offering because they choose not to engage in malolactic fermentation, thereby requiring wice the set amount of time to age a spirit. Of course, the offerings from Alpenz such as Zirbenz was a great demonstrating of their obscure spirits as well, bu the mezcal and appearance of delicious aromatic wines such as Cardamaro or Cocchi assisted in showing the diversity of their portfolio. he star for me from them was the damson gin liqueur, which was not cloying and used fresh juice from damson plums in the gin rather than an infusion or maceration process. The fresh juice gave it a bit of a sharp and tart flavor, showcasing the liqueur as a fresh element rather than what could easily have been an industrialized one.

Pierre Ferrand had an excellent tasting room, in a semi informal manner, with a bit of flair and interesting history set about, both with the antiquated bottle of extremely old Cognac, but also with the Chanticleer cocktails which were bottled and ready to be taken home, a product of David Wondrich's own historical efforts. The Chanticleer presented by Ferrand was a Cognac Sazerac, which supposedly predates the Sazerac, being an ancestor to it. The fact that the cocktail, which was prepared on site, was also bottled to showcase the product line, demonstrates truly what Tales is all about: not necessarily specific spirit brands, but what these spirits can do in drinks. Plus, Ferrand had the right idea, with tasting old exclusive lineups of Cognac, such as a 70 year old and a 50 year old; y not showing just the normal consumer market, it gives the spirit a rich background and history, and enthralls the visitors and spectators into the brand, selling them on the name rather than just the product (which is fantastic anyhow).

In terms of physical swag, Lillet had the right idea with the atmosphere of the room, and the fact it was raining outside, made it even better with the decor and paper umbrellas done in the art nouveau style. The room had some well executed touches, a lack of people inside (which was a shame because of the fantastic punches), and an interesting product to showcase (the new Lillet Rose). And to top it off, they had an aged Lillet which was fantastic, giving the imbibers an opportunity to taste something which is not sold at all, and see, just like with Ferrand, a history behind the product, and a history behind the name, which once again reifies a sense of authority, dignity and sophistication in the overall ethos of the product.

The strangest, yet probably most fascinating tasting rooms were the one doing molecular mixology, but also the Whiskey and Tea Libation room by Diageo, which showcased the use of whiskey, including Scotch, in what amounts to, at the very base of it all, as punches. While quite of a few of the punches, according to the creator of the drinks were lacking because of missing ingredients such as fresh grapefruit juice, the Lagavulin 16 year with Sherry and Lapsung Souchong tea was fantastic. The molecular mixology room, which was done by Koerner, had some interesting stuff going on, but it wasn't executed well, since so many people flooded to the half of the room with samples, and just stood there fighting to see what was going on and acquire a taste. In the case of some of the tasting products, the complex requirement sot deconstruct a cocktail through machinery held up the line and slowed down the flow of samples, but the wait was pretty much worth it. On the other hand, tasting rooms such as the Farmer's tasting room, with its' wide spread and diverse product line up, went over really well in execution.

Perhaps though, my favorite tasting room has got to be the one created by the people at Preiss Imports, now Anchor Distilling. Their product range, like Haus Alpenz is quite extensive, but unlike Haus Alpenz, they did a tasting showcasing their products in cocktails created by bartenders from Boston, entitled the Boston Cocktail Experience. The drinks were exceptional in all cases, and really did represent the wide diversity that their portfolio can encompass. Between classics such as Luxardo, and Springbank Campbeltown single malts, their product range is extensive and high quality. They offered samples of the booze to take with, as well as some keychains and swag, but mostly the true shining stars of the tasting room were the cocktails in the corners, of which there were a large number, eight in total, to choose from. And truly, the room was all about tasting, and offering information should you want it, letting the products speak for themselves rather than having someone speak for them.

The drinks showcased included the Causeway by Ben Sandrof, which was a fantastic rum curacao and maraschino drink with a simple, yet strong flavor profile that was pleasing and smoother; Jackson's Flip Royal, which combined classic spice notes with tea, salt, and a delightful texture and body; Misty's Space Age Pop, which had a lot of stuff going on in a very good way (one woman which I overheard had remarked that this was drink was a liquid orgasm); and John Gersen's Pink Shimmy, an anisette based drink which was done frappe style, and overall a lovely change of pace from so many drinks a Tales). The other four drinks, La Dolce Vita by Cleve, El Camino by Trina Strum, Bitter Bee by Tom Schlesinger-Guidelli, and Joy Richard's Modern Herbal were fantastic as well, and overall worked to showcase the talents of some of Boston's finest bartenders. Recipes of each drink will be put on the site, after I finalize getting the exact copies from the individual authors, and not just Jackson's copy of the recipes, as well as permission to republish the recipes and any thoughts that the bartenders may have on the drinks.

Plenty of other tasting rooms were done extremely well, save for the few that started to refuse guests because they were poorly organized, but c'est la vie. But overall, the tasting rooms were a highlight of the overall event, since of course, they are free (provided you had a wristband), and because of the wide diversity of individuals whom one could meet, as well as the wide diversity of products being showcased in a large manner. Next year I hope o see the tasting rooms a bit more loose and free-form, and a bit more organization and better layout for a lot of the smaller spaces, so that the drinks were not being offered at one section of the room, where everyone would crowd and fight to get a sample. Also, there needs to be better resource allocation, since some rooms were given way too many plastic tasting cups, while others had not enough; being aware of the sheer amount of stations is an important fact that contributes directly to sampling efficacy.

Spirited Dinner at Feast

2011-07-27T21:51:00.000-07:00

So, my internet at the Hotel decided to take a nosedive and stop working on the evening of my second day at Tales. As such, this post is after the fact, but I have to say that I still wanted to talk about the drinks and dishes at Feast, for the Spirited Dinner, "A Taste of Europe," sponsored by Anchor Distilling with Jackson Cannon behind the stick.

At Tales of the Cocktail, tradition includes dinners on Thursday which are pairing of food with cocktails, providing a way to showcase different themes and food. This year I chose to go to Feast, one because I am aware at how well Feast can execute food, and two because I am quite excited to see what Jackson Cannon and the tastes of Boston are like. Feast specializes in European style cuisine, with a lot of country, home-style cooking such as Fish Pies and Bubble and Squeak, but also drawing heavily upon offal. The restaurant originated in Houston, and had opened a year ago a location in New Orleans, which unfortunately closed a couple weeks before Tales, but it opened for a final evening for the already planned Spirited Dinner.

Sponsored by Anchor Distilling Company, which merged with Preiss Imports, the drinks were showcasing different elements in their lineup, and the ways in which they can be use to create a wide diversity of cocktails. Anchor has an extensive lineup, which does allow for quite a few different cocktails to be created, including herbal and sweet, with base spirits of brandy, calvados, gin, rum, as well as the use of more classic ingredients and liqueurs such as luxardo maraschino or curacao de curacao.

The evening began with a brief tasting of a punch, which quickly retired to three tables, for a communal dining experience, meeting new friends and seeing old faces. It was an excellent evening with quite a few representatives from Anchor, Colin Kimball, Simon Difford and Paul Clarke, to name a few; yet compared to many of the other Spirited Dinners, because this one was so small, it allowed for an extremely intimate evening, in which introductions were made by everyone prior to the final course. Besides Jackson behind the bar, we also had Naomi Levy, from Eastern Standard as well, and Devon Tarby, from the Varnish.

To start off, the first entree was a chilled almond soup with grapes, done in a Spanish style, paired with a light sparkling fruit driven cocktail called Apertivo Verano. The soup, with the savory component and texture coming from the almond, as well as the light floral notes from the grapes, was fantastic and paired exceptionally well with the Aperitivo Verano, which emphasized Verveine do Velay, Soberano Brandy, and a touch of Regan's Bitters. The fruit and tart notes from the apertif worked exceptionally well to cut back on the richness of the soup, and the difference in texture proved to have a good effect on the palate.

Following that, we had Scallops St. Jacques, paired with Belle Normandie. This was a weaker pairing, but still quite good none the less, and like the previous one, emphasized supplementing the flavors between drink and food rather than producing a firm marriage. The Normandie was made with Calvados and Eastern Standard Rose Vermouth (fantastic stuff), and a touch of pastis. The Scallops, were a rich brandy cream mushroom sauce, which worked well being cutback by the savory components of the drink drawn from the pastis and vermouth.

Third, we had L'alto Stalone, a gin based libation, with a bit of Maraschino and grapefruit juice, paired with a Parsley and Pancetta Salad with Grapefruit and Parmasan. This was exceptional, both the drink, which was a great riff on more classic gin drinks such as the Aviation, but also inclusion of the grapefruit juice and the Regan's bitters, helped to bring the drink and the food together, in a marriage between ingredients and flavors.

For the main, nothing less than braised pork cheeks, with garlic rutabaga and kale, twists on classic comfort foods of the English isles, but demonstrating exactly what Feast specializes in. The Storm Port Old Fashioned, an English Harbor 5 year old rum, alongside some curacao and Luxardo Fernet, touched up and finished the overall main course.

To conclude the evening, we had the magnificent triumph, which I heard several people claiming was better than coffee with dessert, which was a Flip Royal, paired with traditional English bread pudding. I will admit, I am extremely partial to this drink, since the overall flavors were fantastic, and the food with which it was paired played extremely nice with the King's Ginger that was the base of the Flip Royal, giving it a wonderful spice note that complimented very well the dessert. The use of the salted rooibos syrup also lent a savory component to the cocktail, preventing it from being too sweet, and drying out the overall drink so that it would be a lovely juxtaposition to the bread pudding. And when I say I am extremely partial to this drink, I must clarify, this was quite easily one of the best drinks I imbibed at Tales.

So overall, the evening was a great one, with lots of socializing, an easy going attitude, and fantastic company, as well as excellent potations and fare. As soon as I can clarify and assure that I have the correct recipes for all the drinks, from Cannon, I will post them on my blog. What is going on in Boston may not be ground breaking when thought about in the grand scheme of things, and this dinner might not be the best representation of the overall joy of Boston (for that I was blessed by the Boston Cocktail Experience at the Anchor tasting room) but the execution is fantastic, and represents the level of quality that comes into play from Boston, which quite easily explains why they won awards at both the Spirited Awards for Drink, and Bar Room Brawl, for Eastern Standard.

Spirited Beginnings, or Tales of the Cocktail

2011-07-22T07:33:00.000-07:00

So I'm at Tales of the Cocktail and having a fantastic time. To sum up, this brief post is just merely remarking on some points I have noticed concerning Tales and also establishing what I hope to talk about once this is all over.

So lacking a USB cord to connect to my bloody laptop, I am unable to export my pictures to my site. Yet, if I put some notes online, or an enumerated list of talking points I want to cover, it forces me to be more motivated to do some writing, so hence the actual raison d'etre for this post.

Having never been to Tales before, I was never quite sure what to expect, but I have found that there is quite a bit going on, between the tastings, the shared camaraderie between members of the bartending and liquor community, an exchange of knowledge and enterprise praxis, as well as the enterprise of just enjoying oneself and having a grand old time.

The tasting rooms vary in terms of their style, ranging from seminar style tastings with presentations and more intimate environs for the smaller groups, or larger more elaborate set ups for multiple product sampling. For instance, the tasting room at Bacardi was a seminar style tasting in which bartenders gave a talk about the history of cocktails, the history of the brand, the use of Bacardi in the cocktail, both in terms of cocktails which may utilize it as a white rum, but also how it behaves in the drink from a taste standpoint.

On the other hand, tasting rooms such as the one by Haus Alpenz was more informal, with people congregating around the room and the tables sampling the various, and by various I mean extensive product range; there were papers given at the beginning before entering, that provide a list of the various spirits and wines and gave you space to write notes or rate them. Yet while this style of tasting, which is very informal, seems quite at a loss in terms of information when compared to the the seminar or lecture style tastings, there is still quite a bit of information being exchanged here. The very simple fact that tools, even as simple and mundane as paper and pencil are being given out indicates that there is some sort of skill set necessary to taste and adequately reflect upon the nature of the spirits and how to engage with these potations. Furthermore, the use of the liquor representative as a host of information is quite common, and in the case of many brands, there are quite a few liquor representatives that cannot adequately talk about the enthusiasts interests in the brand; however, this is quickly changing in an industry that is now priding itself on expertise. When you have someone who is more than just a pretty face and can talk to you about the differences between this bottling and the previous years, the ingredients, process of making it (I am so happy someone told me about the lack of malolactic fermentation in Champagne Lanson), or the history of it, let alone about distribution channels, you know you have representatives that have "expert knowledge." Like wine, a knowledge of the product is essential to marketing and selling the product, but also like wine, there is a new found expertise related to the taste of products on the market.

Another thing which has been interesting is the wide variety of individuals who are represented at this event: from a tea sommelier that I met yesterday, to people form the CIA, to the bartender or the liquor representative, or the brand owner, there is quite a plethora of different agents at this event. That was to be expected, but, the sheer level of people engaged at this event is fascinating.

Yesterday on the plane ride to 'Nawlins, I ended up talking with a few petroleum and system engineers for smaller companies that are contracted to design oil platforms. We ended up talking about the level of involvement on different parties and companies in order to provide economic gain within the petroleum industry: media represents the oil industry primarily as a bad, specifically because they only dwell sensationally upon disaster or the financial and legal aspects of big oil. History has always been driven by top-down views of elites controlling and influencing the world, and media does dwell upon that, but what it doesn't capture is the level of engagement within the oil industry to produce gain requires quite a bit of different engagement and companies: the oil companies themselves contract out most of the work to smaller, family owned and operated or independent contractor businesses, as is the case with the design of many refineries and other spaces necessary for the production of refined petrol. But in the case of the oil platforms, which people live, there is a need for food and other supplies: oil companies use locals, in the New Orleans area at least, and have them transport on their own boats to the platforms these supplies. When oil is not being produced, as was the case after the huge BP disaster, many people who might solicit this food, or produce this material or tool, or transport these goods suffer and lose income as well as the oil company itself. We do not think of the interdependence of different chains of inquiry in profit.

This is the same case at Tales. The interdependence is clearly there. The tea sommelier is talking about the use of tea in cocktails and how tea can be paired with foods, and is looking towards establishing higher levels of certification through Oxford; already there is a direct relationship between the tea and spirit industry, both in terms of service and execution, but also in products and branding; there is then also the interaction between the people in that industry and research institutions, or accredited institutions at the very least. More is going on in this interaction than what meets the eye at first, and brief, glance. The most obvious thing to deconstruct is the restaurant: the restaurant must order liquor, which means dealing with suppliers and brand representatives that want the restaurant to order that liquor, who in turn have to interact with the makers of these spirituous beverages; there is a pairing between food and drink, a pairing between the front of the house and the back of the house, a marriage of intricate and delicate textures, tastes, sights and smells; there is the interaction with the consumer, the patron of the establishment, who provides the source of revenue and income, which encourages the front of the house to have what, in many cases is not genuinely there, something known as hospitality; there is the interaction of the media as a source of potential advertising and illumination of the merits-or not as shining qualities-of the establishment, and the delicate balance act between foodies, bloggers, enthusiasts, and "legitimate" professional journalism; et cetera. The relationship is complex in that environment, and a lot goes on to make this executed well, and to make a restaurant stand out as a top quality establishment, which is why it is genuinely so rare to see a great restaurant, and I have been fortunate to be to some truly great ones.

But in this industry, the relationship going on between bartender and blogger, between brand manager, distributor, et cetera is fascinating since it very well encourages a sense and deployed interaction between groups which have to manage and manipulate their way through politics, pricing, distribution channels and law. This is why events like those between Pusser's and PKNY draw since an outpouring of criticism and views. The sheer volume of interaction and reliance upon others in this industry in order to make it profitable is fascinating. And the deployment of media and journalistic praxis helps to establish a sense of expertise within the community, with the written word: giving a place a good review, or talking about the execution of a great meal or drink, or the flair of a bartender, are all examples of formulated expertise. The review establishes a sensation of expertise, and a quality of expertise, it invigorates and instills, and brings into existence expertise which may not have existed before.

This isn't to say that expertise as a whole is not genuinely there in an industry like bartending, that expertise is a fabrication. On the contrary, I view bartenders with great respect (which is a conundrum, since writing this I already am doing what I am talking about), but when looking at interaction between bartenders, there can already be an understanding of what is expert technique versus amateur technique. At a seminar yesterday, on European bartending perspectives, we saw bartenders talking to each other about what is actually learned and trained skills: the free pour. The free pour can be executed well, and when it is it can be almost as accurate as using a jigger, with the same margin of error, but it requires physical skill. And when it is executed well, when there is a mastery through years of practice, it demonstrates a sort of artisanal expertise, with regards to the flair surrounding it. This is a prefect and direct example of physical expertise being generated through praxis.

The exchange of knowledge here, and the networking aspects are important at face value, especially within an industry, since an industry is motivated principally by capital, but at the same time, the backside of it is just as important, if not more important to that side of things. As more and more interaction is woven between individuals who help to construct forms of expert praxis, mores of good or bad liquors, bartenders, restaurants, there is money to be made, and direct movement of intellectual and social capital. The use of social capital, the use of name, weight, and significance is extremely important since it deploys and markets to people with that knowledge. Events like Tales are not for everyone, no matter what they would like to say. There is a distinction of knowledge that is established, and even if you are here for just the drinks, the drinks themselves are complex beasts that cannot be tamed by the tongues of the novitiate. By being at Tales, you already demonstrate a sense of expertise, a sense of social distinction, a sense of taste that differentiates you from others. The aesthetics of taste. As visitors to Tales, we are keepers of secret, and not to secret knowledge. We are propriators of the liquid muse, and we are enslaved to it as well. We are brothers and sisters to a common taste, appreciation, love and hate, which binds us together in a whirlpool of orgiastic drinks.

Nota bene: if I sound arrogant, I'm sorry, and if you have met me, you know bloody well that I am not. But truly, I feel that there are elements of social knowledge that come into play here, things we can call expert knowledge, and that is why events such as Tales, or other food festivals exist. We might like something, deep down that might be what the fundamental reason for buying a commodity, living a certain way, or choosing to make certain decisions, but at the same time there are factors that motivate or lie subconsciously contributing to choice. Choosing to go to a coffee festival or a cocktail festival, choosing to go to a trade show or whatever already demonstrates a sense of knowledge over knowing what to appropriate, and even though taste is very subjective on what is good or not good, the general uniformity of knowledge or opinion that can be arrived to over whether something is of good quality or bad reflects that there is an internalization of knowledge of distinction and choice.

Anyhow, I want to talk about both the European bartending perspectives panel (which is fascinating since it does suggest things, even if Simon Difford would disagree, that are different than what I had previously understood), the Spirited Dinner at Feast I attended, more on inter-connectivity between groups of people within the industry, more on instantiated expert knowledge and praxeological expert knowledge, the exceptional things which I have tasted and brand portfolios as examples of the aesthetics of taste, and a few other things. But, some of those require pictures (at least the more mundane talks), so it will have to wait.

These are my notes for the first day. I guess they were not brief, but oh well. What can I say, I'm a rambling ~~alcoholic~~ academic.

The Painkiller

2011-07-20T19:04:00.000-07:00

Without a doubt, the Painkiller is probably the most well known cocktail this year, seeing as how it is the focus point of controversy on the topic of trademarked cocktails.

The Painkiller originated at the Soggy Dollar Bar in the British Virgin Islands, specifically on Jost Van Dyke, in 1971 (Berry 78). The creation is a product of George and Marie Myrick, and was produced with a mixture of Mount Gay and Cruzan dark rums (Ibid). However, now a days, the drink is oftentimes made with Pusser's Navy Rum; well, not necessarily now a days, thanks to the huge conflict that occurred in June 2011 over the cocktail and its' trademark as well as the bar Painkiller New York, now known as PKNY. While the lawsuit had been started in April, the result in June led to rapid involvement online at the outcome of the trial.

This cocktail is the forefront in terms of questions about what it means to copyright a cocktail, or rather, trademark the name of a cocktail, since recipes cannot by patented according to law. In the case of the Painkiller, the bar owners Giuseppe Gonzalez and Richard Boccato were sued by Pusser's on account that they were damaging the brand. The focus of the lawsuit was to change the name of the bar and website, and stop serving the drink called Painkiller at the bar without the use of Pusser's rum; this lawsuit encouraged rapid assemblage of bartenders, liquor industry members and cocktail enthusiasts to react negatively to the actions of Pusser's. A general sentiment within the cocktail community is that Pusser's rum should be boycotted, with the sentiment being propagated through online mediums and networking sites such as Facebook, as well as blogs, in order to give a sense of the rage that is felt at Pusser's for enforcing something that seems quite absurd.

And rightly so. Pusser's trademarked several things with the name Painkiller, part of which was for advertising purposes, but another trademark was for "alcoholic fruit drinks with fruit juices and cream of coconut and coconut juice." This trademark is questionable, since it presumes that any drink, following with those ingredients, is therefore in violation of the copyright. It doesn't say anything about the type of rum. The point of this trademark was so that Pusser's can start selling premade mixes for Painkiller cocktails which isn't something that many bartenders would condone, since it works directly against he rebirth of cocktail culture and brings us back toward the dark era of potations.

The reactionary attitudes of bartenders and the rapid dissemination of a large feeling against Pusser's and in general copyrighted cocktails, brings up points of discussion and focus within the liquor community. The assemblage of social interaction and a generalized identity within bartenders and the entire liquor community seems to be an interesting phenomena, since it ascribes itself quite easily and readily to prospects of community. The community of the bartenders is both physical, in and of the exchange and movement of bodies from place to place across the country for trade shows and competitions, as well as plain old tourism, but also virtual, thanks to the use of online mediums; in either case, the community does have a physical embodiment, but still ascribes to being an imagined community, established through rhetoric devices, most probably related directly to the free speech and ease of speech found in online space, as well as how online sites such as Facebook, Twitter, or blogs serve as sites of publication and exchange, as a la minute books printed through digital mediums. The exchange of ideas here, and the rapid exchange, contributes directly with a national-global even-community within professions and interests that would not have previously existed without the availability of such virtual mediums or quick, global transportation. And the fact that a community can be established from this, is indicative and provably related directly to the idea that expertise is found within the community, and is therefore a form of new found technical and artisanal knowledge that has not existed, on a global level, beforehand.

The other point of discussion is trademark and copyright law. In Japanese culture, there are jokes that American's sue each other for every little thing, and in many cases this is rather accurate. This liberal world in which we live is driven by proprietary information and profit, and so patents are an easy way to product knowledge and the value of capital. But for drinks, which cannot be copyrighted, and with other cocktails which have similar dilemmas in terms of specific brands of a spirit being called for in the recipe (both the Dark and Stormy and Bacardi cocktail come to mind), there is a major problem when cocktails are copyrighted even though there is little claim or validity to do so, as is the case for the Painkiller cocktail, which was not created at all by Pusser's. The act of copyrighting these drinks is an attempt to garnish profit by having a constant demand for the specific ingredient, but that flies in the idea and rising movement and trend in bars throughout the United States to create artisanal or craft cocktails, as well as exploring and experimenting with the drinks, as a chef would. The rise of bar chefs encourages experimentation, which is in part a response to the idea that mixology is a practiced skill that demonstrates both artistic and expert knowledge related to the execution of the drink. When moving into drinks that are produced according to one specific recipe, there is little room for a profession to grow, and so copyright in this case stifles the expert dimensions of the community, something which arguably is of rising importance when this global bartending and cocktail community derives an imagined shared community and intrinsically is linked and influences the ethos and praxis of the bartender.

Regardless of how we treat this, the entire dilemma is one of trademarking, not one of copyright, and so bringing up the bar as the focal point of their judicial assault was an unwise move on part by Pusser's. It only helped ostracize them from the community as a whole, and their effort to have PKNY change their name and stop serving their drink is moot, since the types of people who would visit the bar, are not ones which would tend to purchase ready made cocktail mix for the Painkiller. Instead of spending time suing, and providing unneeded, poor, publicity, the company would have been better off marketing their cocktail mix to the market which would consume it and think it was good. And cocktails, especially ones which do not have a name brand in the name of the drink, seemingly shouldn't be trademarked, and even that is a fine line especially if the drink was not made by the company itself as a way to sell more of their liquor. The approach that St Germain uses, as well as several other companies, in which the spirit company publishes or spreads cocktail recipes that were created by craft bartenders to showcase the ingredient, is a much better route to increasing market share than litigation or trademarking ever will be.

The Painkiller:

4 ounces unsweetened pineapple juice
1 ounce orange juice
1 ounce Lopez coconut cream
2 1/2 ounces dark Jamaican rum (or Pusser's if you want to abide by the trademark)

Shake the ingredients with crushed ice, and pour into a tall glass or Tiki mug. Finish with cinnamon and nutmeg, and optionally garnish with cinnamon stick, pineapple stick or wedge, and/or an orange wheel.

Tom and Jerry

2011-07-20T01:28:00.000-07:00

A Tom and Jerry is a classic cocktail, which in many cases is forgotten, but quite often seen on the bar menus of many classic cocktail bars or older restaurants, especially during the winter time.

Born of rum and brandy, egg yolk and egg white, sugar and hot water, the drink is one which befits the winter months. Served warm, the texture is like that of a chiffon cake, soft and velvety, with a lot of flavor in both the creamy foam and the liquid itself.

The recipes for the batter, which makes for an easier time producing the drink overall, relies upon general guidelines of whipping the eggs, but there are quite a different amount of recipes for the batter itself. The variations include how to whip the eggs, the inclusion or volume of sugar, and whether the spirit is included into the whipped batter.

Most recipes call for beating the egg separately, however, some of the older recipes, which are more loose, and thus probably rely upon learned experience to know what the texture should be like, rely on guidelines of texture when mixing the egg batter. For instance, Crockett describes beating six eggs well, adding powdered sugar until very thick, and working out the lumps (Crockett 89). This batter is then poured into the mug at a volume of one half tablespoon, and then topped up with brandy, Jamaican rum, and hot water, finished with some nutmeg (which would make this very similar to a sling, although Crockett refers to the Tom and Jerry as a hot potation).

In another case calling for the batter, the volume is doubled to a dozen eggs, and the rum is mixed directly into the batter, stirred to thicken (Meier 67). Meier's recipe adds allspice and uses hot milk instead of water, which does a lot to add to the richness of the drink, as well as the entire body. The use of rum in the recipe gives it a completely different color, since the alcohol is bonded and mixed directly into the foam, and the foam does not seperate as it might when just topping a beverage. This also makes for a more loose body, but suffice to say, that whipping the eggs separately, even though Meier does not call for such a thing, helps increase the body of the foam.

Kappeler gives a different recipe, which is fascinating to behold since in many ways it is more similar to the classic version than any other. Keppeler calls for whipping the yolks and the whites sperately, creating a meringue with the white, and adding the two together as well as bicarbonate of soda; in which case, the rum is added after the fact, alongside teh brandy and hot water or milk (Kappeler 108). The fact that the rum is left out indicates that Keppeler is going for more of a meringue consistency than the other recipes might call for.

The oldest recipe given for the Tom and Jerry, in Jerry Thomas' Bartender's Guide, provides a recipe for the batter in which the egg portions are whipped separately, combined together with an immensely small volume of rum, and calls for the use of bicarbonate of soda to prevent the sugar from settling at the bottom of the drink. In his recipe, there is no to little rum however, seeing as how the batter is rationed out, and the Tom and Jerry calls for the use of brandy specifically, giving a note as to using the rum in equal proportions to the brandy; yet if the rum should be ignored in that case, the only flavor of the rum is that in the batter (Thomas 51-52). The other name, given by Jerry Thomas is the Copenhagen.

The version given by Embury is the strangest of them all. For the batter, he has the addition of spices and rum, similar to the Meier or Thomas recipes, but uses a lot less sugar than most of the other recipes utilize, in order to decrease the overall sweetness of the drink (Embury 336). The drink is then filled with bourbon, topped up with milk, and cognac is floated on top. The use of bourbon is surely a strange change from that of the other recipes.

My recommendation for this classic drink is to make it via the batter, but if you want to make it a la minute, in which case you will end up with a richer and heavier foam, as well as more volume of it in proportion to the overall potation, you should whip the parts of the egg separately, combining the alcohol into the yolk portion, and slowly adding that portion back into the meringue. This then is added to a glass, and finished as appropriate. This is most similar to the version provided by Craddock, since his recipe is individually portioned, but his does not include the rum mixed with the egg batter.

Tom and Jerry:

1 egg
1 ounce Jamaican rum
1 ounce brandy
1 Tablespoon powdered sugar

Beat the egg white and yolk separately, mixing the rum with the yolk so that it runs thin, and the sugar with the white, so that it stiffens into a peak. Combine the mixture into a batter, and pour into a glass. Add in the Brandy, and top up with hot water or milk. Garnish with freshly grated nutmeg.

Ti' Punch

2011-07-20T00:36:00.000-07:00

Ti' punch is a staple drink served throughout the French portion of the West Indies, which is quite simply rather similar to that of a Daiquiri or Caipirinha.

A favorite of the Minister of Rum, Ed Hamilton, the petit punch is a fantastic quick cocktail, or rather a very a la minute and individually sized punch. Made of lime, sugar, and rum, it resembles both a Daiquiri and a Caipirinha, yet, the between those two, the cocktail is more similar to a Caipirinha, specifically because of the type of rum which is utilized in a Ti' Punch. A petit punch, as a drink from the French West Indies, calls for the French rum, or rhum agricole, which differs from the other versions made by the English and Spanish since it does not use molasses in the distillation process, but rather sugarcane distillate, a substance that would make rhum agricole much more similar to the cachaça of Brazil (Curtis 268).

Since the only prerequisite to making a Ti' punch is the use of rhum agricole, the cocktail can be varied in quite a number of ways, especially based upon the preference of the imbiber. Oftentimes made in home for private consumption, it is a quick way to create a short drink that polishes off and rounds out the generally strong and in some cases, harsh, notes of the rhum agricole through the use of sweet and sour flavors. The use of sweet, sour, as well as strong, is in many ways reminiscent of the overall recipe of punch; in the case of the Ti' punch, all that is missing is the weak, which in many cases is the water contributed by the melting ice commonly added to the drink.

The version of the Ti' Punch known among the natives who consume it is dubbed chacun prépare sa propre mort, or each prepares his own death, in which the ingredients are set forth an the imbiber prepares it to their own specifications and maximum pleasure. Oftentimes, this style of presentation is before a meal, in order to create a short aperitif, in order to stimulate the appetite. In many cases, native imbibers drink the cocktail without ice; the use of ice, or not, is really a personal choice, and in one case it very well creates a short aperitif, a bracer of sorts, while in the other, the drink can be served as a sipping drink. In the case of the lime, in many cases, the lime used to flavor the drink comes from a slice of lime that includes the pith and peel, and is oftentimes dropped into the drink, provided the imbiber desires it that way.

As is the case of the drink, preparing it allows you to work with many types of rhum agricoles: the choice between aged or blanc, is one that befits the creator and ultimately the consumer of the drink. The change of the rhum agricole ultimately defines the drink in different ways, providing less or more harshness, more rounded notes or other aromas that contribute ultimately to the flavor and ethos of teh cocktail.

Many cocktails are in their ways a short version of a classic punch: the sour as a whole is a category that befits the overall old school classification of Punch. A sour is generally an individually sized punch, as are many cocktails, seeing as how each consists of the ingredients of sweet, sour, strong and weak, through the use of a citrus, sweetener, spirit and quite often water (created through the dilution of chilling). A Ti' Punch is just one example of such a miniaturized version of punch, but is not the only version, and in many cases is just one expression of a style of drink that floods the bars and liquor houses throughout the world.

Ti' Punch:

2 ounces rhum agricole
Wedge of lime
Simple or cane syrup

In a glass, add a cub of ice, if a chilled punch is desired; otherwise, combine the rhum agricole and with lime juice and cane syrup, both to taste, and stir briefly. Add the squeezed lime wedge if desired.

Marguerite, No. 2

2011-07-19T01:31:00.000-07:00

A lovely tipple, the Marguerite #2 is quite a bit more original, and better-at least in my opinion-than its' predecessor, the Marguerite.

Combining a textural component of egg white, the Marguerite #2 should appear and sound like a ladies drink, a slightly pink cocktail with a lacy white foam on top reminiscent of a nice meringue. However, the overall taste, with the inclusion of sweetness, fruit, anise and the juniper gives the drink a wonderful polish that exhibits the characteristics of a well made cocktail. Dry shaking the cocktail gives it that wonderful layer of foam, and really adds a lot to give the cocktail that extra layer of depth and quality through the use of textural elements. Playing with the texture of the drink, with a slightly heavier consistency thanks to the inclusion of the egg white, the drink also has an interesting body on account of the use of the pastis as well as the sugar in the drink. The textual component, alongside the pastis and the grenadine, gives the cocktail a a character similar to some confectionery from a candy shop, making the drink a joy to consume.

While a more fruit driven gin might be appropriate for this drink, I found that Beefeater, with its' already strong notes of anise, pairs exceedingly well in the drink, and Beefeater 24 or Beefeater Summer Edition being no exception to this. Though, throwing in some Plymouth wouldn't hurt at all, since the herbal and coriander notes of the Plymouth would pair nicely with the herbal character pastis.

The Marguerite cocktail, or rather No. 1 since there are apparently two cocktails named as such, is basically a two part dry Martini (Craddock 101). However, there is another version, which is equal parts gin and dry vermouth, but specifically Plymouth gin, which can be found in the Waldorf Astoria bar book (Crockett 59). In any case, the drink is pre-prohibition, and is at the very least a variation on a Martini; it seems likely that the original Marguerite is a variation that used Plymouth gin specifically, but there is little to support that claim save for the recipe provided by Crockett.

The second version I can't find in any book exactly. Honestly, I came across it on CocktailDB while trying to find something strange to use my lime in, and so this caught my eye. Otherwise, beyond that, I have no idea as to its' origins, but suffice to say we can think of this as being rather similar to a clover club with a lime switch for the lemon, and the addition of pastis.

Marguerite, No. 2

1 ounce gin
1/2 ounce pastis
1/2 ounce lime juice
1 egg white
1/4 tsp powdered sugar
1/4 ounce grenadine

Dry shake the egg in a cocktail shaker. Add in the ingredients and do a quick shake to mix them together; add in the ice and shake until well chilled and mixed. Strain into a cocktail glass.

Marguerite (the original):

2 ounces Plymouth gin
1 ounce dry vermouth
2 dashes orange bitters

Stir with cracked ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Charlie Chaplin

2011-07-19T01:00:00.000-07:00

The Charlie Chaplin is like the man himself: absurd, but with an easy enough air that one can indulge and find themselves amused.

Charlie Chaplin is considered one of the greatest actors of all time, by quite a few film buffs, and likewise was instrumental toward creating the film studio United Artists, which was created in 1919 by Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks in an attempt to establish a film company and studio that would allow them to control the direction that their work took. The aim of these men were to create and establish the actor as a seminal part of the enterprise, giving the actor the ability to influence the film beyond more than just their performance. Chaplin, used his influence in United Artists to continue to produce films that were non-talkies, even as sound started to become an implement during the late 20s and early 30s. Films that showed Chaplin at his best, or rather at physical antics, even during the period of films featuring vocal accompaniment were classics and shined.

With the inclusion of Sloe gin, the cocktail is just like Charlie himself, exhibiting a characteristic ingredient that provides a sense of British character, even if it is silent and sits as one of three principle ingredients in the drink. The sloe gin drives the overall cocktail, especially when it is made in equal proportions. While Sloe gin in the States is pretty much abysmal, and it is still a practice in the UK to make sloe-berry or damson gins for personal consumption, the availability of a quality sloe gin such as Plymouth does a lot to help create quality cocktails.

Of the variations I have found, most recipes call for equal, or almost equivalent, volumes of the three ingredients (Crockett 44; Embury 241). We know that this drink was a pre-prohibition drink, seeing as how Crockett lists the drink as pre-prohibition, and the rise of Charlie's fame originates in the mid 1910s. There is a note for the drink in Embury when talking about the Charlie Chaplin, saying that this short drink originally called for three times as much sloe gin as brandy, which is "far too sweet a drink for a cocktail" (Embury 241). And quite right, the drink benefits from the more balanced proportions, which give it a nice sour, but sweet as well as tart taste. The sour from the lime differs from that of the tart sloe berries, and so the drink makes out with quite a bit more complexity than one would anticipate from a three ingredient drink; overall however, the drink falls apart as it warms, becoming more cloying. So keep it as a nice (low alcohol) bracer, and not a nice sipper.

While the drink appears in the Astoria and in Embury, the drink probably has American origins, and as such the apricot brandy is most likely the liqueur. Do not discount the ability to replace the liqueur with actual apricot eau de vie, which works rather well in this drink, but changes the overall cocktail quite a bit, providing less of the savory-sweetness that comes from a quality apricot brandy.

Charlie Chaplin:

1 ounce sloe gin
1 ounce apricot brandy
1 ounce lime juice

Shake the ingredients in a cocktail shaker with crushed or cracked ice, straining into a glass. Optionally garnish with a twist of lime.

Péché

2011-07-18T02:31:00.000-07:00

There are good cocktail bars in Texas, but few and far in between especially considering the size of the state. In Austin, Péché stands out as a top of the line bar, with fantastic food to pair with superb drinks and a stand up liquor collection. Austin's first "absinthe bar," Péché serves quite a few classic cocktails with craft cocktail twists.

Having lived in Houston for nearly a year now, I know of Anvil and the Grand Prize, two of the better cocktail bars in the city. Yet, I had not made it out to the other areas in Texas, and with the opening of Esquire in San Antonio, the craft and classic cocktail scene looks to be growing in the different metropolitan areas of Texas, just as it is in other parts of the country. I made a trip out to Austin to see the city, but also to specifically visit a few places that were known for their food and cocktails, and Péché easily is at the top of the list for excellent tipples and fare in the capital of the Lone Star state. On Fourth Street, the bar is not too far from the Congress bridge, which is famous for the bats that fly out int he summer months at sunset.

When you first venture into Péché, one of the first things to catch your eye is the decor of the place, as well as the elaborate and extensive bar that runs the length of the dining area. The bar features a few wells, and bitters and glassware adorn the bar counter, while the back-wall is lined with premium quality and choice liquor, making and drawing attention to the spirits as many classic bars would do. Beyond the absinthe fountains on the counter, the overall environment has a sort of French feel, and is surprisingly light and airy during the day. Atmosphere wise, there is music that plays in the background, and provides a nice soft feeling that is not intrusive at all.

Even the bartenders themselves exhibit the atmosphere of an art nouveau or prohibition style New Orleans: the bartenders haverings and pins that have a distinct french fleur-de-lis, evoking a time past when members of societies or clubs wore a signifier to demonstrate that they were allowed into or were able to consume liquor at that establishment. The uniforms of the bartenders, each one wearing a waistcoat and button up shirt, gives the environment that throwback feel, at least within the earlier part of the 20th century, as well.

The bar apparently has a good selection of cocktails with a rotating seasonal menu, with classics such as the French 75 always on the menu. Many of the drinks currently are classics, but they are going towards craft cocktails that are unique to the bartender, specifically chosen to represent seasonal ingredients, themes of pair with food items on the menu as well. The bartenders are well versed in their spirits, and so have a wide repertoire of drinks to try out, especially ones which may make it onto the menu in the future. One drink that I had, which was made by Carter was a fantastic herbal concoction, named after Charlemagne, and featured a wide variety of premium cocktail ingredients as well as flamed rosemary.

The foodstuffs are exquisite: everything is made from scratch during the day, and made to order. I was extremely impressed with the sweetbread pot pie, with a morel cream sauce; it was a rich and filling meal, that was perfectly prepared, coming out after a lengthy wait that was well worth every second. The pie represents everything that comfort food should be about, with a rich, savory and filling taste juxtaposed with complexity and new flavors while retaining a sense of familiarity. Their small plates have a fusion element to them as well, combining European style fare, with more American or South-western elements, such as their current pork belly confit with a poblano mole, or salt cod fritters with a salsa verde.

Overall, you can't go wrong with a trip to Péché. The prices are exceedingly reasonable for most cocktail bars, and with a rotating menu both in terms of drinks and food, you can almost always try something new.

A Michigander

2011-06-13T13:38:00.000-07:00

At its' heart a rather simplistic drink, with tons of flavor laying throughout, the Michigander is followed by complexity and depth on account of the ingredients.

Another MxMo post, this months' theme is drinks that use spirits other than the basic "standard" spirits as a the base. In other words, drinks that use things other than vodka, gin, whiskey, tequila or rum. The theme this month is brought out by Filip over at Adventures in Cocktails, a blog which focuses on artisan cocktails and the experiences that the author, Filip has with different aspects of the bartending profession, community and lifestyle. Filips blog talks about cocktail culture quite a bit, and is quite an exquisite blog. Cheers to you Filip, for a great theme of the month and a great blog.

For this month, I decided to talk about a cocktail that I've been mulling over and enjoying at 320 Main, which is quite possible the Cheers of my life. The cocktail is a wonderful fall aperitif: a Michigander. Created by 320 Main's owner, Jason Schiffer, the cocktail features two ingredients prominently which make up the base of the drink, but neither of these ingredients are the generic spirits: the first being Cynar, and the second being Applejack. Both of these ingredients are popular in a lot of different craft cocktail bars, but by no means are common ingredients, and the taste of the combination between the two, as well as the two other ingredients in the cocktail is quite exquisite, seeing as how it formulates an extremely deep drink in terms of flavor profile. At its' heart, the drink is a riff on a sour. Considering the proportions of the ingredients and the choices of ingredients themselves, honey and lemon juice alongside the Cynar and Applejack, it turns this into a rather complex sour.

Cynar, which is a pretty strange liqueur and bitters, is the product of thirteen different herbs and spices, including the artichoke. Another product of the Campari group since 1995, Cynar is another Italian liqueur which is drunk quite often in Italy with a bit of soda water. In the case of other Europeans, such as the Swiss, the aperitif is drunk mixed with orange juice. The artichoke component in the drink also allows the beverage to be served as a digestif.

Applejack has a very different origin: a popular spirit of the Colonial period, the beverage was oftentimes used as payment for workers in New Jersey area. Made of distilled apple cider, it most probably is a descendant of Calvados, the French apple brandy that originates from Calvados, France. The name Applejack originates from the term jacking, which is slang for freeze distillation, which is also called fractional freezing: by chilling a mixture of different ingredients, liquids with different melting points will be frozen at different temperatures, allowing for the separation of different ingredients. In the case of Applejack, hard cider was left outside, and the different elements would be separated to increase the volume of alcohol in the overall mixture. This process was repeated until the alcohol reached the desired amount of around 40 percent alcohol by volume. Laird's, who solicits the only Applejack on the market currently, comes either bottled in bond or at 40 percent; this recipe calls for the lower proof spirit (only because the bottled in bond version is not carried by his bar).

Jason mixes quite a few drinks, and constantly experiments and constructs cocktails that are uniquely his. Because he makes so many concoctions, he usually gives it a very quick name, based upon how he conceives of the overall cocktail. In the case of this drink, with the use of honey and the earthy notes coming from the Cynar, augmented with the floral and fruit notes of the Applejack, the cocktail invoked memories of the fall. Quickly giving it a name, he dubbed it Dead Leaves, but since he already had another Dead Leaves cocktail, he was dissatisfied with starting down the path of creating multiple variations on a drink, and sought for a new name. Growing up in Michigan, the cocktail speaks very well about the orchards of apples and characteristics of the landscape and people that live in Michigan, and so he decided upon a final name for the cocktail, that being Michigander. For those of you who are not familiar with the term, Michigander is a demonym for the people of Michigan and is actually, though sometimes considered pejorative, a phrase that is preferred by the locals to Michiganian.

Whenever creating a drink, Jason takes an approach which is similar to an artist or musician: he focuses in on the ingredients as if they were colors or notes, and tries to use them to paint a picture or compose a song that can only come together though the combined and joint efforts of the individual components. His muse for creating these inspired cocktails are actually the liquors themselves in many cases, as he tries to take small aspects of the liqueur or liquor or other ingredients, and augment them: in the case of the Michigander, Jason wanted to work with both the floral notes of honey and the earthy notes of the Cynar, and so tried to bridge those two using other ingredients, resulting in this drink.

As many of you know, it is difficult to work with honey. The honey in this drink is a honey syrup, consisting of two parts honey to one part water, mixed over heat as if one would make a rich simple syrup. Honey also has slightly different flavors as a result of the factors contributing to the creation of the honey, but the most common honey available in Southern California, which is where this drink originates and thus what Jason uses, is clover honey.

The grapefruit twist, a garnish at the end, works really well with the flavors of the drink, bridging the citrus from the lemon and the earthy notes from the Cynar. It is the predominate aroma on the nose. Grapefruit also adds a slight numbing sensation over the tongue when you are exposed to it over long periods of time, and so as you mull and sit on this drink, the flavor changes on account of that as well.

The Michigander:

1 ounce Applejack
1 ounce Cynar
3/4 ounce lemon juice
3/4 ounce honey syrup (heavy)

Combine the ingredients shaker tin with cracked ice. Shake until thoroughly chilled, and fine strain into a chilled old fashioned glass, over ice. Garnish with a grapefruit twist.

State of the Blog

2011-06-03T19:52:00.000-07:00

Well... Apologies to those who read and want more posts, and apologies that I have yet to get around to revamping the blog and older posts. I will... I promise.

Overall, the blog is still going. I hope to and aim to continue with it. I know I have some readers who write other cocktail blogs, and I'm flattered that they read my blog. I had been meaning to add a blogroll for the longest time, and I have started one. If you wish to have your blog attached to the blogroll, please send me an email. I read a lot more blogs than just those on my blogroll, and since I am busy right now, I haven't added all those I read... Still, it would make it easier if you sent me a message.

I have just posted eight, yes eight, blog posts today for people to read. I also posted earlier this week a post that is a bunch of musings and ramblings about cocktail culture as a whole, and some thoughts on the matter. It isn't like I'm Camper English, so who really cares what I think, but still, I think there is a pretty good summary about the state of cocktail culture and my feelings on it all (positive of course).

Right now, the aim is to address life concerns more so than the blog, but I will try to keep up with it and post some more cocktails and information about cocktails. First though, I plan to revamp the blog, add a page dedicated to a list of all the cocktails done (for easier access), and then also revise the old cocktails so that they are more coherent, less rambling, and more organized. I need to come to terms that a lot of the people who read my blog look for history, but they have a baseline which causes them to read the blog. Thus, I am thinking of moving history stuff to separate articles, and leave things pertaining to the drinks in those articles themselves.

In the near future I hope to do some posts about craft cocktails created by some specific bartenders. Craft cocktails are great, and I need some sort of direction, and while cocktail history is what this blog will still be about, new cocktails represent a specific movement in our history. And there are great bartenders who deserve recognition.

Otherwise, people can still reach me via email, or Facebook, since my name is rather unique and it shouldn't prove too onerous to find me. And comments are appreciated.

And hopefully I'll see some of you at Tales of the Cocktail.

Cheers.

The Flip

2011-06-03T19:32:00.000-07:00

Another classic style of drink, the Flip is an drink that revolves around the use of a whole egg. Similar to an eggnog, the flip is a creamy, rich and robust cocktail with a lot of flavor which comes from the spirit.

The Flip is "any wine or liquor shaken up with sugar and a whole egg" (Embury 249). This definition would make it rather similar to any eggnog drinks, but in reality, eggnog, save for General Harrison's Eggnog, has a difference: eggnog quite often includes a creamer such as cream. Like other classic drinks, the Flip uses cracked or crushed ice as the method for chilling it, which also helps with dilution and breaking up the egg, in order to create a smoother drink. And also like most other classic drinks, the garnish is nutmeg, freshly grated, which makes for a rather spice and savory component added to the aroma of the cocktail.

Embury notes that the most common Flips are the brandy, gin, and sherry and port variations, though there are quite a few variations using other spirits or wines, which is the case with quite a few other classic drinks (Embury 249). The two classic variation of note which is rather unique is the Chocolate Flip and the Coffee Flip: the Chocolate flip is made with equal parts cognac and sloe gin, whilst the Coffee Flip is made with equal proportions of cognac and port (Embury 250).

Wondrich writes how the Flip was originally, in the colonial period, a drink that had been made of quarts of ale and rum, using eggs and sugar to thicken it and make it more palatable (Wondrich 128). Yet, over time, like many drinks, it eventually got smaller. This is a general trend among drinks, yet, we see now a lot of stuff that comes out and becomes bigger, mainly because we have in our society an idea that abundance and excess is a sign of luxury. The current movement in craft cocktails, and vintage cocktails for that matter, has been trying to reverse this process. It is the same as if you were in a fine dining establishment, where most of the food serves to be small bites, and give you a sample of a bunch of different flavors, rather than one large portion that serves little use other than to dull your palate and fill you up.

In a lot of drink manuals, there are notes that if you want to make the drink warm, heat the spirit or ale, and do a dry shake rather than shake with ice. This makes for a completely different experience, but one that has quite a bit of fervent potential otherwise. They also note the that garnish is optional, but really, the drink is completed once you add in a little bit of spice notes to complement the aroma.

The Flip:

2 ounces of a spirit or wine
1 whole egg
1/2 ounce simple syrup or 2 teaspoons sugar

Dry shake the egg, the spirit or wine and the sweetener to get it emulsified. Then add in cracked or crushed ice, shake until chilled, and strain into a cocktail glass. Optionally garnish with nutmeg.

-----

Craddock, Henry. 1999. The Savoy Cocktail Book. Originally published 1930. London: Pavilion Books.

Embury, David A. 2009. The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. Originally published 1948. New York: Mud Puddle Books, Inc.

Meier, Frank. 1936. The Artistry of Mixing Drinks. Reprint of original. Paris: Fryam Press.

Thomas, Jerry. 1887. Bartender's Guide. Reprint of original. New York: Dick and Fitzgerald.

Wondrich, David. 2007. Imbibe!: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar. New York: Penguin Group.

The Smash

2011-06-03T02:53:00.000-07:00

Like the Cobbler, the Sling, the Cocktail, the Toddy, the Smash is another style of old drink. And a fantastic one, which has a lot of variations.

Embury would have you believe that the Smash is a short Julep, which consists of mint, sugar, and any type of spirit (Embury 272). And this is true. The Julep is seemingly a drink with a longer staying power, compared to the Smash. The Smash is never or rarely served with a straw, since the aim is to drink and imbibe the damn thing rather quickly, making it serve as a bracer (Wondrich 158).

Wondrich writes about how the Smash is perhaps the most popular drink of its' time, especially after it appeared in the mid 1840s, remaining in the hands of imbibers well past the civil war: the height of the popularity of the smash was in the 1850s, and the smash was a symbol of drinks throughout the country (Wondrich 159). Yet, the Smash fell out of favor, and become associated once more with its' other half, the Julep.

Named after the act of smashing the mint, which would be bruised while shaken, the drink has a strong fresh characteristic, and a light yet bold flavor depending on the spirit used. It truly is a way for someone who likes their spirits to appreciate the drink in a refreshing summertime manner. Personally, nothing can beat the taste of a peaty scotch within a smash: the juxtaposition of talc, malt, smoke, herbal flavors and freshness from the mint is absolutely a wonder.

Served with a a fancy garnish quite often, this drink makes less sense when you have the garnish, seeing as how it is meant to be consumed quickly. In which case, Embury's note that the smash can be served with no decorations other than a cherry and a small sprig of mint in a sour glass makes quite a bit of sense (Embury 272). And the garnish was ommitted by Jerry Thomas (at least in the case of the berries). Yet, Jerry Thomas did accentuate the drink with appropriate citrus garnish: orange in the case of brandy (Thomas 31). The touch gives a nice visual component, but also provides a nice element that breaks up the overall flavor and the aroma of the drink.

The use of fruit such as lemon, orange or lime does aid the taste of the cocktail, and so if you look at the recipes for some modern smashes, like the Grand Marnier Smash, there is the inclusion of the sour component to help balance the overall drink (lemon in the case of the Grand Marnier Smash). Regardless, the mint still should be the principle flavor, especially since that is the base ingredient that defines this drink. Mint should be shaken in the drink or muddled into it if it is stirred, and garnished with fresh mint to finish off the aromatics.

The Smash:

2 ounces of spirit
1 teaspoon white sugar, or 1/3rd ounce simple syrup
4 or 5 mint leaves

Combine the ingredients in a shaker tin with crushed ice. Shake, straining the mixture into an old fashioned glass. Garnish with another sprig of mint, and optionally some fruit.

-----

Craddock, Henry. 1999. The Savoy Cocktail Book. Originally published 1930. London: Pavilion Books.

Embury, David A. 2009. The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. Originally published 1948. New York: Mud Puddle Books, Inc.

Thomas, Jerry. 1887. Bartender's Guide. Reprint of original. New York: Dick and Fitzgerald.

Wondrich, David. 2007. Imbibe!: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar. New York: Penguin Group.

General Harrison's Eggnog

2011-06-03T02:30:00.000-07:00

Eggnog is really out of season right now, but it is still a great drink, full of a richness that is hard to capture in a lot of cocktails thanks to the inclusion of the egg. General Harrison's Eggnog, a Jerry Thomas period piece, is a great and different eggnog.

Named after General William Henry Harrison, this eggnog is supposed to have been his favorite drink (Wondrich 132). Harrison, for those who don't know, was an eccentric President of the United States, who served the shortest term (only a month). As the Ninth President, he was one of the earlier presidents, and was going to play a major supporter of the Whig party and its' political agenda. However, after his death, his successor, Tyler, abandoned the Whig docket, and cut himself off from the party. President Harrison had died after contracting pneumonia dying nine days after becoming ill.

Still somewhat popular (as far as old classics go), this drink is perhaps one of the more commonly made drinks to have survived through the ages from Jerry Thomas' bar book. It has a wonderful viscosity and creamy head from the egg, but yet is light thanks to the use of cider, and is fortified with hard cider. Personally, I use a sparkling demi-sec cider, which means the drink has to be made differently, on account of the effervescence, but it does give the overall consistency a nice textural component and levity upon the tongue.

The drink was common along the Mississippi river, and so thus, it just seems like a southern drink to me: and I cannot picture a better time to drink this beverage than out in the summer heat, chilled with nice, tart cider.

General Harrison's Eggnog:

1 egg
1 tablespoon simple syrup or 2 teaspoons sugar
4 ounces hard cider

In a shaker tin, dry shake the egg with the sweetener. Add ice. Shake some more, adding the cider, and shake, finally straining into a glass. If using a sparkling cider, add a bit to the tin over the ice, straining the eggnog mixture out, and top up with the rest of the cider. Garnish with grated nutmeg and, if desired, cinnamon.

-----

Embury, David A. 2009. The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. Originally published 1948. New York: Mud Puddle Books, Inc.

Thomas, Jerry. 1887. Bartender's Guide. Reprint of original. New York: Dick and Fitzgerald.

Wondrich, David. 2007. Imbibe!: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar. New York: Penguin Group.

The Cobbler

2011-06-03T02:09:00.000-07:00

Classic drink. The Cobbler. So many variations, so many offshoots, yet at its' heart it is pretty simple. And delicious.

"This drink is without a doubt the most popular beverage in this country, with ladies as well as gentleman. It is a very refreshing drink for old and young."

Harry Johnson, c. 1880

So, back in the day, we have a lot of different types of mixed drinks, called what they were and made special by what ingredients they included. Now, with a wide variety of cordials, mixers, fortified wines and other spirits mixed in, we dub all our drinks cocktail, even if that was not necessarily the case. The Cobbler is a type of drink that is from ages gone past, yet is still the basis for a lot of the current drinks of the day.

One of the most common variations of the Cobbler, was the Sherry Cobbler: lots of drinks, such as the Sling, Fizz, Smash or Cobbler all had different variations based upon the base spirit that was used. The Sherry Cobbler was perhaps one of the most common place drinks of the past alongside the Champagne Cobbler. Listed in Jerry Thomas' Bartenders' Guide, the drink used a couple wine-glasses of sherry, some sugar, and a few slices of orange, shaken with shaved ice and ornamented with fruits in season. If we chose to substitute the Sherry with something else, we get a different type of Cobbler. It as as simple as replacing ingredients.

David Wondrich writes about how the Sherry Cobbler was extremely popular, not only in the United States, but also when it was brought into France in 1867, at the Exposition Universelle De Paris. At the Universal Exposition the French were lining up at the American Bar, imbibing the drink at extremely high rates, that being that while the Exposition was going on, the American bar was consuming 500 bottles of sherry a day (Wondrich 124). The Cobbler is through and through an American drink, yet demonstrates the early phenomena in which cocktails are spread from their epicenter, the United States, into other regions of the world with great success.

Made of spirit, sugar, ice, and fruit, the drink is extremely simple, and like most old drinks, found its' complexity in the garnish and the character of the spirit. Requiring oranges, which were muddled with the ice, the fruit would usually be garnished with whatever was in season, and quite often that would be berries. I choose to garnish with mint, sine it gives it a nice juxtaposition of freshness to the sweetness of the single malt that I used, and the fragrant, yet light taste of oranges. If I were making this with gin, I would definitely garnish with berries as well.

The drink is rumored to have been named, at least according to Wondrich, from the "'cobbles' of ice over which it is built" (Wondrich 124). The ice, in the case of this drink, is what helps to create a wonderful refresher, that pulls out and lightens the flavor of the spirit or wine, and juxtapose it well with the oranges. If you look at most of the recipes that Jerry Thomas lists, the Cobbler is made witth principally wines, which is one characteristic of a cobbler. Yet it sitll can be made with whiskey, or gin, or brandy, although, those variations, save for the whiskey, are not listed by Jerry Thomas. The other difference with a Cobbler from, say a Fix or a Daisy, is that the drink contains little to no citrus juice when compared to the other two (or acidic citrus juice, seeing as how oranges give a bit of a sweetness) (Embury 303).

As is the case with lots of drinks, it is easier to get the sugar to mix into the drink if you use a simple syrup rather than granulated sugar.

Cobbler:

4 ounces of a spirit or still wine
1 tsp of sugar, or 1/4 ounce simple syrup
3 or 4 slices of orange

Combine the spirit, crushed (cobbled) ice, the sweetener and the orange in a shaker tin. Shake to chill and muddle the fruit. Strain into a glass, garnish with a straw, berries in season, and/or mint.

-----

Craddock, Henry. 1999. The Savoy Cocktail Book. Originally published 1930. London: Pavilion Books.

Embury, David A. 2009. The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. Originally published 1948. New York: Mud Puddle Books, Inc.

Thomas, Jerry. 1887. Bartender's Guide. Reprint of original. New York: Dick and Fitzgerald.

Wondrich, David. 2007. Imbibe!: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar. New York: Penguin Group.

Spencer Cocktail

2011-06-03T01:31:00.000-07:00

Another drink from Craddock's book, the Spenser is a strange drink without a lot going on, especially when it is extremely cold.

I have to say that I'm beginning to think that a lot of Craddock's recipes, and those from the time, taste better when they are not bone chillingly cold. The drinks seem to stand up better when they are chilled, but not freezing cold, unlike a lot of drinks which we now consume today. This might be explained by the differences and availability of ice and air-conditioning; but perhaps, I just prefer my drinks to be a little more warm, in which case, especially in the case of gin, the gin takes a backseat to the other ingredients which have room to move and flow over the palate.

That said, this is the same case as most of Craddock's other drinks. The Spenser is a drink which he describes as "Very mellifluous: has a fine and rapid action: for morning work." The drink isn't bad by any stretch of the imagination, but you have a hard time trying to figure out what the hell he is talking about, especially if you don't particularly like the taste of dry gin and juniper. I happen to appreciate it, but I find it hard to play with paired with certain other flavors. Like apricot brandy, for one.

I can't find this cocktail anywhere other than The Savoy. Still, over at Underhill-Lounge, Ellestad has already talked about the drink. And he brings up some similar points: the sweetness and the lack of complexity int he drink. I tried it with Plymouth and it didn't really work. So I went with a fruitier gin, such as G'Vine: a little better. However, what really made this more palatable was letting it warm up, increasing the orange juice, and cutting back a tad bit on the apricot brandy. Still not great, but slightly better.

Spencer Cocktail:

1 dash angostura bitters.
1 dash (up to 1 teaspoon) orange juice.
1/2 ounce Apricot Brandy
1 1/2 ounce Dry Gin

Shake ingredients and strain into a cocktail glass Garnish with orange peel and a brandied cherry.

-----

Craddock, Henry. 1999. The Savoy Cocktail Book. Originally published 1930. London: Pavilion Books.

Ellestad, Erik. 2010. "Spencer Cocktail." Underhill-Lounge.com. Originally published June 3rd, 2010. .

Chimayó Cocktail

2011-06-03T00:47:00.000-07:00

The Chimayó cocktail is a drink that originates in New Mexico, at Rancho de Chimayó. A tequila drink, this cocktail has some fantastic flavor.

Chimayó is a region of northern New Mexico that has been a pilgrimage site for many Catholics thanks to the Catholic Chapel, the Santuario de Nuestro Señor de Esquipulas, or just the Santuario de Chimayó. The Santuario was built in 1816, and was made as a place for local people to worship Jesus in a manner that was mixed with local custom and practices that worshiped the Earth and soil. However, now the shrine is a part of the Santa Fe Archdiocese, and is managed as if it were a Catholic church, while retaining some of its' original lore and history, especially its' sacred nature as a site exhibiting panacea-like qualities.

Rancho de Chimayó is an exceptionally great restaurant in the heart of the Chimayó valley. The restaurant is built out of an old hacienda, which was owned by the Jaramillo family. Built in an old restored home, the restaurant has a wonderful aesthetic, a lovely patio, great sangria, and a cocktail that was created by the family in 1965, when the restaurant opened. The owner of the restaurant, Arturo Jaramillo, created this drink out of the spare apples that were plentiful around the Chimayó region.

Born of apple cider, specifically American, unfiltered and unsweetened cider, the drink is still quite a good drink if you use an English demi-sec. However, the taste is completely different, so keep that in mind. The traditional garnish still is to have a piece of apple on the rim of the glass, but at the restaurant they actually coat the rim in cinnamon as well, giving it a wonderfully rich and earthy taste; in my opinion, this pairs really nicely with the apple notes, and is even nicer when you use a tequila with a bit more backbone, such as a reposado. Personally, I found the drink still too sweet even at the provided recipes, but if you adjust it, you can get a great flavor suited to your needs.

A great long drink, this is a wonderful alternative to a Tequila Sunrise, especially for those who do not like the taste of oranges.

Chimayó Cocktail:

1 1/2 to 2 ounces tequila
1/4 ounce crème de cassis
1/4 ounce lemon juice
1 ounce unsweetened or very dry apple cider

Combine all the ingredients but the cider in a shaker tin, shake with ice, and strain into a chilled glass (optionally garnished with a cinnamon rim). Garnish with an apple slice or cinnamon stick.

Suffolk Rose

2011-06-03T00:32:00.001-07:00

While most befitting to be called a Breton Kir or a Cidre Royal, this drink that I made I thought of as a bridge between a Kir Royal and a Jack Rose.

Suffolk is a region of England that is a part of East Anglia and has a large amount of arable, and thus workable land. Quite a bit of cyder originates from East Anglia. Historically, it is a region that has had the majority of the population work as field-hands or in agriculture. Similar to Champagne, France, the region has quite a bit of chalk present; the subsoil deposits of chalk help contribute to the "lightness" of Champagne wine, and I would argue that the nature of the land in Suffolk helps contribute to the acidity, tartness and soft-light nature of many of the cyders from the region (Wilson).

And having a bunch of sparkling cider from Suffolk, I wanted to do something with it other than just imbibe the damn stuff, no matter how good it was on its' own. So, I started playing around, and I came up with this drink, trying to combine two classic and very great drinks into a new hybrid. The name Suffolk Rose is a play on the use of Jack Rose, and to give it a more appropriate English name befitting the Aspell cyder, which is made in Suffolk, but remaining reminiscent of the Kir, which was named after a mayor in France.

Suffolk Rose:

5 ounces sparkling demi-sec cider
1/2 ounce pomegranate grenadine
1/2 ounce lime juice

Add the grenadine and lime juice to a chilled glass, and top up with about five ounces of a slightly dry cider. Garnish with a lemon twist.

-----

Wilson, James E. 1999. Terroir: The Role of Geology, Climate, and Culture in the Making of French Wines. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Avalon

2011-06-03T00:32:00.000-07:00

It has been some time since I posted a drink I created, and I finally have become satisfied with what I was trying to do in a cocktail: play with the flavor of apples, but not so that they are cloying as with many apple liqueurs.

I dub this cocktail the Avalon: the name is a welsh word that means apple. Of course, it also has the connotation of the ancient and mythical Arthurian island. The apple to me is a mythical fruit, something that has so many variations and much diversity that it is hard to do justice to the overall beast, just as many myths remain larger than narrative. Yes, myths are larger than life, but they sometimes escape their own narrative, their own discourse, and become larger than that themselves: for instance, the ways in which we take and glorify the Founding Fathers, who were, for the most part part of a large and myriad group of actors that helped establish this country and specific ideals. They have in many ways transcended their original lives, being featured on Rushmore, but even so, their character and ethos becomes qualities that are beyond even the narrative in which they are a part, that being the founding of this country.

Keeping with the Arthurian legend, we can see similar aspects in terms of how myth operates and how we augment the overall figure with new narratives and interpretations. For instance, the NBC TV series Merlin, which was a reinterpretation of Arthurian legend, is a great play off the old more classic storyline. Part of this diversity is that the myth is not limited to one specific narrative or interpretation, but similarly, there is a movement in the consumption patterns of our neo-liberal society in which we drive forward for new, yet familiar stories, ones which can entertain and provide escapism. The escapism of a story is similar to that of many other aesthetic and epicurean delights, and so thus it fits that the cocktail falls into the same group.

With the color of a cider, the drink takes three different apple components, augments them with some accents providing sweetness, freshness and a tart component on the tongue. By no means perfect, the drink is satisfactory and I enjoy the rather complex taste, should you ruminate over it. Using either still or sparkling cider is an excellent choice, but make sure to go for something with a bit of backbone: if you go for a still cider, which is more American, you will have drier, more robust notes, while if you go with an English cider, choose a sparkling demi-sec which assists with tartness. Depending on the cider, you get a completely different flavor, and emphasize different aspects of the fruit.

Avalon:

1 1/2 ounces Calvados
1/2 ounce Berentzen apple liqueur
1/2 ounce lime juice
1/2 ounce yellow Chartreuse
5 mint leaves
Cider to top up.

Shake all the ingredients but the cider with ice in a shaker tin. Double strain into a cocktail glass, top up with about one ounce of cider, and garnish with a mint leaf.

Mixology, Bartending and Cocktail Culture

2011-05-31T19:14:00.000-07:00

We all know that cocktails are seeing a resurgence, especially in the metropolitan centers of the United States, and that there are bars which are paying more attention to the drinks that they serve, but there are questions that arise concerning what motivates these changes, and where can they be found? How come cocktails are seeing new found places and bars (new in terms of the grand scheme of drinking)? Why are people moving to pay more for these drinks? What drives these bartenders to go out of their way for customers, to produce top quality drinks which many people take for granted?

First, apologies for not posting in a while. I have been traveling, busy with existential crises, and just plain old busy. But, in the last month, having traveled around the states, visiting a few bars, talking to some bartenders, and reading articles published in throw-away papers about night life and the cocktail, I have come to the conclusion that there is a lot more to this cocktail movement than just what gets published online or talked about in terms of the East and West coast geography.

While in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, I had read a list of great bars by Santa Fe Barman, and ran across a few throwaway papers about the nightlife, and more importantly, cocktails in Albuquerque, with bars that I wasn't aware existed, including Casa Vieja where bartender / mixologist Katy Gerwin works. And at places that are just outside of the metropolitan vigor, such as LA, you have great bars appearing, such as 320 Main (which is where most of these photos were taken). In Houston, where I currently reside, there are great bars, even though Houston is not necessarily considered a cultural center of the US, including Anvil.

Cocktails have taken off in literature and popular culture as well. With shows like Mad Men bringing attention to the cocktail as a libation, we see lots of people starting to go for more classical styled cocktails rather than those drinks which came out of the late vodka-koolaid period. In Japan, some mangaka authors have written and created pieces on wine and cocktails, exhibiting their own cultural viewpoints about the various drinks, service surrounding it, and the history of the phenomena. In Asia, these have been incredibly powerful, especially some of the wine comics, which have affected import sales of certain wine makers. Overall, in the online global community, there is increasing attention to the cult of the cocktail, as we see advertising campaigns aimed at those who are informed about cocktail culture, as shown in the case of Bacardi's "True Originals" series.

Beyond media representations, we have the physical spaces which are incredibly numerous. The wide diversity of bars, specifically bars that specialize in either vintage, classic, or craft drinks is a fascinating phenomena. The UK, which has a longstanding bartending profession and attention to the mixed drink, thanks in part of the popularity of gin, is exemplary of this, along with other countries in Europe or Latin America. Japan on the other hand, has an interesting culture, which is very focused on aesthetic and flavor, and their introduction to cocktails after World War II has left them with a longstanding craft cocktail history, especially one in which bartenders are treated as experts. Cocktails, as well as food, thanks in part to the internet, but also transnational flows of capital, people, and information through rapid transit such as air-travel has helped to create new found syncretisms in between quite a few different cultures. The attentiveness to cutting edge food with molecular gastronomy, originating (at least in theory) in Spain and France, has grown to be a worldwide, and very cosmopolitan phenomena, and has found its' place in cocktails, thanks to the efforts of Jamie Boudreau and others. Even new bar kitchens have appeared which are dedicated to this concept (The Aviary or Tailor).

The cocktail, and the rebirth of it as a cultural phenomena is drawing upon our imagined past, drawing upon the contemporary attitudes towards cuisine and taste, and juxtaposing it with aesthetics that are built around global exchanges of information and cultural capital. Perhaps the roots of this rebirth of cocktail culture, this "cocktailia," is another aspect of the movement towards more ethnic, adventurous or complex-flavored foods in the early 90s and late 80s, which would definitely coincide with the dawn of cocktail culture; the creation of the molecular mixology being an offshoot of its' brother, molecular gastronomy. Yet, even with all the diversity between bars, their aesthetic and their geographic or cultural local, some things stand out which are commonplace to them.

Historically, we can see changes to the types of alcohol that are present or consumed thanks to manufacturing changes, tariffs, and legislation such as the Prohibition. With the Prohibition, we saw alcohol become a different type of phenomena, moving from the public sphere to the private, and the legal exchange of the liquid, at least in this country, being associated with medicine. Liquors such remained produced in the Caribbean, but moved away form the United States; absinthe had been banned and only recently came into the market again after the legislation had been reversed in 2000. gin, which was cheap and easier to make, since it was rarely aged, found quite a bit of popularity in the United States during the Prohibition, while Whiskey moved away from the main stay and focus it had exhibited years prior. We see bars adopting specific spirits as if they were patron saints, and that adoption gives the bar a bit of personality or purpose, driving it into niche markets and into new experiences. And with the global flow of capital, ideas, and product, we see the exchange of new found liquors finding their way into bars which were only heard of on other continents and are now commonplace (e.g. cachaça).

Like in the Prohibition era, in which spirits were sold for medicinal purposes, alcohol has been something that has a long standing medicinal background. The use of wine in ancient Egypt and Greece, among others, are great examples of this; fortified wines, hippocras, and drinks that featured herbs demonstrate an association with the beverage and various tonics. Alcohol had always been associated with medicine, and it still is today, as we see it turned on its' head as it is analyzed in terms of health benefits. But it also has been a medicine for the soul, tendered to the imbiber from the bottle, and in many cases from a bartender.

What makes a great bartender? Their ability to see what the patron wants, to give them a taste that is suited for them, and excites and tantalizes the imbiber. Yet, bartenders hardly can produce something personally suited for the patron without first knowing a bit about the patron's preferences: certain people enjoy drinks more sour, sweeter, drier, with more floral-notes or bitters or effervescence. To be a great bartender in this case, and to make something that truly excites the patron requires time and a relationship. Truly great bartenders are those who have developed a rapport with the drinker; and we see in a lot of places that mentality coming to fruition, yet quite often those who are drinking at many bars go there for the atmosphere or company of their friends. There is a disconnect in many cases between the consumer and the producer.

To excite the patrons, we see bars starting to use more obscure, old, and rare ingredients, in attempts to create new and interesting tastes, but also as throwbacks to the past, to the vintage period in which drinks seemed to be something more than what they were after the Second World War. In many specialized bars, such as ones focusing upon a specific ingredient or spirit, the bartenders explore what flavors complement what, and treat each of the individual spirits as unique ingredients. For this reason, the use of ingredients, not necessarily fanciful and obscure ones, but just common place ones, and the attentive mind to the taste of each ingredient has created a new found exploration and pleasure to drinking, especially since each taste will differ. The atmosphere contributes to the taste of the drink as well, just as the mood of the imbiber.

The cost of drinks goes up as the ingredient quality goes up, but also as the service increases in terms of quality. Also, as the venue increases in terms of decor or location, the cost of drinks goes up. These things really come off to those who are hurting in this economy as high priced, but in reality, the drinks, when made to high specifications and are pleasing to the eye, nose, tongue and soul are well worth the price of admission for a temporary elixir that brings joy. The juxtaposition and combination of the drink to the venue, the company of friends or potentially new acquaintances makes the price of admission for a cocktail or a few seem cheap, seeing as how these places and bars are becoming quite the exciting aesthetic venues, drawing upon different styles ranging from steampunk to apothecaries to speakeasies. While these venues are supposed to be secret, and they rapidly become more opaque as the internet helps cocktail fanatics to visit them, the venues provide a bit of escapism due to their fantastic aesthetic atmospheres.

We like to use the word mixology now. Yet that word is pretty problematic, seeing as how a bartender, through and through, is a bartender, and is in a customer service oriented industry. Expert knowledge, which is linked with the word, is something which is intrinsic and not necessarily given by a specific connotation. There are no degrees in being a mixologist. As a society, we treat degrees and education as the end all factor, but in reality, the experiences that we have as individuals are by far more important; the professor, who has a doctorate, is entitled to his title of doctor, but really all the effort he put into acquiring the knowledge he has is what makes him an expert, not necessarily a specific title or piece of paper. Plus, expert knowledge is only expertise if it is appreciated or acknowledged by someone else; to many people, who like very simple drinks, that knowledge is irrelevant. The place of value in the bartending industry and cocktail culture still is service. Whether that service comes with a bit of flair, perhaps linked with "utility" as in the case of the hard shake, there is a still a link between style and service, just as there is with quality of ingredients and service. The bartenders that are great, those who establish rapport with customers, or who pay attention the customers needs are just paying mind to the calling of the profession, and the service oriented heart of it.

As we face struggles in our own personal lives, and crises in the public and economic spheres, we turn to cocktails and bars to help us cope with our problems. Not as if we were alcoholics, but as if we wanted a bit of escapism, which helps explain all these bars which have interesting decor, locations, et cetera. Simultaneously, we turn to bars to celebrate and be with others, whether the other is another patron, a bartender, or our own thoughts. The market is ripe for new lines of service oriented consumption, especially seeing as how our economy is continuing to progress into spheres of service industries rather than material production.

Without a doubt, the bar is a very special place, but it is made a special place thanks to the efforts of the individuals in the bar. Not just the different customers and types of clientele who patronage these watering holes that range from dives to speakeasies to lounges. The bar is made a special place by the efforts of the bartender who is behind the stick, who provides service that allows you to forget about your worries and continue on with this crazy life which we all lead.

For now, just sit back, and enjoy that drink.

Income Tax, Mecca, and the Bronx

2011-04-17T16:27:00.000-07:00

What is a way to celebrate finish turning in those dreaded, yet "inevitable" papers which plague citizens of the state? A similarly named cocktail.

The Income Tax cocktail is most probably a variation on the classic Bronx cocktail, which is an aromatic type of gin cocktail, being a perfect martini with the addition of orange juice. Therefore, it seems natural that to understand the ethos of the Income Tax, we have to look at the Bronx, which is also known as the Mecca according to Embury (169). The Bronx was popular drink pre-prohibition, which probably had some prohibition popularity as well, considering the use of the juice helps to mask the flavors and aroma of gin.

The Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar book claims that the Bronx was made by Johnnie Solon prior to 1917, as a response to a challenge by a waiter, and was a nod to the Bronx Zoo (Regan 230-231). It seems quite possible that the drink was around since 1904, over thirteen years earlier than the cited report by the Waldorf Astoria, when there is a list of relatively new cocktails that was published, including the Bronx in its' enumeration (Wondrich 223).

There is some contention in whether the Bronx was a member of the Martini family, or if it was an offshoot of something else at the time known as the Duplex, a drink which was a perfect mix of both sweet and dry vermouth with orange bitters (Regan 231). Yet to me it seems more logical that it is would be an offshoot of a Martini more than a spin off of the Duplex, mainly because of the full bodied and ratio of gin in the drink: it doesn't make sense that a cocktail such as the Duplex would have been changed by adding more of an ingredient than the two principle flavors int he drink, only to have it completely different in terms of taste. Wondrich cites this drink as a cocktail punch or variation on the Crusta, which seems logical, considering the inclusion of the orange juice would come at a time when most drinks were used to using lemon juice as the principle component (Wondrich 223-224).

Embury notes that the Bronx features a ton of different recipes: some books call for both types of vermouth, but most exhibit quite a bit of variation, with vocal nods towards using only one or the other (Embury 168). Furthermore, the recipes vary in whether to include orange peel shaken with the cocktail, or to add a slice of orange into the glass. Even some older recipes would include bitters, which throws off the entire ethos of the drink, and the designated difference with the Income Tax cocktail. Yet the bitters were orange bitters in the case of the Bronx, and not aromatic bitters as is the case with the Income Tax cocktail (Wondrich 224). Overall, the Bronx looks fairly similar to the Abbey, with the exception that it is a bit sweeter thanks to the inclusion of the sweet vermouth, and that the herbal components of the drink are a bit more pronounced in most vermouth when compared to Lillet blanc, the ingredient that formulates the difference in the Abbey.

The Bronx has a few other variations, including the Silver Bronx, which adds in an egg white, and draws only upon Italian, sweet vermouth, and the Pineapple Bronx, which uses pineapple juice instead of orange juice. Of these two variations, the Silver Bronx is rather interesting, since it adds a new textural component to the drink; but on the other hand, the Pineapple Bronx fails at what it does when compared to that of a Royal Hawaiian, or a Algonquin cocktail. Furthermore, Mecca, seems more to be yet another name for the Bronx than an additional variation, seeing as how there are no recipes that are provided for the Mecca, and there are other drinks that exhibit a plurality of names for the same thing (such as the Amber Dream / Bijou / Golden Glow) (Embury 168-169).

Beyond these variations, if we add in the use of an aromatic bitter into the Bronx, we get the Income Tax cocktail, which is by far a superior drink to the original Bronx, adding in new notes of baking spice and a bit of bitter gentian that blends well against the sweetness of the fresh orange juice. The Income Tax cocktail, according to Ted Haigh, was also known as a Bronx with bitters, (and also, as an aside, the Maurice in some old cocktail books) seemingly because of the negative connotation of being bitter towards Income Taxes and the government (Haigh 166).

In any case, whichever version you prefer to imbibe (personally I prefer the versions that include bitters, and of course, the ones made with fresh vermouth and fresh orange juice), it acts as a good medicine for the anxieties that come from living in a highly stressful economic climate. But the same can be said about any alcoholic drink: they all act as a medicine to rest the anxieties of the soul. But in the case of the Income Tax cocktail, the name evokes thoughts about the expectations of the state, and so works well as a panacea for those problems. Even if the cocktail just acts as a placebo to calm the mind in the face of growing problems with neoliberalism, employment and welfare.

The Bronx:

1 1/2 ounces gin
1/2 ounce dry vermouth
1/2 ounce sweet vermouth
1/2 ounce orange juice

Shake ingredients with cracked ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with an orange twist.

Bronx variation:

1 ounce Plymouth gin
1 ounce dry vermouth
1 ounce sweet vermouth
2 dashes Orange bitters
1 teaspoon of orange juice

Shake the ingredients in a cocktail shaker, with orange peel and cracked ice, straining into a chilled cocktail glass. From Boothby's World Drinks and How to Mix Them (1908).

Income Tax:

1 1/2 ounces gin
1/2 ounce dry vermouth
1/2 ounce sweet vermouth
1/2 ounce orange juice
2 dashes Angostura bitters (or other aromatic bitters)

Shake ingredients with cracked ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with an orange twist.

-----

Craddock, Henry. 1999. The Savoy Cocktail Book. Originally published 1930. London: Pavilion Books.

Embury, David A. 2009. The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. Originally published 1948. New York: Mud Puddle Books, Inc.

Haigh, Ted. 2009. Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails: From the Alamagoozlum to the Zombie and Beyond. Beverly, Massachusetts: Quarry Books.

Regan, Gary. 2003. The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft. New York: Random House.

Wondrich, David. 2007. Imbibe!: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar. New York: Penguin Group.

The Sling

2011-04-16T18:43:00.000-07:00

Like a cobbler, cocktail, punch, or the like, the Sling is a classic beverage that predates the cocktail.

A sling is actually a precursor to the cocktail, and has its' own nuances. Now a days, very few drinks can be classified as a sling, seeing as how a sling is generally served with nutmeg; drinks that are currently produced and called cocktails are a synthesis of classic drinks such as the true cocktail, the sling, cobbler or smash have grown together, creating a new type of beverage overall. What defines a cocktail is the use of bitters along with water, sugar and spirit; on the other hand, the sling excludes the bitters, but is served over ice and some grated nutmeg (Wondrich 150-151). The sling therefore is a short drink that is meant to be chilled, served with a single lump of ice (or now a days on the rocks), and is a watered down version of the spirit in order to act as a summer cooler.

Modern variations on the sling, such as the Straights Sling, or the Singapore Sling, both use juices and other ingredients to augment the flavor the drink. This makes for a drink that is certainly, and most definitely not a Sling, seeing as how there is a bunch of other things floating around other than just the standard ingredients. It is similar with respect to what defines a rickey: a proper rickey is made without sugar, and just the lime, mineral water, and spirit. Yet now a days, many times, because of the sweet tooth found in American and Western societies, a rickey includes sugar, much like many other drinks: the absurd level of sweetness in these cocktails are in mnay places expected based upon the adapatation of our palates, but in reality, usually the sugar doesn't help the refreshing quality of the drink. Many of these beverages have a specific aim: that being a purpose to act in a function analogue to that of medicine. A nice cool refreshing reviver, or a soothing drink watering down the spirit but retaining the flavors of it, art really well as salves to the stresses upon the imbiber.

The Sling, just like a toddy, is a mixture of sweetened spirits and water: but in reality, there degree of sweetness is one which barely modifies the flavor of the beverage, only lightening it, making it more smooth, and providing a bit of a pick me up to the imbiber (Embury 307). We can see an evolution of the Sling from the class variation given by Jerry Thomas, or that given by Henry Craddock, into something that is served with sweet liqueurs or lemon, and then finally into a more modified modern variation, seemingly teething with sugary and fantastical fruit flavors, that being the Singapore Sling. The gin is a background note, and while appropriate in a lot of drinks, is not what the ethos of an original sling entails. Embury even notes that Slings, in sharing quite a few similarities to a toddy, exhibit miniscule differences that enable one to accurately determine what makes each beverage certifiably different, especially since the temperature difference of the sling was not necessarily one that was a guaranteed truth, seeing as how some slings, even as late as Embury's time frame, were served warm (Ibid 308).

Wondrich would note that they, the sling and the toddy, are both members of the same family of drinks, which helps explain this difficulty in diagnosing what makes each one unique (Wondrich 152). We see the Sling coming out of the grog, which came out of the toddy, making it a descendant of, but in reality an approrpiately called brother to, its' original format (Ibid 149). The first origin of the sling, that being the gin variety, was found in the beginning of the 19th century: it is rumored that it was created in 1800, and sees the specific character of the sling mentioned in an 1808 article, which made it sound as if the sling was something that Americans found irresistible (Ibid 150). The sling saw quite a bit of popularity across the Northeast and Eastern states, being drunk by citizens of Maryland, Rhode Island, Virginia, and New York in a variety of literature; perhaps in New York, it saw a greater popularity, seeing as how it was cited as being a health drink that a "tumbler of gin sling [...] proves a speedy and an efficacious styptic" Ibid 151).

When making the drink, the amount of water used should remain low, since there will be some dilution from the lump of ice, and also the stronger the spirit, the more effective the water is at pulling out the flavors of the sling. Making a perfect sling, in my opinion, relies upon a careful balance of temperature, dilution and spirit. Certainly also, serving a proper sling over a ton of ice is ineffective, sinc eit mitigates the flavors of the spirit, masking them behind the cold, and on the other hand a room temperature sling is unappealing to the tongues of those who seek a refresher. As such, a single lump of ice, a prechilled glass, and a small amount of water to dilute makes for a rather good sling, much more inspired than one which has little flavor, or has no refreshing quality.

The Sling:

2 ounces of a spirit
1 teaspoon of powdered sugar
1/4 to 1/2 ounce of water, still or charged

In a chilled Delmonico or fizz glass, add a lump of ice, two ounces of a spirit, the water and the sugar, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Garnish with freshly grated nutmeg.

-----

Craddock, Henry. 1999. The Savoy Cocktail Book. Originally published 1930. London: Pavilion Books.

Embury, David A. 2009. The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. Originally published 1948. New York: Mud Puddle Books, Inc.

Haigh, Ted. 2009. Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails: From the Alamagoozlum to the Zombie and Beyond. Beverly, Massachusetts: Quarry Books.

Schumann, Charles. 1991. American Bar. New York: Abbeville Press Publishers.

Thomas, Jerry. 1887. Bartender's Guide. Reprint of original. New York: Dick and Fitzgerald.

Wondrich, David. 2007. Imbibe!: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar. New York: Penguin Group.

Pisco Sour

2011-04-16T00:29:00.000-07:00

Claimed by both Peru and Chile, the Pisco Sour is the quintessential Pisco cocktail.

A wonderful blend of sour components with a faint sweetness juxtaposed with earthy or floral notes. Soft notes of spice on the nose, positioned with the texture of a fluffy cloud on the tongue. Overall a fantastic drink, but one that is an acquired taste: many people have an aversion to the unique flavors of Pisco. Made from muscat grapes (in the case of Chilean Pisco), or Quebranta (Peruvian Pisco), the aromatic brandy can be pungent and overwhelming in flavor (Robinson 532). Generally, Pisco has an aromatic flavor, which is augmented and mellowed by the aging process in the case of Chilean Pisco; on the other hand, Peruvian Pisco generally exhibits a strong and more primal nature, being unaged and full of flavor, but retaining that full blow grape-like flavor with a natural sweetness.

The cocktail is made up of a few simple ingredients, making it rather similar to a Boston sour. The Boston sour is essentially the designation of a variation of a sour, featuring the use of an egg white to give it a new texture. Unlike a traditional sour, with the use of lemon juice, the Pisco sour draws upon the use of Persian limes rather than Eureka lemons. In many cases, there is a mistake in translation to English, calling for lemons rather than limes, mainly because limes are referred to as a lemon in Spanish. As such, you find quite a few Pisco sours in the United States made with lemon juice, but in the case of a properly made cocktail, lime juice is the way to go.

Pisco brandy, Pisco punch and Pisco sour have been the focus of a book by Guillermo Toro Lira, Wings of Cherubs (2007), and also his other book History of Pisco in San Francisco (2010). In the case of the spirit, there is a strong relationship between Pisco brandy and San Fransciso. It seems that according to Guillermo, the drink's original precursor was a concoction drunk by the Viceroyalty of Peru, essentially a mix of pisco and lime; later, in San Franscisco, a cocktail would originate called the Pisco punch which featured pisco, lemon and pineapple. Contrary to this origin story of Peruvian origins, there is another creation myth surrounding the drink: specifically that it was made by an Englishman who visited Iquique, a Peruvian city which would later become a Chilean City in 1884, and that he created what would become the Pisco sour (Joseph 275).

The principle way of changing this drinks' flavor is to vary the type of Pisco used: besides branding, the most obvious change is to use Chilean or Peruvian, since the production processes are different, you get rather different flavors, thanks to the terroir of the grape varietal. The lack of, or minimal aging difference in the production processes between Peruvian and Chilean Pisco also changes the flavors tremendously, so it is only natural that a switch in the principle ingredient by volume would alter the overall taste of the drink.

In general, any type of bitters can be used to top the white foam from the egg white, but the bitter of choice is Angostura. The contrasting, strong colors add a wonderful visual aesthetic, but at the same time, the spice notes complement the flavor of the Pisco. However, in Peru, it is common to use regional bitters rather than obscure ones. For a wonderful twist, switch it out for some orange bitters or other type of aromatic bitters.

Pisco Sour:

2 ounces Pisco
1 ounce lime juice
1/4 ounce simple syrup
1 egg white

Dry shake the egg white in a shaker tin; after shaking so that it is broken down a bit, add in lime juice and simple syrup; dry shake some more. Add ice, Pisco, shaking until well chilled, and strain into a glass; top with some Angostura bitters.

-----

Field, Colin Peter. 2003. The Cocktails of The Ritz Paris. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Jackson, Michael. 1995. Michael Jackson's Bar and Cocktail Companion: The Connoisseur's Handbook. Originally published 1979. Philadelphia: Running Press.

Joseph, Robert. 2006. Wine Travel Guide to the World. Footprint Handbooks.

Schumann, Charles. 1991. American Bar. New York: Abbeville Press Publishers.

Sangria

2011-04-02T23:06:00.000-07:00

Well not a cocktail, Sangria is probably a staple of most social gatherings, and is served as a refreshment at quite a few restaurants; a wine punch, Sangria is perhaps one of the most famous punches, and is in many cases, a refreshing cooler.

Sangria in the form that we understand it originates from Spain, having spread throughout Europe, and finding its' introduction into the United States in 1964 during the World's Fair in New York, having been served by the Spanish. However, the origins of Sangria does not originate with the Spanish: as a punch, it is linked historically with the longstanding traditions surrounding the style of drink, and even prior to it with hippocras, a type of wine fortified with honey and herbs. As an aside note: hippocras is many times mistaken as mead, since mead is a honey wine, but the distinct difference is the base: in mead, the alcohol is fermented alcohol, while in hippocras, there is still a grape wine fortified with something else..

It is highly possible that Sangria has its' origins in claret, a type of wine and, simultaneously, a punch. Punch, as Wondrich notes, is not a cheap drink, being expensive, to produce because of the use of the base liquor (Wondrich 54). Contrary to the expensive nature of punch, sangria at the other time is a cheap punch, seeing as the wine that is used is not necessarily something special. This puts it on the same level as the cheaper rum punch or gin punch that was made in the United States. However, seeing as it is made with a base of wine rather than spirits, it differs quite a bit. Claret, which was the English term for a French Bordeaux, was in many times, when passing through English hands, a fortified wine, given extra character through brandy (Ibid 55). As you can see, there is a similarity between Sangria, which is a red fortified with brandy, and that of Claret, which in many cases was sold fortified; later Claret would be served in a Claret Cup, which was Claret fortified with spirits and garnished with fruits, served over ice (Ibid 263). The cup, which was essentially a miniature punch, looks very identical to Sangria. Furthermore, the local terminology for red wine punches, in any variety was Sangria, so the transmission of Sangria extremely similar to that of a Claret Cup or Claret Punch sounds just like something which would be termed locally as Sangria.

The origins of punch and aromatised wines such as vermouth are all linked to transforming something that exhibited a modicum of quality into something new with bold flavors. Where as most aromatised wines are infused for a period of time longer tan a night, Sangria is usually only infused for a short period of time, usually the night before. However, Dale DeGroff, and others, recommend that you create this a la minute, through muddling the fruit to extract the oils from the citrus peel, and the juices from the pulp (DeGroff 206). To be honest, the flavor is less sophisticated if you let it sit and infuse, but the flavor is more vivid.

The variations which we see so often today, using other liqueurs, mixes of spirits, or styles of wine, is mostly a function of American novelty, and the creation of variances and spins off of specific traditional styles, in order to create something more appealing. Such variations include adding in triple sec, or another cordial, changing out the fruits, or sangrias that are "white wine" or "sparkling wine" versions. While not definitely a traditional approach, the fact that Sangria itself sees its' historical past in punches and hippocras, gives off an aura of acceptance. If you want to switch out the wine, or create some version of your own, feel free to do so, and obviously change out the types of fruit or other helper ingredients to complement or accentuate the flavor of the wine; obviously this is the case even when choosing a specific red.

Yet, although most of the variations can be attributed to American cultural syncretism, there is variations on Sangria in the regions of Spain, including the southern variation zurra, which is oftentimes made with peaches. But in most cases, the wine used will be a red wine. The ideal wine for a Sangria is a Rioja, but you can't go wrong with a claret from Bordeaux; in either case, just make sure not to use a particularly expensive wine, seeing as how the wine, especially in the a la minute version will be very different. Particularly good choices are wines with less of an oaken finish on the tongue, which contrasts in many cases to the bright citrus notes. You can hardly go wrong with a Sangria with fresh fruit and a decent wine, no matter what else is used to vary it (within reason of course).

Sangria:

1 bottle Spanish red (substitute for other types of red)
1 lemon, cut into wedges
1 orange, cut into wedges
4 ounces triple sec or curacao
2 ounces brandy
1 ounce simple syrup
Seltzer water
Any other fruit to taste

In a pitcher, add the fruit and the brandy, syrup, and any other cordials. If made a la minute, muddle the fruit. Add the wine. Serve over ice in a chilled glass, a garnish of fruit, mint or other appropriate borage, and top with some seltzer.

----

DeGroff, Dale. 2008. The Essential Cocktail: The Art of Mixing Perfect Drinks. New York: Clarkson Potter/Publishers.

Wondrich, David. 2010 . Punch: The Delights and Dangers of the Flowing Bowl. New York: Penguin Group.

The Fix and the Daisy

2011-03-19T22:08:00.000-07:00

Each are a type of drink, not so much a cocktail, both the Fix and the Daisy are long drinks filled with flavor and a refreshing chill, a tad bit of sweetness and tartness on the tongue.

As you most probably know, ages ago mixed drinks came in a variety of forms, most of which are now classified as the cocktail, even though the variations and differences between the concoctions, no matter how subtle, were representative of different mixed drinks. The Fix is one such drink, and is rather similar, on first glance to the Daisy. Both the Fix and the Daisy are drinks "of the Sour type," utilizing citrus, syrup and a spirit; according to Embury, the Daisy differs traditionally in the use of raspberry or grenadine syrup, while the Fix calls for pineapple syrup (Embury 298). Even though the difference is incredibly small, it demonstrates and reiterates how easy it is to vary the flavor and utter ethos of a drink through a rather small change in ingredient.

Oftentimes, the Fix is featured as a drink over a fine ice, in order to create an incredible chill on the drink and the glass, making it seem much more refreshing. This is the same with the Daisy. In the case of each drink in order to emphasize the cold nature, the ice and liquid are swished together through the use of a swizzle stick or a bar spoon, which helps in creating a wonderful frosty appearance upon the glass and reaching a cold equilibrium incredibly quickly. In many cases, the drink also features a float of another liqueur at the top of the drink, in order to create a wonderful aesthetic effect: oftentimes, if it is a syrup or cordial, the spirit will sink, graduating the color of the drink, as is the case with a tequila sunrise.

There is another difference that originates back to Jerry Thomas, which is not made of note in Embury: with a Daisy, oftentimes the drink is topped up with a sparkling water or seltzer, which lightens the overall drink. This is a wonderful touch, giving the drink a bit of effervescence (Thomas 32). In a way, this might also be another key note in understanding a difference between the two drinks, beyond just fruit flavor and color. At the very least however, this marks some change in consumption practices, or preparation practices, on drinks that were already rather similar, making them more similar than earlier. To trace this difference however, we can look at Wondrich's research on the matter, which demonstrates that the Fix and the Sour are the earliest classes of "Lesser Punch," and the Fix being slightly older than that of the Sour, even though when looking at these drinks, we would now call them all of the Sour family (Wondrich 98-106). It was in the mid to late 19th century that we start to see the Daisy emerge, as a drink that was cool and refreshing, using the inclusion of soda water to bring a refreshing quality to the beverage that was lacking before. The Daisy was, according to Wondrich (106-108) an offshoot of the Sour, giving the simpler drink a new quality while retaining its' simple nature; soda water was not necessary for something such as the Fix, which was already rather complicated to make with the inclusion of a fancy fruit garnish.

The shift to a more direct comparison between the two, as set out by Embury and others, might very well have to do with changes in drinking practice, and the view in which drinks were related to one another; a Daisy perhaps was seen more similar to the Fix, and so became more associated with it, rather than being seen as associated with a Collins or Fizz, both of which are further offshoots of punch. But, of note is that the products Embury is talking about, those ones being so similar, are only found in more recent literature, and books that were close contemporaries of Embury, such as Craddock's Savoy, treat the drinks more as one would as is the cases with the older, more original format, that being the inclusion of soda water or not: Craddock's recipes for the Daisy and the Fix are nearly identical, save for a short note about using Apollinaris or seltzer to top up the drink. It seems then that Embury could perhaps have forgotten to mention the inclusion of seltzer; yet in most bars, getting a Daisy means you will be getting something without the seltzer now a days, as Embury's style for the drinks have become the "traditional" or conservative approach.

Garnish wise, the drinks oftentimes are garnished with mint and various fruit that is available. In many cases, I would just go for a slice or zest of the citrus fruit used in the drink, and utilize more should they be readily available or if the drink is being served in a fancy goblet.

The Fix:

2 ounces Spirit
1/2 ounce citrus juice
1/4 to 1/2 ounce pineapple Syrup, simple syrup, maraschino, Cointreau or other light colored cordial

Combine the ingredients in a glass filled with shaved or crushed ice. Swizzle with a barspoon or swizzle stick to give a frosty appearance to the drink. Garnish with fruits in season, mint, and optionally float some green Chartreuse on top

The Daisy:

2 ounces Spirit
1/2 ounce citrus juice
1/4 to 1/2 ounce grenadine, creme de Cassis, or other dark fruit cordial

Combine the ingredients in a glass filled with shaved or crushed ice. Swizzle with a barspoon or swizzle stick to give a frosty appearance to the drink. Optionally top up with some sparkling water. For a layered effect, add the dark colored syrup after swizzling. Garnish with fruits in season, mint, and optionally float some yellow Chartreuse on top.

-----

Craddock, Henry. 1999. The Savoy Cocktail Book. Originally published 1930. London: Pavilion Books.

Embury, David A. 2009. The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. Originally published 1948. New York: Mud Puddle Books, Inc.

Thomas, Jerry. 1887. Bartender's Guide. Reprint of original. New York: Dick and Fitzgerald.

Wondrich, David. 2007. Imbibe!: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar. New York: Penguin Group.

Jupiter Cocktail

2011-02-22T23:12:00.000-08:00

The Jupiter Cocktail is a strange color, both blue in hue but turning into a gray depending on the lighting conditions; overall though, the drink is rather good.

While I'm referring to the recipe provided in Craddock's Savoy, Ted Haigh notes that this drink comes most probably from Harry McElhone's ABC of Mixing Cocktails, which was published seven years prior Craddock's, putting the drinks origin around 1923 instead of 1930 (Haigh 179-180). The drink itself is a simple combination of gin with dry vermouth accented by a couple other ingredients, which provide floral notes. The juice, which usually in a drink provides citrus flavor, does nothing more than provide a bit of floral accentuation on the nose, whilst assisting and accenting the aroma of the Parfait Amour. Haigh notes that this drink requires exceptionally exact measurements, and this is partially true, since the drink does not necessarily lend itself to having too much floral notes nor too little accentuation.

Parfait Amour is something which is many times associated with femininity, is another liqueur with connotations of love or lovers, the liqueur is a deep violet or purple in nature, and varies quite a bit in flavor depending upon the manufacturer. The most similar thing to it would be creme de violet or Creme Yvette. Perfect love, according to Peter Hallgarten, an expert on liqueurs, says it has its' color come from creme de Violette and provides flavor through a citrus base with the addition of extra spices to give it a bit of a flowery notes from cinnamon petals as well as peach pits (which is used in creme de noyeaux, which is an apricot / peach pit flavored liqueur that has nut notes) for added complexity (Jackson 97). Personally, Marie Brizard who makes the most readily available version of Parfait Amour in the states, is perhaps particularly suited to this cocktail seeing as how it has the wonderful nose of oranges (just as Hallgarten suggests with citrus orientations in the liqueur).

While the recipes for this drink call for shaking it, I personally like to just stir it, because there is so little juice that it keeps the cocktail rather clear, and doesn't provide much aeration to the delicate vermouth. However, shaking versus stirring this drink does provide a quicker experience, and ensures that the cocktail is diluted well enough, something which is always contentious when stirring a drink. However, in either case, the drink will not be perfectly clear because of the nature of the Parfait Amour's high sugar content, and the inclusion of the small amount of juice. So really, it is a choice that you, as a bartender, can make when mixing up this drink.

Furthermore, I find that a sweeter or earthier gin works wonders in this drink; a London Dry still makes for a good drink, but replace it with Bols Genever, or replace it with any other Genevieve or Old Tom Gin and you have something absolutely fantastic, blending the flavors of the juniper more appropriately with the floral; if you want to stick with a London Dry, go with something like G'Vine, which is an extremely fruit driven gin, or Beefeater 24, whose tea notes work well with the overall floral notes of the Parfait Amour.

This cocktail has a wonderful nose, so a taller or over-sized cocktail glass which helps capture the nose works wonderfully for the drink. Something like a Champagne flute, or a nosing glass works quite well for this purpose. If desired, you can also augment the aromatic nature of the orange by expressing the oils of an orange twist into the glass, keeping the drink smelling quite wonderful while enjoying it and pulling out the floral notes further.

Jupiter:

1 1/2 ounce gin
3/4 ounce dry vermouth
1 teaspoon Parfait Amour
1 teaspoon orange juice

Combine the ingredients in a shaker tin, shaking well and straining after chilling into a cocktail glass.

-----

Craddock, Henry. 1999. The Savoy Cocktail Book. Originally published 1930. London: Pavilion Books.

Haigh, Ted. 2009. Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails: From the Alamagoozlum to the Zombie and Beyond. Beverly, Massachusetts: Quarry Books.

Jackson, Michael. 1995. Michael Jackson's Bar and Cocktail Companion: The Connoisseur's Handbook. Originally published 1979. Philadelphia: Running Press.

Abbey

2011-02-22T22:20:00.000-08:00

Reminiscent of oranges, this drink is a mixture of juniper and orange flavors on the tongue, with slight other floral notes pulling through thanks to the Lillet Blanc and the inclusion of bitters.

Another obscure and not common gin drink, at least in the United States and featuring the inclusion of Lillet Blanc, the Abbey is essentially an a la minute orange gin with less sweetness. Orange gin, as a liqueur, has the addition of sugar in it, but is essentially orange infused gin; in the case of the Abbey, there is no inclusion of the pith and oils, but the flavor is pretty similar, especially with the inclusion of a bitters such as Regan's to provide some spice notes, and the Lillet Blanc.

The drink is a British favorite, still made today, most often the drink leaves out the Lillet Blanc. The Abbey is the first drink listed in Craddock's The Savoy Cocktail Book, and features dry gin, Kina Lillet, orange juice, and a dash of Angostura bitters. Now a days, it is more common to use orange bitters instead of Angostura, so I followed this general guideline, but chose a bitter that has more spice notes, id est the Regan's, to help bridge the gap between what Craddock calls for and the modern day.

Also, the use of Lillet Blanc is a choice made by me because there is no more direct equivalent of old-school Kina Lillet, so the closest thing imaginable on the market is the white version of Lillet. Overall this drink screams to act as an aperitif, seeing as how the inclusion of the bitters, the inclusion of the Lillet, and the inclusion of gin all in one glass, without any added sweetener, helps to encourage and stimulate appetite. The inclusion of Lillet really makes this drink special, and removing it reduces the overall quality of the drink, making it more like a rather generic juniper oriented citrus drink. In a Corpse Reviver #2, some bartenders I know replace the Lillet with Cocchi Americano, which adds a nice bit of variance upon the drink; in the case of the Abbey, the same substitution can be made, to decent effect.

Craddock says to shake this drink, but there is so little orange juice, that it makes sense to just stir it, which keeps the flavor of the aperitif wine, either Lillet or Cocchi, as a major component that balances well upon the tongue; aperitif wines are rather notorious for being fragile in flavor, so too much water can just upset their taste, and stirring is the safe solution here. Also, I personally enjoy this drink with Old Tom gin more so than with a London Dry. But that is just my preference.

Abbey:

1 1/2 ounce dry gin
3/4 ounce Kina Lillet
3/4 ounce orange juice
1 dash orange or Angostura bitters

Stir over cracked ice and strain into a cocktail glass; optionally garnish with a brandied cherry.

-----

Craddock, Henry. 1999. The Savoy Cocktail Book. Originally published 1930. London: Pavilion Books.

Embury, David A. 2009. The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. Originally published 1948. New York: Mud Puddle Books, Inc.

Uyeda, Kazuo. 2010. Cocktail Techniques. Originally published in 2000. New York: Mud Puddle Books, Inc.

Ford Cocktail

2011-02-22T22:09:00.000-08:00

This cocktail predates the Ford motorcar company, so it is not named after them or Henry Ford. Based upon gin, the drink is made more complete through the inclusion of vermouth, bitters, and Bénédictine.

Ted Haigh cites the first source of this as George Kappeler's Modern American Drinks from 1895, and is likely named for Malcom Webster Ford, "famed champion athlete, journalist, and great-grandson of Noah Webster[,]" whose name, evoking images of lexicons of the English language bound in leather tomes, is not far from the mark (Haigh 136). Noah Webster is the creator of the Webster dictionary, and helped to publish textbooks, while writing a profilic amount of text. Contrary to how we conceive of him now a days, he died rather in obscurity, since his dictionary was not well recognized yet; his descendent, Malcom Webster Ford, for whom the cocktail was named, committed suicide in 1902 on account of financial problems. The cocktail itself is a bit better than the end that both of these men received, though, it is rare and not well known.

According to Haigh, the drink is also known as a Vancouver if made with sweet vermouth (ibid 137). personally, both versions are extremely good, provided you use fresh vermouth; of course the drink is made better through the use of gins with a little bit more sweetness, hence Old Tom gin; however, in the case of the Vancouver version, the cocktail works exceedingly well with an earthier gin, such as a Genevieve style. As such, I recommend Bols Genever for that purpose. In actuality, you can also get away with using a Genevieve style gin in place of the Old Tom for the drier version, but it isn't necessarily as well balanced unless you absolutely prefer cocktails approaching a lower limit for sugar. Really though, it is your preference on the gin selection.

For bitters, the two main orange bitters on the market, Angostura Orange and Regan's Orange work really differently in this cocktail: the inclusion of the Angostura gives it a bit more vivid brightness, and makes the drink more light and floral, pulling out the brighter notes of the gin; while the inclusion of the Regan's pulls out the flavor from the Bénédictine, and blends together the spices. I think that a dash of each is rather good course towards mediating and pulling all the flavors together.

Ford Cocktail:

1 ounce Old Tom Gin
1 ounce dry vermouth
3 dashes Bénédictine
3 dashes orange bitters

Combine over cracked ice, stirring well, straining into a cocktail glass and garnish with an orange twist.

----

Haigh, Ted. 2009. Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails: From the Alamagoozlum to the Zombie and Beyond. Beverly, Massachusetts: Quarry Books.

Affinity

2011-02-22T21:29:00.000-08:00

A Scotch and vermouth cocktail, this is closest to a perfect Rob Roy, which can be made with two sets of proportions..

Scotch doesn't find itself in a lot of cocktails because of the characteristics of the spirit, and the wide range it can present depending on the region of production for single malt scotches, or the key malts chosen for scotch blends. Some Scotch exhibits peat notes, others exhibit more malt notes, while others demonstrate floral or honey notes, or some combination of the aforementioned along with other flavors such as citrus, white fruits, spice, or more grain notes. In the case of the Affinity cocktail, which uses Scotch, the choice of Scotch is pretty important, and choosing one that will add depth to the drink, rather than just being absorbed by the vermouth, is substantially important. As of such, I recommend the utilization of a blend, to limit the cost of the cocktail, but also some blend with a lot of peat, to give a bit of a smokey element to the drink, or perhaps one that has more floral notes to contrast against the herbal notes of the vermouth.

Classified as a Scotch cocktail of the aromatic type by Embury, the Affinity according to Embury is a Medium Manhattan with Scotch in place of rye or bourbon (176-178). The terminology Medium Manhattan comes from the idea of using equal proportions of types of vermouth, blending between the dry and the sweet to produce a balanced flavor (Ibid 122). For Embury, the ratio of spirit to vermouth in a Manhattan is two to one, meaning that in the case of the Affinity, the drink should be made with a quarter of a part of each vermouth in ratio to that of the Scotch. Proportions, just like most drinks, vary depending on source, most certainly due to historical circumstances and contexts but also on account of preference. In other texts, such as Craddock's, the Affinity is an equal proportions of each ingredient (less the bitters), which makes for a really strong vermouth driven drink (Craddock 17); personally I prefer the version that Embury sets out, which is also the same as set out by Frank Meier (24).

Whatever you do, make sure to include the garnish for this drink: the lemon peel really sets off the flavor of the Scotch, especially if the key malt is one from the highlands with more citrus oriented notes. The aromatics also help to provide a bit more complexity to the drink which would be predominately driven by the flavors of the herbs in the vermouth.

Affinity:

1 1/2 ounces Scotch
1/3 ounce dry vermouth
1/3 ounce sweet vermouth
2 dashes Angostura bitters

Stir over cracked ice, straining into a cocktail glass, and garnish with a lemon twist.

Whisper

2011-02-22T00:20:00.000-08:00

Basically a perfect Manhattan with equal proportions less the bitters, the Whisper is a good cocktail when fresh vermouth is used.

The perfect Manhattan is a variation on the good old Manhattan, a variation which calls for equal proportions of sweet and dry vermouth. The change here makes for a rather more complicated cocktail, pulling out different flavors on account of the inclusion of another ingredient, that being the dry vermouth. Since you can use a different brand of dry vermouth than sweet vermouth, the drink is easily quite variable, and much more combinations of flavor can be unlocked when mixing the libation.

A whisper, as a drink, is reminiscent of the actual function of a whisper, coming out a bit more quietly than with the bang and style of a Manhattan. A favorite in the West Indies according to Harry Craddock (174), the reason is because the Whisper as a cocktail lacks bitters, something which helps to bring out the full potential of the drink. Bitters are an essential ingredient in classic cocktails, but are not something that a lot of people, whose palates are accustomed to sweet and cloying, are familiar with anymore except in tea or coffee. As such it adds another layer of flavor, another dimension, with notes of various herbs and spices to bring out further complexity in a drink, while not completely changing the tone of the cocktail.

When mixing a Whisper, you can get around the lack of bitter component by using a bitter vermouth like Punt e Mes. When juxtaposed with something like Cinzano dry vermouth, and the high herbal characteristics, you get an overall nice experience; or if you wanted to go for something a bit more refined, the utilization of Carpano Antica works wonders at providing an extremely pleasing experience with the overall drink. The equal proportions called for in this drink helps make the vermouth the entire focal point, so changing it out really changes the overall drink, and to maximize the pleasure of imbibing it, one should ensure the utilization of fresh vermouth (as is always the case with the fortified wine).

Anyhow, if you want to make sure the whiskey does not get lost in the drink, try a stronger and more assertive whiskey such as a rye whiskey, rather than a bourbon, or better yet a very rye driven bourbon; Harry Craddock's book, one of the first places the cocktail appears, does not specify, and only provides an equal proportion ratio (ibid). However, you can easily make this into something that is a bit more spirit forward by increasing the spirit's ratio to that of the vermouth; yet personally, the cocktail is one that should be more driven by vermouth, since the original recipe actually calls for that, and we wouldn't want another thing that is a less complete Perfect Manhattan, so keeping to the original ratio might be wise in this case.

Whisper:

3/4 ounce whiskey
3/4 ounce sweet vemouth
3/4 ounce dry vermouth

Stir the ingredients together in a glass with cracked ice until well chilled, and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

-----

Craddock, Henry. 1999. The Savoy Cocktail Book. Originally published 1930. London: Pavilion Books.

The Saint Augustine

2011-02-11T22:56:00.000-08:00

Another cocktail with little history to be found, the drink just needs to be noted.

Not much to say about this cocktail besides the obvious fact that it shares the name with Saint Augustine of Hippo, perhaps the most famous of all Saints with regards to the Latin Church. And while I could perhaps ramble on about the Saint, and his relationship to Africa, it doesn't make sense to name a cocktail after him, especially one that seemingly has no connection whatsoever. I would rather think, and propose, that the cocktail is named after the city located in Florida. Though speculative, the cocktail makes a lot more sense viewed from this lens: the city, which was originally Spanish and founded in 1565, later became, just like Palm Beach, a resort, thanks to the efforts of Henry Flagler.

Seeing as how the city, a place where rum would be known, as well as grapefruit juice, is rather close to Palm Beach and has a resort history, it makes sense that a cocktail, so very similar to the Palm Beach Special, might actually be from or inspired by this city. Unfortunately, I can't so much as find a source on this tipple, seeing as how I lifted it from Cocktail Database. If I do come across anything I'll definitely update this post.

Overall, the drink works well with both French and Spanish style white rums: the French style, with more floral notes, works exceptionally well, and something that is rather clean and sharp in the Spanish style works fairly well in the drink as well. Also a dash of lemon bitters works well instead of the lemon zest, especially if you wish to use grapefruit zest to provide aromatic to the drink instead.

Saint Augustine:

1 1/2 oz light rum
3/4 oz grapefruit juice
1/4 oz Cointreau
Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice, shake until chilled and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

-----

CocktailDB: The Internet Cocktail Database. "Saint Augustine Cocktail." CocktailDB.com. http://www.cocktaildb.com/recipe_detail?id=2022 (accessed February 5, 2011).

The Palm Beach Special

2011-02-11T22:12:00.000-08:00

Not much to say about this drink. Just that it is a pretty good grapefruit juice drink that taste relatively unique.

Palm Beach has a longstanding history as being a resort, so it makes quite a bit of sense that a cocktail should come out of the region, appropriately named the Palm Beach Special. The town, which would later be incorporated in 1911, was a product of the founder of Standard Oil, Henry Flagler at the end of the 19th century, becoming rather famous for the creation of two luxury resort hotels, the Royal Poinciana and the Breakers Hotel. Even prior to incorporation the area was seen as a resort spot, which become more recogized as such in the 1930s, after the repeal of the Prohibition. Ted Haigh writes that this drink is a product of the 1940s (Haigh 222).

While Haigh suggests Plymouth, which works well, I prefer using something like Steinhager or a Genevieve style gin to give it a bit more unity and let the grapefruit juice pull through with the taste of the vermouth. For vermouth, something less bitter seems appropriate to this drink, such as Carpano Antica. Lastly, if you use a fruit driven gin, either citrus oriented or the grape driven G'Vine, you get a lovely cocktail overall that has most of its' complexity coming form the vermouth. And if you choose to be daring and use something such as Hendrick's, not that I recommend it, cut back on the vermouth to let the cucumber play more with the grapefruit juice. The drink lends itself lovingly to a garnish of grapefruit zest, which gives a bit more of an aroma and fragrance to the cocktail especially if you use a fruitier gin.

Palm Beach Special:

2 ounces gin
3/4 ounce grapefruit juice
1/2 ounce sweet vermouth

Combine the ingredients in a shaker tin, shake with ice until chilled, and strain into a cocktail glass.

-----

Haigh, Ted. 2009. Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails: From the Alamagoozlum to the Zombie and Beyond. Beverly, Massachusetts: Quarry Books.

De Rigueur or Brown Derby

2011-02-11T12:44:00.000-08:00

Known as the De Rigueur, this cocktail also goes by the name Brown Derby, named after the famous Brown Derby restaurant chain in Los Angeles.

As a cocktail, De Rigueur isn't necessarily something is is truly required, but it is an excellent cocktail befitting its' name, with a sort of strong structure of the bourbon backed by some depth from the tart and slightly sweet grapefruit juice and the sweet flavor honey that contributes to the cocktail by giving it more gravity and texture. Interestingly enough, the other name for this drink is actually the Brown Derby cocktail, which is attributed to the Brown Derby restaurant chain in Los angeles and its' environs: however, the question arises of which was first, the De Rigueur, which seemingly is the term used by the Europeans when talkinga bout this drink, or the Brown Derby version. Personally, I find that the cocktail most likely is not a Brown Derby original, seeing as how other cocktails that were signature drinks at the restaurant chain, including the Honeymoon, were invented by others such as Hugo Ensslin (Haigh 164). However, James Hensley states that this cocktail is not even from the Brown Derby, but rather from the Vendome, another Los Angeles landmark.

The earliest mention I can find of this cocktail is in Henry Craddocks book, The Savoy Cocktail Book (58). Listed here as the De Rigueur, the drink is two-one-one, or a simple ratio between all three ingredients producing a fairly well balanced drink, though one which is difficult to work with on account of the thick and heavy gravity of honey. Individuals like Marcos Tello, in a Los Angeles interview with bartenders' changes up the recipe to make it a bit more sour than sweet by modifying the proportions to four-two-one, and technically what would amount to one-half the honey since the honey is replaced with honey syrup, or a mixture of honey and water in equal proportions to make it more manageable, something common with a lot of tiki drinks.

The version of the drink which is presented by James Hensley is one that includes the very same ingredients, and was exceedingly popular in the 1930s as well, just like the Brown Derby. The question however is which came first? I am unable to find evidence which suggests what comes first, but looking at the dates, the De Rigueur had to be around in the 1920s in order to be published in the Savoy, and both of those restaurants in Los Angeles did not come into their popular histories until the 1930s: therefore, it seems quite likely, of course speculative, that the drink originates as the De Rigueur and might have made its' way through name changes or perhaps even genuine innovation at either of these two restaurants. It doesn't seem likely that the drink however was originating from the Vendome, at least in the name Brown Derby.

Overall a fairly delightful drink, the honey can be pushed back if a less sweet drink is desired overall, or the Bourbon can be replaced with a spicier rye. In either case, they are modifications to an already good rink, and are modifications that should be done based upon the preferences of the imbiber. I personally find that the use of a white grapefruit juice works well in this drink, since it gives it a different flavor than the readily used pink stuff which tends to be slightly sweeter.

De Rigueur or Brown Derby:

1 1/2 ounces bourbon
3/4 ounce grapefruit juice
3/4 ounce honey

Combine the ingredients in a mixing tin with cracked ice. Shake well and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

-----

Craddock, Henry. 1999. The Savoy Cocktail Book. Originally published 1930. London: Pavilion Books.

Haigh, Ted. 2009. Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails: From the Alamagoozlum to the Zombie and Beyond. Beverly, Massachusetts: Quarry Books.

Hensley, James. 2010. "The Brown Derby Cocktail." The Spirit Monkey. Originally published June 19, 2010. Accessed February 5, 2011. http://www.thespiritmonkey.com/2010/07/09/the-brown-derby-cocktail-the-golden-age-of-hollywood-in-a-glass/.

The Golden Dawn

2011-01-31T23:08:00.000-08:00

Another cocktail for which the revival is owed most certainly to Ted Haigh, the Golden Dawn is a cocktail featuring Calvados and gin.

Seemingly like the sun at dawn thanks to the layering effect found in the drink, this cocktail is a rather good example of the beauty that can be found in a cocktail. Kazuo Uyeda writes about how the aesthetic color drink is rather important, and this true to an extent: while a cocktail can exhibit beautiful colors such as jade green or illustrious oranges and yellows, even the mighty ambivalent and homogeneous shade of brown can be quite exquisite to examine should it be displayed in pleasant glassware and prepared by stirring rather than shaking to diminish clouding. Each drink can be quite beautiful if treated well: serving liquor out of cheap plastic glasses or shaking everything doesn't do a cocktail justice in many instances.

Returning to layering, it is easy to see at first glance that the technique in this cocktail is not that similar to pousse-cafe style layering. In a pousse-cafe or layered cocktail, the drink will have at least two distinct layers, in which liquids of different densities are poured into the glass at varying rates in order to create a very distinct and specific drink. In drinks such as this or the Tequila Sunrise, the liquid with the highest gravity, usually the sweetest ingredient, is poured over ice or into a drink very slowly to create a sort of shading effect rather than true distinct layers: as seen with the Golden Dawn, there is a small amount of grenadine poured into the glass to create the illusion of reds and orange in what would otherwise be a fairly mono-toned orange-yellow cocktail. With the small amount of grenadine present in this cocktail, the use of layering is mainly for aesthetic affect here, unlike in pousse-cafe or other drinks that rely heavily upon changing the falvor drastically as you get to the bottom of a glass.

Ted Haigh writes that the Golden Dawn is named for the Rogers and Hammerstein operetta which was published in 1927 and had a film adaptation in 1930 (Haigh 155). In 1930, the drink was called the World's Finest Cocktail in a united Kingdom Bartender's Guild contest, having been created by Thomas Buttery of London's Berkeley Hotel (Ibid). however, there is a problem with this, since the United Kingdom Bartendering Guild came into actual existence in 1933. As such, there is a bit of a problem here with the time-line that Haigh presents, since the group would have been unable to retroactively have a competition. It is possible that future members were already meeting though, seeing as how a lot of the Americans had abandoned the US in hopes of preserving their craft thanks to the prohibition.

Haigh notes that there is a divergence in the sources he uses for the drink, claiming that there should be less of the mixers in ratio to the base spirits. Personally, I prefer the version where the spirit is drawn out more, seeing as how it produces a less sweet cocktail. Also the drink works rather well with a more earthy gin, such as a Genevieve style gin, rather than a London dry.

The Golden Dawn:

1 ounce Calvados
1 ounce dry gin
1/2 ounce apricot brandy
1/2 ounce orange juice
Dash pomegranate grenadine

Shake all ingredients but the grenadine, straining into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a cherry and a dash of grenadine in the drink before serving.

-----

Haigh, Ted. 2009. Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails: From the Alamagoozlum to the Zombie and Beyond. Beverly, Massachusetts: Quarry Books.

Uyeda, Kazuo. 2010. Cocktail Techniques. Originally published in 2000. New York: Mud Puddle Books, Inc.

The Millionaire

2011-01-26T00:13:00.000-08:00

While it most definitely does not cost a million dollars to produce, nor should a cocktail cost that much, the sweet and sour components of the Millionaire makes this cocktail quite well balanced and into a tasty treat.

There have been quite a few cocktails that cost quite a bundle, usually featuring very old liquor, and or jewelry and gold in the production of the drink. For instance, the "Diamond is Forever Martini," found in the Ritz-Carlton, Tokyo, in which a diamond is placed at the bottom of your cocktail, all for the price of about 18000 USD. Or at the Ritz in Paris, within Bar Hemingway, you can have a Sidecar that uses 19th century cognac, specifically the Ritz Sidecar which features 1830 vintage cognac for a meager price of 500 USD. Beyond adding in expensive jewelry items, or using expensive ante prohibition liquor in a drink, a well made cocktail is priceless, being able to capture the flavors of the components without over balancing the components. And the Millionaire is one well made cocktail, if made properly as Ted Haigh would note.

Like a Corpse Reviver, the Millionaire cocktail has several variations. Besides the one presented by Ted Haigh, which is also probably the best, there are two other ones: one listed by Trader Vic, which is pretty atrocious, a gin based version known as Millionaire #2, and a bourbon one listed by Jason Wilson in the Washington Post. Haigh presents two versions of one specific form, changing out the ratio of ingredients to make it more sour and drier than a sweet, almost dessert type drink. Specifically the version that Haigh talks about calls for grenadine, lime juice, apricot brandy, Jamaican rum and sloe gin, three of which are rather sweet ingredients, especially if the apricot brandy refers to the cordial and not the eau de vie, the former being the product to which it most likely does refer (Haigh 204-207).

The version Haigh writes about is dubbed Millionaire #4 in The How and When of 1937, but also is cross referenced as Millionaire #1 in Craddock's Savoy Cocktail Book (Craddock 105). Like most of Craddock's drinks, this version of the Millionaire calls for equal proportions of the spirits, and a single lime: this produces a rather sweet drink, and does not exhibit good balance in terms of flavor since three of the ingredients are rather sweet. Haigh muddles about with this drink, giving a variation that turns the rum into the main note, with the two liqueurs being added as accents, and a removal of the grenadine since it hardly adds anything but some extra sugar. While this actually makes a rather palatable cocktail, it is still by no means the best; personally I would rather switch out the apricot brandy for apricot eau de vie, or increase the total ratio of lime to make sure the sour component has a strong presence in the drink as reflected in the recipe I provide. By ensuring that the lime juice is not a miniscule amount in ratio to the rest of the ingredients, the cocktail can pull through with a burst of flavor.

Of the other two aforementioned variations: the recipe that is given in Trader Vic's book is one which has horrible balance, featuring gin, Italian vermouth, grenadine, pineapple juice and the white of an egg; on the other hand, the version which is presented by Jason Wilson of the Washington post calls for the use of bourbon, Cointreau, lemon juice, grenadine, absinthe and an egg white. Just like the Corpse Reviver, the variations are drastic, and seemingly the only shared ingredient between these drinks is the grenadine and the juice. But this semblance of similarity takes a dive for the worse when we look at the second version provided by Craddock, which has nothing in common with the other variations.

The original recipe calls for the juice of a lime, which can range widely; as such, I just use a set amount of lime juice, since the drink should have some uniformity when made repeatedly, rather than vary depending on the size of the lime at each location.

The Millionaire #1:

3/4 ounce sloe gin
3/4 ounce apricot brandy
3/4 ounce Jamaican rum
1 dash grenadine
1 ounce lime juice

Combine the ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice and shake until thoroughly chilled. Strain into a cocktail glass.

-----

Craddock, Henry. 1999. The Savoy Cocktail Book. Originally published 1930. London: Pavilion Books.

Haigh, Ted. 2009. Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails: From the Alamagoozlum to the Zombie and Beyond. Beverly, Massachusetts: Quarry Books.

The Flying Dutchman

2010-12-28T15:16:00.000-08:00

Unlike the portent of doom with which this cocktail shares its' name, the Flying Dutchman is a strange and simple cocktail with quite a few bright and vivid flavors which tastes somewhat of an orange julius beverage.

"Summ und brumm, du gutes Rädchen."

A rare cocktail, seemingly because it is unknown to a lot of people, but also because it demands a rather difficult to obtain ingredient, id est orange gin, the Flying Dutchman is almost as illusive as the ghost ship itself. The drink takes its' name after the Dutch legend. Ted Haigh writes that the cocktail originates from a Dutch bar book; the book which was published in 1950, was entitled Internationale Cocktailgids, having been authored by W. Slagter (Haigh 129). More than likely, the cocktail itself is a Dutch original, probably originating slightly earlier than the publication date. The version which most people are familiar with now a days is one which uses a swirl of curacao around a glass, and then finished with chilled gin: this is highly different from the version that is attributed to Slagter.

The Flying Dutchman as a concept is a Dutch legend, one which is familiar to many sailors, which refers to the dangers and sightings of a strange and illusive ghost ship dubbed the Flying Dutchman. Probably originating in the 17th century, the ghost ship is the focus of much folklore and poetry in the 18th century, and is also an eponymous opera written by Wagner. Many scientists have dismissed the idea as a mirage that had been seen by sailors, created by refractions of the image upon the atmosphere, which would give the illusion that the ship was upside down, as was many times the case for the spectators. The ship however took on a portent of ill meaning, especially by authors who spoke about the ship in the 18th century, specifically Sir Walter Scott and John Leydon. For the literary representation of the ship, many attribute similarities between the fictional captain and the historic captain of the 17th century, Bernard Fokke, whose quick trips across the oceans vast distances between Holland and Java gave him an air that was attributed to the devil.

As a liqueur, orange gin is at its' heart a flavored gin, infused with the rinds of oranges to give it a rich flavor, but the stuff is hard to find now a days in commercial form. The only orange gin that is available in and throughout the United States, so far as I know, is the Seagram's stuff, as well as some orange gin found in a few state-run liquor stores in the Northeast produced by Jacquin. Until the 1970s, orange gin was available in Europe through distillers like Gordon's. Like a sloe gin, the easiest way to create the liquor is to infuse gin with orange zest, without pith, then to filter it and sweeten it to taste; I tend to leave it drier, but that is a matter of personal preference, and so experimentation is useful when infusing the spirit and adding in simple syrup. The entire process is not that difficult, merely time consuming, both in zesting quite a few oranges, but also letting the orange gin sit for an extended period of time. While you can pull out the flavor in about a month, especially with really fine zest and a lot of shaking every day, or by using a higher proof gin, the spirit will round itself out as it sits, even after removing the orange zest, and can continue to draw out flavor from the zest for an extended period of time. In the case of sloe berries, many household sloe gins are aged for a year to pull out the maximum flavor. Unlike the orange or citrus vodka, the orange gin is at its' core, a simple infusion to complicate and pair with the juniper and botanical notes, rather than an attempt to provide a masking flavor as is the case (in most instances) for vodka.

With any cocktail that involves juice, use the freshest juice you can, squeezing it by hand if able. There is truly no replacement for the vivid flavor of fresh juice in a cocktail, providing nice tang, acidity, and sweetness all at once. Using processed juices, especially in the cases of citrus juices, means that the flavor will not be the same, since these juices, the best example being the lime, require processes of pasteurization in order to prevent it from turning an ugly color or amalgamating into some not so pleasing texture. The process, while providing juice to the masses, reduces the vivid taste of the juice, and in a cocktail, where the flavors are supposed to be strong and pungent, it diminishes the overall experience. Therefore it adds quite a bit to go the extra step.

One final note about the sweetness of this cocktail: it appears awful sour considering the use of lemon and orange, but the fresh orange juice has a slight sweetness to it, and when combined with properly made orange gin, that being a liqueur, but not too sweet of one, creates a perfectly balanced cocktail. The bitters just bring out other flavors, spice notes and the like, which help produce a well rounded overall drink. Also, there should be a greater volume of orange juice than lemon juice (oranges should be larger than lemons). For an added twist, add in a Meyer lemon to replace the traditional Eureka lemon juice.

The Flying Dutchman:

2 ounces orange gin
1/4th an orange, juiced (about 3/4 ounce)
1/4th a lemon, juiced (about 1/2 ounce)
3 dashes Angostura bitters

Combine the ingredients into a cocktail shaker. Shake with ice, strain into a cocktial glass, and garnish with a small orange twist.

-----

Haigh, Ted. 2009. Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails: From the Alamagoozlum to the Zombie and Beyond. Beverly, Massachusetts: Quarry Books.

The Navy Grog

2010-12-21T14:23:00.000-08:00

While most likely inspired by the historic version of Navy Grog, this version created by Don the Beachcomber is an exemplary Tiki cocktail.

I'll be honest. A true Navy Grog cocktail uses an ice cone with a straw through it as a garnish. But I'm far too lazy to pack a pilsner glass with shaved ice, and then remove it from the glass, freeze it overnight and then run a straw through it. Just a tad bit too much work for me, considering I really dislike straws. But other than that, the drink pictured is the version presented by Beachbum Berry as Don the Beachcomber's Navy Grog.

A lot of people, usually not cocktail enthusiasts, associate rum with pirates. The idea that grog is a pirate's drink is far fetched, since the mixture was created after the rise of the British Navy as a dominant sea faring authority. Rum, as a rather cheap ingredient throughout the islands that quite a bit of the navy patrolled, was readily available, seemingly as the sugar planters could convert their wasteful molasses, a byproduct of sugar processing that would be used to create the distilled spirit of kill devil, also known as rum (Curtis 53-57). The move to provision the ships with rum came from the attempts of the island planters, who saw turned their waste into a potent swill, one which could be sold, even at cheap, to sailors who wouldn't necessarily be able to obtain fresh water easily. These merchants had, by 1969, created a booklet entitled An Essay on Spirituous Liquors, with Regard to Their Effects on Health, in Which the Comparative Wholesomeness of Rum and Brandy Are Particularly Considered. The long and fairly biased essay helped provide evidence to the naval provisioning office to authorize replacing brandy with West Indian rum on the stores of ships, giving the sailors a new dram to imbibe as their allocated beverage.

Back in the day of the British Navy drinking their allocated rum, the sailors would mix their rum with water, lime juice and sometimes sugar, in order to make the horrific spirit more palatable. Besides making it tastier, cutting back on the harshness of the kill devil, the use of these ingredients saw the creation of something that was in a simple form, a punch. While not adhering to the classic ratio for punches, the mixture of grog by the Navy is a mixed drink, through and through. And such drinks really helped the imbiber stave off scurvy thanks to the inclusion of lime. It wasn't until the late 18th century that rum, that the quality of the rum would improve drastically, so that it would not be as harsh; the quality control methods of making the rum also improved, seeing as how sugar plantation owners would no longer pour bed pans and other waste into the molasses to discourage the slaves from imbibing the kill devil that would come out of it.

The rum that was used by the British Navy for the longest time finally stopped being distributed and allocated to sailors in 1970, a day which would be known as Black Tot day among the sailors. Since the 1950s, the rum available to the sailors, the allocated daily ration, was accepted only by about one third of the sailors who were eligible to receive it (Curtis 60-61). Plus with raising concerns over drunkenness, and devices that provide audit phenomena such as the breathalyzer, there was a growing outreach in the public community to remove this tradition; it was in the year 1970, that the House of Commons found a solution to replace the allocation: donate money to the Sailor's Fund, part of which provided money to discotheques on naval bases. In 1980, the secret blend of rum which was known only to the high British Naval Officers, was sold to Charles Tobias, who created Pusser's rum out of the mix, in order to create a rum to market to retired sailors.

The Navy Grog as a drink has a recipe for a version originating circa 1941, created by Don the Beachcomber (Berry 74). Many times, as Berry notes, this drink will be made using a blender, much like many other tiki drinks, partly to crush the ice, but also to emulsify the mixture, which in the case of the Navy Grog, features honey. In 1950, Don had provisioned a U.S Navy recipe book with guidelines to make the honey easier to use, so that it could be shaken in with the drink, rather than heated or blended to change the viscous thick substance into something potable: honey mix. The honey mix is essentially a honey syrup, made of equal parts water and honey, and thus it is a lot more thin than the pure unadulterated honey. Other than the honey mix, the drink features lime juice, grapefruit juice, three types of rum (Puerto Rican, Jamaican and Demerara), as well as some soda water. The soda water in the case of this drink, serves not so much as to provide effervescence, but to make it potable in a way that allows various flavors to come through more than just the mix of rum.

Ted Haigh calls the Navy Grog the Ancient Mariner (Haigh 294). This is not necessarily the case. While really similar drinks, in that both feature grapefruit, lime, Jamaican and Demerara, the drink ends being similar at that point: for the Ancient Mariner, the cocktail involves simple syrup instead of honey syrup, Allspice Dram, which is a funky liqueur, and no Puerto Rican rum. The ratio of ingredients is also different. As such, I prefer the one pictured in the post, which is linked to Don, partly because of taste, but also because it is more in line with what the cocktail is from a historic perspective. Though, I will admit that the Ancient Mariner is a bit more deep in terms of flavor, because of that Allspice Dram.

Navy Grog:

3/4 ounce lime juice
3/4 ounce grapefruit juice
3/4 ounce soda water
1 ounce honey mix
1 ounce light Puerto Rican rum
1 ounce dark Jamaican rum
1 ounce Demerara rum

Shake the ingredients except the soda water with ice cubes. Strain into a double old-fashioned glass with an ice-cone garnish.

-----

Berry, Jeff. 2010. Beachbum Berry Remixed: A Gallery of Tiki Drinks. San Jose: SLG Publishing.

Curtis, Wayne. 2006. And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails. New York: Three Rivers Press.

Haigh, Ted. 2009. Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails: From the Alamagoozlum to the Zombie and Beyond. Beverly, Massachusetts: Quarry Books.

Wondrich, David. 2007. Imbibe!: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar. New York: Penguin Group.

Eggnog

2010-12-19T17:37:00.000-08:00

What holiday season would be complete without the tradition of Eggnog?

That eggnog you get from the grocery store in the section next to the diary, refrigerated juices, eggs, or other myriad of refrigerated substances during the holiday is hardly something that can be called eggnog. Usually comprised of pasteurized eggs, lest something else such as artificial replacements for the egg, and in some cases the diary itself, the eggnog of the run-of-the-mill grocer is nothing more than a ghost of the drink, lacking in the rich custard like flavor, the complex notes from the spirit, the beautiful aesthetic foam that garnishes the top of any freshly shaken egg drink. Making true eggnog is simple and a part of the American tradition, having been around since the Colonial period. However, the ethos of eggnog, that being an egg drink, is commonplace in a large quantity of historical periods and cultural traditions, having a place outside of the pop cultural representation of Rocky swallowing raw eggs.

Eggs in drinks are truly not that strange: advocaat, originally made by the Dutch with avocados, but is currently made with egg yolks because avocados were not available in the Netherlands, is an egg liqueur that features yolks, sugar and brandy to create a thick, custard like liqueur; tamagozake is a Japanese drink that is a mix of honey, a raw egg and sake whisked together and served hot, traditionally as a home remedy for the common cold; ponche crema, a Venezuelan liqueur made with quite a bit of regional variation, but at its' heart composed of milk, eggs, sugar, rum and spices, is served as an aperitif during the winter months. The Flip, a famous, but not well known style of drink, rivaling that of the cocktail, was originally ale and rum mixed together and thickened with egg yolks and sugar (Wondrich 128; Curtis). Fizzes such as the Golden Fizz or the Ramos Gin Fizz, feature egg yolks or egg whites respectively, and use such components of the common hen to give texture and body to the drink. The wide variety of egg drinks, historically, should demonstrate how important these beverages are to many different cultures, but now a days, with the advent of fear over bacteria and disease, eggs, in most common settings, are shunned in the raw state especially when they are used in a cocktail. But there is little to fear here, since eggs are sterile on the inside, seeing as they are made for reproductive reasons, and the bacteria, which is present on the outside, rarely affects someone in an industrialized society or who has basic hygiene. If you wash the eggs and make sure the shell does not go into your drink, you will be quite fine.

Eggnog, as a specific varietal of drink, can be found in Jerry Thomas' guide as an original American beverage. As Wondrich notes, the drink had spread by the mid nineteenth century into a pan-national Western phenomenon and tradition, having its' own variations in England and throughout Continental Europe (Wondrich 129). Originally made with rum and/or brandy in the American Colonies, eggnog can be made with essentially any spirit. In some instances, harkening back to the early style of mixed drinks in which many featured fortified wine, eggnog has its' own varieties featuring fortified wines such as Sherry or Madeira, which can be known as Baltimore eggnog. In many cases, quite a few recipes call for large volumes of ingredients, using upwards of a dozen eggs, so as to serve a copious amount of guests, but there are a few recipes given by Jerry Thomas which are, if not just scaled down volumes, drinks that are unique creations in their own right, such as General Harrison's eggnog, an individualized portion made with hard cider.

The popularity of eggnog as a drink in the United States is quite possibly an extension of the rum trade, seeing as how rum and beer made a manatham, and the addition of eggs and sugar made an egg calli, which was the basis of the Flip; the difference between the two is that in the case of the Flip, anything that was on hand, like roots or pumpkin would be added to the drink, which would then be heated by the use of a loggerhead, a piece of iron that was heated til red hot and thrust into the tankard of liquid until it stopped sputtering and foaming (Curtis 81-82). These drinks, which featured an extremely cheap, and usually low quality spirit, that being rum, were highly popular seeing as how fine brandy and quality Madeira along with other ingredients were difficult to obtain (Ibid). The extensive importation of rum into the United States is a result of the trade with the Caribbean, but later, during the early State period, there was a large amount of distilleries throughout the Northwestern United States that produced Rum, one most famous one being Medford rum. The availability of rum distilled in the United States decreased after the prohibition, alongside the contemporaneous rise of whiskey. However, you can still find American made rum, the most obvious example being Railean, a Texan rum that is heavily fruit driven.

Eggnog or Egg Nog:

1 Egg
2 ounces Cognac
1 ounce Rum, Santa Cruz
1 tablespoon of simple syrup
2 ounces milk

Combine the ingredients with finely shaved ice, and shake it until well emulsified. Strain into a glass. Top with grated nutmeg or cinnamon. Switch out the alcohol for whatever mix you want to use.

-----

Curtis, Wayne. 2006. And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails. New York: Three Rivers Press.

Wondrich, David. 2007. Imbibe!: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar. New York: Penguin Group.

The Lucien Gaudin Cocktail

2010-11-22T16:53:00.000-08:00

Named after a famous Olympic fencer, the Lucien Gaudin cocktail is a delightful drink reminiscent of a Negroni that is oriented towards orange.

Named after the fencer Lucien Gaudin, this cocktail features gin, Cointreau, Campari, and dry vermouth. Seeing as how the Negroni contains gin, campari and sweet vermouth, the most notable difference between both of these drinks is the inclusion of sweet vermouth rather than dry vermouth. While the proportions are different, relying much more upon the gin as the dominant force in the Lucien Gaudin cocktail, the sweetness is about the same, since the addition of Cointreau helps to bring the overall sweetness of the cocktail back to Negroni levels-not too sweet-enough to balance the drink against the bitters form the Campari. Because of the inclusion of the orange twist, the aroma is still built around oranges and the flavor possesses a better finish of the citrus fruit thanks to the Cointreau.

The recipe for this drink is taken from Ted Haigh's book: I have been unable to find a copy of the drink in anything other than Trader Vic's Bartender's Guide. Haigh writes that the drink was a Prohibition cocktail (Haigh 196). However, it seems unlikely that it would have come out of the United States, since Lucien Gaudin was French. Yet, since I cannot find any sourcing on the drink, I'm unsure where it might originate.

Lucien Gaudin was a French fencer, competing in épée and foil competitions, at a few Olympic sessions, winning gold for both individual épée and foil in the 1928 Olympic games, and in the 1924 games, winning gold in the team competitions for both styles. Gaudin was famous for his skill and accuracy; in fencing, the sport relies heavily upon the motion of the fingers in order to produce accurate hits, disengages, parries or other motions. The movement of the blade with the fingers is the most important part of fencing, rather than using or relying upon the wrist or arm. Gaudin, who worked as a banker, committed suicide in 1934; it is rumored that he did so because of financial difficulties, but others claim he had received a wound to his thumb and fingers, both which are crucial to fencing. Either way, the cocktail is a good way to remember this historic figure.

This cocktail works well with any type of gin, drawing out different undertones of flavor depending on the gin used; it is more reminiscent of an Old Pal if you use something like Bols Genever, and more similar to a Negroni if you use Plymouth or a London Dry. In any format the drink is great, and with the diversity of gin types, you can create a cocktail that suits the palate of the imbiber just by switching out the gin.

Since the drink is very similar to a Negroni, but with dry vermouth instead of sweet, I feel I should point out the major differences attributing to color in the two, as well as the flavor differences. Both are made from white wine, but the color from sweet vermouth is either added after the fact (as is the case in cheap sweet vermouth with caramel coloring), or due to the inclusion of caramelized sugars (Robinson 732). Generally, sweet vermouth includes a bit more sugar as well, making it more syrupy and sweet; yet a truly good Italian vermouth is not syrup-like but complex, and appealing. Good examples of these include the expensive, but excellent, Carpano Antica, and the more bitter oriented Punt e Mes. With the more expensive vermouth, you are also more likely to get something that is flavored with botanicals and herbs, rather than with a concentrate designed for consistency (Ibid).

The Lucien Gaudin Cocktail:

1 ounce gin
1/2 ounce Cointreau
1/2 ounce Campari
1/2 ounce French vermouth

Stir in a mixing glass with ice, strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with an orange twist.

-----

Haigh, Ted. 2009. Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails: From the Alamagoozlum to the Zombie and Beyond. Beverly, Massachusetts: Quarry Books.

Robinson, Jancis. 2006. The Oxford Companion to Wine. Originally published 1994. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

The Automobile Cocktail

2010-11-21T19:13:00.000-08:00

A strange but tasty cocktail, the Automobile cocktail combines gin, scotch and Italian vermouth with a dash of orange bitters.

So I finally have thrown up my hands, said hallelujah, and decided to contribute to MxMo this month. MxMo is a monthly online cocktail exchange, or as the blog put its "online cocktail party." Each person in this association of bloggers submits a cocktail before the event day, so there can be a monthly aggregate post enumerating the various contributors for the month. Every event is based upon a specific theme chosen by a blog who acts as the host for the month: this month, blog Rock and Rye, run by Dennis acts as the host. The theme of this month is "vintage" or "forgotten" cocktails, and since I love these little gems, I went through some books and chose one that caught my eye which I had not paid any attention to before. That being, the Automobile.

The only person to have talked about the Automobile cocktail online, as far as I can see, is Frederic at Cocktail ~~Virgin~~ Slut. His version, which is identical to mine, comes out of Patrick Duffy's The Official Mixer's Manual, but I'm not sure what edition (I presume the original 1934 edition). I found my recipe in Frank Meier's The Artistry of Mixing Drinks (1936). What we can extrapolate from this reprinting of the cocktail two years later is that the cocktail may have been popular enough to travel across the ocean and enter into Meier's repertoire of drinks or that it is a drink older than 1934 and thus well known.

Checking the Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book, we can find a printing of the Automobile cocktail that looks nothing like the version listed by Meier or Duffy. The drink, which is classified as a pre-war and thus pre-prohibition drink is composed of gin, ginger ale, mint and lemon juice (Crockett 104). There is no reference to a pre-prohibition cocktail of the same name, so it is likely that the drink came out of the prohibition. Yet, that seems unlikely, since Crockett notes that there had been issues with importing orange bitters during the prohibition (Ibid 15).

Digging some more to see if I could find Duffy's version, I can say it does not appear in the 1940 printing of The Official Mixer's Manual, since I went through an eBook copy of the book and am unable to locate an Automobile cocktail. So either it it appears in another version, or it is not in Duffy's book at all.

The drink features equal portions of gin, scotch and vermouth with a dash of orange bitters. I increased the bitters to two dashes of Regan's Orange, used a 12 year old blended scotch (Ballantine's 12 year), and poured Bols Genever for the gin. I chose Bols because it has a drier tone that would augment the scotch I think, more than detract from it as a London Dry might. Because the Bols worked really well, I think that any Genevieve style gin would work well, and I could see this working really well with Steinhäger. Now the tricky part is the sweet vermouth; I tried this with a few versions and Carpano Antica works the best (as most people would probably expect) followed closely by a more moderately priced vermouth like Cinzano. Of the trio I tried, Punt e Mes detracted from the scotch and orange bitters thanks to the strong bitter component.

I can say that this drink works well as an aperitif: all the ingredients help encourage and stimulate appetite, as they should, and since the vermouth is not too sweet and well balanced in the cases of Cinzano or Carpano Antica, the flavors are wonderful. I can't picture this drink working with an extremely sweet Italian vermouth, or working with very cheap gin and scotch, since the components that flavor the drink, besides the vermouth, are spirits, so something without backbone or character would make a poor quality cocktail.

Overall, this drink is a winner, since scotch cocktails are few and in-between. Despite this, the cocktail is still very rudimentary at its' base, being a cross between a Martinez and a Rob Roy. Yet great drinks, like the Vieux Carré, seemingly are little more than bastard children bred from two drinks (the recipe for the Vieux Carré is rather similar to a Saratoga, which is similar to a Manhattan crossed with a Metropolitan).

The Automobile:

3/4 ounce blended Scotch
3/4 ounce Holland gin
3/4 ounce Italian vermouth
1 dash orange bitters

Combine the ingredients in a chilled mixing glass with cracked ice; stir until sufficiently cold and diluted, and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

-----

Crockett, Albert Stevens. 1935. The Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book. Reprint of original. New York.

Duffy, Patrick Gavin. 1940. The Official Mixer's Manual. New York: Blue Ribbon Books. Accessed online as an eBook at Open Library. http://openlibrary.org/works/OL15432310W/The_official_mixer%27s_manual.

Field, Colin Peter. 2003. The Cocktails of The Ritz Paris. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Meier, Frank. 1936. The Artistry of Mixing Drinks. Reprint of original. Paris: Fryam Press.

Thomas, Jerry. 1887. Bartender's Guide. Reprint of original. New York: Dick and Fitzgerald.

Wondrich, David. 2007. Imbibe!: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar. New York: Penguin Group.

Anvil Bar and Refuge

2010-11-14T21:16:00.000-08:00

One of the best bars in the nation, Anvil is a great recent bar that provides classic and craft cocktails only.

The first bar I talked about is one near and dear to my heart back in Orange County; as such, I feel it would be great to talk about a bar outside of Orange County in Houston, Texas. By no means the heart of Texas, Houston is a metropolitan city with a plethora of activity going on, but unlike other large metropolitan centers has few craft cocktail bars. Anvil stands out as an exception to this, producing drinks with the utmost dedication and fervor, and has bartenders with many years experience working behind the stick. Of note, besides Bobby Heugel and Mindy Kucan are Christopher Frankel and Yao Lu. Though, every single bartender at Anvil is great, these are just the ones with which I've had the most interaction.

Every one of the bartenders at Anvil are more than capable at creating a cocktail, quite often a variation on a classic one, off the top of their head with great results. I was there one night during a theme of drinks involving Benedictine, and Mindy came up with a Benedictine Cup as a variation on a Pimm's Cup: this drink just works wonderfully, carrying completely different flavors than what Pimm's would have, but being reminiscent enough that the drink reflects the original. That same evening, Chris served me up a cocktail using Cynar and Benedictine which paired perfectly.

Part of the experience at Anvil is waiting. But the waiting is not a bad thing: in fact, with so many talented bartenders and at a busy schedule, the place is a joy to be in since you get to watch the bartenders work their magic shaking, stirring, straining and catering to as many guests as quickly as possible, while still maintaining a sort of intimacy with the customers at the bar (like myself). People like Yao are great conversationalists, easily turning the bar from an alien place to a truly lovable refuge.

Besides a great liquor collection, the bar stocks quite a bit of house made ingredients, including grapefruit beer, their own infusions and house cocktail cherries. You know that when you have Fernet Branca in the speed rail, you have a great bar. The attention to detail in each drink is immense, and steps are not skipped when making cocktails even while pressed for time (hence the waiting). The prices are reasonable, if not great for the quality of the drinks, although some who are not used to twelve dollar drinks might cry foul. The bar was famed for having a cocktail list of one hundred must have cocktails before you die, and now they use menu's that are seasonally oriented with drinks cataloged by major spirit. Yet, if you truly want to imbibe those hundred great drinks, you can still find the list online. Be sure to make or print out a checklist so you can ensure you finish all hundred.

Anvil is not without faults: the bar gets immensely crowded and loud. Personally, I prefer quiet spaces, so when the ambient noise level drives me crazy, I find myself not enjoying my drinks as much as I could. The space is interesting and appealing aesthetically, but it doesn't seem to be appropriate for a bar, at least in terms of classic conceptions of a bar. Built using an old Firestone Store as the exterior structure, this partially explains the space and its' strange arrangement. Yet, that isn't the problem so much as the positioning of the alcohol on shelves, making it exceedingly difficult to access certain bottles, or the layout of chairs turns the bar into a lounge type setting. This aura helps contribute to the crazy hipsters and prowling alcoholic cougars.

The bar also, unlike many other craft cocktail bars, does not refrigerate or pre-chill glassware, since there seemingly just isn't enough time thanks to the high volume state of the bar. This might be absurd to some more metropolitan types, but their drinks still come off exceptionally well and since Houston is a constantly air conditioned city the drinks are plenty chilled.

But, that isn't to say that Anvil's flaws are problems for everyone, or that the bar doesn't turn some of the flaws into a strength. Concerning the cougars, I have seen Mindy Kucan deal with six howling women craving Dirty Martinis (Anvil does not stock olives), by slowly introducing and recommending new drinks to the imbibers. She was able to get these guests to start consuming Brambles, Old Cubans and Queen's Park Swizzles after a short conversation. The bartenders will go out of their way to make sure you have a drink which suites your palate, and will consistently impress any guest with a well balanced concoction.

Overall, Anvil is a bar that truly shines. It is a bar that anyone in Houston should stop by, and a liquor lover could make a pilgrimage to visit. (And for you beer drinkers, Anvil has a great selection on tap at all times, paying close attention to what they serve in the fermented, hop-filled category). If you are in the area, stop by, or if you are interested in spirits and their history, Anvil has a monthly themed spirits class on the last Saturday of each month which is reasonably priced.