Cocktailians

Bootlegger Blues

This week's The Moth podcast tells a whirlwind story of how L. Gabrielle Penebaz of The Saint Eve discovered absinthe through her lust for Donald Sutherland, and how her pursuit of just one taste of the real concoction led her to create a short-lived but enthusiastic community of partygoers who wanted the same thing. (Here's a direct link to just the story.)

The Moth holds regular readings around town and across the country, and their excellent podcast distills the best of the stories told at their theme nights. They're not all cocktail-related, but they are, every single one of them, varying degrees of fascinating.

MxMo Submission: The Star Cocktail

This Mixology Monday was a tough one for me -- not because it was difficult to create a new cocktail, or find a sufficiently interesting drink to write about, but rather because the theme was so goshdarned big. How could I narrow it down to just one drink, when there are so many wonderful cocktails out there containing vermouth? The first cocktail I really enjoyed was a Manhattan, after all, and the category is wide open. As I mentioned in the announcement post, the aromatized-wine family covers vermouth, quinquina like Dubonnet and Lillet, aperitif wines, and lots more.

I initially considered a "Vermouth Cocktail", which dates all the way back to 1869 and consists of simply a couple ounces of sweet vermouth, a tiny bit of ice, and a twist. (There's also the "Fancy Vermouth Cocktail", from the 1887 edition of Jerry Thomas's How to Mix Drinks, which adds a couple dashes of Angostura bitters and a teaspoon of Maraschino, and changes the garnish to a lemon wheel.) Straight vermouth makes an excellent aperitif, whetting the appetite with its wonderful combination of sweetness, spice, and slight bitterness, and preparing the palate for savory delights to come. Dry vermouth on the rocks is a great summer drink, too, and the light herbaceousness can be very refreshing. As Chuck Taggart points out, Lillet on the rocks with a slice of orange "is the favorite drink of one Dr. Hannibal Lecter", and it's good with a flamed orange peel as well.

You don't have to be a cannibal to enjoy Lillet, though -- this is one of my very favorite ingredients, with its sweet citrus flavor tempered with herbs and its slightly viscous, ice-cube-coating texture. It's essential, of course in what I'd probably pick as my favorite cocktail, the Corpse Reviver No. 2 (you'd most likely have to hold a gun to my head to get me to pick a favorite cocktail, but if you did, I'd probably go for this one.) Lillet also figures prominently in the Corpse Reviver No. 2's cousin, the Twentieth Century. Invented about forty years later (and named for the famed and equally elegant express train from New York to Chicago), the Twentieth Century is an amazing drink best described by Ted "Dr. Cocktail" Haigh in Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails as going down "like light, zingy lemonade, but in the aftertaste there is an ethereal sense of chocolate." In Chuck's post here about the Twentieth Century, he asks "Is it too early to create a Twenty-First Century Cocktail?" Not at all, and as I discovered in a visit to the Pegu Club a while back, there already is one. Invented by Jim Meehan of PDT, it's a wonderful balance of tequila, crème de cacao, lemon, and Pernod...but since it doesn't have an aromatized wine in it, it doesn't work for this post. (There's also a Nineteenth-Century Cocktail, invented by Brian Miller of Death & Co. and shown to me by St. John Frizell -- it's bourbon, Lillet Rouge (not the usual Lillet Blanc), lemon, and crème de cacao.)

As David Wondrich notes in his book Imbibe, the introduction of the Manhattan really got the vermouth revolution going, and bartenders around the turn of the century used it in almost everything. In the April 2009 issue of Esquire, Wondrich offers a great formula for inventing new cocktails: two ounces of base spirit, an ounce of a fortified wine, a teaspoon of liqueur, and a couple of dashes of bitters. This formula's easily as useful as the classic 2:1:1 or 3:2:1 ratios of spirit:liqueur:citrus for making Sours sweetened with liqueurs -- and note that fortified-wine recommendation!

I considered a few other cocktails, which I'm noting here because I want to get around to trying them: Dr. Cocktail's CEO Cocktail and Gary Regan's Delmarva Cocktail No. 2 (itself a variation on an original from Dr. Cocktail.) Also, if I ever want to crack open the Noilly Ambre that was a very, very generous gift from the estimable Jay Hepburn, the Amber Room looks fascinating as well.

But for today, I wanted to go farther back, and try a cocktail that was briefly in vogue in 1895. I have a bottle of Laird's Bonded Apple Brandy (which goes into their applejack, which is a blended product with water and neutral grain spirits), and while I do love the Jack Rose, the prospect of another cocktail using Laird's was too good to pass up. 

Star Cocktail

• 1 1/2 oz. apple brandy
• 1 1/2 oz. sweet vermouth (I used Punt E Mes, for maximum cider-y spice)
• 3 dashes Angostura bitters
• 1/2 teaspoon gum syrup (which I omitted, at Wondrich's suggestion)

Stir, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and serve with a twist.

This is an interesting taste -- at first the vermouth's bittersweet spiciness is reminiscent of a Manhattan, but the apple brandy's mellow flavor is different from rye's peppery bite. And, of course, the bitters tie it all together. Angostura is good in this one, but I think I might try the Fee's Whiskey-Barrel-Aged Old Fashioned bitters in this next time.

Announcing MxMo XLIII: Vermouth

The intrepid cocktailians participating in Mixology Monday have tackled some interesting things: spice, guilty pleasures, 19th-century cocktails, strong drinks. They've even asserted that vodka is your friend...something that can be a stretch for many cocktail aficionados.

Well, it enjoys a somewhat better reputation among the cocktailian cognoscenti than it does among the greater public, but vermouth is similarly (and unfairly) maligned by many. There's the infamous "Churchill Martini", the invention of one Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill, KG, OM, CH, et cetera, who really should have known better. It consists of a glass of very cold gin, an olive or three, and a bow in the direction of France (or a glance toward the bottle of vermouth, or some other foofaw involving not actually putting it in one's drink.) There are the protestations from friends and fellow barflies that they don't like vermouth, and I can say I really don't blame them...if your sole experience is of vermouth from dusty, warm half-empty bottles that have moldered away on a back bar since the Carter Administration, you aren't going to like vermouth very much. One can even buy ridiculous products to atomize it in your drink. But that's not necessary, and if you go down that road, you're missing out on a great ingredient.

As cocktail chronicler (and MxMo organizer) Paul Clarke points out in the San Francisco Chronicle,

When the trumpets sound and Judgment Day comes, we mortals will have plenty for which to account. While it falls many points below unforgivable crimes such as destruction of the rain forest, global warming and the green-lighting of "The Love Guru," the decline in vermouth's fortunes from 19th century dandy to outcast of the speed rail certainly ranks on the list of modern offenses. . .

"Bartenders are taught to treat (vermouth) like toxic waste," says cocktail historian David Wondrich.

Wondrich notes that vermouth revolutionized mixology when it entered heavy usage in the late 1880s, and vermouth-heavy drinks of the era - such as prototypes of the martini and the Manhattan, which were made with twice as much vermouth as gin or whiskey - earned the cocktail a new level of sophistication. "By the 1890s it's like every drink has vermouth in it," Wondrich says. "They were completely crazy about this stuff."

As well they should be; quality vermouth stored correctly is a complex, aromatic, flavorful ingredient that adds a lot to a base spirit. (Go read the rest of Paul's article right now if you haven't already; it's a fantastic primer on vermouth -- how to use it, its history, some tasting notes, and even some recipes.)

So: your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to present a delectable vermouth cocktail for us all to drool over. Sweet/Italian or dry/French vermouth are fair game of course, as are quinquina, aperitif wines like Pineau des Charentes, or for that matter any fortified, aromatized wine such as Lillet (red or white), or Dubonnet (ditto.) Have fun, and leave the link in the comments to this post by midnight PDT (no, not this PDT) (3am EDT) Tuesday, October 27th. In other words, you have a little over a week to get it done, and as long as you submit it sometime by Monday, you'll get in under the wire. I look forward to the results!

The Manhattan Cocktail Classic

What did you do the other weekend?

Well -- and this post has taken me longer than I'd have liked to get written and posted -- I went to the fall preview event of the Manhattan Cocktail Classic. Something akin to New York's version of Tales of the Cocktail, the event was a jam-packed two days of seminars, open bars, lectures, history lessons, war stories from behind the stick, and an over-the-top fancy-dress gala.

(According to Robert Simonson in the Times, the gala "was attended by 1,000 people, who consumed roughly 190 turkey drumsticks, six whole smoked pigs, and literally thousands of cocktails, prepared by a team of more than 150 bartenders." A friend referred to it as "cocktail prom", and that was really what it felt like.)

Cocktailians was there, of course, and I shot pictures of all the sessions, three of the "Stories from Behind the Bar" events, the official bar, and the closing gala. I thought some of the most interesting sessions centered around stuff I didn't know as much about -- Andy Seymour's session on sherry and Steve Olson's session on agave stood out especially, as did the session on barware with Greg Boehm, Don Lee, and Alex Day (and David Wondrich as a surprise special guest.) I got to see Jim Meehan inviting guests behind the bar at PDT and teaching them how to make quality drinks, and I got to hear Phil Ward's and Joaquin Simo's stories about life behind the bars at their respective establishments. I got to see Don Lee scientifically analyzing various bartenders' shaking techniques, Dale DeGroff flaming orange peels, Sasha Petraske cracking ice, Charlotte Voisey shaking up cocktails, and Audrey Saunders dancing with Gary Regan shortly before regaling the crowd with tales of gin. The weekend was so engrossing, in fact, that I wonder how they'll top it in May for the full Manhattan Cocktail Classic -- it took me several days to recover, and that was just from a weekend of shooting pictures and conducting brief interviews.

For more pictures than you can shake a muddler at, go here for my full set on Flickr. (If you know peoples' names, feel free to fill them in where I don't have 'em.) And I'll see you at the full Manhattan Cocktail Classic in May.

September (scratch that -- Anytime) is Julep Time

I realize that it’s no longer summer -- the autumnal equinox has come and gone, regardless of the weather -- but I’m clinging to the memory of warmer climes. This stance is chiefly due to my recent acquisition of a vintage electric ice crusher. This streamlined (I think early-to-mid-’60s) Rival Ice-O-Matic is built like a tank, pulverizes whatever I can throw at it, and cost me the princely sum of eleven bucks on eBay:

Why did I want this? Well, Imbibe magazine ran a good-lucking comparison of several ice crushers in the July/August issue, and this one from KegWorks looked like a good choice (heaven knows I don’t have any counter space to spare in my cramped kitchen), but the testimonials on eGullet and the Chanticleer Society for the Ice-O-Matic piqued my interest.

And, of course, now that I find myself the beneficiary of a steady supply of crushed ice, the natural next move is to break out the julep cups and go searching for fresh mint. And while a good mint julep may go down easiest during a sticky Southern summer, I can attest that it’s almost as winsome in a Queens September.

There are so many ways to make a julep; entire books have been written about the variations. PDT has a great maple-syrup one on the menu, and David Wondrich makes an interesting-sounding mint julep with Cognac and a float of dark rum (adding rye for a "Prescription Julep.") However, ever since visiting Chris McMillian's Bar UnCommon in New Orleans’ Renaissance Pere Marquette Hotel, where a julep is as much a performance as a cocktail, I feel like I’m cheating if I don’t adhere to Chris’s recipe. Peach syrup is head and shoulders above plain simple syrup in this drink, and sometimes I augment it with a judicious dash of peach bitters…but this is above all a showcase for quality bourbon. Break out the good stuff (McMillian uses Maker’s Mark, but any quality expression will work just fine. I’ve used Woodford Reserve to great effect, but currently favor Buffalo Trace.)

"Sip it and dream, it is a dream itself. No other land can give so sweet a solace for your cares; no other liquor soothes you so in melancholy days. Sip it and say there is no solace for the soul, no tonic for the body like Old Bourbon whiskey."

Cheers.

BarSmarts

My growing interest in the world of cocktails -- the recipes, the stories, the people, the methods -- has been a continuous learning experience for the past several years. And starting this site last year only kickstarted that; delving into the history and backstories of various drinks and talking to the great bartenders of the age, especially during the current cocktailian renaissance, has taught me quite a bit. (To think that I once ordered a Manhattan at a hotel bar in Los Angeles’ Koreatown, simply because it was the most sophisticated-sounding cocktail I could think of…and never mind that I couldn’t have told you what on earth vermouth was, even if you’d held me at gunpoint.)

The first cocktail website I found was Robert Hess’s Drinkboy, and the essays there were an excellent primer. Then a friend dragged me to Angel’s Share, and the warm welcome (despite the fact that our party of three had schlepped across town in a driving rainstorm; we must have looked like drowned rats) and excellent drinks (“what’s an Aviation?” I thought. “Oh well, better order it”) set the hook. I stumbled across Gumbopages shortly thereafter, and that led to Dr. Cocktail’s book, and then the Pegu Club opened, and a passion had well and truly taken root.

Why do I mention all this? Well, one of the milestones along my path was when I ran across the names Dale DeGroff and David Wondrich. I’ve learned from them over the past few years, but that learning has only accelerated recently. Along with some other master mixologists -- Andy Seymour, Doug Frost, Steve Olson, Paul Pacult -- they’ve started Beverage Alcohol Resource, a high-end spirits-education concern. I knew I couldn’t afford their five-day program (and since I don’t work in the industry, I had little hope of anyone else paying for me to go), but I followed it with interest. I was especially excited to hear when Pernod Ricard partnered with B.A.R. to offer BarSmarts, a comprehensive educational program aimed at working professionals and committed enthusiasts.

The BarSmarts Advanced course sounds neat -- a workbook and other educational materials including video, coupled with a daylong seminar with the B.A.R. partners reinforcing the concepts you’ve been studying, plus a practical exam (imagine making a drink for Dale DeGroff -- gulp!) But if you don’t live in a city where the BarSmarts seminar will be held, what to do? Fortunately, Pernod Ricard and B.A.R. opened up the BarSmarts curriculum to distance learners with the creation of BarSmarts Wired. After registering for BarSmarts Wired and paying a $45 fee, you get access to the complete curriculum covering such things as the history of distillation, how to taste spirits, an introduction to bar tools, recipes for the 25 cocktails you should know, bar service, and more. (In the interests of disclosure: Pernod Ricard picked up my registration fee.) I learned an awful lot about how to taste, as well as tons of really good information about each of the basic spirits, their origins and history, and the various varieties of what's out there. Another great highlight are the videos produced to accompany each module of the curriculum, in which the B.A.R. principals (plus some guest stars like Audrey Saunders and Julie Reiner) give very engaging lectures expanding on the workbook, demonstrate techniques, and make some really great-looking cocktails. There are four modules, and they recommend that you take a week to go through each. (This is a good recommendation, as there's lots of information in each module, and the intervening tests can be a little tricky. Offline study -- you can print out .PDFs of the workbook -- is essential.)

Your $45 fee also includes a nice BarSmarts-emblazoned messenger-type computer bag and a solid set of bartending tools that itself is worth the fee. (Well, I'm not nuts about the Hawthorne strainer therein, but everything else is great...and I particularly liked the all-in-one zester/channel knife/paring knife.)

And they've come up with a nifty way to do the practical portion of the final exam -- their "DrinkBuilder" interface presents you with an assigned cocktail to make, and every step (ingredient selection, amount of pour, technique, glassware, garnish) is a multiple-choice question -- the software even builds, shakes and pours virtual cocktails in front of you. (CocktailNerd has some good screenshots on his review.)

The upshot? I'd highly recommend BarSmarts Wired if you're an enthusiast who wants to take your skills to the next level, or if you're a pro who's not able to get to one of the BarSmarts Live events. Given the equipment and the quality of the instruction, it's a bargain at $45. One caveat, though: at the moment, they're only accepting registrations through the end of September. However, once you register, you'll still get four weeks to complete the course. Pernod Ricard and B.A.R. may bring back the course in the future, but if this sounds good and you have some time to devote to study, tasting, and practice, it's really an excellent program.

I look forward to taking the regular BarSmarts Advanced course soon, and I'll give you an update on the comparisons between that and the Wired version.

Here's How To Mix Them

I was going to add this to the Drinky Linky post below, but this particular link really deserves its own post. This is an effort by one Maurice C. Dreicer, who invented the Dreicer Special cocktail and whose obit in the Times described him as "a radio personality and program developer who engaged in such novel pursuits as recording a verbal cocktail-mixing manual and pursuing a 40-year search for the perfect steak" and goes on to note that "his quest for perfection also led him to invent a device for testing caviar, to form Cigar Smokers United, and to record 'How to Mix Them,' his best-selling manual on how to make drinks properly." Fortunately, gonzo radio station WFMU dug up a copy of the latter, and you can download the MP3s here. Picture a toasty Jim Backus-type character declaiming on the Martini, the Rob Roy, the Ramos Gin Fizz, and more. Highly recommended.

Drinky Linky: Labor (Day) of Love Edition

On our minds and radar at Cocktailians HQ lately:

• Metromix interviews Katie Stipe of Clover Club and Mayahuel;
• tickets go on sale today (at 7:33pm!) for the Manhattan Cocktail Classic's preview next month;
• Darcy takes on bartending schools;
• ...and the McNuggetini didn't come from a bartending school, but looks disgusting nonetheless;
• Should bars print the prices on their cocktail menus? The Baltimore Sun thinks so. For the record, so do I. (And any bar that has the gall to charge $12 for a Bacardi and Diet Coke -- much less serve them -- should be ashamed of itself.)
• Robert Simonson has a great article about Creme Yvette in the new Imbibe magazine. Can't wait to see this stuff!
• Anvil in Houston has a great bucket list of 100 Cocktails to Try Before You Die, and it's been getting some attention. I'm currently at 83 out of 100, and rapidly pursuing the rest. Here's a nice Houston Press writeup of the list...and the comments section is good for some eyebrow-raising reading.
• Another list worthy of your attention is the 25 Cocktails Every Bartender Should Know from BarSmarts (more on BarSmarts anon, but short version? It's cool. Check it out.) No commentary here, except for a hearty agreement and a fervent wish that more bartenders would know these before stepping behind the stick.
• Bénédictine is looking for a signature cocktail, and the contest will be judged by the great David Wondrich (with the winning entry to be the subject of a writeup in Esquire, where Wondrich helms the drinks section.) I haven't found a website for the contest other than this Facebook page, but are there really any readers of this site who aren't on that infernal time-sink yet anyway? Upshot: send your recipe and a description of what inspired you to alchemists@nikecomm.com by September 8.
• Speaking of David Wondrich, he dispels myths about the Sazerac in the Times-Picayune (h/t to Chuck);
• Co-author Kosmonaut pointed me to this good-looking recipe for DIY cocktail onions. Sounds good. I'm gonna have to try this one, plus another that a friend sent me for pickled quail eggs.

Drinky Linky: August Heat Edition

Lots of good stories on the radar here at Cocktailians HQ:

• Wow, when I posted the picture of the Gimlet garnished with a borage flower yesterday, I didn't know I was being trendy;
• Here's a great interview with FCI beverage maven (and drinkblogger) Alexis Kahn and tech-crazed genius Dave Arnold;
• and speaking of Dave, he drops more cocktail science, with Why Do My Shaker Cans Get Sucked Together? and All-Star Shake-off at Pegu Club Testing Shaking Differences Between Bartenders Qualitatively;
• Imbibe covers the last New York seltzer man;
• Marshall from Scofflaw's Den follows up on my post about the intellectual property of booze from a couple weeks ago, and in grand style: he invited IP lawyer Chris Leger to weigh in on the subject;
• Chuck Taggart gives us an awesome, authoritative post on lemonade and some its wonderful variations;
• The Dizzy Fizz highlights some upcoming cocktail contests;
• Robert Simonson, writing in the Times, gives us an authoritative look at the historical accuracy of the cocktailing on "Mad Men";
• while Stephanie M of Astor Wines & Spirits picks cocktails for the women of "Mad Men";
• and AMC itself provides a 1960s cocktail guide on its "Mad Men" site;
• National Geographic Traveler names the Kentucky Bourbon Trail one of its "Drives of a Lifetime"; and
• here's a bar that this website will not be reviewing.

Summertime is Gimlet Time

I don't know where you're reading this from, but here, it's hot. I'm surrounded by a thick blanket of steamy heat, the kind that brings out atavistic instincts in Southerners like me; I feel driven to seek out a verandah (and possibly a ceiling fan) and sip iced tea and endeavor to move as little as possible.

Alas, my ancient yearnings must (once again) be denied, as not only do I have to work for a living (with all the wearing-of-pants that that implies), I live in New York City, where items such as verandahs are in short supply.

However, I have a cocktail shaker and, assuming I remember to fill the trays, plenty of ice. As Embury said, cocktails "must be well-iced," ensuring an appropriately frigid sip to cool the throat and bring the rest of the corpus to a more reasonable temperature.

The lethargy brought on by summer's heat means that I don't tend to want to fuss too much. I love me a Corpse Reviver No. 2, but when I've gotten home from a long day and have been packed in a subway car and am feeling parched and gummy, I want something a little less painstaking. I've been subsisting on cooling drinks that are relatively simple, but nonetheless refreshing. The Americano. The Old-Fashioned. The Jack Rose. And, what I made for myself yesterday evening after I arrived home, kissed the best gal, and showered off the stickiness: the Gimlet.

Raymond Chandler's take on the Gimlet from The Long Goodbye is of course well-known and deserves to be quoted here:

We sat in the corner bar at Victor's and drank gimlets. "They don't know how to make them here," he said. "What they call a gimlet is just some lime or lemon juice and gin with a dash of sugar and bitters. A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose's Lime Juice and nothing else. It beats martinis hollow."

It truly is hard to beat the combination of gin and lime, though Chandler's proportions aren't quite to my taste; they can lead to a sticky-sweet drink, and isn't banishing stickiness the whole point of this exercise? We need something appealingly incisive -- like the drink's namesake -- to cut through the goo.

Now, I've noticed a few bars in Manhattan that tout their Gimlets made with nothing but gin and fresh lime juice. Far be it from me to decry any barkeep who squeezes their own citrus, but fresh lime juice in a Gimlet is a little spiky and too acidic for my tastes. So, I prefer it with a combination of Rose's and fresh. I tend to have to tinker with the proportions, given the acidity of the limes, but here's what I've been enjoying:

The Gimlet

• 2 oz. gin (I used Hendrick's)
• 1 oz. Rose's Lime Juice
• 1/2 oz. fresh-squeezed lime juice

Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and garnish with a lime wheel, borage flower, or something equally appealing.