{"id":603,"date":"2011-04-15T11:07:42","date_gmt":"2011-04-15T11:07:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cocktailians.com\/2011\/04\/correcting-the-times-or-thirty-seconds-over-google.html"},"modified":"2011-04-15T11:07:42","modified_gmt":"2011-04-15T11:07:42","slug":"correcting-the-times-or-thirty-seconds-over-google-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/?p=603","title":{"rendered":"Correcting The Times, or Thirty Seconds Over Google"},"content":{"rendered":"

Below is a letter I sent to the Times<\/em> yesterday (with links added for annotation and clarity):<\/p>\n

Hello,<\/p>\n

In the article "Bar Crawling From Boutique to Boutique<\/a>" by Michael Rovner on p. E9 of today's paper, there is the statement that "the Jack Rose [is] named after a friend of the owner, Jonas Hegewisch, and made with applejack, house-made grenadine and lemon juice."<\/p>\n

This seems dubious at best, as the Jack Rose (whose recipe is given accurately; consult CocktailDB<\/a>  or any quality bar manual) is a classic drink. According to drinks historian David Wondrich<\/a>'s book "Imbibe!<\/a>", the New York Police Gazette<\/em> published a reference to the drink in 1905.<\/p>\n

From "Imbibe!":
I spent many years believing that this drink, one of only two classic applejack cocktails. . .was named after "Bald Jack" Rose, one of the yeggs involved in the notorious 1912 Becker-Rosenthal case (in which Police Lieutenant Becker eventually went to the chair — probably wrongly — for hiring Rose to put out a hit on gambler "Beansy" Rosenthal.) In part, this belief was wishful thinking of the kind all mixographers indulge in. Alas, the facts say different, or at least the Police Gazette<\/em> does, which is not always the same thing. In this case, however, the evidence seems pretty straightforward: According to a squib the Gazette<\/em> published in 1905, "Frank J. May, better known as Jack Rose, is the inventor of a very popular cocktail by that name, which has made him famous as a mixologist." This May\/Rose fellow was apparently employed at Gene Sullivan's Cafe on Pavonia Avenue in Jersey City — and indeed, it's worth noting that applejack is the state spirit of New Jersey. A less glamorous back story, to be sure, but most likely a factual one. As for Bald Jack, according to a widely reprinted newspaper squib from the end of 1912, his notoriety put such a dent in the drink's popularity that some bartenders took to calling it a "Royal Smile" instead. Perhaps.<\/p>\n

(You can see this in Google Books<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

There's also the theory<\/a> that the name simply comes from the fact that its primary ingredient is appleJACK, and that it's rose pink in color when mixed. At any rate, I doubt it's named after a friend of a menswear shop's owner; that would be Hegewischful thinking.<\/p>\n

Other copy-editing tics: the whiskey from Tennessee is "Jack Daniel's<\/a>", not "Jack Daniels" — the original distiller was Jack Daniel<\/a>, and the brand properly includes the apostrophe. Also, the John Ashe cocktail is "finished with an Islay Mist", which is unclear. Islay Mist<\/a> is a blended Scotch whisky, so I'm not sure if that means that Islay Mist is misted onto the drink with an atomizer, or floated atop the drink, or something else?<\/p>\n

Thank you for your time and attention.<\/p>\n

All best,
Sam Meyer
http:\/\/www.cocktailians.com<\/a><\/p>\n

The Times' cocktail coverage tends to be pretty good (see the frequent linkage from here, f'r instance), so this was a surprise to read. I know it's a quick aside in a trend piece about retailing, bu c'mon: thirty seconds with the Google<\/a> or Wikipedia<\/a> would've cast doubt on their subject's claims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Below is a letter I sent to the Times yesterday (with links added for annotation and clarity): Hello, In the article "Bar Crawling From Boutique to Boutique" by Michael Rovner on p. E9 of today's paper, there is the statement that "the Jack Rose [is] named after a friend of the owner, Jonas Hegewisch, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recipes","category-seen-elsewhere"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}