Will

last word

The Last Word is an interesting example of a cocktail that had apparently only regional popularity following its original debut during Prohibition, but that has become a favorite internationally in recent years.

This drink was reportedly introduced by the bartenders at the Detroit Athletic Club in the early 1920s. Two of its four ingredients are “luxury” liqueurs that are in the present day relatively hard to find and relatively expensive. I don’t know whether all three of these characteristics held in those days, but it’s probably a fair bet that Detroit’s proximity to Canada and the Great Lakes, as well as its prosperity during its happy years as a center of car production, had something to do with the fact that an illegal saloon would have access to these ingredients. It’s doubtful that Chartreuse or Maraschino Liqueur would have been available or affordable in much of the country, explaining the drink’s limited popularity at that time.

In any case, it’s a pleasing concoction. Nobody I’ve served it to has had anything but good things to say about it.

The Last Word:

1 part gin

1 part green Chartreuse

1 part Maraschino Liqueur

1 part fresh lime juice

Shake on ice, serve straight up. No garnish needed. How big a “part” is can depend on your tolerance and goals for the evening (some recipes say 1/2 oz. each, others 3/4 oz. each, others don’t specify).

Cheers!

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georgeWashington

It is said that when our invaluable ally the Marquis de la Fayette visited General George Washington at his estate in Mount Vernon, Washington pleased him by serving Mint Juleps — and let’s be honest, impressing a French aristocrat isn’t a small thing. Washington also was known throughout the war to equip his soldiers  with several helpings of grog every night, and he insisted on this provision as a crucial military necessity. He also kept an ongoing brewery making beer at his estate. In addition, when his friend and ally Alexander Hamilton was facing the greatest distress of his public career, Washington showed his solidarity by sending him a solid silver wine cooler, which the late Ms. Hamilton was proud to show guests long after her husband’s untimely passing. Washington was, in short, pretty good all around. That’s why they put him on the $1 bill and the nickel.

So, here are our top three drinks associated with the esteemed General:

1. the Mint Julep — this is a classy drink

2. Grog — rum and milk are a pretty agreeable combo

3. Chilled wine — it’s better than warm wine

Salut!

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1pink

Valentine’s Day is perhaps the most patently manufactured holiday. It is similar to something like the ginned-up-out-of-nothing expectation that a wedding ring be equal to the man’s monthly earnings; a scheme to drum up sales. That’s the world we live in, though, so let’s duly observe the celebration of Saint Valentine’s right actions.

Owing to ancient superstitions, the heart continues to function as the symbol of love — or rather, our stylized cartoon representation of the heart, which is most likely an inverted drawing of buttocks. The heart is red, and so red is the color of passion, and thus pink — the lightened form of red — is the color of tenderness. In accordance with this barbaric vestige, our holiday cocktail will be the Pink Lady.

The Pink Lady is in many ways a mysterious cocktail, just as women, for all their sociability, are ultimately quite mysterious. We can love women because we can know them fairly well. The Pink Lady is so mysterious that we can’t know it that well: it is an enigma. There are numerous references to this cocktail from the period spanning the Roaring Twenties through the Eisenhower presidency, mostly disparaging. It also provided the term that the young Richard Nixon used to imply, ever so subtly, that his opponent in the race for one of California’s senate seats, Helen Gahagan Douglas, was a communist. It was a drink that girls unfamiliar with drinking would order. Its color made it less threatening. It is important that before the 20s, bars were gender-segregated, and women not allowed. So cut the ladies some slack, already. However, no two recipes for the pink lady are the same, and the differences are not minute.

Some recipes use grenadine to achieve the pink color. Others use Angostura. Some call for egg whites, others for cream. I have been unable to satisfy my curiosity as to what the original recipe was. Perhaps the status of women at the time was such that bartenders didn’t think it mattered.

I will give the recipe that seems most consistent with the classical art of mixology.

1 1/2 oz. gin

1/2 oz. grenadine

1/2 oz. fresh lemon juice

1 egg white

Shake vigorously on ice and serve in a champagne flute

Cheers!

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orange-blossom

There was a time, extending basically  from the 17th century until World War II, when the only clear liquor available in the English-speaking world was gin. Somehow our wartime alliance with the Russians — a people who fight tirelessly and fearlessly, and thus pretty good allies to have — opened up our markets to vodka. Before this time, vodka had been enjoyed outside Russia only by bohemian Frenchmen in Paris and their American hangers-on (one of whom invented the Bloody Mary at the American bar in Paris in the 1920s). As happy as I am that the Allied side won World War II, I hope I will be forgiven for regretting that the allied relationship led to gin being displaced by vodka in most Americans’ cocktail vocabulary.

A consequence of this displacement is that one of the most well known cocktails to Americans — whether teenagers or adults — is the Screwdriver. This drink is made by pouring a glass of orange juice and then pouring in as much vodka as the “mixologist” thinks appropriate. The Screwdriver finds its counterpoint in the drink known as Sex on the Beach, so popular a decade ago, which adds fruit schnapps to make the mixture even more fruity and alcoholic. If you appreciate good, well balanced cocktails, this lazy approach should strike you as an affront.

Contrast the Screwdriver to its gin-based predecessor, the Orange Blossom. The Orange Blossom is subtle and tasty. Unlike the Screwdriver, it doesn’t just taste like orange juice with some toxicity added.

The Orange Blossom (Will’s take):

1 1/2 oz. gin

1 1/2 oz. fresh-squeezed orange juice

1 oz. Cointreau

1 dash orange bitters

Mix over ice and shake. Serve in a cocktail glass with a sugared rim. Now tell me this isn’t better than every Screwdriver you’ve ever had.

Cheers!

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Holiday Cocktail Blogging: Homemade Eggnog

by Will on December 30, 2012

1eggnog

Eggnog is probably the best nog there is. Unfortunately, it is only tolerated during advent, because of its traditional connection to Christmas. After that, though, and for the rest of the year, the Bureau of Tobacco and Firearms round it up and destroy it. Perhaps one day there will be a ballot proposition that will change this, but for now it’s the reality we’re stuck with.

Luckily, there is still a way to enjoy eggnog outside of the holiday season: make your own! Here is one of the many eggnog recipes out there:

4 eggs, separated
1/2 cup superfine sugar
1/3 quart whole milk
1/2 quart heavy cream
Bourbon, rum, or brandy
Freshly grated nutmeg

You separate the yolks from the eggwhites. Then you beat the eggwhites until they’re thick and mix in the milk and cream. Meanwhile, add the sugar to the yolks and whisk them. Then, add it all together and beat it stiff. Then combine the frothy concoction with a shot or so of your liquor of choice. Sprinkle the nutmeg on top.

Cheers!

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What I thought was my first encounter with shandy came when I was visiting London. The fact that they sold the canned drink alongside children’s beverages, even though its alcohol content is about 2 percent — the maximum allowed for beer in some American states — made the environs seem quite foreign indeed.

Upon further reflection, I realized that I’d already encountered shandy, in Monty Python’s Drunken Philosophers Song:

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will

On a half pint of shandy was particularly ill

1john-stuart-mill-avatar-1581 Pictures don’t lie: John Stuart Mill was a person

 

This constitutes an all-too-common slander of Mill, a flexible and synthetic thinker who tended to straddle the usual delineations, and who is consequently an object of contempt from nearly all quarters*. It is also, I am afraid, an anachronism. The word “shandy” did not refer to any drink in Mill’s day. He might well have a enjoyed a quaff of “shandygaff”, which preceded shandy. But this was a different drink, composed of beer and ginger ale.

What is shandy? It’s simply a mixture of (light) beer and what the English call “lemonade” — for us, lemon soda. As I understand it, the proportion varies according to taste, with 50/50 being about as light on beer as you can respectably go.

The astute reader will have noticed that the American drink the Brass Monkey is really just a variation on shandy. A Brass Monkey is made by taking a half-full forty of Mickey’s and filling the balance with orange juice.

It’s a refreshing beverage for a hot day. Why then am I blogging it today? Why indeed.

 

*Mill is one of those rare philosophers who can consistently described as both a libertarian and a socialist. This could, in theory, mean that there’s something there for everyone to like. Instead it seems to mean there’s something for everyone to hate. Karl Marx: Mill “clumsily repeat[s] the wretched evasions of Ricardo’s earliest vulgarisers.” Friedrich Hayek: “[Mill] probably led more individuals into socialism than any other single person,” and, “I ultimately came heartily to dislike that figure [Mill]”. This is no kind of talk for a fun, hip cocktail blog, so I shall cut it out with all due haste.

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UPDATED

Chartreuse is a bit of an obsession around here. A persistent question is whether there is any mixed drink with Chartreuse that is as good as taking the elixir straight. I have found the Alaska Cocktail and the Last Word both to be very good. This is another recipe, created by mixologist Marco Dionysis, that I recently happened upon. It is of the family of tropical drinks, such as were made popular by the Trader Vic’s bar chain in the post-war era. The sort of thing that you’d presumably have at an island resort. This is a family with which I have but little acquainted myself.

The Chartreuse Swizzle:

1 1/4 oz. Chartreuse

1/2 oz. Falernum

1 oz. Pineapple juice

3/4 oz. lime juice

Stir on ice with a swizzle stick, serve on ice in a tall glass.

The result was pleasing. But I don’t know if it justifies the use of so much precious Chartreuse!*

Cheers!

P.S.: Thanks to Mr. Dionysis for notifying us that this recipe was his creation. Why couldn’t I have a last name like that?

*Chartreuse is much cheaper in Germany. Go figure.

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The Pernod Cocktail

by Will on May 12, 2012

One of my favorite series of plays is the Fanny trilogy by Marcel Pagnol, who was one of the most popular French writers and filmmakers of the 20th century. It is also a series of 1930s movies. Even though some of Pagnol’s other movies have been popular in the US (Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources, most notably), the Fanny trilogy has been out of print for a long time. It is only available on VHS, and good luck finding a rare VHS title. There is an American adaptation that was made in the 50s, removing much of the dialogue and altering the story, but it is not as good.

(It would appear that Alice Waters is also partial to this series, as she named restaurants after three of its characters: Cesar, Fanny, and Panisse.)

The trilogy also has never been published in English. Or rather, there exists one manuscript translation of it, in a university library in Utah. I tried producing a translation myself, but found it too time-consuming to attempt without remuneration.

Consequently, I have not been able to share it with my girlfriend. We watched the 50s adaptation together and she liked it, but I’ve never been able to show her the real deal.

What I can share with her is the Pernod Cocktail. Because the characters of the Fanny trilogy spend their time at a bar on the Vieux Port of Marseilles, drinking Pernod and Ricard, I have a certain affection for the stuff. However, neither my girlfriend nor I enjoys drinking it straight. Even in France, it is usually served with water to dilute it. But I find the Pernod Cocktail is an even better vehicle for it.

The Pernod Cocktail:

1 1/2 oz. Pernod

One cube of sugar

1/2 oz. water

4 dashes Angostura bitters

Stir on ice and serve straight up.

Cheers!

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We made a number of disturbing discoveries while traveling abroad. One was that people in Europe take their Campari neat or else mixed with tonic water. Another is that young people, even those of the greatest refinement and most unimpeachable grooming, can be relied upon to purloin all the cans of tonic water from the refrigerator, and to drink them as if they were soda. Consequently, we found ourselves more than once in possession of gin but lacking any mixer for it.

We remembered that in the classic film The African Queen, Humphrey Bogart’s character takes his Gordon’s gin without tonic. He prefers to have it mixed with African river water. Katharine Hepburn’s character doesn’t like this one bit, but the sentiment doesn’t seem to be on account of the water.

Anyhow, we found that a half-and-half mix of gin and water, on ice, was reasonably refreshing. That is not to say that we’ve repeated the experiment since the scarcity of tonic water has abated.

The Gin and Water:

1 1/2 oz. gin

1 1/2 water

Serve on ice, with a lime wedge

Salut!

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The Alaska Cocktail

by Will on January 30, 2012

This is a drink that always pleases, albeit at the cost of some precious, precious Chartreuse.

1 1/2 oz. gin

1/4 oz. Chartreuse

1 dash orange bitters

Stir on ice, serve straight up

You can use either green or yellow Chartreuse. I generally go with green, which is available at more stores.

Do you know who got the state up north to be called “Alaska” in the first place? It was allegedly General Henry Halleck, the great military author and blunderer. You didn’t see that coming, did you?

I am unable to locate a fascinating story relating when and where this drink was first mixed, and by what manner of people, but no doubt one exists, or could at least be fabricated.

Cheers!

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