Will

Weeks ago Jen said that we ought to have people over to “salons” on the first Friday of each month. The idea was that we would share delicious cocktails, catch up, and then walk down to Art Murmur. In theory, this should work.

Our first “salon” last month was too successful. We had a huge number of attendees, and my drinks were a hit. But I spent the whole thing frantically making drinks for people! I hardly had time to chat with anyone. Also, we didn’t leave and go to Art Murmur, because everybody was having a good time  and getting free drinks at our apartment.

In preparation for the second salon, we assumed that it would go exactly as the first had. I thought it would be smart to make whole pitchers of three cocktails. That way I could just mix them the one time and could relax. (The three cocktails: the Income Tax, the Manhattan, and the Whiskey Sour).

But this time, fewer people wanted cocktails. Most of the guests were fine with beer or wine. One guy drank nothing but water! One day later, we still have three pitchers of drinks in the fridge. D’oh! This is clearly the most ill-fated instance of backward-looking planning since the Maginot Line.

The experience made me think: what is it that people like about bartenders? It is not merely the drink that results from his or her skill and labor, it is the attention. People like the spectacle of the drink’s preparation, just for them, and they like that as far as the bartender is concerned, their own preferences have absolute sovereignty. Appearance is often in contradiction to what is actually going on, and thus the pitcher of Manhattans — which objectively should have the same value as an equal quantity of Manhattans prepared individually — is treasured less than the specially prepared drinks. Go figure!

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Angostura bitters in their natural setting

Angostura bitters are one of the most fundamental components of any bar, crucial as they are to the Manhattan, the Old-Fashioned, the Pink Gin, the Income Tax, and the Hobo’s Delight. I have also made many refreshing sodas using them. They have a distinctive flavor and aroma that add something special to a drink.

They also have a distinctive label, which keeps on going up after the bottle tapers off into a neck. This label is unusually thick with text, which many people probably never bother with. Let’s have a look at it.

Most prominent is the lore that surrounds Angostura’s origins: it was the creation of Dr. J.G.B. Siegert, surgeon general in the army of Simon Bolivar, the Liberator. He concocted it to settle the mal de mer of naval men, as a competitive advantage against the enemy. So the story of Angostura contains both an element of the historical epic and of the banally pharmaceutical.

Having conveyed the romance of the product’s origins to the reader, the label goes on, promoting its use in just about every beverage and comestible you can imagine:

Because of its delightful flavor and aroma [Angostura] has become popular for use in soft drinks, cocktails, and other alcoholic beverages and it imparts an exquisite flavor to soups, cereals, salads, vegetable [sic!], gravies, fish, grapefruit, fresh, stewed or preserved fruits, jellies, sherbets, ice cream, many sauces, puddings, mince pies, apple sauce and all similar desserts*, regulating the quantity according to taste.

It then doubles down on the claim that we should be putting bitters in our every meal, attempting to micro-manage our consumption:

FOR COOKING AND TABLE USE…ANGOSTURA MAKES FOOD MORE APPETIZING !

Fruits: For cooked or canned fruits add 2-3 dashes Angostura or flavor to taste.

Salads: Blend 2 0r 3 dashes Angostura with each cup of mayonaise, French, or other dressing.

Pies: Add 4 or 5 dashes per cup of mince meat or pumpkin filling. 1 or 2 dashes to apple or other fruit.

Soups: Add 1 or 2 dashes Angostura to each serving of canned or frozen soups, fish chowder, bisques and chicken soups. Stir in at last minute.

Can they really be serious? Bitters in our salads? In meat pies? In soup?! The first time I happened to read these surprising claims, I happened to have some chicken soup on hand. I followed the label’s advice and added some bitters to it. It pretty much ruined my bowl of soup. On the one hand, you can’t blame them for trying to get people to consume more of their product by using it liberally. On the other, we can perhaps read this as a lagging commentary on how bad food was in the 50s and 60s (the copy has the air of having been written that long ago): perhaps adding bitters couldn’t have made it any worse.

The label contains three languages, none of which is the Spanish that Angostura’s first users probably spoke. Most of the text is in English. There are also two enigmatic seals with German words on them. The bottle also bears the seal of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the second — the Angostura company is based in Trinidad — which includes the national motto of England, “Dieu et mon droit.” Although the English people speak English and have historically loved their freedom, this slogan is in French and means, “God an my right,” where “my right” is the monarch’s absolute right to do whatever he or she wants. History sometimes produces strange results.

If any readers have had positive experiences adding Angostura to items other than cocktails and sodas, please weigh in! I do commend the Angostura people for giving us such a thought-provoking label.

*They think apple sauce is a dessert?! What?

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[Imagine a nice photo here!]

1 1/2 oz. rye whisky

1 sugar cube

several dashes Peychaud’s bitters

1 swish of absinthe

Muddle the sugar and bitters in a mixing glass, add whisky, and stir on ice. Swish a small amount of absinthe in an old-fashioned glass, just enough to coat the walls. Strain the drink into the glass, garnish with an orange peel.

The Sazerac is the New Orleans version of the old-fashioned cocktail, and was served at Antoine Peychaud’s hotel in that city throughout the nineteenth century.

Absinthe is expensive and probably hard to find outside of the cosmopole, so it may be more practical to replace it with Pernod, Herbsaint, or another pastis. The history of the rise, fall, and rebirth of absinthe is interesting and instructive. Absinthe became so popular in fin de siecle France that it began to rival wine in its sales. The French wine industry thus lobbied to have it banned and, on the basis of completely fictitious stories claiming that absinthe caused insanity, they succeeded. This ban spread to other countries, and was both a precursor and a twin to the Prohibition that the United States attempted a few years later. But in recent years entrepreneurs have discovered that there were huge holes in the ban the entire time and, a mere century later and with no changes to the law, have resumed production of the product on a completely legal basis. Pernod, Herbsaint and the rest are the ghosts of absinthe that arose when it became illegal: anise-flavored liqueurs that are more cheaply produced and lack any particular complexity.

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We have just returned safely from a journey through Germany, Catalonia, and France. Needless to say, while such a trip acquaints you with the charms of foreign lands, it also highlights the merits of the place left behind, for which you find yourself feeling homesick. Although this blog is primarily about cocktails, I want to report on the state of a more basic staple of the human diet — beer — across these nations.

When the Tom Brokaw of thirty years hence sits down to mythologize the baby boomers as “the greatest generation” (a thesis sure to prove popular with members of that generation, at least), the improvements to American beer in the 90s and 00s will be some of the best evidence he’ll have to work with. I don’t know how my forebears made do with the limited domestic beer options of the old days, but I’m glad I don’t have to. Rather than facing a narrow choice between Budweiser, Miller, and Coors at most establishments, we 21st-century Americans can vary our choice between such excellent and widely available brews as Racer 5 and Red Tail, or any of the great Lagunitas ales, or many, many others.

In Germany*, there is no shortage of beers to choose from. On the contrary, the country seems to be based on the idea that you should be able to get and drink a beer any time and place you choose. I appreciate that. However, in our experience, the variety among different brands is surprisingly small. Most of the beers are light, refreshing lagers and pilsners. Never are they particularly hoppy. They are good, pleasant to drink after an afternoon of lugging a backpack around Fredrick the Great’s old digs, and I wouldn’t want readers to think that I’m implying otherwise. But there exists a much narrower range of flavor profiles to choose from than we are accustomed to. My comment at the time was that the many different beers “do not run the gamut, but rather run together.”

Our friend Spencer (who has spent considerable time living in Germany) has explained that whereas Americans like novelty, and so each brewer tries to produce something unique and different, Germans prefer pursuit of the ideal, perfect beer, and so all brewers aim to best realize this ideal. Thus they all produce similar brews. Whereas we can imagine the trajectory of American brewing as bouncing along on a graph and deviating more and more from average over time, the trajectory of German brewing would be doing the opposite: winnowing in every closer to sameness, approaching closer and closer to distribution along a straight line. We liked the Kristallweisses that we tried, and also the Schwartzbiers and Alts, but it wasn’t long before we were yearning for an Indian Pale Ale.

This mentality — the devotion to the One True Beer, and to rendering it incarnate unto the world — was in fact embodied in law in Germany for many centuries, in the Reinheitsgebot, or purity law. This was of a piece with the traditional Germanic passion for protectionism, and it died only because of European integration. Now it’s legal to import beer from anywhere into Germany, made from whatever ingredients you like, and the Germans take advantage of this freedom by importing beers that taste pretty much identical to what they were already producing.

The situation in Catalonia** was much worse. The Spanish beer that we tried was, to put it mildly, not impressive. The region seems to have no beer culture to speak of. As for imports, Heineken was the best thing available, by far. Oh well! They say the wine there is very good.

France*** has two domestic beers that are OK — 1664 and Pelforth — though they are not exciting. There are microbrews in France, but they have not reached a level of popularity such as would make them widely accessible. Luckily, you can also get Belgian beers, some of which are very good. Alarmingly, some French bars offer the option of getting fruity syrup in your beer for one euro more.

In short, this Fourth of July, we’re happy to celebrate the spirit of innovation and independence that characterize the local beer culture. Here’s to America the Brewful. Salut!

*The Germans incorrectly believe the country they live in to be called Deutschland.

**The Catalonians incorrectly think the place is called Catalunya.

***The French somehow get their country’s name right, though they soon go on to get other things wrong.

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One of the frustrations inherent in trying old cocktail recipes is that many ingredients mentioned have gone out of favor and are no longer available. The situation has improved since I first went looking for the obscure spirits of old: Maraschino liqueur and creme de violette are now stocked at BevMo, for instance. One ingredient that remains elusive is Amer Picon, a French bitter that seems to have been rather popular at one time, but which today is not distributed anywhere in the United States. But in fact the situation is even worse than that: even the Amer Picon that is sold in France is not the same product as the Amer Picon that was available before the 70s. So if you used it in a cocktail recipe from the 20s, you would not be making the same drink that the author was.

I am told that of products currently on the market, the one that comes closest to the Amer Picon of old is Torani Amer. This is produced by the same company that makes the ubiquitous Italian syrups. And yet, it too is quite difficult to find.

But I obtained a bottle of it. Jen and I got home from a long, thirsty day at the Oakland Zoo, and, finding ourselves short on Campari, decided to try the recipe that Torani Amer recommends on the label. As follows:

A little cracked ice
1/2 teaspoon grenadine
2 oz. Torani Amer
Top off with soda water, garnish with lemon peel

The resulting drink was cheerfully refreshing, more reminiscent of Aperol than of Campari. I regretted only that we were not outside drinking it at a sidewalk cafe in a sunny city.

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I received a bottle of this gin as a birthday present from our friend Sue (thanks, Sue!). I had never heard anything of the brand, positive or negative, so I was completely unsure what to expect.

This gin has  a fragrant, foresty nose, full of juniper. It reminded me on first sniff of the familiar smell of Tanqueray. It’s aromatic quality would seem to make this gin a natural choice for dry martinis.

However, it was a hot evening here in Oakland, and we were in the market for more a refreshing, thirst-quenching drink. It’s hard to go wrong with a gin and tonic, and it’s usually a bad sign when a gin doesn’t work in that most venerable of gin cocktails (though not always! See Hendricks).

Given the scent of the gin, and the “London Dry” appellation, I was expecting a conventional flavor, a la Beefeater. However, Jen and I both found Miller’s to be uniquely tasty. It has a strong suggestion of cucumber that combines quite pleasantly with the tonic, and which adds to the drink’s coolness.

I give this gin four stars. Cheers!

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This drink is a variation on the Bronx cocktail, which is itself a variation of the perfect martini, which in turn is a variation on earlier martini recipes. But none of those cocktails is such an obvious shoo-in to serve as a refreshment on the ides of April.

1 1/2 oz. gin

1/2 oz. dry vermouth

1/2 oz. sweet vermouth

3/4 oz. fresh-squeezed orange juice

1 or 2 dashes Angostura bitters

Shake or stir on ice, serve straight up with a cherry garnish.

Sadly, the origin story of this drink, and how it came to have this timely appellation, has apparently been lost in the bustle of history. I’d like to imagine that it came from New York the very year that the 16th Amendment was ratified (1913). But who knows?

Cheers!

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