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Splificator

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  1. Rem acu tetigisti, as Jeeves would say. That is indeed the question. My suspicion is that yes it absolutely is, but here we run into one of the main problems in figuring out the category, the secrecy of proprietary formulae. But my experiments in drying orange peels have yielded huge variations in tonality, from the funky bitterness of Seville peel to the bright sweetness of your average Sunkist Florida sugarbomb.
  2. A question in return. Are we talking a fancy hotel bar, or a low frontier doggery? Where supply lines were good and the clientele discriminating, you'd get the good stuff. Otherwise, you never knew. As often as not, the saloonkeeper, or the wholesaler he bought from, made his whole line of liquors from cheap "Cincinnati rectified," which was essentially vodka. You paid your money and you took your choice. For what it's worth, one bottle of Grand Marnier will make something like 150 Fancy Whiskey Cocktails.
  3. One of my favorite cocktails. Particularly when I'm a-fearin' the booze.
  4. Cointreau made its big move in the 1920s. It did lots and lots of advertising and promotion (as did Grand Marnier). I agree that nothing is ever exactly like it was. Hell, champagne in the early 19th century had 5 times the sugar that the sweetest version has today. Over time, the column-distilled versions, being cheaper to make, flowed into both orange (i.e., colored by steeped orange peels) and white (i.e., colorless from distillation) categories. By Trader Vic's time, I'm sure most of the curacao available was column-distilled.
  5. As I said in the thread-starter, to me the point of a list like this is to capture the zeitgeist of a particular decade, not just list the most popular drink. If you do that, you'll end up with the same few drinks decade in and decade out. The vast majority of drinkers drink what they grew up with and rarely change their habits. I'd be comfortable with the x-tini as the drink of the '90s, but not now. Sure, it's still popular. So is Canadian whisky. But neither is leading the culture. To pick it as the drink of the decade would be like picking Lawrence Welk as the characteristic musician of the 1960s, because of the vast viewership of his TV show. For the same reason, I'd still go with the Spritzer as the drink of the 1970s (actually, late '70s and early '80s), because of the way it captures the way the style leaders of the time turned their back on good old American hard liquor and embraced the "healthier" wine. (And, BTW, bottled wine coolers were a product of the '80s.) Totally agree about the creme de violette and the inability to get Aviations in most bars. But isn't it's presence a sign that you're in a joint that's paying attention to what's going on?
  6. But isn't the Jerry Thomas recipe an infused curacao based on pot-distilled spirit? Like, in other words, Grand Marnier? Sure, his recipe calls for Scotch, but that's why it's "English curacao," in the same way there was "English brandy" (an ersatz version of the French original based on grain spirit and flavorings that didn't survive the 19th century) and "English gin" (an ersatz version of the Dutch original based on neutral spirit and flavorings that went on to rule the world). Many of the Dutch curacaos were based on brandy. The Netherlands imported vast amounts of French wines and grape distillates for liqueur-making, just like they imported vast amounts of Hanseatic barley and rye for genever-making. There are essentially two kinds of curacao: the old-fashioned one, based on pot distilled spirits that are then infused with orange and sweetened, and the slightly less old-fashioned one, based on column-distilled spirits that are redistilled with orange and then sweetened. Both were certainly in use in the 19th century, and both certainly have their uses now. And those uses are not coterminous.
  7. Sir, you speak the language of my tribe!
  8. FWIW, I think the whole point of the Crusta, as opposed to the Sour, was that it only had an accent of citrus--it was basically an old-school Cocktail with just enough lemon juice (say, a barspoon) to give it a flavor of lemon, without any of the attendant sourness. I think if one had to choose a model-drink for the Spirit+Sour+Bitters class (assuming it's strictly necessary to stake off yet another category), there would be no better candidate than the Pegu Club itself, particularly since it's a non-American drink. As far as I can tell, the bittered Sour wasn't a pattern that pre-Prohibition American bartenders turned to when inventing drink. A quick look through a couple of the cocktail compendia from the teens oly turns up the Raymond Hitchcocktail, and that uses orange juice instead of lemon or lime.
  9. I had a little piece in Esquire last year addressing this very topic, as it is one that repeatedly asserts itself. The Hotel Room Old-Fashioned I find that mini bottles will make it through airport security no problem, as long as you only have one or two. If desperate, you can also use two water glasses of equal size as a cocktail shaker. Just place them rim to rim and wrap a towel around the middle. You'll need a grip of iron to keep them aligned, but it's surprisingly effective. You can strain it by cracking the glasses apart, Harry Johnson style. Good call, Chris, about the hotel ice machine. A plastic knife, used carefully, will cut a twist if you start with a lemon wedge and work it through the pithy part. Messy, but better than nothing.
  10. A curveball from the archives: The New Orleans Daily Picayune, February 2, 1843, p.2 With that "absynthe," this cocktail sounds awfully like a (brandy) Sazerac, no? But here's the thing: there was no New Orleans Sunday Mercury--as far as I can determine, the newspaper that this item was cribbed from would have to be the weekly New York Sunday Mercury, a sporting paper with a national reputation that was founded in 1839 (the almost-as-famous Philadelphia Sunday Mercury wasn’t founded until 1850). So it appears that the swells in New York were drinking something very much like the Sazerac seven years before the Sazerac Coffee House even opened. Curioser and curioser. P.S. That "Chesterfield" reference is to the 18th-century Lord Chesterfield, who laid out the rules of polite behavior.
  11. If you can't get Seville oranges, don't let that get in the way of having a nice bowl of punch. You could try orange bitters, or just say to hell with them. They do add a special something, but it's not an essential special something. The arrack, however--well, if you've got some, what are you waiting for? This is exactly what it's for. A little bit will aromatize any punch recipe, and it really is irreplacable. Finally, the champagne. I've ruined more punches by using bad-tasting cheap bubbly. Cava and prosecco both lack the acidity and leanness to make good punch, IMHO. I do, however, like the Gruet, from New mexico, and it's cheap. I hope this helps!
  12. A couple of corrections and observations: The moutwijn for the Bols G. is a three-grain mash (rye, wheat and corn) fermented for 5 days (long) and distilled once in a column still to under 50% abv and then twice more in pot stills, both times to a quite low proof (I can't recall the actual figure, having lost the notebook where I had all this stuff written down while on a pub crawl in Amsterdam; occupational hazard). This is then rested in steel tanks and then blended with grain spirits and flavoring "wines"--spirits distilled with juniper and with various botanicals. The total is close to 60% moutwijn, though. The Dutch were always blenders and complicated distillers, and certainly were early adopters of column still technology (the Bols Genever recipe dates from 1820). The Genevieve, in other words, could not be considered an accurate analogue of 19th century imported genevers. It is, however, a fairly accurate analogue of American country gin, as described in early (i.e., pre-1830) distillers' manuals, although even some of those call for additional flitration and rectification, as a way of matching the smoothness of the Dutch product.
  13. I was indeed quoted, let's say, very selectively. The two things I have found genever mixes poorly with are dry vermouth and tonic. On the other hand, I think it mixes wonderfully well with just about everything else, or at least everything you can mix whiskey with (for that matter, I'm decidedly not a fan of whiskey and dry vermouth, either). Some of my favorite cocktails are based on genever. Edited for diplomacy.
  14. Actually, it was 1912. I don't mean to be pedantic, but there are so few facts in the history of drink I likes to nail down the ones we do have.
  15. I generally like my Improved cocktail as a quick tonic, rather than a slow-sipper (so up, rather than rocks), but leave out the fancy touches and I'll go for the rock. Pedantic? Sure. Silly? Probably. Evidence of deep-seated structural failure in the medulla oblongata? I'll leave Dr. Deko to diganose that. Well, my thanks to whatever higher power you summoned to your aid to perform that crucial task. Your Stalingrad of the soul resulted in as good a bowl of Punch as I've ever tasted. That arrack really is something, isn't it? Like pouring liquid phermones into your drink.
  16. Exactly so. While I like Bulleit fine in the drink, I make mine at home with Rittenhouse bonded, Wild Turkey rye or Woodford Reserve (when I'm feeling that I need a little extra coddling). Generally, as to technique, I like to stir this with fine ice (i.e., cracked within an inch of its ever-lovin' life).
  17. Over in the The original Suffering Bastard on Tiki Central mbanu claims to have discovered an 1959 article in the New York Times which interviews the drink's creator, Joe Scialom. For the life of me I can't find it in the Times Archive, but here's the quote he found: ← Well, y'see, the reason I asked is because Mr. F. Deko has a propensity for non-traditional garnishes. Not to take anything away from Mr. Scialom, who not only invented the drink (and was photographed by Esquire making it) but, when Nasser-inspired rioters burned down Shepherd's, came to the US and went on to a high-powered career in hotel beverage dynamics.
  18. And, just out of curiosity, how would you garnish this one?
  19. I couldn't agree more! The fact that, despite the pressure to slop everything together or cut corners, every drink I tried was perfectly made, was truly astounding--as was the fact that the crew cared enough to actually fiddle with one of my recipes until it came out right. Thanks! And special thanks to Mr. Deragon for assembling a big-ass bowl of Rack Punch on Sunday morning, at which point he had every right to be dead drunk in a gutter on Bourbon St.
  20. ← Like all rules, I believe this one is meant to be learned, understood, and then broken. Some spirits pair up very well indeed. Dark rum and brandy, for instance, have been bunkmates in the booze world since the seventeenth century, with no signs whatsoever of squabbling or disharmony. The brandy adds body and richness, while the rum adds pungency and fragrance. There are others: rye whiskey and brandy (which works like the dark rum-brandy combo), Jamaican-style rum and gin (really!), applejack and just about any damn thing (as noted), etc. Others don't work together at all (bourbon and gin I have found to be rather unpleasant). There's no rule here--it's an empirical art, and the drain will claim many a drink. As an example of one of the unlikely combinations that (IMHO) works, here's a drink I came up with a couple of years ago: Scozzese 1 1/2 oz blended Scotch 1/2 oz Hendrick’s gin 1/2 oz Campari 1/2 oz fresh lime juice scant 1/2 oz honey syrup (made 1 to 1) Shake and strain; no garnish Weird, but surprisingly tasty, if you like drinks with a bitter edge. Edited for detail and because all rums are not created equal.
  21. Another find in the archives. The Syracuse Herald, December 7, 1934
  22. I take it this Virginia Snakeroot is poisonous/toxic too? ← Yes; it's the aristolochia serpentaria. I had to grow it from rootstock. PITA.
  23. From "Cheerio"--a Book of Punches and Cocktails: How to Mix Them, by Charles, formerly of Delmonicos [sic] (NY: Elf, 1930). p. 45, from the "Celebrities' Drinks" chapter
  24. Add, perhaps, the Buck and Breck, detailed in my book, and what he called Lamb's Wool, whhich from his description of it was merely a Hot Buttered Rum that had been set alight so that the butter would pop and crackle like burning wool.
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