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Ha, yeah, I know, and I really enjoy the Thomas Manhattan, especially after dinner. Strangely, we seem to sell at least a couple of the Savoy Version of that drink (Manhattan No. 1) every time we do Savoy night at Alembic. Last time someone ordered both no. 1 and no. 2 on the same order, I guess to do a taste off. So cool.

Nick’s Own Cocktail. 1 Dash Angostura Bitters. 1 Dash Absinthe. (Verte de Fougerolles) 1/2 Italian Vermouth. (1 oz Dolin Rouge) 1/2 Brandy. (1 oz Cognac Dudognon) Shake well and strain into cocktail glass Add cherry and squeeze lemon peel on top. Robert Vermeire, in his “Cocktails: How to Mix them” tells us this is a, “Recipe by A. Nicholls, London, 1922.” A very enjoyable cocktail, and the first cocktail I’ve found where Dolin Rouge is a clear winner as a sweet vermouth. Also the one of the first uses of the Dudognon Cognac in the Savoy Stomp. There’s a bit of a story there. I was called for my annual Jury Service last fall. Fortunately after about 2 days of dithering they released the lucky few unselected jurors and let us go home. It was about 3 in the afternoon and I was downtown. A beautiful and unusually hot San Francisco day. I thought to myself, “Self, I could use a Pimm’s Cup after all that!” So I headed down to the source for the best Pimm’s Cups in the world, The Slanted Door. No, I’m not biased at all. Anyway, after availing myself of a Pimm’s Cup and maybe another drink or two, a gentleman came in to the bar with a couple bottles of wine, Armagnac, and Calvados for the bar manager to try. Luckily he sat right next to me. Turned out, it was Charles Neal, of Charles Neal Selections, an importer of some wonderful French products. We got to talking. I mentioned my eternal Brandy dilemma asking, “Is there a good brandy at a reasonable price?” About all I could get out of him was, “You get what you pay for.” Not willing to let it rest there, I brought up the Cognacs and Armagnacs of a relatively well known commercial firm, saying I didn’t think they were so bad. I won’t mention the name of the firm or his exact words, but the brand did incite some excited comments from Mr. Neal. Suffice it to say, he did not think much of the firm’s products and did not hesitate to express himself explicitly. As the discussion and drinking continued, the bartender ordered us some food saying, “I’m not going to let either of you go home to your families, having drunk so much on an empty stomach.” The food was, as usual, quite tasty. If the spot prawns are still on the menu, order them! As I was heading out, the bartender handed me a worn copy of Mr. Neal’s book, “Armagnac: The definitive Guide to France’s Premier Brandy,” perhaps, so I would be better prepared the next time we met. Mr. Neal and I exchanged good byes, parted in good spirits, and went home to make dinner for our families. Reading Mr. Neal’s Book, I really started to understand more of his perspective. How so many of the small distillers and growers of Cognac and Armagnac have fallen out of fashion, out of style, or been squeezed out of business. Not to mention how important it is to support the people who make or import a product you can truly respect. After my interrogation, I figured I at least owed it to Mr. Neal to try one of his Cognacs, especially since he struck me as someone whose point of view I could respect. So here we are, making a cocktail with the Dudognon Cognac he imports. It certainly is not cheap, but neither is it much more expensive than most other decent Cognacs. To get back to the Dolin Rouge, I find it is a lighter not so sweet vermouth, so it doesn’t do much to obscure the spirit in the cocktail. One of the distributors recently went so far as to say, “A Manhattan with Carpano Antica is a Vermouth Cocktail. A Manhattan with Dolin Sweet is a Whiskey Cocktail.” That sounds a bit too much like they had been drinking the Haus Alpenz “Kool-Aid”, but it is a fair point. In this case, the Dolin Rouge does just provides just some small accent, allowing the Dudognon Cognac to be the star of the drink. Which is a very good thing.

New York Cocktail. 1 Lump Sugar. (1 Demerara sugar cube) The Juice of 1/2 Lime or ¼ Lemon. (1/4 lemon squeezed into tin) 2 Dashes Grenadine. (1 tsp homemade) 1 Piece Orange Peel. 1 Glass Canadian Club Whisky. (2 oz Rittenhouse Bonded) (Muddle sugar cube in lemon juice and grenadine. Squeeze orange peel over drink and drop in. Add Whiskey and…) Shake well and strain into cocktail glass. (If you feel inspired, add a cherry.) Similar method and ingredients to the Mr. Manhattan Cocktail. Even though sources indicate this cocktail is from Hugo Ensslin, it makes me wonder if they might originally have come from the same source. A perfectly delightful old fashioned preparation of a Whiskey sour.

Newton’s Special Cocktail. 1 Dash Angostura Bitters. 1/4 Cointreau. (1/2 oz Cointreau) 3/4 Brandy. (1 1/2 oz Cognac Dudognon) Shake (I stirred) well and strain into cocktail glass. (Orange Peel). Oddly despite the fact that this possesses no chocolate, one of the stronger implied notes was that of chocolate. I fought the urge to remake it with a splash of Creme de Cacao and allowed myself the luxury to enjoy the Negative Space implied by its absence.

I'm not sure, but for me the Canadian Whisky angle is a bit of a dead end. I enjoy experimenting with interesting modern Canadian whisky, sure. But I don't know how relevant it is. The Savoy Cocktail Book is a compendium, right? When they compiled it, they sometimes changed ingredients. When you look at any of the source material, even up to McElhone's "Barflies and Cocktails" in 1927, none of those recipes included in the Savoy Cocktail Book call for Canadian Club. They call for Rye or Bourbon. Even Judge Jr., published during prohibition, does not call for Canadian Whisky. Whether Craddock called for Canadian Club out of personal preference or economic necessity is probably beside the point. Or if it was becoming more fashionable to use smoother whisky by 1930. Smoother blended whisky would certainly be the fashion for the next 30 or 40 years. The short answer is, before the Savoy Cocktail Book, almost all of these recipes called for Rye or Bourbon. I will admit, there are a few Savoy or European recipes which seem to make more sense with the milder Canadian Whisky than with the rougher American straight rye or bourbon. The Byrrh Cocktail springs to mind.

Canadian Whisky experts can correct me, but it is my understanding that this is more or less the way almost all Canadian Whisky is made. Similar to Scotch Blended Whiskys. I believe there is almost no "single malt" or "straight" whisky bottled in Canada.

New 1920 Cocktail. 1 Dash Orange Bitters. (1 dash Angostura Orange) 1/4 French Vermouth. (1/2 oz Noilly Prat Dry) 1/4 Italian Vermouth. (1/2 oz Martini and Rossi Sweet Vermouth) 1/2 Canadian Club Whisky. (1 oz Alberta Premium Canadian Rye Whisky) Shake (I stirred) well and strain into cocktail glass. Squeeze lemon peel on top. A while ago Darcy O’Neil, of The Art of Drink, and I did a trade, resulting in me being in possession of Alberta Premium Canadian Rye Whisky. It’s really tasty stuff. It’s a 100% Rye Whiskey, but made in the Canadian style. That is to say, much of the Rye is distilled to a very high proof, nearly vodka, and then blended with a more flavorful “character spirit” and aged. In its smooth rye flavor, the Alberta Premium reminds me more of Irish Whiskey than other Canadian Whiskies or American Ryes. So this is basically a perfect Canadian Whisky Manhattan with a dash of orange bitters. Who can complain about that?

haha! There are already cocktail ingredients in Regan's "New Classic Cocktails" with flavored vodkas I have no idea about. Two most recent attempts at Hercules: Hercules #1 1 bottle Navarro White Table Wine 1/4 cup Yerba Mate 1 tablespoon Gentian 1 clove Dried Peel from 1 Seville Orange 1/2 stick Ceylon Cinnamon 1/2 cup sugar 1/4 cup Havana Club 8 Year Rum Method: Combine all ingredients other than rum, bring to 140 degrees for 10 minutes. Strain off solids, cool, and add rum. Refrigerate. Interesting, but the bitterness is too prominent and single notedly gentian. Hercules #2 1 bottle Navarro Chardonnay 1/4 cup Yerba Mate 1/2 tsp oregano 2 tsp Gentian 2 tsp Cinchona Powder 1/2 tsp Wormwood flowers and leaves 4 whole cloves Dried Peel from 1 Seville Orange 1 stick Ceylon Cinnamon 1/2 tsp whole coriander seed 1/2 cup sugar 1/4 cup Apple Brandy Method: Combine all ingredients other than brandy, bring to 140 degrees for 10 minutes. Strain off solids, cool, and add Brandy. Refrigerate. Too bitter probably, though closer to a balanced flavor. Would like an even heavier spice presence.

From the wine forum... So you were wondering just how far back vermouth went? Herbal wine, just the thing for ailing pharoahs

I don't know anyone who would be crazy enough to volunteer for the Tales Cocktail Apprenticeship Program. That would be madness. "I hate Cocktails" seems to ring some sort of bell. Great shirt, Ryan. Uh, right, anyway. Does this count as a mid-life crisis? Instead of a red Ferrari or torrid affair, flirting with bartending? Aside from myself and many great bartenders from around the U.S., the esteemed gentlemen who are running the program this year are John Deragon and Don Lee. I believe I've seen them around here from time to time.

Hercules remains, more or less, a mystery. To summarize, for many years because of a description in Stan Jones’ Barguide which called it an Absinthe substitute, it was thought to be exactly that. Something like Ricard or Pernod. However, when I started making these Savoy recipes, none of them made taste sense when made with Pernod or Ricard. They were just awful. About this time, I saw an advertisement that popped up from time to time on the front page of the cocktaildb. It was for a Dutch product called Hercules which was a aromatized and fortified red wine. I made a couple cocktails which call for Hercules with Cocchi’s Barolo Chinato and they made a lot more sense. I started doing more digging and turned up some advertisements in Google Books for a product called Hercules available at about the same time the Savoy Cocktail Book was published. Instead of being an Absinthe substitute, Hercules turned out to be a wine based aperitif one of whose ingredients was Yerba Mate! In addition, a London friend, Jeff Masson asked around about it. Turned out that a friend of his was acquainted with some of the ex-Savoy bartenders. While the most recent bartender didn’t recall Hercules, his predecessor at the bar did! From Jeff: OK, a bitter wine based aperitif flavored with Yerba Mate. Current try at reproduction: 1 bottle Navarro White Table Wine 1/4 cup Yerba Mate 1 tablespoon Gentian 1 clove Dried Peel from 1 Seville Orange 1/2 stick Ceylon Cinnamon 1/2 cup sugar 1/4 cup Havana Club 8 Year Rum Method: Combine all ingredients other than rum, bring to 140 degrees for 10 minutes. Strain off solids, cool, and add rum. Refrigerate. I purposely kept this simple, to try and get more of a feel for appropriate taste combinations with the Yerba Mate. Initial thoughts are that it has too much gentian to be drunk on it’s own for pleasure. But it’s close. Tasting other vermouth I have around, I find many seem to have more culinary herbs in the middle flavors than this. Might have to experiment with including some thyme, mint, or oregano next time. I’m also not sure if the color came from the wine or if it was colored, so skipped that for the time being. Since most vermouth is made on a white wine base, I would guess it was colored, perhaps with cochineal or similar. New Life Cocktail 1/4 Hercules. (1/2 oz “Hercules”) 1/4 Bacardi Rum. (1/2 oz Montecristo Rum) 1/2 Cointreau. (1 oz Cointreau) Shake (I stirred) well and strain into cocktail glass. That’s a lot of Cointreau, but every other recipe for the New Life I can find uses the same proportions, so I guess it isn’t a typo. While it is sweet, it is kind of tasty. However, drinking it, I was reminded of the unique flavors of Armazem Viera’s Esmeralda Cachaca. Remaking it with Cachaca instead of the Montecristo rum did make for a much more interesting cocktail. Interesting that these two South American flavors would compliment each other.

My general rule, is, if it's in the ingredient list, it goes in the cocktail shaker. The Savoy Cocktail book never, to my knowledge, includes garnishes in the ingredient list, only in the method section of the cocktail recipe. Heck, compared to other authors, it rarely includes garnishes, full stop. Interestingly, Cocktail Bill Boothby talks a bit about this in the early editions of his cocktail guides. Saying something like, "certain establishments require bartenders to squeeze twists into the mixing tins, while others allow bartenders to squeeze the twists over the drinks before serving," he claims it makes no difference in the end cocktail, though his preference is for squeezing them over the cocktail. Squeezing them into the tin, and stirring the twists with the drink, does tend to cloud the drink slightly, as well as give more citrus flavor and a bit less scent impression.

...and we're back. Newbury Cocktail. 1 Piece Lemon Peel. 1 Piece Orange Peel. 3 Dashes Curacao. (1 tsp. Bols Dry Orange Curacao) 1/2 Italian Vermouth. (1 oz Dolin Rouge Vermouth) 1/2 Dry Gin. (1 oz Junipero Gin) Shake (I stirred) well and strain into cocktail glass. Kind of similar to the Dandy Cocktail, it make me wonder if those two recipes might have the same source. Check out the new vintage glassware, fresh from the wilds of central New Jersey, courtesy of Chris over at An Exercise in Hospitality! So cool, and beautifully retro! Thanks Chris! Anyway, a very nice cocktail, despite being basically a slightly citrus-ier Lone Tree.

I do agree that a too cold Dry Martini is pretty much impossible. And, yes, a fair point, that the drink can never really get any colder after it is in the glass, even when using frozen glassware. Even more practically, when interacting with wait staff, that drink will actually probably not get to the guest before it has had some chance to warm up. So perhaps best that you put the drinks up a bit too cold when you are working the service well.

Actually, I do. I keep pint glasses in the freezer, and find that 60 seconds over whole KD cubes makes a deliciously cold, yet not overdiluted cocktail. [...] ← I tend to agree that the thermal whatsit (density?) of the tempered glass pint glass makes it the 800 pound gorilla in the equation of chilling cocktails. In experiments I've done at home with pint glasses chilled over night in a -5 F freezer, I can turn chilled water into icy slush just by pouring it down the side of the glass. I suspect pouring booze into the same glass, results in similar chilling. Basically, the booze is below freezing before you add the ice, cracked or not. Then if I add very cold (-5) ice to the glass, there's very little dilution that will happen for a very long time. Things are a bit different in a bar, where the ice is not quite that cold, nor are the pint glasses quite that well chilled. It also makes the converse point, that a warm pint glass, whether that way because of a hot day or because it just came out of the dish sanitizer, is probably the worst possible thing to mix a cocktail in. I also like the point that, if you want to taste the cocktail, there is a point after which it is too cold. A reason we don't just pre-mix cocktails and keep them in the freezer until a customer orders them.

I asked a liquor store manager about this. In Northern California Brizard changed distributors (Young's Market to Southern) at the beginning of this year. He thought this might be why they seem to have disappeared from many liquor stores. Probably just temporary, at least here.

Speaking of, anyone know what's up with Brizard right now? Their products seem to have disappeared from liquor stores. Change in US distributor or importer?

Pectins are usually encouraged in jam/jellies/preserves. Not something you really want in liqueurs. Combination of liqueurs made from dried fruit and apricot kernels is probably where you want to go. Maybe macerated separately and blended after. Fresh apricots are just too subtle and watery to work out well. Not to mention the fact they are only really good for about a week each summer.

Is that a Pug! Muddler in your pocket... ...Or are you just glad to see me?

Maybe a bit before that. Mr. Splificator turned up a reference to what appears to be the new formula in 1964 and posted it here.

Why less? If you're making super extra dry martinis, you're already probably using a quarter ounce or less vermouth in the drink. I don't see that the new or the old makes much difference in those dash-ish quantities. As Splificator noted a while ago, in a Fifty-Fifty, with any gin with some cojones, the "Original Formula Dry" is quite tasty. I find it works equally well in most of the vermouth heavy Savoy Cocktails I have tried it in so far. In fact, I preferred it to either the Dolin or the American Noilly in a Nineteen Cocktail recently.

I have ordered from barproducts many times and find them to be a fine resource, prompt shipping, good products. I can't speak for Toby in regards spear ice at The Violet Hour, but I do know that Heaven's Dog, here in San Francisco, after failing to find anything suitable at the container store, had custom plastic ice trays built for spear ice to fit in tall glasses. It would be difficult, to nearly impossible, to cut an ice spear thin enough. Though we do use big fat square hand cut cubes for drinks in rocks glasses.

Maybe? I found a number of books referring to Swedes from the North being particularly fond of the stuff. This quote via Google Books from an 1898 book called "Through Arctic Lapland" by Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne: I dunno, The Northern Swede sounds pretty good to me...

A friend recently asked what was usually meant by "Caloric" in cocktail recipes. I gave the usual answer that it is synonymous with Swedish Punsch. Then I began to wonder about why it was called "Caloric" and realized I had no idea. Was it viewed as some sort of nutritional supplement? Or was "Caloric" just a brand of bottled punch? Same or similar character to Swedish Punsch?

Article in last Sunday's Chronicle: The Keys to the Sidecar, Jon Bonne