bostonapothecary

a collins for a shiny coat 2 oz. olive oil infused gin (simple fat washing with evoo and seagrams 1:1) 1 oz. lemon juice spoonful of sugar soda water no bitters, no aromatic sugars, no top notes from twists or anything else to obscure the fruity aromas the olive oil contributes to the gin. cheap thrills.

from last night... "gilgamesh" .75 oz. aguardente de medronhos (nova) .75 oz. M&R rose vermouth .75 oz. cynar .75 oz. lime juice i make this drink quite a bit, but usually with mezcal or tequila. the uniqueness of the strawberry tree (arbousier) brandy makes this variation quite memorable. the fairly low alcohol nature of the drink might be what magnifies the aroma of the brandy so much. i've always found it hard to pay attention to a beautiful woman and my drink at the same time. my attention always defaults to a blond rendering most anything i drink as innocuous as a vodka & cranberry juice. my love of this drink has grown immensely because it is so far from innocuous and begs me to multi task while i chat up a gorgeous woman. huge gustatory acidity, gustatory bitterness, tons of unclassified aromas. an epic acquired taste!

hurst hannum and robert s. blumburg's "brandies and liqueurs of the world" claims that "marc de champagne tends to be lighter and more perfumed than marc de bourgogne, reflecting differences in climate, the resulting base wine, and distilling methods." as of 1976 when their book was written the only producer was jean goyard. i'd say use any grappa you can afford. the Portuguese make great affordable stuff. you are going to be overshadowing part of the aroma anyway and introducing texture distraction which will also compete with the aroma. good luck.

2 oz. agavales 100% agave blanco ($27/1.75L) 1 oz. lemon juice lump of "panela", "100% brown sugar cane" from columbia dash bittermen's mole bitters agavales is darn good considering the price. they must be bottling other producers surpluses. the aroma leaves nothing to be desired. i bought the loaf sugar so that i could rub citrus peels against it, but it doesn't seem to be coarse enough to capture a lot of oil. the sugar does on the other hand have a potent stewed greenness that is pretty cool in the tart context of all the drink's lemon juice. an awesome low budget eye-opener. huge acidity and umami aromas contrasting significant gustatory sweetness are the parameters for my favorite acquired tastes...

1.5 oz. st. james ambre 1. oz. constelacao licor de cafe from the island of madeira 1.5 oz. unpasteurized milk form a local farm god bless our local portuguese spirit importers for offering a killer coffee liquor for $8.49 retail. this was supposed to resemble a white russian and worked out fairly well. though i think i should have reached for a silenter spirit... the milk is unpasteurized but i think still homogenized. long story short, it didn't have the gamey, grassy aromas i was hoping for. if it was gamey and grassy, a silenter spirit might let the terroir of the milk express itself better... and if it wasn't (or i wanted some alliteration of aromas) karlsson's gold new potato vodka (which smells slightly "truffled") might be just the thing to create the umami aromatic tension of my dreams...

bumping this thread. i'm dieing to get a copy as a gift for my older brother. any news on distribution?

i cracked some bottles of randall grahm's bonny doon liqueurs last night. his pacific rim framboise is pretty wild. randall commissioned the growing of an heirloom raspberry cultivar that wasn't grown commercially anymore. the aroma is gigantic and the acidity is fierce. as a liqueur goes, its sugar content which i bet borrows the port wine model is near completely self contrasted by its own acidity. this makes it a serious challenge to mix in any classic sour drink ratios, but i can't wait to use it instead of sloe gin which is somewhat self contrasted by its own acidity. last night a patron requested this. massaged mint 1.5 oz. bourbon 1.5 oz. randall's pacific rim framboise soda sort of lame but its exactly what he wanted. if i rendered it for me it would look like: massaged mint leaves 1 oz. barrel proof bourbon 1 oz. pacific rim framboise .5 oz. simple syrup .5 oz. lemon juice soda this would maintain a similar alcohol level and increase the tension of sweetness and acidity while slightly decreasing the dense overshadowing aromas of the framboise. next up was randall's pommeaux homage. the gustatory structure of it was perfect but the aroma came across a little supermarket-y rather than enigmatic mysterious apple. but you get this overwhelming sensation of cinnamon contrasting the apple! i think he does this by getting some tannin out of the apples. sometimes we can't think of things as aromas (olfaction only) because they need to be flavors (multi sensory) for us to recognize them. cinnamon in this case was intensely defined by the fabulous tannins. sometimes this happens with grapefruit. its nothing without subtle pithy bitterness. peach brandy is bubblegum until you add acidity.

i'm not so sure i believe the extend to which these things are learned and culturally relative. vanilla is also said to be sweet in western culture but savory to easterners. but for starters what exactly does savory mean? not sweet; but we tend to be absolutists about it. "savory" dishes have sweetness, but they are more highly contrasted than non savory dishes like desserts. the savory word is too general and probably should be given up for multiple words that can better describe the tension because there are so many options. different cultures seem to develop favorites. so in eastern cultures vanilla is likely a sweet aroma, but also is always used in a highly contrasted manner. if you perceived with a synthetic strategy you will associate vanilla with the contrast which dominates, but if you perceive analytically you will separate vanilla from the contrasts and maybe realize that it provided sweetness. all flavors revolve around contrasting sweetness (via gustation or aroma or so my theory goes...) and the greater the contrast, the greater the acquired taste. i probably cannot reduce vanilla to something so elemental because it is likely self contrasted with its own umami. i have a hard time with the eastern savory ethic. it seems so sweet to me, but my friends tell me i only encounter eastern food abstracted to the wrong ethic. everything i get is supposedly touristy and created for americans, made for snapple country, the land of no acquired tastes.

i've been thinking about classifying aromas lately. we first start to classify aromas that are part of a flavor in terms of gustation. so its easy to have "sweet" aromas which can increase the perception of sweetness in a mixture. dividing all the anti-sweet aromas is where things get tricky. its very hard to say which aromas are sour and which are bitter, but we do know that many people say "that smells sour" so there is a great chance they truly perceive it as sour. i have ridden down the street and smelled freshly mowed weeds which elicit an intense bitter sensation in my mouth... more to the point. if you believe in classifying aromas in terms of gustation can any aromas be classified as umami? when i encounter aromas like tequila, rhum agricole, or certain peruvian piscos, i cannot seem to call their aromas sweet nor any other gustatory division. they don't seem to create the same sort of aesthetic tension in drinks when i swap a rye for a rhum agricole yet the results are always beautiful & delicious. many people describe these spirits as oily or viscous which is something that is often associated with umami. the viscosity seems to be perceived and not exactly "real" and quantifiable. umami is also associated with fermentation and fermented products like "meaty" fermented olives and some people describe certain unaged rum agricoles as having an aroma akin to olives but with different tonality. does it require gustatory tastants to produce umami or have we been dealing with part of the umami spectrum all along via aroma?

i see it all the time in the restaurant when tasting inexperienced people on wine. the term bitter for some is used as a catch all for dislike. to these tasters the wines usually feature some dissonant acidity, but they lack the vocabulary to say "too dry" or "too tart". though it could also be as lilija explains.

i'm really curious to hear a summary of what they are going to be talking about. it is a really exciting topic and people are finally starting to fully explain what was once only received wisdom. some of the concepts though are hard to put to use. the idea of diluting an alcoholic solution with water to increase the available-to-perceive aroma is a chemistry trick and rather interesting, but its hard to integrate into a multi sensory flavor. now that you've diluted your manhattan with water you may have increased the aroma, but you changed all the other tensions that also create the emotional content of the drink... its very hard to use in a "beautiful" context. the coolest ways to increase aroma, i think, are tricks of perception that work in the brain. for example, different tastants (sugar and salt are the big ones) can increase the threshold of perception of an aroma. this is why certain tastants are known as "flavor enhancers". when more than one sense worth of data goes down a path in the brain the effect becomes an amplification of the signal. adding texture can further increase the signal. this is why the fruit left over from your infusions can seem so much more alcoholic than they really are. texture amplification can also work on aroma. but again its hard to use in a beautiful context. whatever is amplified often gets out of control. de-amplification is seen when you juice a strawberry and rob the fruit of its texture. the whole strawberry tastes so real and the juiced strawberry tastes so bland. you can't make the juice taste real again until you add other amplifying tastants like more acid and more sugar. i've been trying to make a "trigeminal cocktail" by leaching out the aroma from black berries so i can have "blackberry skeletons" to reinfuse with a familiar classic so people can see the amplification effects of texture. i had done it once before to make "maraschino blackberries" which were blackberries infused with distilled blackberry eau de vie and mace. you can drink the blackberry-mace brandy but you can't eat a blackberry without spitting it up because the aromas are so overly amplified. its difficult to use the trick in a beautiful context. texture has another ill effect on aroma which is texture distraction. when engaging in multi sensory perception your attention span does not give equal weight to the senses. our attention span gravitates towards texture then towards gustation and only finally to olfaction. texture distraction is why manhattans are best stirred if the goal is showing off the aroma. simplified texture gives your attention span a shot at actually perceiving the nuances of the aromas. the manhattan might also simplify gustation for the sake of your attention span, because there is no distracting gustatory tensions like sweet + bitter or sweet + acidic. this flavor stuff is tricky business, but what is great is that when you unravel the nitty gritty of the mechanics of flavor you can take one theory from cocktail making and move it to understanding wine or to understanding food. right now people's understanding of the culinary disciplines seems too separate. i think all the walls are starting to come down and the cocktail is the great illustrative teaching tool.

i just cracked a bottle of scarlet ibis for the first time. while i do find it delicious, i don't think it really fills a unique hole in available rum flavors. reminds me of ron de barrilito of puerto rico or some of the bottlings from the pierre ferrand-plantation project. good stuff at a fair price. i definitely need to get myself a bottle of stone pine and try this drink! anybody try the renegade rum bottlings? i just found them all on deep discount closeout and thought i should grab a few bottles of at least the 1990 guyana.

my coworker really likes the "maximillian affair" which was invented at Drink in southie and bares a striking resemblance to the "artists special cocktail" from the savoy. an awesome template for a drink. "maximillian affair" 1 oz. mezcal 1 oz. st. germain .5 oz. punt y mes .5 oz. lemon juice twist "artist's special cocktail" 1 oz. whisky 1 oz. sherry .5 oz. lemon juice .5 oz. groseille syrup (red currant) i interpret the sherry as being sweet (100g/l sugar) whereas eje interpretted it as dry in the savoy stomp. i think i used harvey's orange aromatized sherry last time i made the drink and grenadine instead of groseille. anyhow i've had the maximillian at drink and can vouch for its awesomeness but i don't allow st. germain in the house so i had to re-render the recipe to keep my coworker happy for her shift drink... and of course i made a double. 1 oz. mezcal (vida) 1 oz. matilde poire .5 oz. punt y mes .5 oz. lime juice 2 dash peychauds matilde's poire is their coolest liqueur and must be non profit if you consider all the gorgeous pear eau de vie they put in the product for such a low price. like st. germain, matilde poire uses a sugar model that is very similar to pineau des charentes which is bascially low sugar and fits into these eccentrically structured recipes quite well. delicious! excellent structure and epic aromatic tension! there is an awesome middle ground between 2:1:1 sours and 2:1 Manhattans.

asking about base spirit might be a strategy to size up a guest, but i don't think its the best. i've always seen it creating a large degree of choice paralysis for starters. many bars then handle high acid drinks in strange ways. "citrus?" sure, but what exactly am i getting? citrus implies acid but its not the end of the story. its very tricky to articulate a relationship of sweetness to acidity because the culinary literacy rate is so low. when tasting people on wine, many use the term bitter for acidic because they don't have the vocabulary and bitter to them is synonymous with dislike. very few people are enthusiasts of the mechanics of flavor perception. one co worker cannot tolerate an old fashioned or a manhattan. she doesn't even like a 2:1:1 sour made with a 400g/l syrup. she only enjoys side car style sours with 250g/l liqueurs. you can only increase the level of sugar relative to acid on her if you add drying aromas (mezcal, gin, rye, chartreuse). very tricky. she is a wine drinker. she can't even articulate any of this. she tells me not to put any sugar in her drinks. the other co worker only drinks an old fashioned at the end of the night. he favors beer over wine. most of our patrons are dry wine drinkers and we seem to sell high acid cocktails 10 to 1 low acid. go to the beer bar around the corner and they have the reverse ratio. the data points to people always seeking gustatory pleasure before aroma, and tells the story that gustatory preference is very polarized therefore needs serious discussion. spirit types are mainly issues of aroma and though aroma influences gustatory perception its not as significant as plain old acid and sugar. what is crazy is that if we really seek out gustatory pleasure over aroma then we probably over engineer most of our drinks. good aroma is what costs money (dollar an ounce stuff), but you can nail any gustatory structure for low bucks. (you can then add spectacular low dollar aroma with aromatic bitters) so he who masters communication to segment his market between first the polarized gustatory preferences of imbibers then second their attention span for enjoying aroma can probably make more money than his competitors. the mint and ginger are basically low art aromas. cheap and fun. perfect for when people don't have the attention span for high art aromas like $1.50 an ounce cognac. on the favorite drink issue i'd say most are in love with the structure of their favorite drink, (and besides having an often narrow sense of harmony) they stick with it because they can't communicate what they enjoy about it. the risk of the getting something unpleasant and it costing $10 is not worth bothering. no one like mint enough to switch from a tart to sweet drink just because it has their favorite low art aroma. when you get to the high art aromas that is a different story. i'd say the next phase of bartending is first about communication and teaching the multi-sensory perception of flavor and second making drinks cheaper.

what we have going on here the dictatorship of language. but why? evolution is trying to sell some drinks (exploitation of some sort) and express himself artistically (awesome) splificator is trying to sell some books (which requires some power maintenance) and protect us from a return to the seven or eight decades of bad drinks. (awesome) the way i see it, evolution is trying to create symbolic tension by the use of a hyphenated name (tension is often awesome). the hyphen takes a recipe that is supposed to be dynamic (made to a imbibers specs) and creates a static poetic rendering of it. static drinks are important because you cannot have a conversation with everyone these days, especially when they don't speak the same dialect. the rendering relies on the strength of the original which is important to uphold, even if that is curmudgeonly. hyphenated names have some how gone out of favor, but they can do some really cool things. a drink like the oaxacan-old fashioned explores the culinary literacy rate. it challenges you to say the name, be familiar with the references, and understand their really clever creative linkage. the name that it ties itself into even gives you a clue as to its gustatory structure (an old fashioned will not be high acid). the tie in only works if its clearly defined (that doesn't mean a narrow definition). i get so mad when bartenders ask questions like what base spirit (aroma) before they ask what structure (high acid or not). the Jeet Kun Do of making drinks is gustation before olfaction, but the spirits industry tries to drill into everyones' head brand first. gustatory structure clues like hyphenated names should never be scoffed at. the hyphenated rendering can also subversively expand harmony. if some curmudgeonly person orders a "chiapas-old fashioned" because he is more or less forced or tricked into it and the person enjoys it (exacerbated by positive symbolic value picked up from the room's ambiance), there life will be better off. we need to create and protect a clear understanding of our past so that we will have useful symbols to express ourselves with and expand harmony.

how old were the samples when your friend tasted them? this stuff ages. i already think the vintage dated jean de lillet i have is frail and dieing. not surprising and it is very different than the current incarnation. but the stuff still isn't that amusing. it basically is a sauternes with aroma synthesized by citrus peels. lillet and even bonal seem to focus mainly on aromas that increase the perception of sweetness. this makes them more akin to natural wines which are dominated by such aromas, (mainly fruit expressions) and also makes them sort of boring to me. cocchi americano, borolo chinato, vergano "luli", and even regular sweet and dry vermouth focus more on aromatic tension via having both aromas that increase the perception of sweetness and those that decrease it. the intense aromatic tension they create is more exciting to me and i prefer those products to any reenactment type of experience. i bet the original version of lillet was fairly boring relative to our current understanding of what is artistically possible (cocci americano, vergano luli) the double quinine product sounds kinda cool, but that is just one amplified note contrasted with a sauternes like fruit expression. maybe not that impactful. at some point in time quinine content became regulated and there was a maximum allowed amount enforced. an article that details measuring quinine content via the alkaloid content is detailed in amerine's "technology of winemaking" where there is a dubonnet byrrh comparative analysis. i wonder if this regulation drastically influenced any of the products. (i also wonder if the technique could create an IBU style measure of bitterness that could be used to perfect aroma extraction techniques which try to limit bitterness) after seeing the 1962 and 1972 consumer's union guide to wine & spirits and the differences they tell about the market place, anything based on wine before the 1970's was probably a pretty erratic experience.

1 oz. espolon reposado tequila 1 oz. cynar 1 oz. martini rossi rosato 1 oz. lime juice dash peychaud's i've had mixed success bringing significant bitterness to high acid drinks. yet i really enjoy this (after a while). the initial sip seemed sorta dissonant (inharmonious), but as i spaced out a bit and perception changed from an analytical to synthetic strategy, pleasantly sour-bitter structured experiences came to mind like a pithy grapefruit. harmonious!

2 oz. pisco cesar 1 oz. lime juice (with a fraction of sour orange) bar spoon of sugar pineapple foam (left over form using my centrifugal juicer to make pineapple juice angostura bitters shake and double strain the first three ingredients then layer over top the foam and dab on top a few small drops of angostura bitters i only added the foam because it was there in front of me and was going to get tossed. the foam is really stiff like a meringue and is the product of forcing air into the juice as the centrifuge spins. if you pour the juice back through the juicer you will keep making more foam. it takes about a half our to collapse. the particular pisco makes the drink. it seems to be more pungent and penetrating than others brands. more akin to tequila. my theory as to why is that they make their muscat wine like you would a red as opposed to a white (press the grapes after fermentation). all the extra skin contact would increase the pungent aromas and the resultant distillate is closer to what muscat grappa is like, but somehow avoiding all those higher alcohol kerosene sort of aromas. can't say for sure but its the best guess i've got. and it sure is delicious.

i just got a copy of the 1962 "consumer's union report on wines & spirits". i also have the 1972 and they paint an interesting portrait of what was available for vermouth. in 1962 massive bottle variation was found between brands and the judging was quite difficult. they actually gave up in frustration and just listed available brands by price. the testers suspected bottles were either mishandled in storage or created from different wine stocks. testers weren't even able to consistently score the brands they serve in their own homes. in 1972 all available brands (domestic & foreign) were judged as delicious and more or less impossible to rank so they again were just listed by price. since everything was of good quality domestic brands were endorsed because they were cheaper. this makes it seem like any drinking experience that included vermouth pre 1970's would probably have been highly dynamic.

i know the aviary concept is a work in progress but the projects depicted in the videos didn't seem that interesting to me. to me their whole style of art is pretty low brow. their contribution to mixology seems to be basically exploring really simple avenues of expectation/anticipation and the potential of deconstructing traditionally homogeneous drinks into the inhomogeneous. whether its been done before or not its just not that powerful. the problem is that their area of exploration that i've seen so far is not where the majority of the emotional content of a drink lies. emotional content being the shape of your like or dislike. most people really seem to get the majority of their pleasure from elements of gustation. acid, sugar, and alcohol. cheap and easy yet hard to find enough people that understand it well enough. the pinnacle (and its pretty high brow requiring a investment like enjoying opera) is when you can integrate aroma. wielding tonality and juxtaposition. thats when harmony gets interesting and subversive things start popping up. not easy to do and not easy to find a market for. but thats where the most profound art lies. all this texture stuff gets the press because its low brow and easy to understand not like all the people here discovering the joys of dry sherry in cocktails. americans seem to identify more with science than art because most of this culinary science is general knowledge while most of this culinary "art" requires a bit of specialization and experience. mixologists always seem to be seen as mad scientists and not rembrandts or wassily kandinskys. a shame because i bet most people aim to be rembrandt. i keep seeing too much of culinary art happening in an artistic vacuum and not being integrated into art in general. no great writing survives but i have a feeling based on their output, the bartenders of the early 20th century were highly integrated into the general arts scene. they probably had a better understanding of the spiritual value created by uniting relationships with empathy. i'd love to see this cocktail thing go in a direction where mixologists start making bigger contributions that even leave the discipline every now and then. at the least mixology could take the lead in culinary art theory and build a better understanding of the flavor concept. mixologists could create the creative linkage theory that builds the better american gin. they could teach perfumers more about aromatic tension & symbolism because they understand it better. and mixologists could create the language that the next generation of sommeliers use to differentiate and interpret wine. they could teach wine makers more about abstracting wine. i wish i had my own bar and a bigger budget in a denser city.

right on! i wish i could steal the "now you know". i used to fear the almond. i always felt like a woman was trying to poison me with arsenic. it was in no way a relaxing aroma. but symbolism changes, we acquire acquired tastes, and now i'm mixing up a 750 of portugeuse almond liqueur a week... last night i subbed macallan cask strength for the rye. pretty serious.

This sounds interesting, and I can probably fake it up with stuff I have on hand. Obviously, I don't have the almond liqueur... how would amaretto compare? Or creme de prunelle, maybe? the liqueur has a 20% alcohol level. which is near the minimum of preservation. i tried making the drink at work with amaretto and didn't enjoy the results as much. amaretto feels like it has more aroma so it didn't seem to contrast the other aromas well with the same proportions. it mostly overshadowed the whiskey and sherry. i don't have a lot of experience with orgeat to differentiate the tonality of the aroma from this stuff. most syrups as opposed to liqueurs have sugar contents near 400g/l so i only like to use them in high acid drinks. a change to orgeat would effect the structure of the drink because these liqueurs are probably in the low 300's of sugar. home made syrups also vary a lot in the amount of dissolved aroma and restraint in this case seems to be key here for an elegant drink. this drink is funny because i don't like drinks with strange proportions so i try to always use fairly even measurements which is limiting, but i also don't like brand-static recipes and this drink seems to rely on this brand of almond liqueur. good thing its cheap enough. i'd try the creme de prunelle before the amaretto. i'm on a budget, but i wish i had over proof rye for the drink.

1 oz. overholt rye 1 oz. amontillado (bodegas dios baco) .5 oz. cynar .5 oz. almond liqueur ("algarvinha" from the portugeuse producer vice rei) i eventually ran out of cynar so i reconfigured it as 1 oz. mezcal (del maguey vida) 1 oz. amontillado (bodegas dios baco) .5 oz. averna .5 oz. almond liqueur ("algarvinha" from the portugeuse producer vice rei) both versions are excellent but i think the rye version is most exciting. the drink is really driven by the aromas of the sherry and the almond liqueur. the liqueur is interesting stuff. 8.99 retail. but i can't tell from translating the writing on the back whether it is all natural or not. the tonal expression of almond aroma certainly is excellent. the producer also interprets the almond aroma with a curious color. its very pale unlike the very dark luxardo and amaretto.

well you should collect them, make a simple wine, and get them to your nearest home distiller... its imported by sarmentos of new bedford. but the bottles i have might have been in the basement of the liquor store for a decade. i was told sarmento only brings in an allocation of a few cases a year for the old timers. the aromas are wild and crazy for a fruit brandy. arbutus also makes the most memorable single varietal honey i've ever had. i'm also in love with a liqueur called "brandymel" which is honey (i think its local algarve honey) fortified with arbutus brandy and is very easy to come by here. makes an excellent bees knees. "medronhos" comes from a moonshining tradition that i heard was cracked down on in the late nineties. taxes weren't paid by the distillers themselves because they bartered with it for rent. most of it probably was taxed eventually when it was formally bottled. it is supposedly made by old men who forage for the fruit. this is an great slide show of the process.

"I just think bartenders deserve more of the profit and credit for the money being made by multinational beverage corporations during this golden age." -Eben Freeman yikes, i think eben is looking for some sort of protection from the "establishment". everyone is only in the hypothetical stage, but any poorly conceived legal way to protect yourself is likely to back fire. i think one of the solutions to not lining the pockets of multinational beverage corporations is to not use their products. there are vast alternative options out there besides micro distillery "clones", but when you get off the beaten path it requires a certain culinary theory that isn't well developed. i've been using all these dirt cheap, excellent quality, portuguese products for quite a while now and have been thrilled with the results. many bars know of them but do not touch them. i don't think they have the skills to evaluate them for "quality" (whatever that word means) or the theory to put them to use, therefore they can't reap the subversive benefits (low cost gets people to socialize more often, exotic nature yields an expansion of harmony) culinary works are definitely expressionistic (they have an emotional content: the spectrum of non universal reactions from repulsion to elation). the problem with the recipes we use right now is that they are dynamic and not static. the dynamic nature means they cannot accurately codify the expression intended. when we ask for a recipe we intend to get a static version because we want to recreate the same expression, but it doesn't work out that way with the current state of recipe writing. the reason our recipes don't hit their mark is because they skip over so many points that are needed to fully codify the expression. the expression and emotional content of a culinary work comes from an intense synesthetic experience (cooperation of the senses) which has vast points of tension. we have done very little to identify these points and map the relationships. we also make our recipes out of large dynamic units (that damn terroir thing strikes again!) which makes a culinary work very unlike a static industrial process or fairly static musical notation. cocktails are interesting culinary art works because relative to a chicken dish, they have fairly simplified texture, temperature, and are built out of units that are closer than most things to static. they are also easy to turn into metrics and study which makes them the perfect tool to illustrate culinary theory. the rise of expressionism in art (painting, music, dance, etc. think wassily kandinsky, same era) paralleled changes in bartending style. bartenders started packing more emotional content into their drinks and relied on more fixed static recipes. in the jerry thomas days, all recipes were expected to stretch up and down to an imbibers taste, but in expressionistic bartending you don't mess with the proportions of the savoy's "lucien gaudin". take it or leave it which means that non drink inventors still have to learn to curate. so feran adria isn't that radical a conceptual artist. adria basically brings more texture and more tricks of expectation and anticipation to add more options of expression. being so calculated in tricks of expectation and anticipation isn't even new. it is widely practiced in amaro making. amaros are not about being bitter, but rather about the manipulation of bitter things. "special effects" (different extraction methods) are used to create a expectation differential of the aroma out the glass and the product under full sensory cooperation. i don't think food & drink will become more of an art until people outline more of the mechanics of flavor. the cocktail is the best place to begin.