Wild Bill Turkey

Sliding doors for back-bar fridges also mean that you don't have the door swinging out into the tight space behind the bar and becoming an obstacle. If your barback is trying to get into the fridge to place glassware for you, he can slide it open and work without disturbing you, but if he has to swing open a door with hinges and corners, then either he can work back there or you can, but not both. Problem is most fridges with sliding doors have return springs to close the door by itself, which can make it a pain to hold open if you're trying to load it.

Bought some last week at Bevmo (California chain of liquor supermarkets) off of a fully stocked shelf.

I suppose it depends on who you're trying to talk to. Maybe everyone else here really does find it impossible to avoid thinking of "craft brewing" when they hear the word craft, but not me. Of course, I'm not a professional bartender, and maybe that's who we're trying to communicate to? I don't think that was Kent's original intent, but it seems like we're also on a quest to name our own interest. I doubt most people will think of craft brewing right away, but, like me, will think first of craftsmanship. Maybe you'll say this is still too agrarian for describing these modern cocktails, but I doubt any of the bartenders in question would bridle at being called a craftsperson, whereas, okay, I can see them rolling their eyes at being described as a "gourmet". "New Old School" doesn't sound very good to me, I have to say. A phrase like "Old School" sounds too much like contemporary slang to me for it to embrace the timelessness of the subject, and adding "New" to it to suggest an evolution just sounds slogan-y.

Craft cocktails: starting to sound like a winner Nostalgic cocktails: misses the point completely Chris'"ewww": made me laugh out loud in a room by myself.

Both neo-Classic and classic-inspired sound appropriate and, with hyphens, work as category names without requiring the use of quotation marks. Both terms exclude the classics, of course, but I doubt people would be confused enough to think you couldn't get a Manhattan at PDT.

Okay, so Gourmet isn't the word, and likely for the reasons I mentioned. Although in fairness, if I went up to the bar at PDT and asked for "one of those dandy "Classic Cocktails" you're famous for making", and used "air quotes" around "Classic Cocktails", my guess is that I wouldn't be anybody's favorite customer either. Maybe if they could tell I was spelling the phrase as "Klassik Kocktails"...

Please accept. Remember "America's Top Bartender"? The show was as bad as it could be, but what made it all so awful was the quality of the judges. How could you take a show like this seriously if you have no faith in the judges? The TV show had a gigolo and two hired escorts for judges, and the whole thing was a joke. Flair was valued as much as taste, and the contestants were essentially judged on their looks. TV entertainment requires a certain amount of sacrifice of quality in favor of showmanship, but ultimately, even on TV, you have to believe the judges have a clue about what's going on in the glass...

I'm also interested to hear what others have to say here, because I've had this question before as well. "Classic Cocktails" seems to be the shorthand people are using, but I agree that it isn't right, for a number of reasons. I'm tempted to pull an old advertising word from the 70s out of retirement: Gourmet. It's a word that doesn't mean much to us anymore, since the whole world went foodie back in the 90s. But "Gourmet cocktails" kind of says what we mean. Made by and for someone with a focus on taste, quality, and a level of sophistication. Likely to be a little more expensive than the average. The word "Gourmet" these days kind of works against its own meaning, like calling something "Classy". But its meaning is accurate, and maybe the word has been dead in advertising long enough that it could be returned to use in daily language?

Different, yes. Like apples & fish. I think the new one is much, much better, but they're so different that they're hard to compare as though they were from the same family. They're made by different hands, with different ingredients. Both distillers are skilled, all the herbs carefully chosen from good local sources on opposite sides of the ocean. The recipes may have been similar, but they're really completely different animals.

Two thoughts: On the amount of lime juice, Jeff Berry changed ONLY the quantity of lime juice in the"Trader Vic's" Mai Tai recipe between the publication of "Grog Log" (which calls for 1 1/2 ozs lime juice) and "Sippin' Safari" (which calls for only 1 ounce). Having always used the older recipe, which uses more lime juice, I've always been very happy with my results. But the Beachbum's changes to this recipe seem to indicate he agrees with you. The two-rum recipe seen in Jeff Berry's books, as well as others seems like the way to go for teaching a class about this tropical standard. After all, the practice of mixing rums for unique blends is central to the style of this category. I can't imagine teaching even a brief segment on the subject of tiki drinks without demonstrating the blending of rums, and it strikes me as odd that the Barsmarts course ignores this tradition (though, of course, who am I?)

Just had my first glass of the VEP (green) as a digestif after a great meal at Boulevard in San Francisco. I may have to sell my truck and buy a bottle of this...

Yes, please, post updates. I'm fixing to try my first infusion, and I wanted to do pineapple rum. I see this time you've switched out the overproof demerara for the W&N, and the blackstrap for Myer's. I would be very interested to find out if you found this year's recipe to be an improvement.

Actually, it IS on that website, under "P" for Pomegranate. The picture that comes up when you click on it shows the bottle with the French word "Grenade".

I would think that if a cocktail had been created to celebrate a painting, it would be created after the painting had been finished and displayed in a gallery, and I'd even say after it had been reviewed and had at least a little time to build up some celebrity. Cocktails were named for popular plays and musicals once they'd been open long enough to become the toast of the town. I'd never heard of the painting, but if it became a a big enough hit that it was famous at the time, then the cocktail might have been created anytime within a year or two after the painting was finished, so your 1914 date isn't inconsistent with your story.

The Bluecoat Gin bottle is not only beautiful, but very comfortable to handle and use as well. The Bulleit Bourbon bottle is another of my favorites. Not having a neck, it might not be as easy to handle in a speedrail situation, (I imagine) but when making drinks at home, the classic apothecary bottle, and the way you hold it, make one feel they're performing a little alchemy when cooking up a drink.

What can people here tell me about domestic pisco, ( meaning in my case, from the US)? I saw that Eje was using a California pisco in one of his recipes recently, and I'm anxiously awaiting a sample of pisco from Todd Leopold, whose Denver distillery makes a pisco that won some awards last year and which is about to hit the California market (as well as a couple of selected others) within the next couple of months. This is also, BTW, the base with which he makes his unique absinthe. As much as I love pisco, both for sipping and making sours, I find it ridiculously hard to get decent bottlings, as the three or four distributors that have a stranglehold on the US market only circulate a handful, and none of them are even in the top ten lists of people who know their pisco. I've been ordering it on the net from Peru, with shipping times and charges that make it a rare and exotic treat. I'd drink a lot more of it if I knew of viable domestic brands. I have high hopes for the Leopold. Anybody know of other domestics?

Thanks, guys!

Sorry, I'm not a pro bartender. What does it mean to "cook" a drink between stirring and straining? Also, what does "on a 2-inch rock" mean? I'm guessing it refers to a rocks glass, but?

The legend is that if you make a large batch of Mai Tai and serve it in a Volcano Bowl, Trader Vic will rise from the dead (ironically turning him into a Zombie, a Don the Beachcomber creation) and come to take you to your grave. I used to scoff at this, like anyone would, until the night I tried it when some friends came over. I had just poured the drink into the bowl and was adding the big straws when we all heard heavy footsteps coming down the hallway. Well, more like one footstep alternating with a sound like a heavy club hitting the floor and being dragged. I realized with a growing sense of horror that it was Trader Vic's wooden leg. I quickly poured the drink into the sink, and the noise stopped, replaced with a deep rumbling laugh, and then nothing. I ran into the hall to find it empty. I suppose you could make a scaled down Fish House punch for one glass, or you could make a punch-sized Mai Tai. Logic dictates it shouldn't matter. But if you try it and you hear that step-bump-drag in your hall, for God's sake pour it out.

The intended use for the Volcano Bowl is the Volcano, which calls for the small volcano in the middle of the bowl to be filled with 151 and set ablaze. ( also requiring extra long straws so your drunk friends don't singe their eyebrows ) There's also the Scorpion Bowl, from Grog Log, and I see no reason why you couldn't do the same flaming rum trick in the volcano bowl when you make this drink.

"guaranteed on artificial pigment" Which is cool because I've found a couple of local Brazilian markets that carry bottle passion fruit juice, but it's all orange-colored nectar. The bottle pictured above has the color I would have expected to see. Edit: "the bottle pictured above" is actually now on the previous page.

Staying on topic with both the mint and the pastis is the French aperitif called Le Perroquet (parrot). The French have three standard additives they blend with pastis to create three common aperitifs: Pastis + Orgeat= La Mauresque Pastis + Grenadine= La Tomate Pastis + Mint syrup= Le Perroquet These being commonly ordered, most French bars that serve pastis will also have these syrups. I've never owned mint syrup, so I've never tried it, but the other two are quite good if you like pastis, and of course La Tomate is better if you make your own grenadine. I've been meaning to try making my own mint syrup so I could try the Perroquet, but it won't have the iconic green color (from commercial syrup) that gives the drink its name. The proportions, from the book "Aperitif" by Georgeanne Brennan: 1oz pastis 1 tablespoon mint syrup 5ozs very cold water

Thanks, Sam. Found your comparison on page 3 of that thread, and it was just what I was asking for. I swear I ran searches for both "apricot brandy" and "Apry" before putting up my post, and while I got, as you can imagine, a phone book of listings for threads that contained references to both, I never saw the obvious thread title that you linked to.

Rather than start a whole new topic on the subject of apricot "brandy", I thought I'd tag my question onto this topic, since the general consensus seems to be that the Marie Brizzard Apry is the best option in this category. However, as this thread laments, the Brizzard products are very hard to find, and though I did find the Apry at a high-end spirits store here in San Francisco, it was fairly expensive. Easier to find, and only 2/3 the price, is the Rothman & Winter Orchard Apricot Liqueur from Haus Alpenz. This sounds delicious, and it's hard to imagine this maker selling me something as empty and flavorless as the Bols apricot brandy I've been using. Anybody tried both?

Yeah, just checked it out, and I would have to join Blurb and pick a password and give them leave to send me spam before they'll tell me the shipping cost. But on their shipping info page it suggested to book creators that the shipping for a standard book might be $19.95. For a $20.00 book. Can that be right?