DrinkBoy

It is my understanding that the gin, absinthe, calvados version is known simply as the "75", while that improved gin, lemon juice, sugar, champagne version is the one that is properly called a "French 75". The first occurance I know of for the "French 75" is in "The Savoy Cocktail Book" (1930), and the first occurance I know of for the "75" is in Harry McElhone's Bar Flies and Cocktails (1927). You mention a reference for the "75" in 1917? I'd be interested in knowing what book that was in. And do you have an earlier version of the "French 75" than from The Savoy? Both drinks were quite popular, and perhaps invented as well, at Harry's American Bar in Paris. My theory on the "cognac/brandy" recipes, is that they mistakenly see the term "French" and immediately assume that it "must" mean it is made with brandy/cognac since gin isn't very French... It was actually the champagne that made this drink "French", and gin is indeed the correct/original base spirit to be used. Even David Embury gets this wrong. Made with brandy/cognac it "should" be considered a different drink. -Robert

Because when you find the right spot to have them, they are FABULOUS! There is a vibrant and growing cocktail culture in London. On a recent trip I was treated to cocktails at a variety of London cocktail venues, from "Trailer Happiness", to Salvatore Calabrese's new joint at "Fifty", and a wide variety of places between them. While not all of the drinks were great, they were all memorable in one way or another, and I was very impressed with where the London scene was going. Yes, the beer (aka "Real Ale") there is great, but don't pass up some of the great cocktails that you might also discover if you happen to be in the right spot!

Having already had the Vermouth/Martini experience on several occasions in London, I thought I'd nip that one in the bud and ordered a "gin martini" once. The bartender looked at me as if I was speaking a foreign language (Hmmm, guess I was, American :-), and she asked me to repeat... a couple times... then she asked me how to make it... "Oh!" She exclaimed, "I thought you were saying 'Genie Martin'"...

I LOVE IT! :->

I love te Canlis, although I haven't been there for several years. Is it "Alain Ducass"? No. Is it the "Best Restaurant In Seattle"? No. That would probably be Rover's, HerbFarm, Union... But it is still a great. Better if you can have a reservation for 6 or more and ask for a window view, where the view is essentially better than what you get at the Space Needle. But the food is great, the service is great, and order the "Cafe Diable" after the dinner for a great (but not as good as it used to be, before the fire marshall got involved) drink experience. -Robert

Yes, this is Paul Harrington. Currently living in Eastern Washington. Buy it NOW before he runs out. -Robert

I'll pipe in with my support of the oxo mini-angled measure as well. It's as easy to use as having multiple jiggers, one of each necessary size, but... you don't have to have multiple jiggers.

The Zen Of Bitters... here is my take on this. "Bitters is for cocktails, as salt is for soup." Ok, so perhaps that is an oversimplification, but its a description that works well for me. The point I'm trying to make with that is that just as salt "brings out" the flavor in a soup, bitters performs a special bit of magic in a cocktail. And just as you wouldn't want to to actually "taste" the salt in your soup, likewise you don't want to use enough bitters in your cocktail that it tastes of bitters. Originally, in order for a cocktail to be called a cocktail, it was expected to include bitters. This was essentially true up until around 1900, at which time it is said the "Lone Tree Cocktail" was invented, partially as a dare, to prove that you could actually make a cocktail without bitters. At least that is the story that is related in the appendix to the second edition of the Savoy Cocktail Book. Bitters was even an ingredient in the Martini (at least in print) up until about 1940. Normally it called specifically for orange bitters. I often find that bitters provides a special little binding action to the flavors in a cocktail, so it suprises me every time I hear somebody order a drink like the Manhattan (one of the few surviving cocktails that is still expected to include bitters) and specifically call for it to be made without bitters. It is my expectation that at some point in this persons past, they got a little too curious about the contents of that little paper-wrapped bottle and sampled a teaspoon of it straight. This would then prompt them to never want to repeat that mistake, or even include it in any future libations. A few weeks ago I was visiting a bartender who was showing off one of his creations. It was good, but something was missing. I pulled out a little mini-bottle of Angostura that I often carry with me, and added a few dashes. Perfect! The bartender himself was shocked at the transformation that I performed on his drink with just a couple of dashes. It was clearly the missing ingredient. -Robert

If you are in the New York area you might want to drop by Lupa and check out their stock. As I recall from my last trip there a couple years back they had a pretty impressive collection of Italian "bitters", which included several different vermouth style products.

I moved out of Oly back in 1977. The restaurant my family always went to for "special occassions" was The Falls Terrace down near the (now defunct?) Olympia Brewery in Tumwater. No idea if it is still there, or if it is even worth recommending anymore.

Speaking of fresh jucies... Does anybody have any "rules" for how long fresh juice stays... well... "fresh". If you "had" to prep up an amount of juice ahead of time, how soon would you insist on dumping it, and preping up a new batch? -Robert

There's the Bjou, and it's cousin the Tailspin: Bijou 1 ounce gin 1 ounce Chartreuse 1 ounce sweet vermouth 1 dash orange bitters Stir well with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a cherry and a squeeze of lemon peel. (Tailspin uses a dash of Campari instead of a dash of orange bitters... at least the one I reference on my site does... and DANGED if I can recall where I found that version!) I realize that there are a couple of versions, but at least one of the "Blood And Sand" is a four-parter: Blood And Sand 3/4 ounce scotch whiskey 3/4 ounce Cherry Herring 3/4 ounce sweet vermouth 3/4 ounce orange juice Shake with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass. And here are some more... One issue is that some of these drinks have a few different recipes that are recorded for them... not all of them are "equal parters"... De La Louisiane 3/4 ounce rye whiskey 3/4 ounce sweet vermouth 3/4 ounce Benedictine 3 dashes pastis 3 dashes Peychaud's bitters Stir with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a cherry. Nicky Finn 1 ounces brandy 1 ounce Cointreau 1 ounce lemon juice Dash Pernod Shake with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a Maraschino Cherry or a lemon zest. Tango 1/2 ounce rum 1/2 ounce sweet vermouth 1/2 ounce dry vermouth 1/2 ounce Benedictine 1/2 ounce orange juice Shake with ice. Strain into cocktail glass Garnish with an orange twist. This following one is "variation on a theme" that I did with the Negroni as inspiration: Trident 1 ounce dry sherry 1 ounce Cynar 1 ounce aquavit 2 dashes peach bitters Stir with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist. And to go to a bit of an extreme, here is one the "almost" makes the grade... depending on how you want to handle that bit of brown sugar... let's say we mix it in with "almost" an ounce of water in order to make a brown sugar simple syrup ;-> Zombie 1 ounce lemon juice 1 ounce lime juice 1 ounce pinapple juice 1 ounce passion fruit syrup 1 ounce gold rum 1 ounce 151 demerara rum 1 ounce white rum 1 tsp brown sugar 1 dash Angostura bitters Dissolve sugar in juice. Shake with ice and pour into a collins glass. Garnish with a mint sprig. created by: Don the Beachcomber and as uncovered in "Intoxica!" by Jeff Berry -Robert

If you want to make a food analogy, saying Vodka is like Tofu is far closer than saying it is like chicken. Chicken has lots of flavor to it. However I even think that Tofu has a lot more flavor in it than Vodka. Perhaps the best thing to compare vodka to is bottled water... and for good reason :->

Olie, since your product apparently is available for sale in the US, doesn't that mean that it isn't true Absinthe? (ie. no wormwood/thujone)

It actually might be Mr. Bonds passenger who is going to need that ice-cold martini to settle their nerves! :-> Make that two please...

This sort of gets into that whole "bruising" of the drink myth. I've done many side-by-side comparisons, and when all things are equal there is very, very, little difference in taste between the two that I can detect. So I personally don't think that there is any botanical enhacement going on when you shake a Martini, or if there is, it isn't much. The only excuse I've heard yet that comes close to justifying shaking a Martini or Manhattan, is "but I like the little ice crystals on the top of the drink". For me, it is all about presentation. A shaken Martini will be cloudy, especially when you use the proper amount of vermouth. While stirred, it will be crystal clearA shaken Manhattan will have a foamy head on it, which I personally find disgusting. I expect we have James Bond to blame for this whole "shaken not stirred" situation. I always tell people: "You shouldn't treat women like James Bond does. You shouldn't drive like James Bond does. You should't find it easy to kill people like James Bond does... so why should you follow his guidance on drinking?"

My theory about vodka, and it's emergence onto the scene, is that while people knew of it prior to Prohibition, they didn't take it seriously. After all, it has no flavor, so it makes as much sense to use it as the base of a cocktail as it does using water (instead of stock) as the base of a soup. It wasn't until Prohibition sort of screwed up our perception of spirits, and the cocktails made with them, that we became less concerned with the flavor that the base spirit was bringing to the table than the alcohol. And once the marketing mavens "enlightened" us as to vodkas "no taste, with a kick", we soon took that ball and ran with it.I don't view gin as a vodka substitute, but instead see vodka as the "universal" substitute (or at least that is what the vodka manufacturers would love you to believe :-) Of course, I have a bias against vodka. For me, it's purpose in a cocktail is as a flavor diluter/equalizer, which can often be handy. It is a blank canvas, a white wall, an empty glass. What you put into it provides all of the features and characters. I feel that all of the attention that vodka gets amongst the masses is more a reflection of how little connection the modern drinker has with a well turned drink. Most vodka drinkers I encounter out in the wild will have an amazingly strong brand loyalty to a particular vodka... and yet when confronted with a blind tasting, rarely pick it as their top choice. Gin, essentially a fraternal twins of Vodka, is very much a different beast. Amongst the common spirits, I feel that it has the most radical of flavors, with Tequila taking a close second. It's flavor profile does not present the same non-descript surface as vodka, instead it is full of hills and valleys and robust texture that interacts with the other ingredients, often in rather amazing ways. From a culinary standpoint I might compare it to black pepper. By itself it can be seen as rough and aggressive, and when added to a dish it will often present a perceptable flavor, and yet at the same time it works amazingly well with all sorts of things. You can use black pepper on a steak, on vegetables, on stawberries, and on ice cream, pretty wild. I think the Jasmine cocktail presents a great example of how gin plays in a cocktail. You really don't think you are tasting the gin in this drink, instead it tastes like grapefruit juice... but try any other spirit and that flavor profile goes away. The gin makes the drink. The Pegu is another great gin based drink that really showcases this spirit well. And there are countless others. It's not that you are canceling out the juniper flavors, but instead that you are celebrating them. -Robert [Edited to correct a couple, but perhaps not all, embarrassing spelling mistakes :-]

Some good details about Absinthe can be found here: http://www.wormwoodsociety.org/ABSfaq.html There is a broad spectrum of Absinthe out there, some is crap... no, a lot is crap. And I haven't had a "home-made" Absinthe yet that has been worth the effort. Of the Czech Absinthe, only Sabor is worth taking the trouble with. Hills should be avoided at all costs. One nice benefit about Sabor, is that it's available at the Duty Free stores at the London-Heathrow airport. I usually pick up a few bottles on my way back to give to friends. In my opinion, the Jade Absinthes are the best currently on the market. And the whole "burning of the sugar cube" method is one of those new "trendy" ways of doing Absinthe, and to the best of my knowledge was totally unknown back in the "real" days. -Robert

Um..... which is EXACTLY the problem. The Martini is "a" cocktail, not a big-brush-stroke generality to apply to any cocktail you are trying to get the public interested in. I totally agree that the cocktail-neophyte "wants" a Martini, but in truth isn't really ready for one yet. I also don't really have a problem if they "think" they are having a Martini just because it is served in the same glass that a Martini traditionally comes in. The problem however, is that it doesn't stop there. There needs to be a "guidance" phase of the process, where this cocktail-neophyte, after having a few beginner cocktails, mistakenly refers to a "lemon drop" as a Martini, at which time the bartender, or their drinking buddy, politely corrects them. At issue, is that neither the majority of bartenders, nor the majority of their customers, realize this. We have been operating at "critical mass" of cluelessness about cocktails and Martini's for far too long, and so people don't realize what they don't know about this fine drink. It is up to the devoted few of us who seem to take this personally to re-educate the masses. Viva la cock tail!

Ok, so this is a bit of a shameless plug, but we (The Museum of the American Cocktail) have just published our first book, and I'd like to let you all know about it (and give you a chance to purchase a copy... :-) We plan on publishing a new volume each year, in this, our first volume, the chapters are: A Brief History of Punch David Wondrich The Rise and Fall of the Martini Robert Hess History and Character of the Gimlet Paul Clarke The Genealogy and Mythology of the Singapore Sling Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh The Bellini Lowell Edmunds If You Like Piña Coladas Jared Brown Antoine Amedee Peychaud Phil Greene Down to the Sea in Ships Anistatia Miller The Definitive Guide to Simple Syrup Darcy O’Neil Twenty-First Century Cocktails Audrey Saunders The Long and Winding Road Gary Regan ...hopefully you've heard of at least a few of those name :-> You can get more information, and... oh yeah... purchase a copy, at: http://www.mixellany.com/ -Robert

Just a few of the places that I miss are: The Unicorn It was in the U-District across from Costas. A bit of a hole-in-the wall sort of joint that served english "pub food". Pasties Peas and Chips, Steak and Kidney Pie, Shepards Pie, Toad in the Hole, and of course Guiness... at least until Angus (the owner) go so fed up with the quality of Guiness that we were getting sent here in the states that he berated customers who ordered it :-> Piccolo's Pizza Across from Dante's in the U-District. In my mind, this was hands-down the BEST pizza in the city. It was fairly non-traditional. There was one which was white-sauce with onions and steak. Another which was a vegetarian "monster" pizza, and some other odd-balls. I've still got one of their menu's taped up on one of my kitchen cupboard doors. Henry's Off Broadway One of the things I liked here, was that they had a great bar which (as I recall) served some pretty good drinks. Also, when seated at the bar you got a good show from the saute station. Davil's I think I spelled this wrong... oh well... It was a French Restaurant up by Seattle Central Community College, which I thought was absolutely fabulous. One of the things I distinctly remember was that they almost always had Escargot on the menu, but I don't think I ever saw it served in the traditional garlic/butter sauce. Instead they had a variety of other exceedingly yummy sauces that they would use. Glendenning's North Aurora, near the Doce's Antique Mall, it's now some little sports bar. This was what I refer to as a "gourmet shor-order" restaurant. One of those somewhat standard "breakfast diners", but almost everything on the menu was just a "notch up" from what you might expect, and very well done... unfortunately Jerry Glendenning (the owner) apparently ran into some tax problems and such, and they shut it down. More recently... Stars At the top of Pacific Place shopping mall in downtown Seattle. I'm not sure if I ever actually ate in the restaurant proper, but I hung out at the bar A LOT. It was fabulous, with a great selection of well crafted drinks, and bartenders who honestly appeared to be interested in making their drinks right. I still keep in touch with several of the bartenders I got to know from here. Hop Scotch A wonderful little resturant up on 15th, which had a fabulous selection of Scotches. They unfortunately ran into some "partner" problems, which ended up taking the business down. Cassis :-< :-< ... Nuff Said. And I'm sure there have been others if I take a little longer to think about it. -Robert

...and DeLaurenti down at the Pike Place market has a decent selection as well (up the stairs toward the wine section, on your left) -Robert

In our current incarnation (ie. in a temporary space inside of the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum) we don't have our library in place yet, although there are several very old books on display in the display cases.We are making progress with the arrangements for a more permanant location, where we will have more capabiliites for expanding the scope of our offerings. -Robert

I've been playing around with it for the last little bit... I -really- wanted to like this stuff, since I've been a fan of Starbucks for a long time... but I don't. By itself, it has a nice and assertive coffee flavor, which should be expected, but I feel that it just overpowers any drink you try making with it. I recently wrote about this on my enimic blog .

The comparison of Tequila to Mescal is similar as the comparison of Cognac to Brandy. Meaning... all Tequilas -are- Mescal, but all Mescals are not Tequila. Both are distilled spirit made from that Agave plant, but in order for it to be called Tequila it has to come from a very specific geographic region in Mexico, there are also some specifics about manufacturing. It is a -very- unfair generalization Mescal as "rot gut". If somebody is making some "moonshine" product from agave in their garage, it would probably qualify as "rot-gut" Mescal, but the same could be said about whiskey, brandy, rum, vodka, etc. There are many Mescals which are far finer then many Tequilas. -Robert