Dave Arnold's Postulate of Classic Cocktails

[Chris Hennes]

Over on the Cooking Issues blog this morning, Dave Arnold has the second part of his series on cocktail science. In it, he puts the following forward:

My postulate of classic cocktails: classic drinks are those that maintain deliciousness over a wide range of temperatures and dilutions – they can withstand bartender abuse and interpretation, and they don’t wither in front of a lazy drinker chatting up their date.

So he seems to be saying that what makes a drink succeed as a classic cocktail is that even if you order it in a crappy bar, it will still be edible. Having had a few horrific Manhattans, I'm not sure I can agree with this: what are your thoughts on the matter?

[Chris Amirault]

I think what he means is that -- accounting for quality preparation up to the point of service -- recipes for the "classics" are particularly calibrated to support a wide range of temperature variation without going out of whack like his gin n tonic shot. A good Manhattan, for example, is tasty from around 28F up to room temperature and within a pretty wide dilution range, at least in my mouth, but it has to be well executed to begin with.

Not sure if that works with all the classics, though. A warm Martini goes into my sink, for example.

[eje]

You're sort of taking him out of context.

In the article he talked about a drink of his that was only palatable in a very narrow range of temperature with a ridiculously futzy preparation.

I believe he is postulating a sort of "evolutionary" model for "classic" cocktails.

If a cocktail isn't successful or enjoyable in a variety of settings with variable preparations, it won't survive as a "classic".

[Kohai]

Erik, that was my understanding too. A few days ago I read the OP, started penning an impassioned counterargument, and then decided to actually read the source blog before posting it. Glad I did. He's not necessarily saying that unskilled hacks lean on the classics because they're easy - he's just saying that some drinks are extremely sensitive to temperature and dilution and require careful timing or they will be ruined.

I suspect that the category of drinks that are as finicky as his gin and tonic - which is a pretty involved creation, technically speaking - is a very small category, and is actually the exception rather than the rule. It's also worth noting that while the prep for the drink requires a great deal of special equipment (redistilling gin) and technical ability (clarifying juices) that are above and beyond what people expect from their bartenders, the actual drink itself was simply served from a bottle. Anyone could do that - the question is whether the drinker shoots it quickly enough. This example seems to speak more to temperature of cocktails than dilution.

As far as his postulate addresses dilution - I feel that the ability to accurately gauge the dilution of a drink and strain at the right time will make the difference between an OK cocktail and a spectacular one. A classic cocktail might be "forgiving" of a certain margin of error in dilution, but I think there's no mistaking when someone has just nailed it.