Cocktailians

Chilling Effects, Part II: Pusser's Revenge

I wrote a post back in August '09 about the intellectual property of booze, and the various attempts to copyright, trademark, or otherwise legally restrict cocktail recipes, names, and techniques. (That was sparked by my getting a nastygram from a company wanting me to rename my "Gingerita." I chose to call it the "Litigious Bastard" instead.) A year or so later, Chantal Martineau wrote a post for The Atlantic covering the same territory, (though it doesn't draw many distinctions between copyrights, trademarks, and patents, and has some other inaccuracies.) That article starts out by mentioning a cease-and-desist threat against the Lower East Side tiki bar Painkiller:

Shortly after the tiki-themed cocktail lounge Painkiller opened its doors on the Lower East Side of Manhattan this May, a man walked into the bar and threatened to issue a cease and desist order. Pusser's, which distills a Navy-proof rum in the British Virgin Islands, trademarked the recipe for a Painkiller cocktail back in 1989. The man claimed that Painkiller's owners, Giuseppe Gonzalez and Richard Boccato, had no right to the name of the bar or its namesake cocktail, which they like to make with rums from Martinique and Jamaica. He was promptly sent packing.

As well he should have been. As it turned out, they didn't trademark the recipe (see my earlier post for some analysis on whether that is or isn't actually doable. I don't think you actually can, and I certainly don't think it's a good idea, for reasons I outline there.) 

Pusser's has a relatively recent history, though their principal product is a recreation of high-strength blended rum issued to sailors by the Royal Navy since 1678. So what exactly did Pusser's trademark? It's hard to link to their search results, but if you go over to TESS, the US Patent and Trademark Office's electronic system, you'll see that among other results for "Painkiller" (such as trademarks for "gymnastic and sporting articles", clothing, and "entertainment and education computer game software", bicycles, and medication...all of which are trademarked by entities other than Pusser's), there are live trademarks owned by Pusser's for "advertising services" (for "National Pusser's Painkiller Day"), "restaurant and bar services", "non-alcoholic mixed fruit juices", and "alcoholic fruit drinks with fruit juices and cream of coconut and coconut juice."

Drinky Linky: Hot As Blazes Edition

It's way too hot in New York City, so cool off with a mint julep or some other concoction involving lots and lots of ice. And go read about cocktails while you do! Here's what's caught my eye on the Interwebs lately:

• Frozen cocktails just right for a New York heat wave;
• the Belmont Stakes horse race is coming up this Saturday. Have a Belmont Breeze to celebrate, and after our extensive taste-test, make it the old DaleDeGroff version;
• Friend of Cocktailians Blair Reynolds announces that his Trader Tiki line of syrups has been renamed to B.G. Reynolds. I guess my collection will become expensive collector's items! Go to his new site, Okole Maluna (or "Bottoms Up!") for deets. How cool is Blair? He has his own fez, people. And his own bitters. Clearly, not someone to trifle with;
• Check out this amazing collection of miniatures found in Albuquerque;
• Going shopping for ice-cube trays with Eben Freeman (though a memo to the Times: it's Kold-Draft, not "cold-draft." Sigh);
• Milk & Honey is apparently moving uptown, and a (horribly-named) bar named "Attaboy" will replace it;
• Time Out New York has a cocktail-themed issue out, with features on everything from cutting-edge cocktail trends to New York's 41 best cocktails to ten cheap drinks to summer cocktails to a series of bartender profiles to game-changing cocktails to another series of bartender profiles. Seriously, go check this out out -- I don't subscribe, but this one's worth visiting a newsstand for;
• Is there anything that Haus Alpenz hasn't brought us? Awesome news: they're coming out with a Swedish Punsch;
• Michael Dietsch drops knowledge on measuring and tools in Serious Eats (and please count me firmly in the pro-measuring camp);
• I will be pleased to support New York Cocktail Week next week;
• And I entered their contest;
• A food truck with a liquor license! (Seriously, I've thought that a cocktail truck would be the way to go. Stupid unsexy laws...);
• Sam Sifton tells us that the Diner's Journal official Drink of the Summer is the fizzy Dark 'n' Stormy variation the Unstrung Harp. Sounds tasty indeed;
• this is kind of off the radar of this blog in so many ways, but the sheer ballsiness in committing to a bad idea kind of won me over: pairing wines with McDonald's menu items;
• The ever-awesome Francine Cohen of Inside F&B gives us the rundown on LUPEC NYC's "Speed Rack" speed-bartending event slated for this Sunday (more here, and you can get your tickets here);
• Details listens in to top bartenders shooting the shit at Dram;
• Robert Simonson had a nice article on aperitifs and cocktails made with them in the Times;
• And a nice interview with absinthe maven Ted Breaux (Lucid, Nouvelle-Orleans, PF 1914, &c.) in Wine Enthusiast.

Two Gentlemen of Williamsburg

This absolutely killed me:

 

How many bartenders will nod knowingly, secure that it only applies to the other guys and not them?

(A tip o'the trilby to Audrey Saunders for passing this one along.)

Drinky Linky: M'Aidez Edition

It's not May flowers as much as May showers, if I look out the window at Cocktailians HQ -- remembering to move the bottles on the windowsill full of various infusions -- but it seems as good a time as any to check in.

 The winners of Saveur.com's Best Food Blogs Awards have been announced, and DrinkDogma takes the Best Cocktail Blog award. Huge congratulations to Bobby and the Anvil/DrinkDogma team for their good-looking, solidly-written, well-photographed site. I'm humbled and honored that Cocktailians was nominated, especially in such august company, and everyone that voted for us has my utmost thanks. All of my fellow nominees do quality work, and you should check them out -- Alcademics, Kaiser Penguin, Jeffrey Morgenthaler, and Cask Strength. (Shame on me; I hadn't been familiar with Cask Strength until his nomination. Andrew Bohrer's a hilarious, passionate writer, and I'm pleased to add him to the blogroll. (To my further shame: I need to update the blogroll one of these months.))

Here's what else has been catching my eye on my traipses around the interwebs of late:

• Are you familiar with "wiking"? The combination of wine-tasting and hiking is apparently big. (Next up, if I can figure out how to keep everything cold, is my company which will outfit and lead people on "walktails.")
• Jeremiah's Vanishing New York finds beauty in Sardi's and its swizzle sticks;
• More white dog/new make unaged whiskey is hitting the market! Yeah, it's trendy, but it's an interesting trend;
• Can cocktails improve your complexion? Frank Bruni investigates. (I'm glad he did and not me, as Provocateur sounds like a perfectly horrid place...part and parcel of why Team Cocktailians tends to avoid the meatpacking district.) One would think that if booze really makes one's skin better, Bompas & Parr's 2009 experiment with alcoholic gin mist would've tightened wrinkles all over SoHo;
• Does the "perfect bourbon" exist? Buffalo Trace thinks so, and is trying to narrow down exactly what that might be;
• Dean Martin's recipe for bourbon burgers;
• and to complete the bourbon trifecta, a look at bargain bourbons that are still worth drinking;
• Toby Cecchini's recipe for lime/ginger cordial looks really good. Your gimlets may thank you;
• If you're interested in synesthesia, how better to investigate the phenomenon than by visualizing the flavors of cocktails?
• I like me a Negroni, and it's always easy to talk most bartenders through one. Frank Bruni pronounces the Negroni Sbagliato at dell'Anima a drink for an imperfect world. I'm not sure I'd go that far -- gin is lovely, after all -- but it's good addition to the palette. I'd be remiss if I didn't note that Cocktailians visited dell'Anima a few years ago, and it appears that their current Negroni Sbagliato is an evolution of their earlier Roasted Orange Negroni, which went down very nicely indeed;
• Amor Y Amargo. A "bitters tasting room", run by the Bittermens folks. Interesting;
• "A swirl of gin, and just a hint of tonic." Anderson Cooper introduces his "white bread ripple";
• Derby Day wasn't long ago, and Saveur presented some variations on the classic mint julep that may be of interest as the summer unfurls;
• CitySip profiles five New York hotel bars;
• and Auntie Beeb names America's best cocktail bars;
• a primer on the Margarita;
• the Piri Pressure sounds really good;
• a lovely post on the Americano;
• "Do You Need to Think When You Drink?" Robert Simonson recaps a discussion on mixological historicism, in the Times;
• So last month I mentioned the various royal-wedding-themed drinks out there. (And I'm still getting them in the mail! Cunard's line of themed Bombay Sapphire cocktails looked good.) But apparently what the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge prefer is the "crack baby": the oh-so-PC mix of passion fruit, champagne, and vodka. But if Big Willie and Babykins' (see? The things you learn from Radar magazine...) favorite cocktail isn't frightening enough...then check out this amazing picture of Kathie Lee Gifford trying one out. (Previous actual royal cocktails include the Prince of Wales cocktail and the Queen's and her mother's well-documented love of gin and Dubonnet.) 

Ultimate Cocktail Challenge Judging

The Irish comedian Dylan Moran has a great routine about wine:

“There are two types of wine essentially, and everybody knows this. There’s the one where you drink it and go, "Mmmm, well that’s ok, can we get eight of those please, give us eight of those." There’s the other one, you know, where you go "Ga…bt…Jesus, WHAT is that?"

But with spirits, 'tain't always that easy. There are lots of different kinds of spirits, distilled from many different things, and the range of flavors is enormous. And there’s been an explosion in the spirits market lately, what with the renewed interest in cocktails: there are more vodkas, rums, gins, whiskeys, than ever. So how are you supposed to figure out what’s what? To separate the plonk from the good stuff? And would the same spirit work in very different cocktails?

To address these kinds of questions, there are various judging panels and organizations that have sprung up to rate spirits, kind of the modern equivalent of the gold medals awarded by expositions of yore – the Stolichnaya vodka and Angostura bitters bottles bear these medals proudly, for instance. And the Ultimate Beverage Challenge, which invited me to drop by their cocktail judging recently, is attempting to go one better. Not only are they identifying what they say are the best examples of various spirits – they’re trying each of the spirits in classic cocktails to see which one comes out on top. As David Wondrich told me, the same tequila might not work as well in a Paloma or a Tequila Sunrise as in a Margarita. So, it was the judges' task to taste them all. (Wondrich also noted, a touch wearily, that they'd tasted twenty Palomas so far that day -- the second of three days of judging -- and that they'd been going since 10am.)

And, this year brought another changeup: not only was the UCC evaluating spirits on their own, and spirits in various classic cocktails, but this year they also added signature cocktails: recipes that a liquor brand presented to showcase their own spirits. These were judged head-to-head on the basis of which recipes were most appealing and tasted best, but obviously they weren't going to try, say, Old Raj gin in a cocktail specifying Hendrick's.

When I walked into the judging room, the cocktail dork in me was impressed by the star caliber of the judges: the owners and managers of some of the best bars in the country were there, as well as spirits writers, beverage consultants, and other exponents of the mixological art. (DeGroff! Saunders! Sharpe! Bezuidenhout! Meehan! Tello! Hess! Wondrich! Reiner! Regan! Shine! Pacult! All of whom looked as fresh as daisies, and most of whom I'd seen not-terribly-long before at the Bulleit Rye launch the previous night!) Several tasting panels huddled around bars where bartenders turned out several identical drinks from standardized recipes. (Because it’s a double-blind competition, the bartenders were mixing from numbered carafes, not labeled bottles.)

Vote For Meeeeee!

Well, what a lovely suprise that was! I went to Vermont for a few days (reviews of maple bitters and maple liqueur TK), and return to find that Cocktailians has been named one of six finalists in the Best Cocktail Blog category of Saveur.com's Best Food Blog Awards.

It's quite an honor, and we're up against some very fine blogs, heavy hitters all: Alcademics, Cask Strength, Drink Dogma, Jeffrey Morgenthaler, and Kaiser Penguin. I hope you go and check all of them out.

However, I'd be lyin' if I didn't say that I hope you come right back and vote for Cocktailians. Voting's open till May 12, and I'd love it if we had your support. Thank you!

Drinky Linky: April Showers (Not Growers) Edition

A few things that have caught my eye of late while I've been engaged in Interwebs persusal:

• Above: a friend is using fresh chives from her garden as Bloody Mary straws. kinda brilliant!
• Yes, the royal wedding is coming up. Yes, I've gotten lots of dippy awful-sounding recipes from liquor brands sent to me. No, I'm not going to share them with you...with the exception of a couple: this one from Tanqueray's Angus Winchester and this punch from Beefeater's Dan Warner looked good;
• Jigger, please: Employees Only maestro Steve Schneider drops wisdom, though I disagree with his stance on measuring.
• How to open a wine store in 10 easy steps;
• the ice-obsessed Sasha Petraske, as well as some others, have opened an ice-services company for bars, operating out of the space next to Dutch Kills in Queens;
• also in my neck of the woods, The Beaver Bar at the Astor Room has opened up in the former commissary space at Kaufman Astoria Studios. (Can't wait to try it out; when I swung by last Sunday, they'd closed early, so I couldn't partake);
• The Awl takes a page from Michael Pollan, pleading with Americans to improve their drinking habits: "Drink alcohol. Quite a bit. Mostly bourbon.";
• Tad Carducci's recipe for Oaxacan Punch looks interesting (and bonus points to Liquor.com for using the same punchbowl I own);
• The "solid cocktails" at the late, lamented Tailor were interesting...but here's an Easter spin: Painkiller Peeps!
• Tiki Adam's home Airstream bar: WANT;
• No egg whites after 9pm? How San Francisco bars are managing high demand with drinks that take time to make;
• The Five o'Clock Cocktail Blog presents the "Mr. Smith", a Gin Buck with a splash of mint syrup and named for a personable politician who did some time;
• Green cocktails, and not in the Chartreuse sense;
• Pioneers of mixology reveal their secrets (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3);
• the Breuckelen Distilling Co. and the Brooklyn Distilling Co. (and neither should be confused with the New York Distilling Co, by the by) have settled their trademark lawsuit;
• Frank Bruni of the Times points out that the New York bartending scene has more guest stars than "Law & Order: SVU";
• Michael Dietsch, at Serious Drinks, lists his favorite five cocktail books (good solid list, though I think I might swap out Wondrich's "Imbibe!" or Beachbum Berry's "Remixed" in place of the Mr. Boston guide);
• Gaz Regan showcases "Louis' Mixed Drinks" from 1906; and
• Oooh, I need to get up to Rhody to check out this show at the RISD Museum on cocktail culture and its intersection with fashion.

Correcting The Times, or Thirty Seconds Over Google

Below is a letter I sent to the Times yesterday (with links added for annotation and clarity):

Hello,

In the article "Bar Crawling From Boutique to Boutique" by Michael Rovner on p. E9 of today's paper, there is the statement that "the Jack Rose [is] named after a friend of the owner, Jonas Hegewisch, and made with applejack, house-made grenadine and lemon juice."

This seems dubious at best, as the Jack Rose (whose recipe is given accurately; consult CocktailDB  or any quality bar manual) is a classic drink. According to drinks historian David Wondrich's book "Imbibe!", the New York Police Gazette published a reference to the drink in 1905.

From "Imbibe!":
I spent many years believing that this drink, one of only two classic applejack cocktails. . .was named after "Bald Jack" Rose, one of the yeggs involved in the notorious 1912 Becker-Rosenthal case (in which Police Lieutenant Becker eventually went to the chair -- probably wrongly -- for hiring Rose to put out a hit on gambler "Beansy" Rosenthal.) In part, this belief was wishful thinking of the kind all mixographers indulge in. Alas, the facts say different, or at least the Police Gazette does, which is not always the same thing. In this case, however, the evidence seems pretty straightforward: According to a squib the Gazette published in 1905, "Frank J. May, better known as Jack Rose, is the inventor of a very popular cocktail by that name, which has made him famous as a mixologist." This May/Rose fellow was apparently employed at Gene Sullivan's Cafe on Pavonia Avenue in Jersey City -- and indeed, it's worth noting that applejack is the state spirit of New Jersey. A less glamorous back story, to be sure, but most likely a factual one. As for Bald Jack, according to a widely reprinted newspaper squib from the end of 1912, his notoriety put such a dent in the drink's popularity that some bartenders took to calling it a "Royal Smile" instead. Perhaps.

(You can see this in Google Books.)

There's also the theory that the name simply comes from the fact that its primary ingredient is appleJACK, and that it's rose pink in color when mixed. At any rate, I doubt it's named after a friend of a menswear shop's owner; that would be Hegewischful thinking.

Other copy-editing tics: the whiskey from Tennessee is "Jack Daniel's", not "Jack Daniels" -- the original distiller was Jack Daniel, and the brand properly includes the apostrophe. Also, the John Ashe cocktail is "finished with an Islay Mist", which is unclear. Islay Mist is a blended Scotch whisky, so I'm not sure if that means that Islay Mist is misted onto the drink with an atomizer, or floated atop the drink, or something else?

Thank you for your time and attention.

All best,
Sam Meyer
http://www.cocktailians.com

The Times' cocktail coverage tends to be pretty good (see the frequent linkage from here, f'r instance), so this was a surprise to read. I know it's a quick aside in a trend piece about retailing, bu c'mon: thirty seconds with the Google or Wikipedia would've cast doubt on their subject's claims.

Drinky Linky: Happy New Year Edition

A roundup of some interesting things that have caught my eye around the Interwebs lately:

• Robert Simonson covers the aged-cocktail trend in the New York Times (my encounter with Jeffrey Morgenthaler's Barrel-Aged Negroni is described here);
• Simonson also limns bars devoted to the punch resurgence;
• Speaking of punch, here's another nice review of Wondrich's latest;
• Simon Ford checks out the Portland cocktail scene (previously covered by yours truly here, here, here, and here);
• A friend of Cocktailians opened a distillery in Eugene;
• and another good friend of Cocktailians started the Five o'Clock Cocktail Blog;
• It's not just Oregon: the Times looks at craft distilling's rise in the Northeast;
• NPR covers microdistilling;
• and so does Grub Street, noting the arrival of Brooklyn bourbon;
• and there's the Great Brooklyn Gin Battle as well;
• Paul Clarke looks back on 2010 in spirits and cocktails;
• Darcy O'Neil predicts what 2011 will look like;
• and the Village Voice lists their 10 Best Cocktails of 2010;
• and Derek Brown lays out his Top 5 Cocktail Experiences of 2010 (and resolves to drink more in 2011);
• more listicles! USA Today lists 10 great classic American cocktail lounges;
• the Times checks out mixology apps (in my meager experience, a lot of these aren't terribly sound, overly focus on weird shots with "funny" names, or don't have some necessary ingredients. Best I've seen is Cocktails+, based on CocktailDB, but I'm not sure it's still available. I'd dearly love an Android port of that one);
• While I do not brook the dissing of Charles H. Baker and his Gentleman's Companion, I liked this list of good cocktail books;
• London's Experimental Cocktail Club looks interesting;
• Eatocracy talks to LeNell about what (and who) she's learned to love;
• and here's a nice interview with Jim Meehan;
• did you know that if you don't hire a bartender for your party, you're just a loser? At least to d-bags?
• and Jason Wilson responds to the above story, to great effect;
• Chocolate-rum mousse!
• Fernet on tap!
• The Harvey Wallflower? The Old Milwaukee Thermidor? The Crest Mint Julep? Must be New Year's resolution-themed craptails;
• also in the Bad Idea Digest: TGI Friday's wants to make bartending an Olympic sport;
• if you really want a virgin New Year's Eve, here you go;
• and if you've lasted this long, both on the post and with the blog, thank you! Cocktailians turns three years old tomorrow, and we appreciate your eyeballs, your comments, and your presence. See you next year!

Noggin' It

You really should go over to Eatocracy and check out this post I wrote on eggnog and some variations thereof. (Included: Jeffrey Morgenthaler's eggnog recipe, my mother's favorite eggnog recipe, and my grandmother's recipe for Southern Boiled Custard. All yummy.)