Cocktailians

Shaking vs. Stirring Pt. II: DrinksCompanion Drops Some Science

One of the things that makes cocktailian culture so endlessly fascinating (aside from the alcohol, of course) is the sheer variety of it all; aside from the infinite number of drinks and recipes out there, there are often several different ways to make a given drink (which brands of spirits do you use, and in what proportions?) and even good-natured debates on cocktail-making techniques. 

Cases in point: the debate over at Jeffrey Morgenthaler's on straining vs. cracking, and Chico's interesting post below on shaking vs. stirring.  As I noted in the comments, I usually follow the classic rule of shaking everything with juices or other harder-to-mix ingredients, while stirring drinks that are composed solely of spirits.  And, as Jay points out, there's something in the silky texture of a stirred Martini that can't be matched by a shaken one...and the visual impact of a crystal-clear drink can't be beat either.  But, it ultimately comes down to personal preference.  (I once heard that Dr. Cocktail shakes everything, just because it's more fun that way, but I can't find any corroboration of that.)

But if you really want to get into it, check this pair of very detailed posts from DrinksCompanion:  intensive discussions of both shaking and stirring.  And yes, there are different schools of thought on how to do each of those methods:  the posts take you through the various styles of shaking (including the Japanese "hard shake"), and the American, Japanese, and European styles of stirring.  Informative... and I think I'll have to schedule a trip to Angel's Share soon to get another up-close look at the "hard shake" in action.

Shaking vs. Stirring: Brothers, Sisters, Come Together!

The Baltimore Sun chimes in on the never-ending debate on how best to mix and chill one's martini. Turns out it's as much a sizzle-versus-steak argument as it is about anything substantial in re the actual finished product.

"When I was in Tokyo, I liked the way Japanese bartenders would shake martinis," says David Myers, owner of Sona in Hollywood and Comme Ca in West Hollywood, Calif., "but Sammy [consulting bartender Sam Ross] has converted me. He says stirring blends the alcohols better. Instead of a rapid shake, which emulsifies, there's just a delicate blending."

Oh, those crazy Japanese can make anything look enticing. But you'll come back. They always come back for Sammy's special silver stirrin' spoon!

Personally, I'm not refined enough to have an opinion. (The concept of "bruising the gin" seems a bit precious, though I can certainly respect that there is a certain alchemy to the thing.) Frankly, that damned spy ruined this discussion for me, and I no longer can even muster up the spite necessary to ask for it stirred, not shaken. I trust my bartender to do what they deem to be best, and like getting a haircut, if I don't like it, I'll try something else or go somewhere else. Or I'll do it myself until I get it right, temporary uglinesses be damned.

Tell me I'm wrong, call me a cretin, I understand. If you have a preference (or even better, a reason for that preference), I'd love to hear it.

Now Here's A Civilized Approach To Self-Discipline

This method, from Academic Productivity, and used here to drive a rolling writing deadline, could (and, oh yes, should) be adapted to any pursuit that one finds less than palatable:

What I call the Martini Method is named after an anecdote I once read about the novelist Anthony Burgess (of Clockwork Orange fame). Burgess was a very productive writer, which is attributed to a system where he would force himself to write a 1000 words a day, 365 days a year. When he had completed his word count, he would relax with a dry martini, and enjoy the rest of the day with an easy conscience, and normally in bar.

The only problem with this is that on days where one is truly productive from the get-go, you may get to the pub before they open. Wait, did I say "problem?" I meant "most awesome thing."

Night and Day

I've gone out drinking with friends twice in the past couple days, and in reviewing the various evenings' carousal, what strikes me the most is the utter contrast between the two excursions.

Let's start with Saturday evening.  A friend from work was having a party at Jour et Nuit, a lounge near the Plaza Hotel.  We got there at about 8:30, and the place was filling up but not packed.  It wasn't my kind of place, really; I usually find lounges to be uncomfortable places with insipid drinks and too-loud music that prevents conversation, and this wasn't really an exception.  There were lots of "beautiful" people there, or at least people who went to great trouble and expense to appear beautiful to someone.  (My favorite was the Ann Coulter lookalike (sans La Coulter's adam's apple) with 5" heels and legs so skinny that her knees looked like an ostrich's).  And, of course, as the night progressed, there were lots of "whoo!" girls grinding in place to the music, spilling drinks, and bumping me repeatedly with their overstuffed shopping bags that they would not put down (or leave at the coatroom, evidently.)

But I digress:  this is a cocktail blog, after all:  you're wondering "How were the drinks, man?"  Fair point. 

There were three bartenders working behind the stick, and they were pretty busy even when we got there.  I eyeballed the liquor selection and the drinks that were being consumed around me -- lots of Cosmos, lychee martinis, and the like -- and decided on something relatively simple.  I ordered it like I would in a hotel bar or similar place that isn't likely to attract cocktail geeks:  "Manhattan, up, with bitters, please."

The bartender rolled his eyes.  (Bad sign.)  He then protested slightly:  "Hey, you live in Manhattan, you work in Manhattan, you drink in Manhattan...why do you want to drink a Manhattan?"

Me, not believing what I'm hearing, but nonetheless trying to keep it light:  "Well, I could order a Brooklyn or a Bronx -- those are cocktails, too!"

Bartender:  "Ewwww, I don't think I'd want to drink something called a Bronx."

Me, still trying to keep it light, but wanting my damn drink already: "Yeah, and I think the recipe for the Brooklyn is just water from Coney Island Creek, shaken and strained into a dirty glass."

The bartender laughed, and set about making my party's drink order.  I thought I saw him making a Manhattan, but he was pretty busy.  He handed me drinks for my girlfriend (a Cosmo, not bad aside from the sour mix), my friend and co-author Chico (he'd ordered a Martini, he got a glass of cold gin with three olives in it), and my friend Patty (who had asked him to make something with Bourbon that was on the sweet side -- he came up with something involving Bourbon, grenadine, sweet vermouth and sour mix that she really liked). 

No Manhattan.

I waited by the bar to catch the bartender's attention, which I did after he'd made drinks for two or three other people.  He saw me looking confused and asked if he could help me.  "I ordered a Manhattan", I said. 

"Didn't I hand it to you?" he asked. 

"Um, no, you didn't."

"Oh well, it's right there, then", pointing to the drink, which was sitting directly in front of a woman at the bar.  I explain to the bartender that ah, I thought it was hers, we all had a little bit of an awkward laugh about it, and I collected my drink.  It was one of the worst Manhattans I've ever had.  (I've literally had Manhattans in diners that were way better than this.)  I'm not sure what whiskey they were using (and I should have called one, in retrospect), but it was harsh and burny.  There was little to no vermouth, and no bitters whatsoever.  I only could finish about two-thirds of it before I fished the cherry out and decided to switch to a safer, easy-to-make highball.

But then I couldn't get the bartender's attention.  Yes, he was slammed.  But standing at the bar, looking awkwardly at the bartender for a full ten minutes, without even an acknowledgement that he's busy and would get to me soon, started to seem a bit fishy.  And, when he looked right through me a couple of times and then moved on to someone who hadn't been waiting as long?  That's downright weird.  (And bad economics:  why would a bartender want to ignore the person whose credit card anchored the tab?  Seems like he wouldn't want to upset the person that determines his tip.)

Eventually one of the other bartenders took pity on me and asked me what I wanted.  After letting her know that my tab was with the first bartender (she just asked my name and said she'd find my tab, no big deal), I switched to gin and tonics and was fine with those.

When we decided to move on, we went to Stone Rose, which was full, but huge.  The hostess told us that it'd be 10-15 minutes for a table, but that we could wait in the bar (which was busy, but not so busy that there weren't a couple stools free, with sufficient space for the rest of us to stand...and they came and got us when a table was free.)  They had a better selection of liquor visible, and one hard-working bartender who took our orders with aplomb.  (two Lillets on the rocks, two Hendrick's and tonics.)  My Hendrick's G&T was excellent, but I wasn't sure what kind of tonic they used -- it was very sweet and cloying.  The Hendrick's is big enough to make its unusual botanicals' presence known, though, and it was ultimately a successful drink, and a nice change of pace from the earlier madness.  (Going through the menu made my eyebrows shoot up, however -- $17 for Ketel One and Red Bull?  When a buck less will get you a Champagne cocktail at the Pegu Club, or $5 less will get you a non-Champagne drink there?)  We ended up getting hungry after one drink (or less-than-one for one friend, whose Lillet got snagged off the table by a busboy before she'd even finished it), and went elsewhere for burgers and Prosecco.

That was Saturday.  Last night, we went to the Pegu Club.

You Crazy, Bearded Civil War General!

As threatened earlier, cocktail guru/historian/writer David Wondrich showed up on Conan Friday night.

And because this is the twenty-first freakin' century and we live in a digital age and all that, the segment's already been uploaded to YouTube:

UPDATE:   ....and. no it's not.  It's been pulled.  (When will NBC learn that this hurts no one?  (You'd have thought the "Lazy Sunday" brouhaha some time back would have brought this to mind.)  This isn't going to make anyone not watch Conan, or not buy Wondrich's new book; if anything, it'll only heighten interest in both of them and what they're up to.)

At any rate, as Trader Tiki notes in the comments, NBC does at least have the episode on their site for viewing.  Go here, go to "Select Episode", choose "Friday January 11", and then go to Act 4.  (And hope their player doesn't crash your browser -- it nuked my Firefox session twice.)

MxMo Submission: Pêche de Resistance

Mixology Monday is a great idea, and it's something I'd been interested in participating in for a while.  And now, with this blog, I don't really have any excuse not to participate.  The topic this time around is brandy, which seems apropos for a winter month...and it's also a good spirit for my first MxMo, since (as I admitted) I don't really know a lot about it.

When I think of brandy, I think of snifters, of course, and evenings spent in front of the fire, rolling the snifter between one's fingers as one contemplates the vapors.  (Smoking jackets figure somewhat prominently in this reverie, too.)  However, my New York City apartment is equipped with neither fireplace nor snifters (nor smoking jackets), and so I decided I'd have to strike out on my own.

The quintessential brandy cocktail -- and one of my favorite cocktails ever -- would have to be the Sidecar, that heady, complex combination of Cognac, Cointreau, and lemon juice that manages to showcase each of its individual ingredients while simultaneously achieving greatness beyond the sum of its parts.  I've had some truly amazing Sidecars -- I single out the ones at Angel's Share and Pegu Club in particular -- so I was anxious to try my own take on the cocktail.

I didn't have any peach brandy in the house, but I did have a bottle of Védrenne "Les Royales de Nuits-Saint-Georges" Crème de Pêche de Vigne that my parents generously brought back from France a few years ago.  It's great stuff, with an intense peach flavor, and I thought it'd go nicely with the brandy.  And then I got to thinking (always a dangerous thing) about the poached peach with cinnamon that I'd had as a dessert in a restaurant somewhere, and I realized that the clove-cinnamon flavor of Angostura bitters might work well with the crème de pêche.  Some experimenting with the Sidecar proportions (as DrinkBoy notes, there are lots of different ways to approach it) and I came up with this:

Pêche de Resistance
(named by the inimitable Czeltic Girl)

• 2 oz. brandy
• 1 oz. crème de pêche
• 3/4 oz. lemon juice
• 2 healthy dashes Angostura bitters

Shake with ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and serve with a twist.

Depending on things like the kinds of brandy (it'd be interesting to try this with a drier Cognac, such as Hennessy) and  crème de pêche (the Vedrenne is pretty sweet and is only 18% alcohol, far less than Cointreau's 40%) you use, not to mention the acidity of the lemon juice, you may have to tinker with the proportions a bit.
 

UPDATE: The MxMo roundup is now up at SLOSHED!  Many thanks to Marleigh for organizing and hosting it all.

Long-Dead, Yet Still Bringing Pleasure

Trader Tiki offers an invaluable roundup of some old cocktail books that have passed into the public domain.  With links to full-text PDF versions, even.  What a great resource to peruse.

Not-so-incidentally, one of those books is the grandaddy of them all:  Jerry Thomas' 1862 magnum opus How To Mix Drinks: Or,The Bon-Vivant's Companion, the first bartending book ever published.  (I'd be remiss if I didn't note that the book has been available on The Art of Drink as a painstakingly transcribed online version.)

And incidentally, as every cocktail geek knows, a biography of Thomas by David Wondrich came out not too long ago.  (It looks great, but I confess that I'm a bad cocktail geek and haven't yet read it, though it is on my mammoth to-read pile.)  And a hot tip I just received from an unimpeachable source:  Wondrich will be appearing -- and making cocktails -- on NBC's "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" tomorrow (Friday) night.  I look forward to checking it out.

Corpse Reviver Coverage

Over at Oh Gosh!, Jay Hepburn explores the various Corpse Revivers.  This is fun to see, as the Corpse Reviver No. 2 is my very favorite cocktail, dating back to the first time I tasted one a couple years ago at the Pegu Club.  An excerpt from what I wrote at the time:

The best part of the evening, though, happened near the end.  The place had quieted down a bit, and we'd fallen into a conversation with the bartender about my unusual Old Fashioned.  He told us that he didn't usually muddle with an Old Fashioned, preferring to use simple syrup instead.  Then he said that he knew that we were an appreciative audience from our first order, saying "When I heard you order a Corpse Reviver, I knew you guys would be fun.  And when you knew enough to specify a Corpse Reviver No. 2, I figured you knew what you were talking about."  After we complimented him on the drinks, he went on to ask me how I liked the Corpse Reviver.  I told him that I'd never had anything like it, and that it was an incredible drink.  I said that I don't usually like anise-flavored drinks, but had decided to try something that came so highly recommended.  (And, it's only a few drops of Pernod in there anyway.) 

Our bartender locked eyes with me, grinned, and said "Don't tell anyone, but that wasn't Pernod in there.  That was the real stuff."

Wow.  No wonder the cocktail was so complex and herbal.

What a memorable evening...and we will be back as soon as our livers (and wallets) recover.

Much as it did with Dr. Cocktail (except, um, without the erudition or flair), this drink set me on the path of becoming a true cocktail enthusiast/geek/snob -- I had to get a bottle of Lillet, and couldn't believe my good fortune of being able to make these at home!  Whenever I wanted!

Off the Presses

I've been trawling through the various cocktail websites, looking for interesting ones to add to the blogroll, and just ran across Robert Simonson's Off the Presses.  A few of his posts really resonated with me, so here's some linky goodness for your Tuesday morning perusal:

• What Cocktailians Like.  Guilty as charged on most of 'em.  (They don't have to be below 14th Street, but I understand why a lot of the joints in question are.)  And the speakeasy aspect can easily slip from being a fun gimmick to an exclusive (and not in the good way), hipster attitude.  Good drinking establishments take hospitality seriously, and mean it in all senses of the world.  Life's simply too short to play snobbish games.  Which brings me to...
• The $25 Cocktail.  Simonson tastes the $25 "Staggerac" at PDT.  I'm all in favor of making fine cocktails with quality ingredients, and yeah, I'd be interested in tasting a Saz made with George T. Stagg (though I prefer my Sazeracs with rye, thanks for asking...though I am intrigued by my co-author Chuck Taggart's variation with cognac, which he's dubbed the "Royal Sazerac").  So kudos to PDT for making this available...but I just hope this doesn't have a bar-raising effect, leading to conspicuous-consumption ridiculosities such as the $25,000 sundae, the $1,000 omelet, the $10,000 martini and the $1,000 pizza;
• What's Wrong With Most Cocktail Joints?  Simonson tosses darts and laurels, finding a place that has an uncommon sense of history (yay!) but dilutes that by serving candy-bar drinks for people who don't really like to drink (boo!).

First Blush

Hi. Chico here. I just wanted to announce my presence here, if nothing else.

 

My tastes may float comfortably in the same end of the pool as Vidiot’s (gins & whiskies (& whiskys!) as starting points, fanning out to everything else from there), but he has most certainly refined them to a whole new level. I’ll be reading this blog with as much interest as you to see where this goes.

 

Insofar as I’ll be contributing to Cocktailians, it’ll probably be on a much more basic level than my highly esteemed and most excellently educated colleague. I kind of suspect his (and, at least in equal measure, Mr. Taggart’s) entries will tend toward what-to-do, while my contributions, such as they shall be, will tend more toward what-not-to-do. Misadventures, horror stories, beer goggles, anything one might drink on a dare; these are a few of the things I feel comfortable experiencing for you. Hopefully, I'll get some things right (or at least glom on to other people's successes and good times), but frankly, I know which side of my bread has the proverbial butter.

 

Starting in a couple of weeks, I’ll once again be financially solvent enough to start actively participating in the greater culture of potables, at which point I look forward to getting my education back on. Until then, I’ll be watching this space and taking notes. Just like you should.