So, I started this blog in 2009, as a way to…Spread the love and appreciation of Mixology to our students.
This tumblr was such a wonderful experience of pure joy, there was no profit motive, or even expectation that anyone would read it. I still remember getting an e-mail from the folks at Bulldog Gin saying they loved my Gin Punch piece and it’s posts like that that inspire them to make such a high quality product.
And over the last few months, more and more of my attention has been on our new website, www.MixologyWine.com (there’s an integrated blog on the site, where the best posts of this blog are going), and writing our new book.
So I wanted to put this blog to rest.
Ori @ Mixology Wine
(Pisco at Cuba, note the traditional three drops of bitters on the froth)
About six months ago, you could walk into Cuba Libre, and order a Pisco Sour and ask if they used egg whites, and they’d look at you like you had three arms. I know this, because I did it before relenting and writing about their Mojito…
Using egg whites in drinks is a Mixology mainstay, a practice dating back over a hundred years. But it still weirds people out. On July 22nd, when the city was so hot the only way to combat it was with congener light sleek house rum, fresh mint, and lime, I met up with a friend at Cuba.
As I was about to order another Mojito, I noticed that the menu at Cuba actually had Pisco sours made with egg whites. Now, to give you guys a little history:
Mojito Marketing:
When our old head instructor, Luis Bermudez, was at the helm of Cuba through most of the 90s, there was always a sense that things wouldn’t last. It was like a theme park with alcohol, and eventually, like so many other Old City bars of the moment. It was assumed that Philadelphians would tire of Mojitos and Cuban colors and flavors. But they didn’t, and now Cuba is here to stay. It’s the same story with the Mojito, it started as a fad, and then…Didn’t stop.
Fads make restaurant managers, PR Firms, and Marketing people nervous. They don’t know when the fad will end, so it’s best to start a new fad. The drink that has been waiting in the wings for the last 7-8 years as a contender for the Mojito’s crown is the Pisco Sour.
Pisco has a really bizarre history. The king of Spain banned wine in the 1600s, and the colonists in Chile and Peru (Pisco is generally considered to be Peruvian, but don’t get into arguments with Chileans about it…) had to get a little creative with the grape. They created a uniquely clear unaged brandy.
Fast forward a few years to the Morris Bar in Lima, Peru (hence the Peruvian’s claim to fame), where a guy from Berkeley California adapted the Pisco Sour from the traditional Whiskey Sour.
The Whiskey Sour has the classic formula of
1 Part Sweet (Simple Syrup)
1 Part Sour (Lemon Juice/Lime in the Tropics)
2 Parts Strong (Spirit)
To this golden proportional mean, Pisco was introduced, but egg whites were added, which gives the drink a beautiful thick foam on top. That’s the most important thing to realize about egg whites.
THEY. DON’T. CHANGE. THE. FLAVOR.
So you can relax, intrepid drinker, they just make the drink frothier, and put a little dose of protein in it. In July/August heat, that’s a blessing.
On top of said cocktail three little drops of bitters serve as the traditional garnish.
The next blog post will talk about how to introduce egg whites into your bar without freaking out your bar manager (cost!), your customers (eeew!), or your guests (wha..)
(Brennen, the impossibly nice Barman who comped us a “mistake” Mango Mojito before he even knew I was blogging..;)
NOTE TO READERS: Yes, the blog has been neglected recently (we’re writing a book! Doncha know?), but expect all that to be rectified in the future)
Hey guys, we started doing a monthly column for South Jersey Magazine, and we share the unabridged recipes with you guys because…we can =)
(Image Credit: DrMixologist.com)
Spring is here! Here’s a variant of one of the most simple and easy brunch drinks to make, the Champagne Cocktail.
It’s simply sugar, and bitters, muddled together and filled with champagne.
This version is inspired by fresh blackberries, that are just coming into season. The sugar and the bitters combine to make a tart base, like fresh jam, and then we’re adding some delicious elderflower liqueur, and balancing out the sweetness with fresh lemon juice.
Enjoy!
Blackberry Jam
Spoonful of Sugar, Dash of Angostura Bitters
Muddle these with the back of a wooden spoon or a muddler in the bottom of the glass. Bonus points if you can get a sugar cube, but wholly unnecessary.
1 oz. Chambord
1 oz. St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur
1/2 oz. Lemon Juice
Then
Top with Champagne (we suggest Veuve Cliquot at Mixology Wine)
Blackberry Garnish
Your only right is to the action, and never to its results. You may never act for the sake of the results; but neither may you ever become attracted to deciding not to act.-
Bhagavad Gita 11.47
It’s Tuesday morning in New York. It’s beautiful, the sun is shining, and I don’t have any “work” to do besides attending a Mixology Seminar, which is as close to Disneyland-without-lines for me as life gets. Thing is, I can barely move. I’m coming down from three days of intense yoga with master teacher Simon Park. I’m pretty new to Yoga, and my friends are still a little weirded out by how intense I’ve been about it. I was asked what it’s like to do three hours or more of yoga without stopping. I never really know how to answer that. The truth is that things just start to fade after a while. Poses blend into one another. Your shoulders burn, your legs burn, you sweat, you go through moments of caring and not caring. You try things, you succeed, you fail, you fail a little better. It’s a grind, repetition and basics, but it’s also an adventure. And sometimes, something breaks through. There’s an opening somewhere, a crack in the carefully laid foundation, and suddenly you can do something, or feel something you couldn’t before.
And at that moment, it’s like flying. It doesn’t last, and you can’t control when it happens. But that moment, that feeling, makes it all worth it. And then you come down. The pain sets in, the soreness. Particularly after a hard yoga session. I have a routine to offset it. Eat to bursting as soon as possible, lots of veggies and protein, take some whiskey for the pleasure and pain of it (all those civil war doctors were on to something), sleep 10 hours, and get ready for the next day. It helps, but intense yoga for three days takes its toll. I brought my yoga mat with me last night, and almost eked out a practice session, before collapsing into bed.
That’s it. No more yoga today. Today is about drinking.
Your most important job as a bartender is to think about how you can make a cocktail that the guest will think is great. Never forget this. This is fundamental if you want to master the way of the cocktail.” -
Kazuo Ueda, Cocktail Techniques
We’re late, but the staff at the W is effortlessly accommodating. It’s difficult to be self conscious at a gathering of Mixologists, because we have such a bizarre style, rockstar convention would be closer to the truth. White jackets and immaculate fingernails, tattoos and handlebar moustaches, skinny ties and dress shirts that fade into worn denim and chains. And yet, the prevailing attitude is one of serious politeness. Truth is, we’re not really rockstars, we have the look, but not the swagger.
Presiding over this merry band is Sir Gary Regan-or Gaz-dressed in a faded Indian kurta, of all things. Regan is the Willie Nelson of the cocktail world, he’s seen it all, his dad owned three pubs, he cut his teeth in New York, his “Joy of Mixology” is a key seminal work on the subject, and he travels around sharing his love for drinking, and making friends. He runs a free newsletter from ardent spirits. He swears like a pirate, and smiles like a saint. In response to the frequent praise, acknowledgements, and thank yous that flow in his direction, he smiles shyly and his hands form the anjali mudra.
Some of the best Mixologists in New York are gathered together, we straighten our spines, align the pranic flow of our chakras, and try to keep up as Regan leads us through a guided meditation.
“So. Hum”
He tells us.
“It means I am that.”
I tried to escape yoga today. As Gaz would say, not fucking likely.
Gary Regan on Mindfulness Bartending, three practices to immediately boost your effectiveness:
- Show up early- Regan started bartending in England at a very young age, but when he moved to New York and started bartending in his early 20s, he was extremely intimidated by the crowd, the caliber of the bar, and the drinks. One of the things he would do is show up early, and just be at the bar. He would polish the glassware, he would talk to the rest of the staff. What he didn’t realize at the time, but became clear to him later, was that he was actually meditating, preparing himself for the chaos and bustle of the day.
- Talk to someone invisible- In any social setting, there are the people we notice immediately. The attractive, powerful, talkative ones. Go to any bar in the world, and look at most people, they are constantly scanning the room for someone “worth” talking to. All the while, the busboy flits back and forth between the tables, invisible and unacknowledged. Talk to him. Ask him his name and how he is, where he goes to school.
- Ask “how you’re doing?” And actually mean it, with eye contact, and wait for a response- This last one was huge with me. The attitude of “How are you” being the same as “Hi” is so pervasive in our culture that when I was a runner, cyclists would pass me going the other way on the Schuylkill loop, and say “How are you?” It was insane, by the time I heard them, they were already gone. Most of us do this without even thinking, we gloss over communication with each other. Instead, ask someone, and really listen to what they have to say.
Teach this triple truth to all: A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity.-
Buddha
The guy above is Dushan Zaric. Master bartender at the helm of Employees Only and Macao Trading Company. He’s also a yoga teacher. Yeah. He was presenting with Aisha Sharp of Contemporary Cocktails.
In line with Regan’s talk, Dushan and Aisha presented a program called The Mastery of Service. The gist of it was that as people, and as bartenders, we have to put up with a lot of shit. Unruly guests, impossible drink orders, know-it-all servers, guys hitting on the boss’ girlfriend, the list goes on and on. Or does it?
What followed was a cocktail of Eastern Thought, Neuro Linguisting Programming, Mindfulness Meditation, and Jungian principles about the nature of reality. The gist was not simply to react, but to observe yourself as you react. One of the tenets of NLP is that there are no unresourceful people, only unresourceful mental states, and that we all make what we feel is the best choice available to us at the time, according to our perceptions and interpretations of the world around us.
They also said something really interesting, that the best bartender has three sides, perfectly balanced:
- The Mixologist- This is the technical aspect of our profession. The walking drink encyclopedia. The whiskey repository, the citrus maven, and the shaking virtuoso. This is the easiest to develop, and the easiest to see. It is the “gross body,” the surface layer. Technical skill is incredibly important, but ultimately, every bartender knows that nobody goes out just to get a great drink at a restaurant. There is something they’re chasing, a feeling, or a dream that they have. The Mixologist, the technical layer, is an excuse for them to go there. A yoga class to get a tighter ass or better abs is the same, it’s our excuse, what we’re chasing is possibility, a feeling, a dream. And so from the Mixologist we move onto the more subtle aspect of…
- The Sage- The sage is the part of us that is always there, that knows the impermanence of things, that pierces the veil of reality, that is not fooled. The sage is the opening inside us that occurs when we relinquish judgement and start to see things around us as they really are. When people are open to you, when your jaw is relaxed, when your gaze is steady and soft, when insults and the inevitable stresses of work seem to pass through you like you’re a ghost, you are accessing the sage aspect of your personality. The sage is what allows you to be all things to all people, while still remaining yourself. It is detachment, it is permanence, it is peace. Sourced in this peace is the third aspect of…
- The Rockstar- Neil Strauss, pickup artist and writer of “The Game,” says that when you are engaged with a group of people, you must have a level of energy that is equal to or greater than theirs or they will slowly lose interest in you and the conversation. Because the bartender deals in dreams, because she engages people, she must be a rockstar. This is the aspect of your personality that embodies the possibility of the ultimate experience of the present moment. How hard can you laugh? How sexy can you be? How confident can you be? When the eyes of others are drawn to you, when the members of the opposite sex lick their lips and play with their hair, when you move fluidly from service to conversation to action, you are accessing the rockstar aspect of your personality.
If one of these is out of alignment with the others, it shows. Standoffish bartenders who endlessly stir mechanically perfect drinks without eye contact. Disconnected aloof guys who yawn like they’d rather be at home reading ascetic philosophy than out with their fellow human beings. Girls who push their breasts forward while smiling plastic smiles and improperly shaking martinis.
Balance. Balance is the key.
Aren’t you sick of these quotes already? Be honest.-
Me
It is an unfortunate fact that as soon as a universal truth is realized, it is the nature of the ego to re-read, dissect, analyze, and organize it. It is the nature of the ego to slowly and gently beat truth to death until all that’s left are the words. And then we take the words, and form heuristics, or mental shortcuts, because who wants to remember all the words, really? We can always google them again. The first half hour I was riveted. But after two hours of talking about enlightenment, spirituality, and equanimity behind the bar, my eyes started to glaze over. I started to source all of the literature we were reading: That’s from Tony Robbins, that’s Tao Te Ching, that’s classic NLP anchoring. I started to look around the room, I started to doodle, I started to feel smug. This stuff is cake, I know all this.
If only there was a way, in both Bartending and Yoga, to cut through what my friend and former Tony Robbins trainer Ralf calls “The Higher Ego.” Fortunately, there is:
The Practice.
On the table in front of me are a handful of nondescript glasses with a sheet of paper marked “Do not touch.” I figured it was some kind of locally sourced organic potato vodka tasting for the table, and quickly wrote it off. I was wrong.
They gave a command for the people on the aisle (shit, that’s me) to mix the ingredients together in the shaker provided, and to pour it out into a glass. A Negroni is a hard drink to mess up, especially with the ingredients pre-measured:
1 ¼ oz. Plymouth Gin
1 ¼ oz. Campari
1 ¼ oz. Sweet Vermouth
I reach down and try to pry a bar spoon from our complementary bar kit, only to be admonished by a Barsmarts rep who tells me just to slosh the ingredients around. This annoys me. I slosh the ingredients around anyway because I’m quietly terrified of looking stupid in front of my immensely qualified peers, a handful of which have volunteered to taste the finished product.
I hand mine over, and it passes inspection. I feel silly for being nervous. All the drinks taste the same, of course they would, we used the same ingredients.
The second command comes. In front of us, we have another set of identical pre-measured ingredients, and the same tools to mix them. But the instruction is different:
“Make the drink for the person you love the most in the world.”
Fortunately, my mom is right next to me. I don’t feel particularly loving, because we were fighting that morning about something, but I give it a go anyway. I take the ingredients, and maybe slosh an extra few times, maybe put a little extra care into it, but otherwise, I’m inclined to believe it’s bullshit.
We taste the drinks. I taste the difference right away, but pretend I don’t.
The drink is passed round the table. The second one tastes smoother, lighter, gentler. It shouldn’t be possible. It shouldn’t be true. But it is. Words are one thing, practice is another.
At the end of the exercise, Dushan tells us to have a way of accessing that state, that loving meditative state. He uses a marble that he keeps in his pocket. A tray of marbles is passed around. I take the striped orange one, in honor of the second chakra of creativity and sexuality, and my yoga studio, Dhyana Yoga.
I still have it. Congratulations Aisha, Dushan, and Gary. I’m a believer.
Cheers.
So imagine you’re there, with your bottle of Macallan 30, and it’s the end of a perfect day. You get your favorite glass out, maybe it’s a brandy snifter, maybe it’s crystal, maybe something personal, and you pour yourself a gentle dram (an amount that corresponds to how you generous you feel) of the good spirit.
Aaaaahhhhhh
But, you wish your Scotch, though perfect, yes, was on a little bit of ice.
As you sit there, with your (alas hypothetical) $1200 bottle of Scotch, and you realize, that it would be a shame to take the ice from your fridge and just drop some in.
What should you do? Here are the three commandments to drinking Scotch on the rocks:
- The ice shouldn’t melt. Well, maybe a little, but not much, the goal is to take away part of the sting of the alcohol, and to infuse it with just a touch of pure water, to bring out its flavor.
- The Scotch shouldn’t be ice water cold, it should be only slightly chilled. The purpose of chilling the scotch is to lightly cool it, and take away part of the sting of the alcohol. If it’s too cold, it will numb your taste buds!
- The water used for the ice should be either as pure, or as tasteless as possible. That means high quality bottled water (Fiji, which supercools better than any other water), or distilled water (preferred because it’s completely tasteless) should be used to make ice.
How should we accomplish all of this?
Option one, the high roller:
If you are willing to buy one, the Macallan machine will make a perfect circular ball of ice every time. This was inspired by legions of poor Japanese apprentice bartenders who are taught to cut circular balls of ice for months before they are allowed to get behind the stick. Now we have a machine that does this!
Option 2, a great bar:
This is my glass at village whiskey, where they do this sort of thing automatically. Note the dense, hand cut ice that melts VERY slowly.
Option 3, Whiskey Stones:
The easiest way to chill Scotch at home is with these stones. I mean, sometimes I do geek out enough to buy distilled water or Fiji, make a tray of ice cubes, and seal it off from the rest of the freezer. But usually, I’m lazy. If you’re like me, you’re going to want to keep some whiskey stones on hand. Keep ‘em in the freezer, and break them out when you’re ready to drink!
So I found out today, that Elizabeth Gilbert, who wrote Eat, Pray Love, wrote another little article for GQ, and they made that little article into a movie called Coyote Ugly.
It might be the best thing I’ve read all week. And that’s saying something. I read a lot of comic books.
Here’s the link.
This is article I wrote for South Jersey Magazine. Because of space considerations, they weren’t able to publish the whole thing. On the internet, where we laugh at such things and don’t worry about Perfume ads crowding text space, here is the whole thing =). Bonus Points if you drink this while watching Justified and wearing a Cowboy Hat.
Mixology Monthly: Whiskey Sour
WARNING: Although a sour is a very common drink, most people have never had one made with fresh ingredients. After you make this drink, you will never order a drink with sour mix at a bar again. The taste and freshness of the ingredients is incredible (and cheap), that you’ll never go back. Bartender beware.
The tried and true formula for ALL sour drinks goes:
1 part sweet (simple syrup)
1 part sour (homemade lemon juice)
2 parts strong (liquor of your choice)
Easy.
Here’s the recipe for our specific drink:
3/4 oz. Brown Sugar Simple Syrup
3/4 oz. Fresh Squeezed Meyer Lemon Juice
1.5 oz. Jack Daniels
Shake and Strain into a highball glass (any glass at home works, really) filled with crushed ice.
Garnish with a flag (orange and cherry) or an orange wheel.
The Whiskey Sour is a drink that is popular both in the winter and the summer, and in March, when the weather changes, and the first warm days start peeking through the grey, the perfect drink will wake us up, refresh us, and remind us of what’s to come.
We’re using Jack Daniels because it’s cheap, it’s popular, and because it has a sweet and sour flavor profile (because of the mash that is reused from year to year). It’s absolutely perfect for this drink.
To start, we’re goign to make brown sugar simple syrup. We’re using brown sugar because it makes a rich dark syrup with a beautiful texture. We’re making the simple syrup traditionally, which means 1 part brown sugar, and one part boiling water. I like to get mine as thick and syrupy as I possibly can. You can make it in a sauce pan, but I just take a pyrex cup and boil water, and drop it right on the sugar. If you have extra, it’ll keep for a couple weeks in the fridge.
And now for the secret ingredient
(Image Credit: lemontree1.com)
Meyer Lemons. The Meyer Lemon is best described as a cross between a lemon and a tangerine. They were discovered in China but in the winter they are in season in California.
Where can I get Meyer Lemons?
For the purposes of researching this article, we called five Trader Joe’s locations in PA and NJ, they stock Meyer Lemons for as long as they can get them.
We’re using Meyer Lemons because they’re sweeter than regular lemons, so they’re a perfect match for a sour.
You’ll want to use to crushed ice if you can, and then you can garnish the drink with a garnish called a flag, which is an orange tied to a cherry. My personal favorite for this garnish is an orange wheel, which complements the tangerine flavor of the lemons, and looks better. Customers won’t complain, they’re sick of maraschino cherries anyway.
Enjoy!
And now we have yet another new Rye Whiskey
This is from Bulleit, and it boasts one of the highest rye content on the mashbill (95%!!!). Why not 100% you ask? Some barley is necessary for balance as it contains enzymes that convert the grain into sugar.
A crash course on Rye/Wheat/Corn in American Whiskeys is as follows:
Bourbon has to be 51% Corn, HOWEVER, it cannot be more than 80% corn. Possibly the most important decision a Bourbon producer has to make is how to fill that 49-20 %. If wheat is used, there’s a smoother sweeter taste (Makers Mark), if rye is used, it’s a bit rougher and spicier (Jim Beam).
Rye Whiskeys, are now becoming more popular (loads of spice!). These have ranged from the smoothness of rye one, to the cheap, and excellent Wild Turkey Rye (the star of numerous hot toddies when I was feeling under the weather):
Yes, that is my dryer, don’t judge me.
(Source: iamtommyg.com)
There’s a really popular essay, making the blog rounds, called “Against Mixology,” by Sarah Deming. It’s an important essay to read for all Mixologists, because it sums up the critiques and angry customers that have challenged the movement from the beginning. Her words are in italics, and my responses are in bold.
When I walk into a SoHo gallery, I expect to be snubbed. One look at my shoe-handbag combo and even the intern knows I can’t afford the art. At an alt-rock show in Williamsburg, I am game for shame at the door. I’m not that young anymore, and all my piercings are hidden. Basically, if art is on the line, I’m okay with elitism.
She starts off polite, and self deprecating. Ok so far.
When it’s a question of sin, however—and no matter how much we dress up drinking or call it by a fancy name, it remains just that—judgment is absurd. People want their sin the way they want it. This is something every drug dealer and pornographer knows, so why can’t today’s upscale bartenders understand? To the so-called mixologists, I say: Pour up and shut up.
NOW she makes her point. Drinking can never be art. Drinking is-GASP-a SIN! Deming wants what she wants! She wants her porn without plot, her cocaine pure, and her alcohol straight. She condemns the artistry, complexity, and exclusivity of the craft cocktail world in one vicious sucker punch (the analogy is apt, she is a golden gloves champion).
Notice how she is judging and condemning drinking as sin and not art, in the same breath that she says that judging is absurd.
Should Mixologists cater to her wishes? Is drinking sin? Is the customer always right? Read on, dear reader…
The problems with mixology begin with the word itself, a clumsy cocktail of Latinate root and Greek suffix appropriated by a lunatic fringe within the bartending world. The word offends the ear and only seems acceptable after repetition. In fact, I’m sorry I’ve already used it so much; the healthy contempt you felt when you first read it is probably fading, just as an unpleasant odor will go away if you smell it long enough.
In his 1948 essay “The Vocabulary of the Drinking Chamber,” H. L. Mencken called the word “silly” and cited it as evidence of bartenders’ “meager neologistic powers.” It’s kind of sad to read this Mencken essay now. He obviously expected the word to die the quiet death it deserved, but for once in his life he was too optimistic. Not only did it survive, it bred. Modern drinking chambers resound with pretentious neologisms; if you want to learn some, just pick up an issue of Imbibe magazine. “Edible cocktail” and “solid” are two of my personal favorites, both of which mean “Jell-O shot.”
First she attacks the word “Mixology,” citing H. L. Mencken. First of all, most people I’ve spoken to are unaware that the word even existed before 2004, it seemed to gain popularity around the same time as “truthiness.”
English is not a language like Italian, where there was a concerted effort to freeze it in place around the time of say…the publication of the Divine Comedy. English is a language of passion, personality, and public acceptance. Shakespeare invented words, Melville played around with them. Do we criticize these men? No! We respond and change according to their passion (that’s what she said).
We needed a word in English to describe something. Bartender was too generic. Bar Chef sounded unwieldy and silly (“Oyster Sauce in your Bloody Mary Sir?” “No thank you good Bar Chef, I will make do with my modest Mimosa.”) Master Bartender sounded pretentious. Mixologist was just right.
But what is a “Mixologist?” Does it mean anything at all? I will attempt to explain the term as it is currently used in the industry. Bartender is used in our vernacular in the same way Cook is, to “bartend” and to “cook” are both verbs and jobs. You can’t “Chef,” and you can’t “Mixologist.”
Bartending is the brute, grunt work of making drinks, the daily grind of preparing them for consumption. Cooking is the brute, grunt work of preparing food without which any restaurant would immediately collapse. This is not to decry cooking, but to salute it. In life, we grind things out, we clean up our cat’s vomit, we clean the toilet, we make scrambled eggs, we fill out paperwork. We make Gin and Tonics. We make Fish and Chips.
Ah, but do we not also Dream? Do we not desire, for example, to make homemade Gin and Tonics. Should we not scour the shelves for the best G & T Gins (Citadelle has my vote!). Should we not research the best ways of making quinine syrup?
Anthony Bourdain famously remarked in Kitchen Confidential that Chefs are craftsmen, not artists. But it is the imagination of the chef, and the grunt work of the kitchen that makes the craft of any exceptional restaurant. Likewise, It is the Mixologist and Bartenders together that create the unique drink experiences that were unheard of ten years ago, to make the craft cocktail movement that Deming so blithely takes for granted.
Also, what’s wrong with a little art, have you seen these amazing Jello Shots?
Ah, back to the essay!
The insidious thing about words is that the act of decrying them promotes their usage. Mencken did just that: Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate gives 1948 as the first written record of the word “mixology.”
No, the insidious thing about self important English mavens is that they ignore the natural evolution of the English language. People say something, and POOF-it becomes something that people say. Even if some people don’t like it! Webster’s Collegiate is not the judge, jury, and executioner Deming would like it to be, it is a RECORDER.
If you have never encountered a mixologist in the wild, consider yourself blessed. Maybe you live in a nice college town where people still smile at each other in the streets. You patronize a clean, well-lighted place where someone called a bartender smiles, prepares your favorite beverage, and lets you drink in peace.
This picture is from the New York Times. Even in New York, the eye of the Craft Cocktail hurricane, there are places like P. J. Clarkes, and men like Doug Quinn get the respect they deserve.
Enjoy it while you can. One gray happy hour you will go to your clean, well-lighted place to find the windows boarded up, the address obscured by a skull and crossbones, and the name changed to something like The Pharmacist’s Revenge. The horrible, sinking feeling in your stomach is called “mixology.”
If you are thirsty enough, go inside. (I know it looks closed, but that’s just a trick to scare off customers.) Once your eyes adjust to the crepuscular gloom, you will be menaced by a beautiful hostess. Remain calm; you have every right to be there. Don’t let on how badly you want a drink but instead act listless and bored. This should be easy if you listen to the music being played now that the cool jukebox has been replaced by the mixologist’s iPod.
There once was a bar in Philadelphia. The bar was called Apothecary. I loved that bar. The state forced them to shorten their name to APO. They had no food menu, and they eventually went bankrupt. Thankfully, other cocktail bars sprang up to carry the torch. Craft Bartenders or Mixologists wised up, they learned marketing savvy, they learned that curious mix of old and new that appeals to their niche. They understood that customers need romance, they need a sense of exploring, of trying something unique, expensive, and hard to make. They understood the value in cutting their own ice.
I miss jukeboxes too, but I can’t think of many restaurants off the top of my head that don’t stream Pandora or the hippest employees ipod. It’s so much better that way, no commercials, and it fits the demographic of what the customers want. Oh wait, I thought of a place-Wendy’s.
You may now proceed slowly toward the bar, which is the large object in front of you made of zinc or tin, groaning beneath the weight of all the fruit infusions. Behind it stands the man whose sole purpose in life is to keep you from your drug of choice. He is probably a white male in his late twenties with a handlebar moustache, mutton chops, or pubo-Amish beard. He dresses like a member of a barbershop quartet. A frown hovers over his lips as he surveys his vast collection of bitters.
Unless it’s a woman, who takes pride in her work and makes very good money in Hollywood without wearing revealing clothing as detailed in this LA Times Article.
The worst mistake you could make at this point would be to wave around a twenty. This will offend the mixologist’s dignity. Like a cat, the mixologist must acknowledge you in his own time, if he does so at all. Don’t snap his suspenders; he bites.
That jewel-encrusted, leather-bound volume he is sliding in front of you is not The Complete Works of Shakespeare but the Seasonal Cocktail Menu. You now have two options. You can flip past the prologue about the good old days when men were men and India was a colony, and scan the list in search of something that doesn’t contain truffle foam, tarragon caviar, or housemade miso bitters. Or you can bravely close the menu and say, “This looks amazing, but I think I’ll stick with my usual.” Depending on what the usual is, be prepared for some humiliation.
If you don’t like it, don’t go. Bars like this are the exception, not the rule.
The last time my dad came to visit, shortly before he died, I took him to Smith and Mills, a tiny bar in Tribeca built of reclaimed industrial fixtures. As a city planner, Dad was sensitive to the beauty of architecture, and I thought he’d like the quality of the space.
In his broad Oklahoman accent, he ordered an Amaretto sour.
I’ll never forget the way the waiter smirked. “We don’t serve those here.”
“Why not?” Dad asked.
“The mixologist doesn’t like Amaretto.”
My father looked hurt and confused. He was probably trying to simultaneously parse the word “mixologist” and understand why it mattered whether he liked Amaretto, since it was my father who was going to drink it.
“Do you maybe want a whiskey sour, Dad?” I asked. “They’re really good here.”
He shook his head stubbornly. “How about a mojito?”
This time the waiter actually laughed. “We don’t have those this time of year.”
I forget what Dad ended up drinking. Whatever it was, the mood had been ruined. He felt like a hick, and I felt like a jerk for exposing him to such unkindness. This was an ongoing theme in our relationship. You can never make up for a childhood spent apart, and Dad and I were always out of step in each other’s world. We were always thirsty for something that wasn’t on the menu. A bar should be the kind of place that lubricates such tensions, rather than aggravating them.
Bill Cosby said the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
These bars intentionally go against the grain. Especially in New York, where they are carving a niche in the most densely competitive economic ecosystem in the world! Why did you take your father to a craft cocktail bar? It’s an intentional culture shock! Were there no other architectural marvels in Manhattan? Was P.J. Clarke’s too much of a hike?
Is there pretension in Mixology, of course there is! But why? Read on.
Maybe your “usual” is something more chic than my father’s, though, something irreproachable like a Manhattan. I assure you, a top mixologist will still find a way to put you in your place.
The frown will deepen above the Amish beard as he shaves ice off an enormous block and piles it into a cocktail shaker. He will fire off a rapid series of questions, ostensibly to tailor the drink to your taste. Don’t be fooled; every question has a very clear right and wrong answer.
“Rocks or up?”
“Up, please.”
“Perfect or sweet?”
“Um…perfect, I guess.”
“Shaken or stirred?”
“Stirred?” Good answer! It’s considered terribly un-Mixologically Correct to shake a Manhattan.
“Angostura bitters or housemade miso bitters?”
“Angostura.”
“Cherry or twist?”
“Twist?” Correct again! This particular mixologist has authored a series of scathing blog posts denouncing the cherry garnish.
“Rye or bourbon?”
“Uh…”
It’s not your fault. You are tired and thirsty and from up close that beard is really scary. You say something disastrously un-MC.
“I’ll take Maker’s Mark.”
A wave of relaxation spreads over the mixologist’s face. He strokes his ascot with a little smile. “We don’t carry industrial liquor here.”
“Industrial?”
“Any brand that has a production of over a thousand cases a year.”
“Oh.”
“In addition, most educated drinkers agree rye whiskey gives more complexity to the finished cocktail than bourbon. Since you’re obviously a little new to all this, let’s start you off with a Kentucky rye that’s been aged in Madeira cask and contains thirty percent corn…”
Try to stay perfectly still and say nothing, like an animal playing dead. Hopefully his lecture won’t last longer than twenty minutes, and you’ll get your drink at the end. It won’t be as good as your usual, because it will have way too much bitters and will cost twice as much. But you’d consume paint thinner at this point just to shut him up.
For every conversation like this, there have been 100 instances where bartenders do not know how to make a simple, traditional Martini. A point Deming herself goes on to make:
Don’t get me wrong: I’m in favor of the well-made cocktail, and I love serious bartenders who take pride in their craft. The gin martini is the official alcoholic beverage of my marriage, and the world would be a better place if every bartender knew how to make one. My husband, a touring jazz musician, drinks them wherever he goes, “very dry, stirred, with a twist.” He texts me when he is served a particularly heinous rendition, which generally happens in Minnesota. Here are the last three texts:
Plastic cup of ice, half-vermouth, half-gin, lemon wedge
(Bartender consults recipe card!) Plastic cup of ice, half-vermouth, half-gin, lemon wedge
Real martini glass! Filled to brim with room temperature gin and vermouth. Olives.
I rest my case.
The Midwest could use a little cocktail education. Still, the nice thing about sin is that it generally delivers. At the end of a hard Minnesotan day, even a cup of watery vermouth does the job.
Ah, standards you say? Education you say? Now you want the middle ground. The skill without the pretension. You want to have your cake and eat it too!
What’s missing is an understanding of how change happens, of how human nature works. Innovative people have large, highly competitive egos. These are a by product of trying to enact any form of change. When I was younger I went to Le Bec Fin for the first time. I remember how cordial and down to earth the staff is. It’s hard to think of a restaurant with higher culinary and aesthetic standards than Le Bec Fin. I was so nervous and confused with all the different polished silver utensils, I tentatively asked what to use for fish I was informed and the waiter said gently:
There’s no utensil that’s wrong once it’s in your hand.
But that’s not the whole story, Le Bec Fin is an monument driven by the obsessive Napoleonic complex of Georges Perrier. He is not an easy man to work for. The difference is that Le Bec Fin is established. The Coq au Vin we take for granted is an institution now. It is unassailable.
It wasn’t always like that. Restaurants struggle to survive, Chefs, Mixologists, and the rest of us who are really alive fight a difficult struggle to turn our dreams into day, to create and share what truly makes us happy. It takes guts not to serve vodka, to drive your clientele to the dark rums and strange infusions and high prices that allow your bar not only to survive but to thrive.
It’s not easy to convince bar owners to spend money on ginger bitters and fresh fruit infusions in a recession. It’s not easy to sell the romance of the speakeasy. But the fruits of the efforts of Mixologists have started to appear. When recognition occurs, the ego relaxes, and customer service starts to shine through. The customer service at the Franklin is infinitely better than when they began. They learned their lesson, they learned the balance. All that recognition from GQ, Zagat, and winning Best of Philly certainly didn’t hurt.
There’s a story in the Hindu Puranas about how the god Krishna’s skillful drinking saved his life. When he was just a baby, an evil demoness named Putana was sent to kill him with poisoned breastmilk. Putana assumed the form of a beautiful woman and charmed Krishna’s mother into letting her suckle the infant god. Krishna drank from Putana’s breasts, but he sucked out only the sweet milk, leaving the venom behind. She perished of her own poison.
This is such an awesome analogy I had to find a picture, here it is:
Discrimination is one of the qualities of the divine. Bartenders should drink the milk of the mixologists’ techniques and fine attention to detail. They should leave behind the venom of judgment and privilege.
The granddaddy of the New York mixology scene is Milk and Honey, which has an unlisted number famously given only to friends, family, and the famous. Newer speakeasies create the illusion of exclusivity by means of (well-publicized) hidden entrances through phone booths or dark alleyways. Anyone can get in, but the customers still feel the satisfaction of sort of belonging to the kind of club that wouldn’t accept them as a member. The “secret” door only opens for the right kind of people. I have no thirst for that. I came to New York to meet all kinds of people, not just the right ones.
In Culinary Artistry, chef Michael Romano says, “I think there’s a danger of getting too much into the idea that ‘I am an artist’… A restaurant is about nurturing, about saying, ‘Welcome to my home.’ It’s an interactive process in which you provide your guests with something they’re going to ingest, going to put in their bodies. It’s a very intimate thing, and they should have a say in it. Chefs should be flexible.”
So should we all. Drinkers should try new things, even if they aren’t “the usual.” Bartenders should honor the spirit of the public house, a place with wide-open doors.
So you want people to be nicer. I agree. You want people to be more flexible. I agree-to a point. But bars have to stand for something. Don’t order Thai food in a French Restaurant. Don’t go to a speakeasy and order a Cosmo. Things will mellow out. The renaissance is only starting. Give it a little time, and be nicer to us Mixologists.
Sarah Deming is the author of the children’s novel Iris, Messenger. She is also a Golden Gloves boxing champion.
Okay, so I read One Day, by David Nicholls six months ago, when my friend, who’s…A player, read it and decided that he wanted real love. Any book that could elicit that kind of transformation was worth a read. Ok, fine I skimmed it! Which is how I missed this awesome part, which I found thanks to Gaskella’s blog:
‘I eat out most days now. As a matter of fact, I’ve been asked if I want to review for one of the Sundays.’
‘Restaurants?’
‘Cocktail bars. Weekly column called “Barfly”, sort of man-about town thing.’
‘And you’d write it yourself?’
‘Of course I’d write it myself!,’ he said, though he had been assured that the column would be heavily ghosted.
‘What is there to say about cocktails?’
‘You’d be surprised. Cocktails are very cool now. Sort of a retro glamour thing. In fact -’ he put his mouth to the empty martini glass ‘-I’m something of a mixologist myself.’
‘Misogynist?’
‘Mixologist.’
‘I’m sorry, I thought you said “misogynist”.’
‘Ask me how to make a cocktail, any cocktail you like.’
She pressed her chin with her finger. ‘Okay, um … lager top!’
‘I’m serious , Em. It’s a real skill.’
‘What is?’
‘Mixology. People go on special courses.’
‘Maybe you should have done it for your degree.’
‘It would certainly have been more fucking useful.’
Awesome right? This is why you shouldn’t skim books. Also, eat your vegetables. Diet fads come and go. Vegetables are solid.
P.S. Yes, this will be a movie…But! It will have Anne Hathaway, and Nicholls wrote the screenplay too, so it won’t be that bad.
So it’s Valentine’s Day! And for Mixologists, it’s the day we celebrate the story of Amaretto.
Leonardo Da Vinci had a lot of students. One of the best and most famous of these was a painter by the name of Bernardino Luini. In 1525, a church of the town of Saronno commissioned Luini as their painter. The church itself was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and Luini needed a model for the Madonna.
He looked everywhere, and finally he found her. She was a young innkeeper who had just been widowed. She was beautiful and had a touch of sadness. Luini immortalized her in Saronno, and according to most versions of the legend, they became lovers.
To thank him, the poor widow was at a loss. He was a famous painter, one of the most important men of his generation. So she used brandy as a base, and steeped it in apricot pits. This was the original recipe for Amaretto. The premium Amaretto brand, DiSaronno, honors the town where the legend took place.
Although the flavor in Amaretto is almond, and it’s sweet, there is a trace of bitterness that reflects the sadness of the widow.
Here’s a good Mojito-type drink that you can make that brings the flavors to life:
Piazza Summer Love:
Muddle and Build in a Collins Glass
2 Dried Apricots, cut in half, muddled with honey ginger syrup*
1 oz. Brandy
1 oz. Disaronno
1/2 oz. Domain de Canton Ginger Liqueur
Fill with crushed iced.
Top off with Inko’s Apricot White Tea
*To make the Syrup, in a saucepan take 1 part boiling water, and one part honey. Stir until even, and then soak fresh ginger for 2 hours. Remove ginger. It’ll keep for a few weeks.
The picture on the right, Gin Lane by William Hogarth (1751), is now used extensively to characterize the Gin craze of London, an epidemic similar to crack cocaine in the 80s.
Beer Street, is much less well known and less popular, but the two are meant to be viewed together. The reason this isn’t always done is because Gin Lane is used to shock contemporary audiences, and also to convince them of the dangers of alcohol. Viewing it alongside Beer Street takes away the sting of the argument (oh wait, he’s saying Gin is bad but beer is good…)
On one side, we see the really prosperous inhabitants of Beer Street, but why are they so prosperous? It’s because they are norished by locally brewed beer. Hogarth isn’t just making a case for the lower alcohol content of beer, he’s also advocating economic policy. There are strong hints (the pawnbroker) that the success of Beer Street is also the reason for the failure of Gin Lane. England’s free market economy and decision to allow the distillation of Gin, a cheap, potent, alcohol made widely avaialable by the industrial revolution are the subjects of Hogarth’s critique. As noted by the words on the Gin Cellar:
Drunk for a penny
Dead drunk for twopence
Clean straw for nothing
It’s easy to see the two pictures as good vs. evil or beer vs. gin, but it’s not that simple. It’s more accurate to say that this is a product of an artist, and a people, coming to terms with the good and the bad effects alcohol has on our lives, resulting in so much joy and so much misery simultaneously. We see this again and again throughout alcohol history.
Mojito @ Cuba Libre
I felt like a fraud until I had my first mojito. I liked beer, wine was nice once in a while, and gin and tonics were just…swell. But nothing really moved me until that first Mojito. Wham! That’s it! That’s a drink.
Cuba Libre has built a massive corporate empire, and an iconic spot on Philly’s temperamental club scene for nearly 20 years on essentially two drinks: the Mojito and the Caipirinha.
Yeah, they’re that good.
Of the two, I like the Mojito better. Made with the (cheap) house light rum. The ingredients themselves are what make the Mojito shine, while the rum gives it just enough backbone and meaning.
It just may be my favorite drink. It might be the mint from Israel (which the menu cheekily refers to as “hierba buena”), the snap of crushed sugar cane downstairs, or the fresh lime juice, but it just does it for me.
There are flaws sure, the mint is a little too obliterated, making the drink just a tad grassy, but the bartenders at Cuba are not craftsmen, they are ruthless champions of batching and efficiency, seasoned club veterans supervised by managers in immaculate suits and secret service earpieces.
Why the machinery and security? Its simple, Cuba Libre is Disneyland for adults: Salsa, beautiful women, and nostalgic tropical throwbacks. And the Mojito is king. There are better drinks, but this one is the best.
Backhanded Punch @ Franklin
Cruzan White Rum
Creme de Cacao
Fresh Lime Juice
The best thing about this drink is how the Creme de Cacao seems to disappear into it, and how perfectly it’s balanced. Kashmiri tea is a form of chai tea made with green tea leaves, so it’s light and complex. The rum here really plays a sleek supporting role, melding with the lime juice, while the tea and Creme de Cacao work together. What we have is an incredibly smooth, complex riff on a daiquiri that works perfectly. And the warmth of the Kashmiri and Creme de Cacao makes it seasonally appropriate too.
Incredibly well done.
Sam is the head founder of Dogfish Head, a craft brewing company based in Delaware. He’s also the host of Brewmasters, a new craft beer show on the Discovery Channel, that premiered last night at 10 (it’s ok, I was watching the Eagles too).
When Sam started Dogfish Head in 95, it was tiny, he got the beer brewing bug from working at a Microbrewery in NYC. Since then, he put his English degree to good use writing books that simultaneously educate and make beer more accessible like “He Said Beer, She Said Wine.”
It’s tough to lead a movement as diaphanous and scattered as America’s craft beer, but Sam has slowly emerged to be our generations Michael Jackson. The great thing about Sam is that he has a deep respect for the history and art of brewing, he teamed up with Forensic Anthropologist Patrick McGovern to produce King Midas Touch and Chateau Jiahu, beers based on ancient recipes from digs in Turkey and China. But he’s not stuffy, marketing beers like Funk Master I.B.U. on his website.
Find out more about Caglione and his show here.
