One of my regrets, and I have many, is not writing Ted Haigh ahead of this post. You see, he’s done so many great things; helping Fee Brothers craft their falernum, solving the riddle of the origins of the Singapore Sling, and, of course, playing the role of “Bartender” in “Superbad,” and having his insight into the origin story of this drink would be enlightening. In the Whoa, Nellie! you have a set of strange bedfellows, glancing nervously at one another and wondering how they arrived in the same drink, much less the same city. And it’s worth talking about the city in which this drink resides.

The Whoa, Nellie! calls the Cafe Adelaide and Swizzle Stick Bar in New Orleans its home. It was contributed to the Swizzle Stick’s menu as a tribute to the first Mardi Gras after Hurricane Katrina and in a stupefied fit of unfit drunkenness I ordered it and it broke through my haze of disorientation and inebriation and brought the guiding light of clarity and “Damn, this is GOOD,” to my soul and I scratched out the recipe from the poor bartender’s lips as I slurred my way through understanding.

Whoa, Nellie!

• 1.25oz Rye Whiskey (Sazerac or the like)
• .75oz Dark Rum (Coruba or Myer’s)
• .75oz Cointreau
• .5oz Grapefruit juice
• .5oz Lemon juice
• .5oz Simple syrup

Shake all ingredients and double-strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Think recuperative thoughts.

As my friend Rick said upon first tasting this drink, “The first sip reminded me of the Alamagoozlum in its strangeness. The melange of ingredients produces a symphony where no one instrument is heard, yet a chorus of sound echoes in your ears.” Yes, something like that.

The Whoa, Nellie! brings the unusual pairing of Rye and Dark Rum together in a way that allows this to be more than a sour but, even with the grapefruit, less than tiki. It’s one of my favorite types of drinks, built on simple and easy-to-find ingredients but bringing with it enough complexity to be wildly interesting without being fussy and demanding voodoo-like ritualistic principles of process or construction to achieve its goals. In short, it’s divine and yet accessible. It also goes great with hearty summer dishes such as grilled sausages, grilled flat-iron steak, or barbeque. This is a drink that cries out to be put into rotation as the mercury threatens to burst out of the thermometer out your window and poison the Hydrangeas you’ve nurtured so well.

Also, if you’ll allow me, back to Ted Haigh and New Orleans. Tales of the Cocktail is next week and, with it, a gaggle of cocktailians, bartenders, and other enthusiasts descend upon the Big Easy and raid bars like the Swizzle Stick and make them their own. One of the things I look forward to most at Tales this year is the release of a new version of “Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails,” by Ted Haigh . The first edition was the second serious cocktail book I purchased, right behind “The Joy of Mixology.” Ted opened my eyes to such wonderful drinks as the Blue Moon, the Alamagoozlum, Picon Punch, the Income Tax Cocktail, the Pendennis, and many others. He also did it with a degree of grace, detail, and intrigue that made it great fun to read.

In this deluxe edition Ted brings us back to those drinks but with new insights, new sources, and with a look at how the Internet has affected and supported the burgeoning cocktail culture. If you are thinking of dipping your toe into cocktailian waters and are at a loss for a place to start, you can’t do much better than this guide. If you are a seasoned mixologist or aficionado of quality drinks and don’t yet have this on your shelf, your library is incomplete. Buy it at Tales and get it signed by Ted himself or order it on Amazon, it’s one of the good ones.

The story of Mud Puddle Books is the story of Greg Boehm. Greg was born , a poor black child into a family that published Salvatore Calabrese’s cocktail books under the Sterling Publishing label. “Each year I would go to London a few times and inevitably spend my evening sitting at his bar when he was at the Library Bar at the Lanesborough Hotel,” said Greg. “As my interest in cocktails grew, I started collecting old cocktail books. This was about 10 years ago.” Sitting across Salvatore Calabrese’s bar and learning the art and reward of fine drink would light a passion in the most stolid and steadfast of us, and, in Greg’s case, his passion took the form of locating, and collecting, one-by-one, the lost spirits and recipes for which he’d begun his exploration at the appropriately named Library Bar.

“The internet helped in tracking down these ingredients and recipes could be found for the ingredients that were not commercially available. My book collection grew steadily….When I finally gathered all the books in one place there were close to 2,000 books from 1940 and earlier. Now my collecting madness includes innumerable bottles of long discontinued booze.”

Then, something changed. Suddenly, Creme de Violette, Pimento Dram, and other long-forgotten cocktail ingredients, so many of which are required to faithfully reproduce the recipes in the vintage tomes Greg had assembled, began appearing on the market. And, likewise, a burgeoning community of cocktail enthusiasts were publishing, and promoting, recipes for lost liqueurs and spirits on the Internet and in mainstream magazines such as Imbibe. And Greg was sitting on an accidental Alexandrian Library of the Cocktailian Arts. “In other words, the books were now a living history and part of the cocktail renaissance that was in full force. And, once I decided to republish the books, they had to be as accurate as possible.”

But, how would the purists, the collectors who had been using out-of-print cocktail books as a commodity for trading as collector’s items, and the general reader receive these reprints? Fortunately, because these are not mere “reprints” but faithful reproductions of the original works, down to the paper’s weight, the book’s binding, the typeface, the embossing and imprints, and the dimensions, they have been widely welcomed. “The cocktailian community has been incredibly supportive of Mud Puddle’s cocktail book publishing program,” confides Greg with a mixture of pride and relief. “It has been incredible to see bartenders across the world re-creating old drinks and also creating new ones based on the old recipes form the books [and,] for the most part, cocktail book collectors are happy with the reproductions…luckily for [them], the reproductions seem to actually have increased the value of the originals. Perhaps more people are aware of the old books now.”

And so, from “Barflies and Cocktails,” a book in which Greg had to find, “…a printer that was wiling to go the extra step [of using] 3-piece binding that is never used today,” to “The Modern Bartender’s Guide” which has the original “blind stamping” on the front and back Greg has brought us Mud Puddle Books’ Cocktail Kingdom. The original books to publish were selected through the best possible means imaginable, “Bartender and fellow cocktail book collector from London, Jeff Masson and I sat down with David Wondrich and Ted Haigh at the French 75 bar in New Orleans during Tales of the Cocktail to discuss what books to publish next.” This organic process of selecting and reproducing classic and vintage books has been a boon for cocktail enthusiasts interested in the first recorded recipe for Parfait Amour as well as the casual reader wanting to enter into the world of better drinking with books such as Robert Hess’ “Essential Bartender’s Guide.”

In fact, so flexible and open-ended are Greg’s pursuits for the next cocktail classic reproduction that he relates how his latest project came about in this way:

“Mud Puddle is a small company and we are all very hands-on. It would be difficult to be as flexible as we are if the company was larger. For example, while in the Mixoloseum chat room last week it was suggested that we should republish “The South American Gentleman’s Companion” by Charles Baker. And, we started working on the project the very next day. Sterling Publishing was a much larger company and while we published cocktail books, they were a tiny part of the business. “

Greg freely confesses that it’s “by some miracle” that the Cocktail kingdom endeavor has stayed afloat. I highly recommend any of the beautiful reproductions but especially Embury’s “Fine Art of Mixing Drinks“, Jerry Thomas’ classic “The Bartender’s Guide: How to Mix Drinks: A Bon Vivant’s Companion” and Charlie Paul’s “Recipes of American and Other Iced Drinks“. Between these three vintage books you will find yourself immersed in the language and history of the American Cocktail and can appreciate its history, colorful contribution to culture, and keep yourself mired in long lost flavors for as long as your heart, and your curious mind, desire. Just be sure to keep the miracle alive and start building your collection today. You won’t be sorry.

This is a reposting of my work over at The Mixoloseum’s Blog, please take a look over there and what other great work you can find.

With How’s Your Drink?, Eric Felten accomplishes no small feat, writing a cocktail/cocktail history book that walks to a different drummer and approaches cocktails and their histories a unique way. Where most cocktail books separate the history of the cocktail, cocktail recipes and their specific history (if they’re included at all), and any bar gear/bartending techniques sections and put them in chaste silos of chapters never meant to meet or marry, How’s Your Drink? traipses through the history of the cocktail and weaves the recipes in-line with the narrative of the history of the cocktail and often, more specifically, historical events or famous or intriguing characters.

See, above all, this is a literate book. Felten spends what, at first glance, appears to be an inordinate amount of time discoursing on oil speculation in North Dakota, salacious gossip rags in Colonial America, or pilgrimage practices of Native American tribes of New Mexico leaving the reader to wonder, ‘Exactly where are we going here?’, only to turn the page and find a recipe bringing the narrative to a point where cocktail intersects history and culture and provides a rich feel for the context in which the cocktail came to be, and often, who enjoyed it and why. This is where Felten’s jazz influence comes into play. The sections between recipes often feel meandering and loose and finally hit a strong rim-shot where a recipe is sprung on the reader and, more often than not, the reader finding the idea of having that drink right away extremely appealing. For example, in discussing the Negroni, Felten includes not only how the drink originated with Count Negroni in Florence but what its significant role in everything from Tennessee Williams’ The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone to Nick Naylor’s film Thank You for Smoking has been and further illustrating how both demonstrate the Negroni’s “touch of corruption”.

The only complaints I have against the book are that the Jazz riffing tone of literary and historical subjects and their intercession with various cocktails sometimes leaves the transitions falling flat or feeling awkward and tacked-on, and that it would be very difficult to use as bartending guide given how the recipes are interspersed throughout. And, while being a bartending guide is not its primary intent, even having a final section that compiles all of the drinks into one area for reference would increase its value, especially since there are so many worthy ones here. The index will serve this, I know, but sometimes I just want to flip through a list and see what strikes me and I won’t be able to easily turn to for this or that purpose.

All in all, while Grimes’ Straight Up or On The Rocks works the intellectual side of cocktails as a sociological phenomena, Felten uses his Jazz training and improvisational ear to work a literate and historical perspective to mixed drinks that strikes a perfect note between education and enjoyment. It’s a perfect counter-point to Grimes. I suggest owning both as between the two you will have a very thorough and enjoyable understanding of mixed drinks, how they came to be, and why they are such a fine idea. Also, you’ll be inspired to try a few new things, put on a classic jazz album, or put on a tux and dance, and that’s never a bad thing. It’s a great small gift or stocking-stuffer for the cocktail enthusiast in your life and you can click here to pre-order, and I suggest you do.

How’s Your Drink Rating:

I’ll give it to you straight up, I love this book. Specifically, I love that it treats the cocktail as a Big Idea™. And more than that, a big American idea. You see, one of the things I didn’t realize until studying cocktails, well, more studiously was that, as a general rule, the rest of the world doesn’t quite get the big deal about, or the spirit behind, cocktails (there are many notable exceptions to this, of course). William Grimes captures that phenomena, and explains it, brilliantly in this book. For example, from the prologue:

“For most of the world, America is the great entertainment factory…In the Declaration of Independence they [the colonists] enshrined, along with life and liberty, the inalienable right to pursue happiness. But happiness is hard. Happiness takes work. Even worse, happiness is a long shot. So, America settled for fun, perfected it, and sold it to an eager world…the seductive sound of ice chattering in a cocktail shaker – this is a tangible, consumable expression of the lofty principles in the Declaration of Independence, the free culture of a free people.” Read More »

With Alcoholica Esoterica Ian Lendler has assembled a dizzying and fascinating array of facts and tidbits from the early and present history of drinking, spirits, and cocktails. From the first page’s warning to the reader about becoming Cliff Clavin to the last page enumerating the definitions and etymologies of ‘tumbler’ and the phrase ‘wet your whistle’, the book is a page-turner for anyone remotely interested in the history, character, humor, and humanity involved in the pursuit of drinking and drinking well.

The book covers a very broad set of subjects touching not only on the technical aspects and history of alcohol production and advances in their various forms but also in the social and personal implications these advances had. Every major category of spirit, liqueur, booze, hooch, and temperance movement is covered with at least a smattering of attention; often with humorous results. For example, when discussing ‘dandy facts’ about champagne, Lendler notes:

“After defeating Napoleon, the British banished him to the island of St. Helena. To further the punishment, Napoleon was allowed only one bottle of champagne per day.  This was clearly too barbarous for English nobleman Sir Walter Scott, who protested that it was cruel to deny the fallen Frenchman the “solace of intoxication.”"

It seems in this book there’s an interesting gem such as that on every other page and the pages in between are informative and illuminating in how alcohol is manufactured and its impact throughout history.

I have only two minor complaints with this book which are that the flow between topics is sometimes very shaky and awkward which makes the book feel less a whole than a compendium of slapped-together factoids, and that the first-half of the book seems to be more fleshed-out and even-keeled than subjects in the latter-half. The segments on beer and wine at the beginning feel much more thoroughly researched and hefty than, for example, those on liqueur and cocktails; topics which I feel there is plenty of subject-matter, resources, and interest in to warrant more attention and depth.

However, it’s a fine addition to just about any cocktailian’s library as I’m almost certain at least a large part of the information within is not contained in other sources necessarily at your disposal. And while the content sometimes feels and smacks of something less than academic and indubitable in its research, if you’re that worried about that and it’s ruining your fun, then you should really go and have another drink. Clicking under ‘Drinkage’ to your left should get you well on your way.

Alcoholica Esoterica Rating:

This book surprised me. It was with a pretty skeptical eye that I picked this up while browsing the wine/cocktail/spirits section of the bookstore as I usually do when I visit. I fully expected, since the 'Field Guide to…' series of books is just that, a series, and these types of things tend to be shoddily put together, quickly assembled, and assembled at the lowest possible cost. Now, I love a good Field Guide (my wife's 'Field Guide to Bacteria' is endlessly fascinating) but there's something that smacks of gimmick to applying the concept to all sorts of home economics-style subjects (Meat, Stains, Seafood, Herbs & Spices, etc.). I couldn't have been more wrong.

Rob Chirico does an excellent job of first acknowledging the luminaries of the cocktailian craft that assisted him in his research (primarily Dale DeGroff and Gary Regan) and the bibliography reads like a Who's Who of what books you should have on your shelf if you're serious about studying classic, vintage, or new classic cocktails that honor their culinary and artistic history and nature. So, that out of the way, I delved in and was immediately impressed by two things; how entertaining the book was while being educational (and accurate) about the cocktails' origins and histories, and how he included (in true Field Guide form) information such as flavor affinities (food pairing options), graphic icons beside each cocktail's subcategory for quick reference, and 'Areas and Times of Occurrence' (i.e. when you're likely to 'spot' a particular cocktail). Fantastic! Read More »

This is a very attractive and durable guide printed on quality stock that my wife picked up for me in the ‘Bargain Books’ section of a chain bookstore last year. Now, I don’t know Stuart Walton’s name from Adam but one of the first things you notice is the quality of the layout and design and the amount of color used throughout the book; the production values are very good. The first section is quite large (93 pages) and gives very good information on spirits, liqueurs and alcoholic beverages throughout the world. You can immediately tell that there is a more international tone and breadth to the book than most guides because the recipes are given in ‘measures’ (parts vs. oz or cl) and each spirit’s entry gives background on how styles vary from country-to-country. For example, I discovered Slivovitz through this guide as it has its own entry (as does Arak, Kirsch, Chartreuse, etc.), whereas in most guides it’s barely mentioned, or if it is it’s lumped in with brandies in general. Read More »

This is a collection of famously drunk (and only dead, to Norman Mailer’s apparent dismay) authors and their associated drinks. The recipes are very classic and can be trusted to be true to the drink’s original make-up and intent. The introductions and anecdotes for each author are great reads as you gain insight not only into the type of drinker each author was but also the world they inhabited with that drinking.

My only two complaints of the book are that the drinks seem to sometimes only be loosely connected to the highlighted author and the writing samples are too brief. The excerpts for each writer are well chosen and highlight how drinking was romanticized or portrayed in the author’s works. No doubt many suffered no shortage of passages from which the editors could select.

Overall, the book is a bit shallow as a cocktail guide and likewise shallow as an introduction to the authors’ drinking habits and works. However, it’s a clever idea, it’s beautifully illustrated and arranged, it’s great for a quick read or to touch on now and again for light reading, and its strengths and charms far outweigh its detractions.

Rating:

I absolutely adore this book, perhaps because it was the first book I received when I went on my book purchasing binge after discovering the pleasure of finely made cocktails. So, because I trust Regan’s research and respect with which he approaches the subject (though mirth abounds), I tend to follow Regan’s recipes for classic drinks whenever possible. Half the book is committed to the history of and concepts around cocktails and their creation.

This book changed my approach to mixing drinks and the categorization of drinks it provides is invaluable in understanding how drinks are related to one another and why. While the ingredients for the cocktails can be esoteric because the book attempts to go back to the original recipes (Bitters that were mixers of choice when cocktails were born are difficult to get here in Tulsa, though thanks to Robert Hess’s references, I’ve been able to find many online), the cocktail recipes are, so far, well-balanced and demonstrative of the classic style.

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