When you read one of Charles Baker’s Gentlemen’s Companions you’re in for a delightful romp through his travels, misfortunes, egotism, and name-dropping. They’re lively and fun reads. When you try to parse a recipe from one of Charles Baker’s Gentlemen’s Companions you’re in for a headache. By way of example, here’s the text from Baker’s description of the Pendennis Club cocktail:

“THE PENDENNIS CLUB’S FAMOUS SPECIAL
To 1 jigger of dry gin add 1/2 jigger of the best dry apricot brandy procurable. Squeeze in the juice of 1 lime or 1/2 a small lemon, strained of course, and trim with 2 dashes of Peychaud’s bitters which has been made for generations in New orleans…Split a ripe kumquat, now available during the winter in most big grocery or fruit stores; take out the seeds and put the two halves in a Manhattan glass. Stir the drink like a Martini with lots of cracked ice and strain onto the golden fruit. This is a sweeter Grande Bretagne, see Page 47.”

I’ll hand this to the man, by the time you’re breathlessly done reading his recipe entries, you’re certainly ready for a drink. Fortunately, thanks to the efforts of Martin Doudoroff (one of the fine people behind cocktaildb.com) and St. John Frizell there is a “Charles H. Baker, Jr. Companion” that assembles the recipes into a more readable and usable format. You know, a Companion to the Companions, so to speak. Many of Baker’s recipes are suspect at best and absymal at their worst, and the Bumblebee is a nice gem found in the pages of Baker’s South American Gentlemen’s Companion. It is a deceptive drink in that it looks simple enough but reveals a lot about the quality of your rum and the fastidiousness of your preparation when it’s served. Here’s the recipe excerpted from the book:

The BUMBLE-BEE COCKTAIIL–May God Forgive the British-Inspired Pun-Title–a Nice Rum-Honey Thought from Georgetown, British Guiana.

That same old world-wandering friend J.K.L. Ponsonby-Foulcques, the “Jekyll” of Bin-’n'-Gitters fame, Page 24 gave us this unusual, simple yet satisfying drink, also. Mix in shaker:

• 2 oz best medium dark rum
• 1 1/2 to 2 tsp strained honey
• 2 tsp or so, lime Juice
• 2 tsp fresh egg white
• Curl Orange Peel
• Drops Angostura

Shake hard with big ice and strain into pre-chilled stemmed cocktail glass. Dot with 3 or 4 drops Angostura Bitters, and twist curl of orange peel over finished drink for fragrant scent.

I was introduced to the Bumblebee by the fine work they do at Heaven’s Dog in San Francisco and love this drink when the seasons change between summer and fall. Using an aged rum with no small amount of “oomph” is paramount in this drink. Something along the lines of Angostura 1919, Appleton V/X, or Clement VSOP will bring their character through the egg white and honey without overpowering the drink. Too dark or light a rum, however, and the Bumblebee loses its charm.

The proportions of lime juice and honey can be toyed with and doing so is a good exercise in discovering how a rum’s character is affected and brought out by the changes. As for the egg white, measuring out 2tsp can be troublesome so I highly suggest placing an egg white or three in one of those condiment squeeze bottles you see at picnics and cook-outs and dispensing a carefully-measured amount of egg white. Using too much or too little egg will surely kill the drink (thanks to Rumdood for the dispensing tip). It’s a temperamental drink, I’ll admit.

Give this drink a try and practice your dry shaking to get a good froth on top of the drink as it’s key to getting the drops of Angostura to sit properly and keep them from dissolving the foam and sinking down into the drink before their time. My thanks to Erik Ellestad for the full excerpt from the South American Gentlemen’s Companion. On Baker’s writing, I’ll quote my good friend Doug who said, “He’d have been the greatest cocktail blogger of all time.” Likely true, likely true…the bastard.

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.

I’ve been around the block, well, not a lot, but enough times that it’s rare I now find a drink that takes me completely by surprise. I’m seasoned enough now that, for most the most part, I can eyeball the ingredients and get a general feel for what the outcome will be. “Oh, that’s a twist-up on the Monkey Gland, I get it.” Or, “I believe the Sleeping Giant was quite a bit like that, hmmmmm, I’ll check it out.” Now, maybe it’s my increasingly apparent lack of interest or lack of desire to deeply explore tiki drinks (I leave that to better folks than I) but the 2070 Swizzle, which Paul Clarke featured in the Sept/Oct issue of Imbibe, caught me completely off-guard. To the point where, sitting on the couch after mixing my first, I took a sip and Joana, watching my expression, said, “You just fell in love a little bit, didn’t you?” Yes, Martin Cate, I want to have your babies .
Read More »

This particular Mixology Monday is hosted by Dinah at bibulo.us with the theme “19th Century Cocktails” and, I’ll admit, it was a bit of a daunting task trying to find something that was both eligible AND looked tasty. I tend not to go in for trying 20 things in the interest of curiosity. I’d rather find five cocktails that look divine and four end up earning time in the pantheon of cocktailnerd’s regular rotation than go through 20 as an academic exercise and come out wishing I’d just gone ahead and made another Dead Reckoning instead of feeling like I need to brush my teeth long and vigorously…like 20 times in a row. That being said, after a disastrous Morning Glory Fizz (from Harry Johnson’s Bartender’s Manual), with which I was sorely disappointed and will try again, Joana stumbled upon the Hendrick Cocktail and it hit exactly the right notes emphasizing how bitters, a slight touch of sweet, and slight touches of absinthe and citrus can be used to create a simple drink that invokes the style and tastes of the era. The Hendrick Cocktail also provides me a specious excuse to run through my new bourbons for comparison. Read More »

First, a confession…I have no idea if that’s the actual Singapore Sling they served during the Juniperlooza session at Tales of the Cocktail, but I’ll be damned if I care because:

1. I remember it being tasty and have notes to that effect…
2. While not the absolute hands-down best drink I had at TotC or during my time in New Orleans, that is the most awesome piece of ice I’ve seen in a a while. It’s like ice porn.

Read More »

For my MxMo XIX theme in September of last year I chose ‘Fizz’ generally because I thought it’d be fun and narrowly because I have trouble denying myself any reason to have a drink topped with sparkling wine, champagne, tonic water or club soda. Or hell, any with champagne as a base for that matter. So recently when my glorious wife shoved a stack of papers in my face with a great number of drinks she felt I needed to make for her to try post-haste I had no trouble taking that honey-do on when I saw how many involved the bubbly.

Among the many she found were the winners of last year’s Tales of the Cocktails competition; the Crescent City Blossom, the Starfish Cooler, and the Sparkling Sakepom as well as several from the Food Network and Martha Stewart websites including the Laughter in the Rain , the Killer Mango Champagne Cocktail, the Grand Champagne Cocktail, and the Frizzante Mojito. Now, many of these require more work than I’m immediately willing to put in sight unseen but several of these I could try with little pre-work and had the right ingredients ready, and willing, to go. We tried the Starfish Cooler, the Crescent City Blossom, and the Frizzante Mojito. Each had their considerable charms, and none fell flat or disappointed. Read More »

If I can’t be gratuitous with the new camera and photos I’m able to take, what joy in life is there, no? This was my second attempt at an entry in MxMo XVIII that didn’t make the cut; not because I liked it less than the Sleeping Giant, because I actually preferred this drink, but because even though it uses orange juice it just didn’t feel like it was jiving in the spirit of the thing. This is a more traditional Tiki cocktail in that it’s a blend of 2-3 juices in moderate proportions as well as a liqueur and a couple of rums thrown in for good measure. According to Jeff ‘Beachbum’ Berry this drink was created in 1970 by Hank Riddle, while working at the famous ‘Don The Beachcomber’s’  restaurant as a competition entry. I gravitated towards this because it offered an opportunity to use Cherry Heering, an ingredient I’ve only recently acquired through the generosity of my in-laws and have been wanting to use sooner than later. Read More »

There was a period of about a year and a half where I almost exclusively drank champagne (come to find out this is neither the most financially viable concept nor the best for your reputation: see tagline above). So once I discovered the art and craft of well-made cocktails, making cocktails with champagne seemed a natural marriage. Apparently our forebears agreed seeing as how the Champagne Cocktail is one of the first documented, and certainly one of the longest-living, cocktails. But first, some background on my tastes; I drink champagne on the dry side (anything north of 'Extra Dry' and I jump ship) with my favorite non-special-event-look-we-spent-over-$100-on-this! being Piper-Heidsieck's Brut Cuvee. However, if you use this delight for mixing I will seriously have to come to your house and put the hurt on you. So, for mixing purposes I like to hang in the respectable 'methode Champenoise' $14-$20 range with goodies such as this, this, or this. And, again, I stick with the Brut as I think mixing with anything sweeter than Extra Dry, unless specifically called for as with the Bellini, throws the drink way off. Thus, with my love of the bubbly, and classic cocktails, the wife and I had an evening of fizzy lifting drinks and worked our way through a few champagne-based mixed drinks. The results were lovely. Read More »