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 .
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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 »

After my massive heart attack-inducing scare regarding my laptop last week, which suffered an untimely and irrevocable demise, I had to have a good stiff drink. And more than that, gentle reader, I wanted to tantalize myself with something new and untried. Let’s scare us up some monkeys! Monkeys = fun! Whereas laptop crashes in the middle of a business trip (and all of my business is contained in said laptop) = woe and Job-like curses to the powers that be. Or, rather, Job’s friends-like curses. Job actually turns out to be quite the existential stoic. But, I digress, to the detriment of my point.

I selected the Monkey Gland cocktail, an ill-named but interesting cocktail because it combines several of my favorite things; gin, a chance to use homemade ingredients (grenadine), a chance to feature a monkey (see right), and absinthe or an absinthe substitutes. It also features the mundane in: orange juice. Maybe that’s the ‘gland’-ish part, hmmm? Read More »

I’ve been intrigued by classic films since I became fascinated with quality filmmaking and studying its art. In classic films you often see drink and/or drinking used as a metaphor much more often than you do today. I’m not talking about Days of Wine and Roses sort of in-your-face with alcoholism and its destruction of a man’s soul, but more of how drinking (and smoking) were used as character signals for dramatic subtext, whether it be, ‘hey, that guy just lit a long thin cigarette, he must be morally ambiguous,’ or it’s in a sexual context where sharing a drink with pregnant pauses and dramatic lighting display the growing tension between two people who may just well be married to boot. In other words, drinking and smoking used to be used as dramatic shorthand to great effect. Where sexual tension was once gracefully handled between two characters by the touching of their hands at the passing of a bottle or cocktail glass it is now grossly on display and, more often than not, handled without the slightest hint of subtlety or panache. It’s ironic that what sexuality was once kept off-screen for propriety’s sake is now left on-screen, often with all the delicacy and respect afforded a plumbing training video, and what was once a romanticized and accepted part of adult life, drinking, has been co-opted by the forces of political correctness and is often left off-screen or avoided entirely (except as a means to self-destruction), much to our loss. Read More »

This is simply one of my favorite cocktails. The ‘Corpse Reviver’ set of drinks actually belongs to a class or family of cocktails used, particularly in the morning, as ‘pick me ups’ (think Bloody Mary), presumably from a night of many other non-pick-me-up cocktails. I can think of no better way to start my day than with one of these fine drinks no more than I can actually imagine doing so. For example, the ‘Savoy Corpse Reviver’ was a brandy-based cocktail with equal parts brandy, fernet branca, and white creme de menthe. While I haven’t tried it, I can almost guarantee it won’t satisfy as well as ‘#2′.

This is a drink that, like the Aviation, is a great introduction to how gin can be used to wonderful effect for the ‘But I don’t like gin!’ crowd, is a fantastic example of how the true cocktail craft can create something far greater than the sum of its parts, and exemplifies just how damned much we’re missing in the insipid and limp cocktails served in most bars and restaurants today.

I’ve found only a couple of variations on this drink and I greatly prefer one over the other: Read More »