1950 Paraty Cocktail: An Old Style Dry Shake for an Old Style Cachaça

In 1723, Jacques Savary des Bruslons informed readers of his Dictionnaire universel du commerce that native Brazilians — before Europeans came on the scene — were the most robust of all men, seven feet tall, and at the age of 100, they were no more decrepit than Europeans aged merely 60 years. However, he noted, ils ne vivaient que de maïs, d’oranges et de sucre — they lived on maize, oranges, and sugar. French merchants made fortunes on that Brazilian sugar and, in the process, some developed a taste for a Brazilian cane spirit called paraty (par-a-CHEE).

Over 225 years later, the 9th edition of Henri Babinski Gastronomie Pratique (1950), gives a recipe for a paraty cocktail "particularly appreciated in Brazil," but which is too strong, presumably, for more refined French palates. Paraty we would recognize today as cachaça and the technique he recommended for taming it as a variation on the dry shake so popular in recent years.

The dry shake, as practiced today, is a straightforward technique used to emulsify egg whites in drinks. Some think it’s new; it’s not. First, some portion (and sometimes all) of the cocktail’s ingredients is put in a shaker with the egg white. Then the bartender seals the shaker, shakes hard to emulsify, then re-shakes with ice, and pours the drink in a glass. It may or may not be strained into the glass, depending on the drink — and the bartender. The result is a velvet-textured drink with a foamy head made of very fine bubbles.

The technique Babinski (or Ali Bab, as he was known) recommends is different. Paraty — named for a colonial-era town of the same name in the state of Rio de Janeiro — was rough stuff for drinkers used to fine French brandies (though God knows some calvados could strip the paint off a barn door). It had what Ali Bab referred to as l’odeur empyreumatique, a “burned” smell, possibly from using direct-fire stills.

As anyone who has ever truffled eggs in the shell, refined homemade wines, or cleared soup stock or boiled coffee knows, egg whites can be used to absorb odor and trap particulates in liquids for easy removal. This is the same idea. Mixing egg white with the “burned” spirit, then straining the mix before using it in a cocktail, helped to remove some of the objectionable odor — which, seemingly, native Brazilians did not mind, even those who lived to a hundred years and stood seven feet tall.

Once softened and strained, the spirit was approachable for goût francais and could be blended with lemon juice, pineapple syrup, and bitters.

Cachaça imported today in the United States and western Europe generally does not need such taming. Leblon, for instance, works just fine without the strained egg white treatment. Some of today’s moonshine, though, could benefit from a bit of last-minute polishing…

From Ali Bab’s 1950 Gastronomie Pratique:

Paraty Cocktail

20 grams of paraty,
10 grams of lemon juice,
10 grams of syrup of pineapple,
5 drops of Angostura bitters,
1 egg white,
Crushed ice,
Zest of one lemon. 

Mix the paraty and egg white in a glass, which has the effect of mitigating some of the paraty’s burned aroma: shake it all for a few minutes, then strain. 

Put the strained paraty in a shaker with lemon juice, pineapple syrup, angostura bitters, crushed ice, shake to chill; pour into a cocktail glass, squeeze the lemon zest over the drink and serve with small straws.

And the original for those whose French is better than mine:

Cocktail au paraty 

Le cocktail au paraty est particulièrement apprécié au Bresil. Sa composition intégrale nous semblerait trope forte. En voici une adaptation au goût francais. 

Pour chaque personne, prenez:
20 grammes de paraty,
10 grammes de jus de citron,
10 grammes de sirop d’ananas,
5 gouttes de bitter angostura,
1 blanc d’oeuf,
Glace pilee,
Zeste d’un citron. 

Reunissez dans un verre le paraty et le blanc d’oeuf, qui a pour effet de mitiger un peu l’odeur empyreumatique du paraty: agitez le tout pendant quelques minutes; filtrez. 

Mette dans un shaker le paraty filtré, le jus de citron, le sirop d’ananas, le bitter angostura, de la glace pilée; secouez pour glacer; passes dans un verre à cocktail, ajoutez le jus du zeste d’un citron et servez avec des petites pailles.

Blood Orange Cobbler with Lillet

Blood Orange Cobbler

Now that Summer is on us, I’m serving light wines and aperitifs more frequently. A few homemade aperitifs, such as the vin d’orange and Pamper Moose, remain tucked away, still maturing in the dark. Except, of course, when a bottle wants to be broken out. For store-bought versions, we tuck into Aperol, Pimm’s No 1, and Dubonnet. The aromatic and lightly citrusy Lillet is a particular  favorite around here; we either drink it chilled or deploy it in stiffer mixes like the Twentieth Century cocktail (see the link to Jason Wilson’s adaptation below). Lately, we’ve been using it in cobblers — something slightly boozy that we can drink in quantity without getting knock-kneed on a worknight.

Fruit cobblers, kin to slumps, grunts, and other baked desserts, are great stuff, but those are for another day. Rather, we’re getting into drinking cobblers here. David A. Embury (1948), writing in The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, described them thus:

Like the Fixes and the Daisies, the Cobblers are served with straws in a goblet filled with finely crushed or shaved ice and are decorated with fruit and a sprig or two of mint. They differ from Fixes and Daisies (which are basically Sours) primarily in that the Cobblers contain either no citrus juice at all or, at the most, only one or two dashes. They consist of either a wine or a spirituous liquor combined with either sugar syrup or some sweet liqueur.

Not long ago, I spent part of a lazy afternoon at local bar Polite Provisions, where Jackie Patterson, a brand ambassador for William Grant & Sons, plunked down a bottle of the Sicilian blood orange liqueur, Solerno, for a few rounds of mixed drinks. We go through a lot of different orange liqueurs at the Whiskey Forge and have our favorites for certain drinks. In a cobbler, I particularly like the vaguely raspberry notes that Solerno brings to the game.

Blood Orange Cobbler

.75 oz. Solerno Blood Orange Liqueur
3 oz. Lillet Blanc
1 tsp blood orange marmalade* 

Dry shake ingredients and then pour over crushed ice in a julep cup or rocks glass. Garnish with a sprig of mint and sliced fruit such as strawberries and orange wheel. 

*If you don’t have blood orange marmalade, use regular Seville orange or even apricot marmalades.

Goes well with:

• Writing in the Washington Post, Jason Wilson gives his adaptation of the 1937 classic cocktail, the Twentieth Century. Most nights, I prefer a stiff whiskey or gin cocktail, but when the mercury rises, this is a nice switch.
• We also like blood orange marmalade in a sour and in a Satan's Whiskers variant we call Satan's Bloody Whiskers. 

Tiki Nights at Polite Provisions

Getting a strong drink in San Diego has always been as straightforward as walking into the nearest bar. In a town where many equate strong with good, however, finding well-balanced cocktails still takes some footwork. Fortunately, the odds of tracking down a good mixed drink has shifted in the last eight years since bars such as Lion's Share, El Dorado, Craft & Commerce, Prohibition, and the Grant Grill at the US Grant Hotel have stepped up the game. What we don't do particularly well (except for individual bartenders at certain bars on particular nights) are tiki drinks.

Schooners: good for bar fights and Prohibition hijinks 

Erick Castro hopes to raise our town's tiki profile a bit with a new tiki series at Polite Provisions, the Normal Heights bar he opened this year with the partners of Consortium Holdings. The second Tuesday of every month, Castro plans to host a Tiki Takedown. Or maybe it's a Tiki Tuesday. He seemed flexible on the name when I dropped by last week. The concept, though, is solid: on that second Tuesday, regular and guest bartenders will riff on classic polynesian-pop cocktails and serve contemporary drinks in the tropical style.

Helping to launch the series, Marcovaldo Dionysos is coming from San Francisco bar Smuggler's Cove next Tuesday, May 14th. Does that name ring a bell? I once asked Marco — to my mortification — for a Guatemalan Handshake. He was kind enough to give me what I wanted rather than what I requested.

Expect plenty of rums, fresh citrus, and lashings of spice. Named after a boat in George R. R. Martin's Games of Thrones series, Castro's Cinnamon Wind uses Jamaican rum and spike of Becherovka, a bitter Czech herbal liqueur with a cinnamon backbone that doesn't get the play it deserves.

Cinnamon Wind

2 oz Appleton Estate V/X
.75 oz fresh lime juice
.5 oz Becherovka
.5 oz cinnamon gomme*

Shake with ice ice cubes and pour — ice and all — into tiki mug. Garnish with freshly spanked mint (don't just fluff it; spank it!), then grate a cinnamon stick with a microplane over the whole thing.

*If your week's plans don't cover making cinnamon gomme, try BG Reynold's cinnamon syrup (see below for a link).

Tiki nights at Polite Provisions (4696 30th Avenue, San Diego, CA 92116) run from 7pm-2am on the second Tuesday of every month. The kickoff is next Tuesday, May 14th. If I get out from under a cascade of deadlines, you may see me there. If not, raise one for me. Either way, break out your finest Hawaiian shirts and dresses.

Goes well with:

• Tiki mugs. If no tiki mugs are handy, a heavy glass schooner is fine. No schooners, either? Sheesh. Get off the pot. Do as I did: get some from Tiki Farm (maybe the new Onigaw mug styled after a Japanese gargoyle) or Munktiki (I'm a fan of both the Stinkfish and hideously adorable Mermaid mugs). 
• This is not the first we've heard of Tiki Tuesdays.
• BG Reynolds' cinnamon syrup runs about $5 at okolemaluna.com.

The Price of (Citrus) Perfection

Georgia O'Keeffe lemons show up with surprising frequency

In a major grocery store, whether it's Safeway, Ralph's, Tesco, or Albert Heijn, you're apt to find beautiful fruit on offer. Oranges so immaculate and perfectly spherical they could be ornaments. Eureka and Lisbon lemons so hefty, so perfect, that they each could stand as the very definition of "lemon." Down the line: perfect fruits and vegetables. Well, perfect to the eye, anyway. Relatively high prices reflect  culling of the oddballs, the defects, the grotesque, the undersized, and the unevenly ripened. Limes for 69¢ each, individual lemons for 89¢.

In a pinch, sure, I'll buy just enough at those prices to eek through whatever citrus shortage drove me to that particular store. But at the rate we burn through fruit — especially citrus for cocktails — I'd be a damn fool paying retail prices for perfectly formed specimens.

Enter the second-tier grocer. You may not know about them in your community, but even many small towns (and I've lived in a few) have markets that serve immigrant communities. I'm not talking about high-end specialty stores that cater to well-heeled world travelers (though those are nice, too). Rather I mean the small stores with ingredients imported from "back home"or made locally in a familiar style that less affluent shoppers nonetheless crave; curry blends, certain cheeses, particular breads, teas, syrups, sugars, sweets, pickles, etc. In Philadelphia, there's the 9th Street Italian market. In San Diego, my go-to place for such things is North Park Produce. The store clearly buys a lot of seconds — those fruit and vegetables that aren't quite up to snuff for display at the major chains, the ones that were culled. These are the fruits I tend to buy for cocktail and cooking.

Limes with a bit of wind blemish, oranges with a blush of green on one side, and lemons that can be, frankly, bizarre are what I'm after. Most of them are actually fine, just undersized. And the prices? Well, they fluctuate, but a single dollar will typically get me 4-5 pounds of oranges (pounds, mind you, not single oranges), 7-10 lemons, or anywhere from 8 to 20 limes. At those prices, we're almost never without the ingredients to crank out any one of hundreds of cocktails.

Of course, if drinkers or eaters will see the fruit as part of serving or prearing it, more seemly specimens may be in order. A big bowl of defects and seconds on the bar is not going to get you top dollar for your cocktails. But a hybrid approach is fine. Serving fresh lemonade from a huge see-though dispenser? Juice the cheap ones, but buy a bag of big perfect beauties to cut in half, ream, and float in the mix.

Customers, after all, do pay a premium for pretty food.

Goes well with:

• Bitter oranges. The season is drawing to a close, but I scored a bunch at North Park Produce (3551 El Cajon Blvd, San Diego, CA) for $1.39/lb and used most of the batch for making vin d'orange. The rest is going into a cake later today.

Whisky Advocate Runs Feature Story on White Whiskey by...Oh, Hey. Me.

You have to look at white whiskey 

on its own merits. 

If you judge it 

compared to aged whiskeys, 

it fails. 

Every time.

~ Darek Bell

Corsair Artisan Distillery

Shea Shawnson pours Double and Twisted light whiskey at Elixir

The current issue of Whisky Advocate magazine has a feature article on white whiskey by yours truly. [Edit 12/9/12: scroll down for a link to a PDF of the article.] White, light, unaged, minimally aged, and "raw" whiskeys are growing in popularity. Not everyone — including those who make it — agrees on what it is, so when editor Lew Bryson asked me to take a run at white whiskey, I made some phone calls, packed a sandwich, and hit the road to talk to distillers who make the stuff and drinkers who down it.

As grain spirits come off the still, in- dustry insiders call the heady, limpid distillate new make or white dog. Every whiskey distiller in the world makes it and almost all of it is destined for barrels. Some, though, trickles out to the public. Lately, distillers and consumers alike have taken to calling it white whiskey. Marketers trumpet it as a hot new thing. In truth, the wheel has been around longer. And fire, of course. But new make was old hat when Johnnie Walker took his first wobbly steps. 

What is novel is that until about 2005, few dreamt a market still existed for the stuff.

My travels brought me up the west coast of the United States. From tiny sheds up dirt roads to a distillery in an old Air Force hangar, I met with men and women making, selling, drinking, and mixing white whiskeys.

Bars and restaurants from New York to Seattle offer white whiskeys as a matter of course, even pride. White Manhattans and albino Old Fashioneds abound. If whiskey cocktails unblemished by oak are insufficiently exotic, trendy tipplers can ask for them “improved” 19th-century style with a few dashes of absinthe. 

Despite growing awareness and acceptance, the category is dogged by three recurrent questions. Two are worth addressing in passing: (1) Is white whiskey moonshine? and (2) Is it any good?

I tackle those in about 500 words, but the third question, the one people should be asking and which fills the bulk of the article, is what do we do with it? Pick up the Winter 2012 issue of Whisky Advocate for some of the answers — including arguments that the way many white whiskeys are made is completely wrong — or download a PDF of It's a Nice Day for a White Whiskey here.

Interviews, insight, and recipes from Thad Vogler of Bar Agricole and Shea Swanson of Elixir in San Francisco, Darek Bell of Corsair Artisan Distillery (and author of Alt Whiskeys), Jim Romdall of Vessel in Seattle, Ian and Devin Cain of American Craft Whiskey distillery, barber and distiller Salvatore Cimino, 13th generation master distiller Marko Karakasevic from Charbay, and, midwife to the modern tiki renaissance, Jeff "Beach Bum" Berry.

Here's a bonus recipe that didn't make the article from bartender Rhachel Shaw whom I ran into as a customer at rum bar Smuggler's Cove. Shaw pays tribute to Elizabeth Taylor (whom one can only presume guzzled staggering quantities of raw whiskey) with a drink named for the late movie star's perfume:

White Diamonds  

1.5 oz. Koval Chicago Rye
.75 oz. Cocci Americano
.5 oz. Maraschino
1 dash Bitterman's Grapefruit Bitters 

Stir on ice. Strain. Garnish with grapefruit peel.

A Swift Kick from a Kentucky Mule

I am aware, in some vague sense, that a mule is a type of shoe, although I am fairly certain that I don't own any. More familiar to me is the proper dead mule, a symbol deeply entwined in — and arguably a signifier of — the literature of the American South. But it is the Kentucky Mule, that bourbon-fueled harbinger of excess, that has kicked off many an evening with friends and family around the Whiskey Forge.

Everything tastes better through a grunge filter

Some history: Around the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, vodka was an obscure spirit in the United States, small potatoes, nothing like the cash cow it is today. The Moscow Mule is the drink that changed that.  That original mule, a vodka-and-ginger beer highball, was made famous at the Cock 'n' Bull Tavern in Los Angeles. By the time Elvis sang his way through Blue Hawaii twenty years later, the drink had become a classic. In Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, Ted Haigh reports that a girlfriend of Jack Morgan, the Cock 'n' Bull's owner, had inherited a copper goods business. She presumably was the source of the squat copper mugs that remain to this day de rigueur for serving the drink.

Vodka, though, is not everyone's first choice when it comes to making and downing mixed drinks. Nor are copper mugs. Enter the variations. Tweaking the basic idea of a spirit, lime, and ginger beer leads to regional and topical versions of the drink; the Mexican Mule (tequila), Caribbean Mule (rums), the Blackberry Mule, and Audrey Saunders' Gin-Gin Mule. Most of them benefit from a dash or two of cocktail bitters. Classically, that has meant Angostura bitters, but when we swap bourbon for the vodka to yield a Kentucky Mule, I've found that Fee Brothers' old fashion aromatic bitters is the better choice. Use what you've got.

American-style ginger ale doesn't have the backbone this drink requires. Instead, use the more fiery ginger beer. A Cock 'n' Bull brand does exist. We've used that as well as Bundaberg from Australia and the fearsome Blenheim's from South Carolina (I quite like that one, but it's a bit strong for some). We've found that Gosling's sells a reasonably-priced, all-natural ginger beer for making a Dark 'n' Stormy, but it's our favorite of the lot for this drink instead: light fizz, well-balanced ginger taste and aroma, not overly sweet. A liter runs less than $3. No, Gosling's didn't send me any. We just like it a bunch. Get some.

Kentucky Mule 

2 oz good (but not your best) bourbon. Buffalo Trace is great here.
Half a small lime
4-5 oz ginger beer (Gosling's if you've got it; if not, use your favorite)
2 dashes aromatic bitters (Fee Brothers, Angostura, or dealer's choice) 

Build the drink on ice in a highball glass. Squeeze the lime into this and drop in the shell. Dash in the bitters and give it a quick stir. If you're a stickler for tradition, use copper mugs rather than glass. Some folks garnish with mint and lime wedges, but then some folks listen to Nickleback and dabble in crossdressing. To each his own.

Goes well with:

• The drink's versatility should be apparent and the template works with lots of iterations. Using pisco could result in a Peruvian (or Chilean) Mule. Applejack could yield a New Jersey (or an Orchard) Mule. You get the idea. Use gin, swap in tonic for the ginger beer, and lose the bitters...holy cow, it's a Gin & Tonic. 
• The truth of food and drink origin stories are so often obfuscated by good stories. Eric Felton takes a closer look at the origin of the Moscow Mule and Cock 'n Bull's head bartender, Wes Price. Felton's version putting Price as the originator feels like a better fit. 
• I like ginger. There's always some around. Here's what I do with it. 
• We did overindulge in mules last year. I'm pleased to be making them again, but one of the drinks we started making when we grew tired of so much ginger beer was the Punky Monkey cocktail with Buffalo Trace bourbon and Scarlet Ibis rum. Good, good stuff. 

Why So Spunky, Punky Monkey?

We get into cyclical ruts around the Whiskey Forge — watching a month’s worth of Tosh.0 in one sitting, for instance, reading everything a particular author published, or tucking into the glazed pork belly time and time again from our favorite neighborhood joint, Carnitas’ Snack Shack.

And drinks? Ah, man. There, too. We make a drink we like and that’s it. That’s what we drink. We got so stuck on Kentucky mules last year that I can barely stomach the thought of one more. Gallons, literally, of Buffalo Trace bourbon went down our throats on that one cocktail. Anyone who came over was offered a bourbon-and-ginger-beer combo. That’s not to say I’m sick of bourbon, that I grew weary of the bitters in it, or that the mule is a bad drink. Far from it. I just wanted a break from the monotony of it.

Enter the Punky Monkey, created by Joaquin Simo of New York’s Death & Company, to shake me out of our cocktail doldrums. Jeff Berry laid out the drink in his Beachbum Berry Remixed. At the bar, Berry reports that it’s on the menu as the Kerala. Regardless of the name, it’s a great little cocktail that relies on not just bourbon, but — in an uncommon and, in some quarters, controversial move — bourbon and rum in the same glass.

The rum is The Scarlet Ibis, a 98 proof blend of Trinidadian rums made specifically for Death & Company. Imported by Eric Seed of Haus Alpenz, The Scarlet Ibis is available commercially, though in limited quantities. In a pinch, Berry suggests, one could substitute either Sea Wynde or Santa Teresa 1796. When I cranked out a round of apricot-colored Punky Monkeys last night, I had no Buffalo Trace on hand, so mixed equal parts Wild Turkey 101 and Bulleit bourbons. What the hell: I was already putting blended rum in the glass, why not blended whiskey?

Purists be damned, this was a delicious drink.

Joaquin Simo’s Punky Monkey

1 oz Scarlet Ibis rum (see above)
l oz 90-proof bourbon (Buffalo Trace preferred)
½ oz sugar syrup
½ oz fresh lemon juice
½ oz fresh pineapple juice
Dash Angostura bitters
Dash Peychaud's bitters
5 green cardamom pods

Lightly muddle the cardamom pods. Add all other ingredients, then shake well with ice cubes. Strain through a fine-mesh wire sieve into a champagne coupe.

Note: If you scale up, go easy on the cardamom. A little goes a long way, so if, say, you quadruple the recipe, maybe only double the spice.

Goes wells with:

• In San Diego? Drop by our favorite neighborhood joint, Carnitas' Snack Shack. Pork belly, stellar burgers, foie gras different ways, steak sandwiches, poutine (alas, no poitin, but the pulled pork topping softens that particular blow). Our first week in the new house, we got takeout from this little North Park gem four times. 
• In New York? Mosy on by Death & Company to whet your whistle. There's a no reservations policy, but get in early and you should be fine.
• Looking for a birthday present for me? Aw, how sweet. I'll take some Scarlet Ibis. Go ahead and get one for yourself, too, at K&L.

Drink What You Like (Regardless of the Mixologists' Sniffy Disdain)

if i was bartending with anyone

who said shit like that

i would pull his underwear over his head

and throw his ass

out the front door

~ bigjmurf

Over the holidays, one of the local markets slashed prices on liquor. Cointreau, in particular, was nearly half price, so I bought several months' worth. As I was checking out, the clerk read the neck tag's recipe for a margarita and, sounding genuinely sad, said "Damn, I've been making this wrong for years." I asked him "Well, do you like your margaritas?" His face brightened immediately. "Oh, yeah. They're great!""Then what do you care what someone else says you should be drinking? Make them the way you like them."

Now, I like well-crafted, classic drinks as much as the next guy and hold bartenders who purport to make them to certain standards — I'll send back a Manhattan that's been shaken, for instance — but the thing about drinking is: drink what you like. Listen to what seasoned boozers have to say, but don't be intimidated by them. Do you like, for instance, your red wine chilled...or with fish? Well, cork dorks may disapprove, but drink your red wine chilled and with fish. Is what you want right now — for whatever mysterious reasons — a Long Island iced tea? Well, then, order one.

But not from this incompetent pretender:



Thanks to John T. Edge from Oxford, Mississippi who sent me this gem this morning. You'll find this guy in the video everywhere. Portland, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Chicago, New Orleans (well, during Tales of the Cocktail, anyway), San Francisco, Los Angeles...and probably your home town.

You know...wait. Hang on. On second thought, DO order that Long Island ice tea from the mustachioed, waistcoat-wearing, bitters-making douchebag. The theatrics alone may well be worth the price of the drink. Who knows?  He might just make you the best Long Island you've ever had.

Goes well with:

• Victoria Moore's How to Drink.  She writes: “It’s often said that life’s too short to drink bad wine, but I’d go further. Life’s also too short to drink good wine, or anything else for that matter, if it’s not what you feel like at the time. There’s no point in popping the cork on a bottle of vintage champagne if you really hanker after a squat tumbler of rough red wine.”
• Brad Thomas Parsons' book Bitters. It's a good read for regular folks wanting to know more about the history and use of cocktail bitters, but beware that it's also kindling for the fevered prejudices of guys like the ridiculous fool in Shit Bartenders Say above.

Bookshelf: The American Cocktail

She was rather like one of those innocent-tasting American drinks which creep imperceptibly into your system so that, before you know what you're doing, you're starting out to reform the world by force if necessary and pausing on your way to tell the large man in the corner that, if he looks at you like that, you will knock his head off.

P.G. Wodehouse (1919)

My Man Jeeves

With Christmas less than two months off, we’re solidly into cookbook season. This year, that means cocktail books as well. Of those, a handful of new American drinks titles should be on the radar for the cocktail geek in your life (even if that happens to be you). We’ll take a look at some of them over the course of the next week.

First up is The American Cocktail by the editors of Imbibe magazine. Imbibe writing is spirits-heavy, but covers drinking broadly, so any given issue may have stories on tea, soda, coffee, wines, beer, cider, or even water. Producing a cocktail book was a natural course for them; I’m glad to see the editors finally got around to it.

Headnotes on fifty recipes in the book give historical context, ingredient notes, and drinks origins. The recipes themselves are from bartenders across the USA and are broken into areas of the country (The South, Northeast, Midwest, West, and West Coast) where regional ingredients from sassafras to huckleberries lend a sense of place to all of them. Without getting to the elaborate preparations of molecular mixology, the book gives a pretty representative look at what drinking looks like in craft cocktail bars around the country. Wisconsin Kringle syrup to liven up your brandy, anyone? What about a persimmon margarita?

An eight-page appendix of American craft distilleries is a particularly welcome addition, as is specifying particular spirits from local distilleries throughout the book. Yeah, yeah, distribution is limited for a lot of the spirits, so you can usually swap out the specific spirit with a similar one you’ve got on hand, but hats off to the bartenders and editors for making the point to call out local liquor in many of the recipes. Hunt around online; you can often find merchants willing to ship local wet goods to your door.

In the section on the South, spirits and wine director Shannon Healy at Crook's Corner in Chapel Hill — my old stomping grounds — deploys the North Carolina cherry flavored soda Cheerwine in a bittersweet cocktail called Big Bay Storm.

Big Bay Storm

1.25 oz Gosling's rum
.75 oz ounce pineapple juice
.75 oz fresh lemon juice
.75 oz Campari
Ice cubes
1 ounce Cheerwine soda

Combine the rum. Campari, lemon juice, and pineapple juice in a cocktail shaker, add ice, and shake vigorously. Strain into an ice-filled Collins glass. Top with the Cheerwine. Stir to combine and garnish with the orange wheel.

From Portland, Oregon comes Evan Zimmerman’s North by Northwest cocktail, balancing apples in three forms (local brandy from Clear Creek Distillery, fresh-pressed juice, and apple butter) with lemon juice and Averna, a dark Italian amaro we use to good effect in dark Manhattans from time to time.

North by Northwest

1.5 oz Clear Creek apple brandy
.75 oz fresh lemon juice
.75 oz fresh-pressed apple juice
1 tsp apple butter
Ice cubes

Combine the brandy, lemon juice, apple juice, Averna, and apple butter in an ice-filled cocktail shaker. Shake well and double strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

The Editors of Imbibe Magazine (2011)
Photos by Sheri Giblin
The American Cocktail: 50 Recipes That Celebrate the Craft of Mixing Drinks from Coast to Coast
144 pages (hardback)
Chronicle Books
ISBN: 081187799X
$19.95

Drinking Cheerwine Like It's My Job

Moderation. I'm familiar with the concept, of course. But there are occasions when it just doesn't sit well.

Pinched from Cheerwine.com

The last time I left North Carolina, for instance, I drove off with nine cases of Cheerwine stowed in the trunk. Nine. I don't believe that, until that day, I'd bought nine cases of anything ever for myself at one go.

But while living near Chapel Hill I had picked up the habit of downing two or three of the cherry-flavored sodas each day. It's a distinctly North Carolina soda and just wasn't available where I was headed. That was going to be a hard habit to shake. As far as I knew, the stash in my trunk was going to have to last for months, maybe as much as a year if I...ugh...if I practiced a little moderation.

I'm not alone in my obsession; Tar Heel natives have doted on Cheerwine since 1917 and in a recent slideshow on fifty iconic Southern food brands, Garden & Gun magazine led with the red stuff. Recipes abound for using it in cakes, as a braising liquid for hams, in barbecue sauces, ice cream, and, increasingly, cocktails.

The batch I hauled away is long gone, but fortunately I no longer have to make a 2,500 mile trek to get what may well be my favorite soda. Here in Southern California, BevMo carries single bottles. The cost is a little more than I used to pay...but overall, it's cheaper than the interstate microimporting I used to do. To help find a source close to you, the soda company offers a zip code finder here and will ship it. Kegworks ships as well.

I never got around to braising a ham with the stuff or using it in a brine, but I admit that now that I have a source for it, it might be time for another case.

Or two. 

Caveat: I haven't seen anyone selling Cheerwine in plastic bottles online, but stick with glass bottles and cans. In North Carolina — and, admittedly, this was years ago, so things may have changed — the plastic bottles I bought often held flat soda, even when freshly opened. This was never a problem with cans and glass bottles.

The Vanderbilt Fugitive

In issue 41 of The Southern Foodways Alliance’s quarterly newsletter Gravy, co-owner, bartender, and extraordinarily nice guy Bobby Heugel writes “At Anvil Bar & Refuge in Houston, we believe in the narrative power of a great menu. Our Summer in the South menus approaches each cocktail-character as an advocate for Southern traditions and ingredients—few of which are more iconic than buttermilk.”

Set aside for the moment — careful, now, don’t jostle it — the notion of a cocktail-character and instead cast your eye on the concoction Heugel presents in the piece: the Vanderbilt Fugitive.

The original Vanderbilt Fugitives were a group of early twentieth-century writers and poets who came together at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Counted in their ranks were Southern men of letters such as Robert Penn Warren (All the King’s Men), Allen Tate ("Ode to the Confederate Dead"), William Ridley Wills, and others. You can just feel bourbon dripping from the walls at the evocation of their names.

But this isn’t a bourbon drink. If you recall, it’s a buttermilk drink. Oh there’s rum, yellow Chartreuse, Averna, all kinds of delicious things — but it’s the buttermilk that gives it that special je ne sais what?

The Vanderbilt Fugitive

1.75 oz El Dorado 5 Year Demerara Rum
1 oz rich, acidic buttermilk
.5 oz Yellow Chartreuse
.5 oz Averna Amaro
.5 oz maple syrup

Combine all ingredients with ice and shake for at least two to three minutes, allowing cocktail to expand in volume. Strain into a Collins glass with cubed ice. Garnish with freshly grated nutmeg.

~ by Yao Lu and Anvil colleagues

Goes well with:

• The SFA’s “foodletter” Gravy. Download it here.
• When in Houston, drop by Anvil. If you’ve more than six in your party, make certain you all order a Ramos gin fizz — and on no account tell them I sent you.

Rum-Fueled Blackout

Earlier this month, San Diego lost electricity when a power line from Arizona failed, leaving almost 5 million people without power. Normally, my neighbors are calm, quiet types, but when the flow of electricity just stopped that afternoon, their hooting and hollering sounded as if someone had tossed bags of wolverines and bees in their living rooms.

Rumors were rife and nobody seemed to know exactly what had happened. We weren’t sure how long we’d be without power, so we loaded bags of ice in the freezer and avoided opening the refrigerator to eek out as much residual cold as possible.

Hours later and still with no power, we realized that some frozen foods might not make it, so we decided to break out the most ephemeral food in there: a mango/maraschino sorbet.

I’d lifted the recipe almost verbatim from David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop, except that I swapped out the dark rum he called for with slightly larger dose of lower-proof maraschino liqueur. Maraschino — not to be confused with the lurid red maraschino cherries one finds on ice cream sundaes, fruitcakes, and certain Manhattan cocktails — is a clear, aged liqueur made from Marasca cherries. It has an old-world affinity for fruit salads, so mango seemed a good fit.

It was.

But we didn’t forget Lebovitz’s original call for rum, so I hauled out a bottle of Coruba, a dark Jamaican rum, for drizzling over the sorbet in our candle-lit living room. I drizzled — at most — a tablespoon over the softening deep yellow sorbet.

The boys had other ideas. They turned their small bowls into drinking vessels by sloshing in several ounces of rum over their scoops. We each squeezed lime over what we had. I had lime-rum sauce on my maraschino/mango sorbet; they had slushy maraschino/mango daiquiris.

Everyone went to bed happy.

Mango-Maraschino Sorbet

2 fat, ripe mangoes (2 pounds, just shy of l kg)
2/3 cup/130 g sugar
2/3 cup/160 ml water
½ oz fresh lime juice
½-1 oz maraschino liqueur
Pinch of salt

Peel the mangoes and cut the flesh away from the pit. Cut the flesh into chunks and put them in a blender with the sugar, water, lime juice, maraschino, and salt. Squeeze the mango pits hard over the blender to extract as much of the pulp and juice as possible. Puree the mixture until smooth. Taste and adjust lime juice or maraschino.

Chill the mixture thoroughly, then freeze in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Goes well with:

• For the maraschino, I used Luxardo brand. Maraska is another good choice.The former, wrapped in straw, is easier to find, but online merchants sell both if you don't come up with either in your local stores. 
• Blackouts aren't the only thing to cause us to drink in SoCal. Earthquakes do, too.

Bitter Disappointment from Japan

I’ve been working on a documentary project that requires a comprehensive representation of cocktail bitters. Given the burst of interest in the field and ever-increasing new producers, that imminently manageable — and largely historical — project has metastasized into a monster.

Monsters, I can handle. Work goes on. Heartbreak, however, wasn’t part of the plan.

One of the last bottles of Hermes Orange Bitters

When I discussed the project earlier in the year with San Francisco barman Neyah White, I asked him whether Suntory still made Hermes brand orange bitters. Stocks had seemed to dry up both online and in bricks-and-mortar stores. As West coast ambassador for Suntory whisky, White was in a position to know the status of the company’s products.

The brand was dead, he reported. There had been discussions in Japan to revive it in light of America’s resurging interest in cocktails, but...no dice. It had become an extinct ingredient. Some time later, he wrote that he had secured for me a single bottle, used, only partially empty, but with a broken cap.

He wrote:

Last night in Tokyo, we hit the best Whisky Shop in the City...totally solid shop, vintage Chartreuse, vintage whisky (as in things bottled in the 50's and 60's), tons of Amari, 13 Ichiro's Malts, rums I have never seen, 5 Pimm's, etc., etc.. I ask politely about Hermes and the owner smiles sadly, goes to the back brings out his last bottle, it has a slightly broken top so he set it aside and never sold it. He says he is sad it won't come back and is hanging on to this as a sample. I say that is great.

We keep poking around and showing our appreciation for things we find and he grabs some glasses and pours all drams of Wild Turkey bottled in the 70's. Not crazy good, but very cool. One of the guys with us is Lincoln Henderson (former Master Distiller for Jack Daniels) and tells the owner how he is an old friend on Jimmy Russell and how this is some of the first stuff that Jimmy both made and bottled, pretty important really. The next thing I know a bottle of medicinal rye from 1927 gets opened and each get a nip of that. shockingly good, very maple-y.

To say thanks, I pull out .375 of St. George's Grappa that I had lugging around (I brought gifts for the Suntory folk, had extras) and present it too him. He promptly turned around and grabbed the Hermes Orange and gave it to me.

Where do I send it?

I’m no fool. I told him. When the package didn’t come, I assumed White simply hadn’t shipped it yet. But, in fact, he had. The shippers had misplaced it and the package languished for months. White eventually tracked it down.

I was so happy when that box finally arrived. Happy that I had my hands on such a thing and that Neyah White had thought enough of me to send his only bottle — and one with such a great story. This truly was passing on a kindness. I brought the small brown box inside, opened it, and carefully pulled back its first two flaps.

A potent orange aroma arose from the box mixed with something...else. Was it cardamom? Cloves? I closed my eyes and tried to place it. Almost instantly, the smell registered as “wet cardboard." My eyes shot open and I sucked air in through my teeth. Brad Pitt's line from the film Se7en springs to mind: What’s in the box? I grabbed a bone folder from the counter and, with trepidation, shifted packing peanuts aside. What’s in the fucking box? Even stronger smells of warm, wet cardboard and orange wafted out. Underneath the top layer: shattered green glass, a torn label, packaging material that had shriveled and shrunken into hard little knobs.

The only bottle of Hermes orange bitters I’d seen in years was splayed out, utterly destroyed. During its time in courier limbo, the bottle’s broken cap had slowly trickled bitters — drip, drip, drip — onto biodegradable packing peanuts. The peanuts did what they were designed to do; they began to shrivel and dissolve. With the padding reduced to a fraction of its original size, the bottle was freed to bang around within the box. All it needed was rough handling to crush its precious cargo.

Life, as it must, goes on, as does the bitters documentary project. But not with Hermes. Not today, anyway.

Goes well with:

• A look at Chris Bunting's Drinking Japan. If I visit Japan any time soon, I'm taking his book.
• And I'll probably do some more studying of Mark Robinson's Izakaya: The Japanese Pub Cookbook
• If you are a modern producer of cocktail bitters and we haven't spoken about including your products, shoot me an email (moonshinearchives at gmail dot com) and I'll give you the skinny.
  

Hurricane Season

Photo: Ryannan Bryer de Hickman

As Hurricane Irene bears down on the Eastern seaboard, I understand the concern that friends and family back East feel. Powerful cyclones can be frightening and this one looks like a doozy. At last word, New York City hospitals were being evacuated. My advice? Get to a safe and secure place with whatever supplies you need. Then turn on some music, break out the rum, throw yourself a little New Orleans-style hurricane party, and wait it out — with the appropriate cocktail.

In the Winter 2011 issue of The Zenchilada, I wrote a column about an iconic New Orleans cocktail, beloved by visitors, if not necessarily by each and every local.

It’s not true, as some claim, that Crescent City natives neither eat Lucky Dogs nor drink Hurricanes, but that drink is a decidedly tourist affair aggressively seasoned with dark rum. After that, opinions diverge on ingredients. If you order a Hurricane in New Orleans today, you likely will be served a strong red drink. None of what you’re likely to get is particularly good. Whether from a bar or a clandestine street vendor, the rule for concocting one seems to be “Make it red, make it rum”—but that’s not how it started, and that’s not what growing numbers of drinkers around the world are mixing when they want to evoke the French Quarter and Mardi Gras.

The article traces the history of the drink and gives five recipes from the original 1940’s version (that was not red, though it was rum) to modern interpretations and quotes from tiki historian Jeff “Beachbum” Berry, “King Cocktail” Dale DeGroff, and Matt “RumDood” Robold. Rounding out the pack of drinks authorities is Tiare Olsen, the Tiki Queen of Sweden, with her “Funky Hurricane” bolstered with Smith & Cross, a funky, funky pot-stilled Jamaican rum.

For the article and recipes, go to The Zenchilada.com, and navigate to page 32 of the Winter 2011 issue about carnivals and feasts. Or download the PDF here.

Remember the Maine? Hell, I Barely Remember the Walk Home.

Treat this one with the respect it deserves, gentlemen.

~ Charles H. Baker, Jr.

Charles H. Baker, Jr. — bear with me, drinks people; I know you know this, but others may not — is a towering figure in cocktail literature. His 1946 two-volume The Gentleman’s Companion was one of the first serious cocktail books I bought almost twenty years ago. Because bars sometimes base cocktail programs on his recipes more than half a century after publication, a passing familiarity with them helps tipplers navigate options at bars that trade in old-school drinks.

This weekend in Portland, I was pleased to recognize Remember the Maine, one of his classics, featured at Teardrop Lounge. It's not unlike a Manhattan, but with an absinthe kick, you wouldn't mistake one for the other. The drink's name refers a popular slogan that decried the sinking of the battleship USS Maine in Havana's harbor, thus sparking the 1898 Spanish-American War. Baker invokes the slogan in his typically florid and heavily-capitalized prose: 

REMEMBER the MAINE, a HAZY MEMORY of a NIGHT in HAVANA during the UNPLEASANTNESSES of 1933, when EACH SWALLOW WAS PUNCTUATED with BOMBS GOING OFF on the PRADO, or the SOUND of 3" SHELLS BEING FIRED at the HOTEL NACIONAL, then HAVEN for CERTAIN ANTI-REVOLUTIONARY OFFICERS

His original recipes reads: Take a tall bar glass and toss in three lumps of ice. Onto this foundation donate the following in order given: one jigger good rye whiskey, ½ jigger Italian vermouth, one to 2 teaspoons of cherry brandy, ½ tsp absinthe or Pernod Veritas. Stir briskly in clock-wise fashion -- this makes it sea-going, presumably! —turn into a big chilled saucer champagne glass, twisting a curl of green lime or lemon peel over the top.

That "cherry brandy" has caused some confusion — or at least room for interpretation — among bartenders since both Cherry Heering (a dark, sweet, cherry-infused brandy) and Kirsch or Kirschwasser (a clear distillate of cherries, nearly double the proof of Heering) may be used. I find the lower-proof Heering rounds out the drink nicely, but feel free to experiment. The drink doesn't call for much absinthe, but tread lightly if you're unsure whether you enjoy the taste; its presence is not a subtle one.

Remember the Maine (modern adaptation)

2 oz rye
.75 oz sweet vermouth
2 bar-spoons Cherry Heering
½ bar-spoon absinthe

Stir briskly with a bar spoon in a mixing glass with ice. Strain into another glass and serve up.

Goes well with: A stop at Teardrop if you're in Portland. In fact, it's one of the reasons to visit.

Teardrop Lounge
1015 Northwest Everett Street
Portland, OR 97209-3117
(503) 445-8109
http://teardroplounge.com

National Absinthe Day: The Start to Finish Cocktail

March 5th, for those who mark such things, is National Absinthe Day. This is not, you understand, an official American holiday so much as an informal recognition of the four years that proper absinthe has been once again legally available in the United States.

As the Wormwood Society puts it,

No regulations have changed. Prior to May 2007 it was not widely known that the tolerance for official method of thujone analysis—10ppm—is such that it effectively legalizes many European absinthes. This was a major breakthrough. It also means that a number of pre-ban era absinthes would be legal in the US by modern standards, including the definitive premium absinthe brand, Pernod Fils.

Official holiday or not, the fact that Americans can now legally buy a range of imported and domestic absinthes does seem reason to raise a toast to that green fairy. And because I’m headed to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, I’ll let a New Orleans bartender give a recipe for a mixed drink. Rhiannon Enlil from the Uptown cocktail bar Cure created a cocktail that’s a really nice play between bitter and sweet across the palate, truly a taste for adults.

The Start and Finish

1.5 oz Averna
.5 oz Lillet Blanc
.5 oz dry vermouth
.5 oz Pernod absinthe
1 dash orange bitters

Stir ingredients over ice, strain into a chilled rocks glass, and garnish with a lemon twist.

If you’re in New Orleans, do try to stop by Cure. I don’t make it Uptown absolutely every single trip, but when I do, I drop by this former fire station for some great cocktails and late-night bites.

Goes well with:

• A visit to Cure at 4905 Freret Street in New Orleans. Give 'em a call (504) 302-2357 or check out the website.
• Another visit — to the Wormwood Society’s FAQ about absinthe. You’ll hear a lot of hooey and misinformation about absinthe, but these guys are some of the most trusted voices out there. You can read what users have to say about Pernod and many more brands, extinct and extant. 
• Bookshelf: A Taste for Absinthe, a rundown of R. Winston Guthrie and James F. Thompson's 2010 book on the spirit and cocktail recipes that call for it.

Marshmallow, an Untraditional Collins

Whether christened Tom or John, the Collins family of drinks dates back to the early 19th Century. They are essentially individual servings of a cool gin punch made popular at London’s Limmer’s Hotel by headwaiter John Collins some 30 to 40 years before civil war broke out in America.

Nevermind that Collins didn't actually invent the punch (in his 2010 book Punch, historian David Wondrich gives that honor to Stephen Price, the American manager of London's Garrick Club). To this day, a concoction of gin, lemon juice, some sweetener, and cold sparkling water bears the headwaiter's name. Well, his surname, anyway.

Variations on the drink — Bootsy, Barnabas, vodka, and Michael Collinses — came later. To this august and suspect list, I add my own: the Marshmallow Collins.

Several months ago, I wrote about my experiments with marshmallow syrup using the shredded root of Althaea officinalis, that is, real marshmallow plants rather than candy marshmallows (see below for link). At the time, I wrote

The cut root I purchased was perfectly dry and felt like any other root or shredded bark. But wait. In water it became mucilaginous; a thick, colloid, almost ropy syrup formed as the infusion sat overnight. Dry, it had just the faintest musty smell. Once it got wet, the smell was, well, rooty. Seriously. Smelled like someone had been digging up the garden.

It's a difficult syrup to work with. Not because of its thickness and tendency to stick to itself — which, admittedly, is a little odd — but because of its inherently bosky taste and smell. I happen to like it, but I don't like the way it mixes with whiskey. Gin is another story.

So when one of the boys suggested a round of Marshmallow Collinses last night, I smiled and let him put together a batch. Here's how we ended up making them:

Marshmallow Collins

3 oz gin (we used Beefeater)
1.5 oz fresh lemon juice
1 oz real (e.g., Althaea officinalis) marshmallow syrup
Cold soda water

Combine the gin, lemon juice, and syrup in a shaker full of ice. Shake to combine and chill. Strain into a tall glass full of ice. Stir briefly, top with soda water, and serve.

Goes well with:

• Real Marshmallow Syrup — my original post about my syrup experiments with the odd little root. Includes French sirop de guimauve recipes and my modern update as used above.
• David Wondrich (2010) Punch: The Delights (and Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl Perigee/Penguin Group, New York. Innumerable plaudits from drinking types have been written about Wondrich's book. I can only add at this point that I wish all drinks books were so well written — and researched. Wondrich's isn't the only book on punch I own, but it is the best.

Drinking Manhattans from my Great-Grandmother's Champagne Glasses

A quick note to let you know I haven't died, just been without wireless for most of the past week.

After a trip to snowy Kansas City, I'm back in San Diego where the sun has rarely felt so good. I wasn't even home from the airport before I unbuttoned my heavy chamois shirt and hoped I'd remembered to leave iced tea in the fridge.

Yeah, I complain about the snow, and I remain happy not to see it more than once every two or three years, but the truth is that Kansas City has grown a lot more interesting since I left it for college. There's cool new bars and restaurants, entire neighborhoods have been rehabbed, and — let's face it — the barbecue has never sucked in KC. It's enough to make me look a little closer at real estate.

One of the most surprising moments came, though, when I walked into my parents' house and my mother suggested that I would probably like a Manhattan. On the verge of saying "No, that's ok, I'm just happy with tea by the fire," I saw she had set up a bar on the kitchen table. Just for us. There was whiskey in a flat-bottomed antique captain's decanter, Angostura bitters, cherries, a cherry-grabber far older than I, and great old glassware. That first night, we had Manhattans in my grandmother's heavy lead crystal tumblers.

The second night, we had them in my great-grandmother's champagne glasses. Now, my great-grandmother died in 1926, so lord knows how old those glasses actually are. They only hold about three ounces, but the stems are hollow, so the whiskey goes almost all the way to the table top.

It's not my usual way to make Manhattans, but when I saw a bowl of fruit, I grabbed an orange, peeled off two wide swaths, and gave the drinks a dose of California. The syrup-laced cherry one usually finds in a Manhattan is optional. Use one or not as you see fit, but don't muddle if you do.

Manhattan
2 oz bourbon
1 oz sweet vermouth
2-3 dashes of bitters
orange peel (with no white pith)
cherry (optional)

Rim the glass with the orange peel, twist it into a spiral, give a squeeze over the glass, and drop it in. Add liquids to a separate ice-filled container. If using a cherry, drop it in. Stir until chilled, strain into the prepared glass. Drink it while, as some old-timers say, it's still smiling at you.

You can also swap lemon for the orange and add a dash of absinthe. But my mother is a respectable lady, and unlike me, does not keep absinthes on hand.

Pity Tits, a Guatemalan Handshake, and Why the Business is Awful

A few weeks ago, I asked a friend a simple question: “Would you like some music in your ears?” He cocked his head to one side and didn’t answer. I paused. Two seconds passed. Three. I took a breath and repeated the question, “Would you like milk for your tea?”

I’ve lost count since moving to Southern California how many have mistaken me for — in the local parlance — voice talent. Those who like the sound of my voice have no idea how much work goes into maintaining it.

See, my brain doesn’t work. Hasn’t for years. Not since I was a kid, not the way it’s supposed to, anyway. Every single day, all day, the wrong words threaten to tumble forth in a cascade of nonsense, non sequiturs, and outright gibberish. At times, I cannot understand the utterances that come out of my own mouth. We’re not talking about occasional faux pas that anyone could commit or the torrents of vulgarity one experiences with Tourette’s syndrome. Instead, I am plagued by phrases and words that don’t fit the conversation. Sometimes, they wouldn’t fit any conversation. Most of the words are real; some aren’t. Some real words are strung together in meaningless phrases. Often, I couldn’t articulate the right words if my life depended on it.

Take the Quarantine, an old Charles Baker cocktail made with Filipino rum. Last Autumn, I visited Smuggler’s Cove, Martin Cate’s fantastic rum bar in San Francisco. Filipino food is some of my favorite, but I hadn’t had Filipino rum, so I leaned in to bartender Marcovaldo Dionysos and confidently asked “How about a Guatemalan Handshake?” Dionysos almost imperceptibly squinted, smiled politely, and leaned a little closer. It was the expression of someone who thought he had misheard something, maybe because it was too noisy. I knew that look well. “I’d love to try one of those Quarantines,” I repeated. Christ.

When I told Cate about this later, he confirmed my own thoughts. “I can clearly state,” he wrote “that I can't think of anything that sounds more like the name of a dirty sex act than Guatemalan Handshake."

My family has long since stopped being concerned and now laughs openly at me. What the hell, I do, too: sometimes it’s laughable. I have, for instance, called parking meters parking engines. Well, ok, that’s not so bad. I once asked guests, however, in a loud and clear voice if they were ready for pity tits. God knows what they must have thought, but I knew we had both hummus and pita bread on hand. Whatever I had intended to offer (neither breasts or little flatbreads) quickly morphed to pita. Ta da! In college, Franklin Street was rechristened Frazzlebrap — just one example of the gibberish that regularly shoots from my mouth — and, rather than telling my partner that some chicken was ready for the grill, I strode into the living room, raised my right hand, and confidently declared “The business is awful.”

There’s clearly a disorder of some kind at play, though the neurologists haven’t quite been able to pin down. There have been MRIs and x-rays. Nothing conclusive. Wernicke’s aphasia was suggested more than once, though, thank god, if that’s it, it’s a mild case. At a recent dinner of Korean BBQ when I swapped one word for a similar one, a neurologist at the table proposed paraphasia — saying television when telephone is meant, that sort of thing. But the misspeaks are more complex than that. She ruled out a brain tumor after realizing that I’ve been doing this for decades.

When my words come out wrong, I can sometimes correct them on the fly by rearranging the sentence as I speak so that listeners don’t catch on. The result isn’t the sentence I intended, but no one’s the wiser. That’s not always possible, especially when my brain slips into neutral and I’m unable to speak at all. The aching caesura that follows leaves me, mouth open, utterly silent, like an armadillo in the headlights. I can describe a thing in German, I can paraphrase it in French, I can give you the general idea in Spanish, and I can even point mutely to one sunning itself on the windowsill, but I'll be damned if I can tell you in those instances that the word I want is cat.

Those very close to me know about this Achilles tongue — one friend keeps a running lexicon of intended versus actual utterances — but most people would never suspect anything unusual. Even the neurologist at dinner (whom I’ve known for ten years) didn’t pick up on it until last week. I’ve gotten very good at passing for someone with a normal brain.

The truth is, I am forever wrestling my tongue into submission. Speaking, especially in groups, used to be a terror for me because of it. Quite literally, I would rather have died on the spot than speak in public.

I’m no longer terrified of holding forth in public and, in fact, have gone out of my way to speak on radio, on television, for journalists, and in front of audiences numbering in the hundreds. In order to pull that off, I’ve developed a few tricks.

The first trick is not to speak unless I must. The less I speak, the fewer chances I have to say the wrong thing, as, for instance, I recently asked “Do you have pickles in your shit?” I’ve no idea what I intended to ask my friends en route to the coffee shop, but I assure you, it was not that. Even I was stunned. Fortunately, my rogue utterances are rarely vulgar, but why risk a conversation-stopper like that?

The second is listening. If I’m not speaking in a public setting — say, in a staff meeting or on stage — I damn well better be doing something. From a young age, I learned to observe even minute details. When others speak, I carefully parse not just what they’re talking about, but how they’re presenting — what pronouns and verb tenses they use, the vocabulary itself, pronunciations and accents, and what they’re not saying as much as what they are. I study clothing, haircuts, makeup, and perfumes. There’s a wealth of secrets just in breathing patterns, the cut of a shirt, and how one refers to carbonated beverages.

Being quiet has made me, since I was a child, adept at reading faces and body language. When my brain and tongue go off the rails, I usually hear the wreckage, but not always. So I constantly use others as a gauge my performance. A barely raised eyebrow, a head cocked ever so slightly to one side, or lips turned down just a hair tell me as much about what’s coming out of my mouth as looks of outright bewilderment. A mental rewind of the last few seconds lets me isolate the offending words and quickly reshuffle the subsequent ones. Mostly, this works. Sometimes it doesn’t. My partner recently explained: “When I realize that you’ve misspoken, I understand what you meant to say about 85% of the time just from the context. The other 15%, though, is a complete mystery.”

Being quiet and speaking infrequently oddly makes people pay more attention when I do talk. I keep my voice low, slow, measured. In a meeting, this usually causes others to stop talking, to stop texting, to quit handling papers. It draws their attention to me like a spotlight and they, quite literally, lean in and listen. Of course, it helps that I tend not to speak unless I have something worthwhile to say. Gives me a false aura of wisdom.

That measured pace, though, is just another trick. I am fighting, always fighting, my tongue. It wants to do bad things. Always. When I want to talk about whiskey, it’s itching to prattle on about opal pits, c-car-c-car-car-carpets, finger toots, or terrible opium choices. For real. Those are the kinds of things I say. So I pause between phrases, reining in that willful muscle at every turn. In a twenty-minute talk, I’ll do this hundreds of times. To my knowledge, I’ve never let slip anything horrible or perplexing in a talk. The overall effect, I’m told, is one of calm erudition sprinkled with humor.

It helps — another trick — to have a script. If I have to memorize 30 pages of copy to get through a talk, that’s exactly what I’ll do. If I’m going on radio or television, I know the topic and practice answers and anecdotes beforehand. Seeing me prep for a public talk is a lot like seeing Colin Firth as the painfully stammering King George VI in the 2010 film The King’s Speech. My speeches are marked in green ink: when to breathe, when to pause, when to force an elision, or draw out a phrase. By the time an audience hears a new speech, I’ve delivered it as many as ten times at home. Otherwise? Well, otherwise, I sound like a lunatic.

Lastly, I write. I’ll fly anywhere in the world to talk about food and drinks, but writing is a quiet sport. It’s not necessary that I speak much. Rather, it’s necessary that I listen, that I observe, that I understand what needs to be written and why. After more than thirty years of practice, I’m good at these things.

Will I come speak if you invite me? If the schedule allows, of course I will. I will do my very best — as I do every hour of every day — to keep my brain corralled and my tongue in check.

Please understand, though, that if I propose a Guatemalan Handshake, I’m probably just thirsty.

Probably.

Batida Paulista from The Zenchilada

The newest issue of The Zenchilada is out with two articles by yours truly. One is on using raw eggs in drinks and the other about Lancaster-style beet pickled eggs (there’s an egg theme at work for the entire issue). I’m pleased to have worked one more with photographer Douglas Dalay for the pickled egg shots. He’s the one who captured this fireball while barman Martin Cate made punch at the 2010 Tiki Oasis.

The cocktail article has three drinks; a batida Paulista, a golden fizz, and a fantastic smoky drink from New Orleans bartender Danny Valdez called “That Night a Forest Grew…” with Del Maguey Chichicapa mezcal, a brace of hot sauces, and Pedro Ximenez sherry.

In the article I specify Leblon cachaça, a widely available sugarcane spirit from Brazil, for the batida Paulista. If you have access to other brands, feel free to use another or even a young rhum agricole. From The Zenchilada (Fall 2010 issue):

During the Truman administration, Brazil’s ambassador to the United States was Mauricio Nabuco…Margarette de Andrade credits him with this São Paulo cocktail in her 1965 Brazilian Cookery: Traditional and Modern. It’s exactly the kind of drink, made one at a time, that suits small gatherings. The batida (or “beaten” drink) calls for cachaça, a sugarcane spirit from Brazil gaining popularity in the US. A rhum agricole from the French West Indies makes a passable substitute.

Batida Paulista

2 oz cachaça (Leblon preferred)
1 tsp egg white
1 Tbl superfine sugar
.5 oz fresh lemon juice (or lime)
Sugar for rimming

Wet the rim of an old fashioned glass with fresh lemon juice and dip in sugar. Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice cubes and shake hard until blended. Strain into the prepared glass.

For the rest of the article (and the issue), check out The Zenchilada. You may also want to check out the Corn Tassel cocktail, one I made featuring white corn whiskey, orgeat, and Cointreau.