Not quite Antigua, but for late March in Seattle, it could have been much worse.

On days like these–when I can leave the Gore-Tex at home and stroll down the street in a short-sleeve shirt, looking out at the torn-paper edge of the snowcapped Olympic Range beneath a cloudless sky–summer feels so close that I’m almost ready to dig the grill out of storage.

Of course, it’s not to be–it never is. Eight years in the Pacific Northwest has taught me that beautiful springtime days are merely cruel hoaxes on the sun-starved inhabitants, destined to be followed by an unbroken stretch of clouds and drizzle that won’t relent until Fourth of July weekend. Still, we can pretend it’s almost summer, just for one night.

One of the pleasures of owning Jeff “Beachbum” Berry’s Grog Log and Intoxica! is that they have so many recipes that answer the question, “What the hell am I going to do with all that homemade pimento dram I have in the cupboard?” On a faux-summer day, a rum drink like Jasper’s Jamaican–which Berry credits to Jasper LeFranc of the Bay Roc Hotel in Montego Bay, from the 1970s–can make the warm season seem that much closer.

Jasper’s Jamaican

• 1 1/2 ounces gold Jamaican rum (I used Appleton V/X)
• 1/2 ounce fresh lime juice
• 1/2 ounce pimento dram

Shake well with ice, and strain into cocktail glass.

I’ve taken a couple of liberties with Berry’s recipe. First, his version calls for 1 1/4 ounces rum, which really puts the rum’s flavor at a disadvantage; I’ve upped it another 1/4 ounce, which straightens the drink’s backbone a little. And, Berry’s recipe calls for 1/4 teaspoon sugar, which–with the allspice liqueur in there and everything–strikes me as a bit of overkill. Try it, and if you want it sweeter, give it a dash or two of simple syrup.

Tags: Drinks, Pimento Dram, Rum, Tiki by Paul
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Fifty-five years after it earned half of its own chapter in Jack Townsend’s The Bartender’s Book, the Clover Club has been forgotten by all but the most dedicated of students of the mixological arts. Along with its close relative (and topic of the other half of Townsend’s chapter), the Pink Lady, the Clover Club was an emblematic cocktail of a particular type of drinker. As Townsend noted in 1951–

The Clover Club drinker is traditionally a gentleman of the pre-Prohibition school. He may not necessarily be one of the legal, literary, or business figures who were members of the club of that name. He may never have been in the bar of the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia where the Clover Club members foregathered and the drink originated. But he belongs with that set. And switch from a Clover Club to a Pink Lady? Never! For one thing, someone might classify him along with that Pink Lady drinker down the bar.

Who dat? Why, surely you know her. She’s that nice little girl who works in files, who’s always so courteous but always seems so timid. She’s the one who sort of reminds you of your aunt, the quiet one. Naturally, you never expected to see her at a bar. She gets into one about twice a year, at Christmas time or some other high old time. Just why she picks the Pink Lady for these occasions–since the Lady packs quite a wallop–remains a mystery, even to her perhaps. It’s quite possible she has seen the decorative and innocuous-appearing pink-and-white amalgamation passing on a waiter’s tray and decided, “Hmmm, that couldn’t do me any harm.”

Townsend–who at the time of writing the above was the president of the Bartender’s Union of New York, Local 15, AFL–knew a thing or two about cocktails and the types of customers likely to be attached to them, and referred to the drinker of the Clover Club as “the distinguished patron of the oak-paneled lounge.”

But while these captains of industry may have disdained the file clerks ordering their Pink Ladies, by the time Townsend penned The Bartender’s Book, the writing was on the wall–the Clover Club was becoming a woman’s drink. According to a survey of bartenders in the U.S. and Canada, conducted by the New York Bartender’s Union from approximately 1946-1951, the Clover Club had slipped out of its leather-and-oak gentleman’s club habitat and made itself a preferred drink among the post-War Carrie Bradshaws. Yet even with this gender switch, the Clover Club’s fortunes were sinking. Rated the 34th most popular cocktail in the survey–tied with the Tom and Jerry, below the Jack Rose, Rock-and-Rye and Milk Punch, and just barely ahead of other forgotten drinks such as the Paradise, the Horse’s Neck and the Gin Daisy–the Clover Club was reported as decreasing in popularity in the six years covered by the survey.

Even with today’s growing interest in classic cocktails, it’s unlikely that the Clover Club will recover. For one thing, it contains raw egg white, which would seem to be the kiss of death for classic cocktails trying to make a comeback, with the possible exception of the Pisco Sour and, perhaps–and not without a heavy note of irony–the Pink Lady (disguised as “The Secret Cocktail” in Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails).

Furthermore, while it’s an interesting drink from a historical perspective, for culinary adventurers it’s a bit lackluster, especially as compared with more complex drinks such as–cue the irony again–the Pink Lady. Gin, lemon juice and grenadine, shaken with the white of an egg–bracing, fortifying, reliable, and ultimately unexciting; a Studebaker in a cocktail glass. But take the example of the timid file clerk at the end of the bar, and tip in a little applejack, and the Clover Club morphs into a free-spirited firecracker. Townsend writes,

Aside from the young ladies at their infrequent soirees, the Pink Lady is drunk to some extent by the seekers of the gay life along the Great White Way. Somehow, to the boys who were brought up looking at the flamboyant circus posters on the side of country barns, a Pink Lady connotes something halfway between their early dreams of a lady acrobat in white tights and a scarlet woman.

Fifty-odd years later, the Clover Club is little more than a footnote in cocktail history, appearing as an afterthought (or a prelude, as the case may be) when discussing its once-insolent, yet ultimately tastier and much more fun relative. Any more irony left in that shaker?

Clover Club

• 1 1/2 ounces gin
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• 4 dashes real grenadine (to taste)
• 1 egg white (1 egg white will suffice for two drinks)
  

Add ice and shake with studied firmness for at least 10 seconds. Strain into chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a stern glower.

Pink Lady

• 1 1/2 ounces gin
• 1/2 ounce applejack
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• 4 dashes grenadine (to taste)
• 1 egg white (1 egg white will suffice for two drinks)

Add ice and shake with carefree exuberance for at least 10 seconds. Strain into chilled cocktail glass and garnish, of course, with a cherry.

Tags: Applejack, Drinks, Gin by Paul
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I’ve just updated the links sidebar to include a few cocktail blogs I’ve recently come across. Be sure to check them out.

Days That End in “Y” is a mighty blog of booze news, updated with alarming regularity.

Boston Cocktails covers…well, Boston cocktails. It’s good to see what’s going on in other cities.

While it’s been on the list for a while, DC Drinks is worth mentioning for those who have not yet had the pleasure–two guys in DC, exploring the world of drinking.

Kaiser Penguin is a brand-new and mighty-fine drink blog from Pennsylvania, run by Rick, a frequent guest in these parts.

And, in case you somehow managed to miss it, Eric Asimov at The New York Times has started a blog that promises to cover the enjoyment to be found in drinking (as opposed to tasting) wine, beer and spirits (though the links and overview appear to be about 95% wine-related so far). Let’s see how often spirits and cocktails make it into the picture: The Pour.

Check ‘em out, and keep spreading the good word…..

Tags: General by Paul
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Every March, around the middle of the month, I feel the need to apologize to Ireland. On the day reserved for honoring the land’s patron saint, it’s become an American tradition to pay an outlandish cover charge to stand in an overcrowded bar, holding plastic cups of green-tinted lager and being jostled all night until a Miller Lite-swilling fratboy vomits on your shoes.

Even drinkers who celebrate in more upscale bars sully the holiday with bad, bad drinks. For proof, look no further than the drinks in this week’s Seattle Times “Cocktailing” section: the “Irish for the Day” (vodka & green creme de menthe, with a clover carved out of lime peel as garnish), and the “Leprechaun Mor-jito,” again with the dreaded green liqueur (”We serve it straight up with green crème de menthe, and for a garnish it’s got a mint leaf. It’s kind of like a martini/mojito/leprechaun,” says the bar manager).

I’m sorry, sons of Erin–it never should have come to this.

Fortunately, though, there are options for holiday-appropriate cocktails that don’t require stooping to the mixologically morbid. All of these examples employ Irish whiskey; two are simple variations on an Irish Manhattan, and one is a newer entity which is worth getting to know.

Emerald

2 ounces Irish whiskey
1 ounce sweet vermouth (or less, to taste)
2 dashes orange bitters

Stir with ice & strain into chilled cocktail glass.

There are plenty of drinks called the Emerald, but this one is the most agreeable. From the recipe, it may sound simple and unexceptional, but don’t just write this one off– the orange bitters join in an unusually simpatico relationship with the Irish whiskey, making the Emerald much more than just an alternate Manhattan.

A similar drink, with a much different flavor, is the Tipperary (Gary Regan’s thorough write-up of this drink appears in today’s “Cocktailian” column in the San Francisco Chronicle). Dating back nearly a century, the Tipperary is also related to the Manhattan, but uses green Chartreuse instead of bitters to throw the taste in a more brooding, complex direction. The original recipe used equal parts Irish whiskey, sweet vermouth and Chartreuse; Gary dries it out a bit with this recipe. (And if you feel like you just have to drink something green because it’s St. Patrick’s Day, the touch of Chartreuse adds an emerald sheen to the glass, without making it appear as though you’re imbibing a glassful of Scope.)

Tipperary

2 ounces Irish whiskey
1 ounce sweet vermouth

rinse chilled cocktail glass with green Chartreuse and discard excess; stir whiskey & vermouth with ice and strain into Chartreuse-coated glass.

A final Irish whiskey cocktail worth discovering is of a more recent vintage: the Weeski, an original drink from David Wondrich’s Killer Cocktails. Wondrich matches the tempermental flavor of Irish whiskey with the equally difficult-to-mix-with blonde Lillet. Using a bit of Cointreau to bind the flavors together, and a little orange bitters to give it greater depth, Wondrich has created a cocktail that’s worth the price of the book.

Weeski

2 ounces Irish whiskey
1 ounce blonde Lillet
1 teaspoon Cointreau
2 dashes orange bitters

Stir with ice; strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

Tags: Drinks, Irish Whiskey, Vermouth by Paul
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Thanks to Robert Hess for reminding me of this drink in a post over at The Spirit World.

As Robert points out, the Japanese Cocktail is one of only ten “cocktails” listed in Jerry Thomas’ 1862 The Bartender’s Guide. It’s unfortunate that this drink has fallen by the wayside–its flavor is deep and evocative, yet it’s not so complex to scare off less-seasoned cocktail drinkers.

The crucial ingredient here is orgeat syrup. A key component in a few other drinks–the mai tai is an example that readily springs to mind–orgeat is simply almond syrup with a faint touch of orange flower water. Monin makes an agreeable version, though, for do-it-yourselfers, Darcy lists a recipe over at The Art of Drink.

The composition of the Japanese Cocktail evinces the nineteenth-century sweet tooth; if you’re into sweet drinks, try the recipe as listed, but I’d suggest toning down on the orgeat until you reach an agreeable point.

Oh, and the name? The story goes that Thomas created this cocktail in honor of a visit to New York by the Japanese delegation. In a globalized world, the Japanese Cocktail is a reminder of a time when such things seemed so rare and exotic.

Japanese Cocktail

• 2 ounces brandy
• 1/2 ounce orgeat (or to taste)
• 2 dashes Angostura bitters
  

Stir with ice, strain into cocktail glass. Garnish with lemon twist.

Tags: Brandy, Drinks, Gettin' Jerry With It by Paul
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