A couple of months ago, I wrote about an essay at Lost Magazine by a writer named Wayne Curtis, about a cocktail very dear to my heart, the El Presidente (or should that just be “El Presidente?” I never remember the protocol). Well, Curtis has a book coming out next week entitled And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails, and, thanks to the review copy I received in the mail, I’m proud to have gotten a jump on everyone else in digging into the latest volume of booze-oriented scholarship.

Almost everyone, anyway. The New York Times beat me to the punch a week or so ago, with Jonathan Miles’ writeup in the “Shaken and Stirred” column of a visit to Pegu Club, where Audrey Saunders mixed him a bombo, one of the 10 cocktails alluded to in the title (Miles’ verdict: the bombo is a bust). Plus, the blurbs on the back cover are from Ted Haigh, Dale DeGroff and Jeff “Beachbum” Berry, so that puts me another rung down the ladder of the first-to-reads. But I’m still glad to have a copy of the book in hand, if for no other reason than it gives me bragging rights that I’ve been in the first wave of cocktail geeks to dig into the finest narrative overview of spirits and cocktails since William Grimes’ Straight Up or On the Rocks: The Story of the American Cocktail.

Though Curtis doesn’t aim for the whole shebang, like Grimes did — instead, as the title implies, this book is all about rum. As Curtis writes in the introduction,

Rum is the history of America in a glass. It was invented by New World colonists for New World colonists. In the early colonies, it was a vital part of the economic and cultural life of the cities and villages alike, and it soon became an actor in the political life.

[…]

Rum embodies America’s laissez-faire attitude: It is whatever it wants to be. There have never been strict guidelines for making it. There’s no international oversight board, and its taste and production varies widely, leaving the market to sort out favorites. If sugarcane or its by-products are involved in the distillation process, you can call it rum. Rum is the melting pot of spirits — the only liquor available in clear, amber, or black variations.

Curtis is no romantic about his subject; while, later in the book, he covers the rise of premium rums, he suffers no illusions about the original quality of the New World’s native spirit. This is made clear beginning in chapter one, where Curtis points out that “Distillation concentrates and intensifies the subtle tastes found in the original low-alcohol product. Brandy has thus been called the distilled essence of wine, and whiskey the distilled essence of beer. And rum? It is […] the distilled essence of industrial waste.”

And a Bottle of Rum covers rum’s rough early days, when it helped bolster burgeoning economies in Jamaica and, especially, Barbados (among the terms for intoxication printed by Benjamin Franklin are “crump-footed,” “staggerish” and “Been to Barbados”), fortified British sailors and pirates (Blackbeard favored tumblers of a cocktail made with flaming rum and gunpowder), became part of the infamous (and somewhat mythical, as Curtis explains) triangle trade of rum and slaves, and appeared prominently on the bill of fare for virtually every inn and tavern in the young American republic. Curtis also points out oddities in the modern history of rum — for example, how one of today’s top-selling rums is named after the Welsh-born privateer Henry Morgan, whose MO with wealthy captives included the victims

[being] stretched on the rack, or [having] flaming sticks tied between their fingers, or a cord twisted around their heads so tightly that their eyeballs popped like grapes from their skins. […] Some had their feet burned off while still alive; others were said to be suspended by their testicles and battered with sticks until a violent anatomical separation ensued.

Think about that the next time you’re tempted to order a Captain and cola.

Curtis also covers rum’s versatility as a mixing liquor — no wonder, given the industrial harshness of the spirit’s early ancestor — and covers pre-Jerry Thomas concoctions such as grog, punch and flip, as well as the sling, the mimbo, the afore-mentioned bombo (rum, molasses, water and nutmeg), cherry bounce, bilberry dram, syllabub, switchel, sampson and calibogus. Further on, he tackles the daiquiri and the legacy of El Floridita, Hemingway’s endless thirst for frozen rum drinks (house record at El Floridita: 16 daiquiris in one sitting), the debate over the Bacardi cocktail that continues to this day (just venture over to the Drinkboy forum for proof), and the rise of rum and coke, mojitos, and the whole tiki experience. And, as should be expected from any comprehensive overview of a particular spirit, Curtis also tosses in a final chapter containing the recipes for 30 rum-based cocktails.

If I’m glossing over a lot of things, it’s because I’m still not quite halfway through the book — it’s been another busy week — but so enamored am I of Curtis’ approach to rum that I wanted to make sure I got a post up about this book before I leave town on Wednesday, and will be focusing (and, hopefully, posting) on other things.

So, click away — head on over to Amazon or Powells and advance order a copy of And a Bottle of Rum, and while you’re at it, stop by Wayne’s blog, Republic of Rum, where he chronicles his continuing adventures with this native spirit. Don’t make me send Captain Morgan after you…..

Tags: Books, Rum by Paul
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Screw eBay.

Over the past few years, I’ve put together a modest library of drinks-related books, most of them out-of-print and many fairly old and somewhat rare. Apparently, I haven’t been alone; as I check out the usual places on eBay and other online sources for old books, I’ve seen prices rise exponentially, just in the few years I’ve been collecting.

Take David Embury’s The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, for example. Three years ago I was shocked by the $40-50 price tag I was finding for the book online; I eventually found a copy at Powells.com for $10, and snagged it immediately. Today? Check this out: as of this moment, a copy of the 1961 edition in good condition is running at $225, with two days left to bid. That’s downright depressing, for someone hoping to expand his collection.

You can at least find Embury; other vintage cocktail books are so rare that I can’t even recall finding them online, much less at a hyper-inflated price. Such is the case with Harry MacElhone’s Barflies and Cocktails, from 1927. Cocktail geeks with greater experience, timing and/or resources than I have wagged this volume temptiingly online and in press as it has, among other things, the first known printed recipe for the Pegu Club. But despite my sporadic searches, I have yet to see a copy for sale.

This drink apparently comes from that book, and it’s a cocktail I’ve been meaning to try ever since David Wondrich wrote it up in last fall’s edition of Drinks magazine. Wondrich notes that the author included a section of recipes contributed by regulars to Harry’s New York Bar in Paris, where Macelhone presided. Credit for this drink goes to a Philadelphian named Chuck Kerwood, apparently known as the “wild man of aviation.” Yeah, well, if you had a couple of these under your belt, you’d be pretty wild in the cockpit, too.

Burnt Fuselage

• 1 ounce VSOP Cognac
• 1 ounce Grand Marnier
• 1 ounce dry vermouth

Stir with ice; strain into chilled cocktail glass and twist a strip of lemon peel over the top.

Verdict? Nice….

Tags: Books, Brandy, Drinks, Vermouth by Paul
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I struggled a bit with the whole “pastis” idea. I enjoy the flavor of anise, and like the flavor in cocktails, but when looking for a pastis-containing drink that had an agreeable taste, and that had a decent story, I kept running into dead-ends.

Then I came across the cannibals.

William Seabrook was an old-school adventurer. A Maryland native, Seabrook fought for the French army during World War I (and was gassed at Verdun), then started a career as a newspaper reporter. After a few years writing for Hearst papers, Seabrook embarked on a freelance career, writing for publications including Vanity Fair and Reader’s Digest, and quickly earned a reputation as an intrepid traveler who would venture into the unknown for months on end, go deep with the locals, and come back with an incredible story.

His first book, Adventures in Arabia: Among the Bedouins, Druses, Whirling Dervishes & Yezidee Devil Worshippers, was published in 1928 (and republished as recently as 1991). The Magic Island, an account of his months spent in Haiti–during which Seabrook became possibly the first journalist to witness and document voodoo rituals in the island nation’s cities and remote villages–followed in 1929. In 1931, Seabrook shocked readers with Jungle Ways, in which he documented his journey across Africa, from Ivory Coast to Timbuktu, at one point spending several months living with cannibalistic tribes and, he claimed, once dining on human flesh (a claim he later withdrew, after realizing years later that his hosts–possibly repelled by his distasteful display of enthusiasm–had probably duped him with a meal of roast gorilla*). Throughout these travels and the popular books they spawned, Seabrook revealed himself to be a keen student of anthropology, with a special interest in native religion, mysticism, sorcery and magic.

Seabrook’s adventures and success as an author earned him access to intriguing circles in Paris and New York. He counted the photographer Man Ray among his friendly acquaintances, and the noted occultist Aleister Crowley was one of his closest friends (and, later, one of his most bitter enemies). Reporter, adventurer, writer, sorcery aficionado and self-professed sadist and masochist, Seabrook was a complicated man.

He was also a world-class lush.

In the early 1930s Seabrook was, by his own estimation, knocking back a quart to a quart-and-a-half of Scotch, gin, brandy and Pernod every day. By 1933, disgusted that he had become a drunkard of the tumbler-of-whiskey-before-getting-out-of-bed variety, Seabrook and his friends decided he needed serious help. On December 4–the night before Prohibition was repealed– Seabrook sought treatment for chronic alcoholism and had himself committed to an insane asylum in Westchester County, north of New York City. He stayed there for seven months, a lone souse in a ward full of schizophrenics, manic-depressives, catatonics and hysterics. He recounted his experiences in 1935 in Asylum, perhaps the first published inside account of a patient in a mental institution, and a milestone in the literature of the treatment of alcoholism. A mild bestseller, Asylum was reprinted in several pulp paperback editions through the 1960s.

Seabrook’s treatment took place at a time just after straightjackets and handcuffs had been removed from regular use, but his experience was still quite severe. After sleeping off his final drunk, Seabrook was examined by doctors, shaved, and then taken to be bathed.

[…]A fireman stood behind two hoseless nozzles, mounted on a fireboat pedestal with dials and gauges. They stripped me and stood me against the wall where I’d make a fine target, with bars to cling to, so that I wouldn’t be knocked down. They gave it to me, first hot, then cold, then hot and cold together. I let out several loud howls, and they laughed. I didn’t know whether I was howling because I enjoyed it or because I was outraged. It hit you sometimes like a fist. It was like having a barroom fight with the Johnstown flood.

After being bound to his bed with layers of wet sheets while he sweated through the DTs, Seabrook gradually settled into life in the institution. He made friends with the other patients; squabbled with the staff (particularly over the subject of prunes), and, eventually, came to believe he was completely cured of his chronic alcoholism.

Following his discharge, and the publication of Asylum, Seabrook did the only sensible thing for a recently reformed drunk: he contributed a drink recipe to a novelty cocktail manual.

So Red the Nose, or Breath in the Afternoon is a 1935 compilation of 30 cocktail recipes (each accompanied by an illustration, several–including the one for Seabrook’s page–blatantly offensive in a racial-and-ethnic-charicature kind of way), submitted by some of the leading authors of the day. Participating authors included Erskine Caldwell, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Theodore Dreiser and Ernest Hemingway, who contributed perhaps the book’s most famous concoction, Death in the Afternoon, his legendary absinthe-and-champagne gloom-lifter. Seabrook’s drink was the Asylum Cocktail, which, as he described, can “look like rosy dawn, taste like the milk of Paradise, and make you plenty crazy.”

Composed of equal parts gin and Pernod, with a touch of grenadine for color, the Asylum resembles no dawn I’ve ever seen, unless it’s one I’ve forgotten due to the preceding evening and its resulting alcohol fog–which probably explains where Seabrook’s description comes in. The Asylum isn’t the best pastis-containing cocktail out there, but it’s also not the worst. When something comes recommended from a man with a hankering for human flesh and a habit of hobnobbing with devil-worshippers, it sometimes pays to experiment a little. But caution is warranted: as the editors of the volume note, “Members of So Red the Nose Club should read Asylum to discover what lies in store for incautious imbibers of Gin and Pernod.”

Asylum Cocktail

• 1 1/2 ounces gin
• 1 1/2 ounces Pernod
• 1 teaspoon grenadine

In a rocks or Old Fashioned glass, build the grenadine, Pernod (or other anise-flavored liqueur) and gin, in that order; do not stir. Gently add ice; watch as the cocktail changes colors. Eventually drink.

[Oh, and Seabrook? A lush for life, as he relates in his autobiography, No Hiding Place, published in 1942, two years before he took his own life with an overdose of sleeping pills.]

When mixing the Asylum, or any other cocktail calling for a pastis or absinthe substitute, there are a range of available options. Pernod, the most popular anise-flavored liqueur, works quite well in these drinks–though, with its grape-alcohol base, Pernod is technically not a pastis (by definition, pastis is made with a neutral alcohol base; but what the hell–Pernod works, and it’s easy to find).

It’s worthwhile to venture beyond the most familiar products on the shelf. Thanks to Murray at Zig Zag, I had the chance to sample a few true pastis last week. My favorite of the group was Granier, which had an assertive anise aroma yet was soft and well-rounded in flavor, slightly sweet, and retained its character when mixed with water. Others, such as the more-familiar Ricard–which presented the sweetness first and the anise in a short, coarse burst afterward–and La Muse Verte–an unsweetened pastis that tasted crisp and bright neat, with a touch of bitterness, yet folded quickly when mixed with water–fell further down on my list.

* UPDATE: Promoted from the comments section, Adam Thornton helpfully points out that Seabrook did consume human flesh–though not with the African tribe, as he initially thought, but rather, later on, in Paris. Realizing he lacked the necessary experience to write about cannibalism, Seabrook convinced a friend at a morgue to give him a piece of flesh from an accident victim, then carefully prepared it in his kitchen, documenting every step.

Read Adam’s comment and follow the link to get the full, um, flavor of Seabrook’s endeavor. And if you’ll now excuse me, I have a topic to propose over at “Is My Blog Burning?”

Tags: Books, Drinks, Gin, Mixology Monday by Paul
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A sample cocktail from George J. Kappeler’s Modern American Drinks. I don’t know if this is a Kappeler original, and I haven’t checked to see if it’s in other cocktail manuals, but this one caught my eye as something period-appropriate, with the added benefit that I happen to have the ingredients on hand.

Here’s Kappeler’s wording on the recipe, followed by my recipe (in my usual format):

Fill a mixing-glass half-full fine ice, add two dashes gum-syrup, three dashes Peyschaud [sic] or Angostura bitters, one-half jigger apple brandy, one-half jigger Italian vermouth. Mix, strain into cocktail-glass, twist small piece lemon-peel on top.

And my preparation:

Star Cocktail

• 1 ounce apple brandy (I used Laird’s Applejack)
• 1 ounce sweet vermouth
• 3 dashes Peychaud’s or Angostura bitters (I used Peychaud’s)
  
• 2 dashes gum syrup

Stir with ice and strain into chilled cocktail glass; garnish with lemon twist.

A couple of notes: first, at the beginning of the book’s recipe section, Kappeler defines a jigger as holding two ounces–this is different from the contemporary definition, in which a jigger contains one and one-half ounces–hence the measurements in my recipe.

Second, Kappeler calls for apple brandy–I assume that in 1895, the type of apple brandy he’d most readily have on hand would be domestic (ie, not Calvados), and quite possibly Laird’s (as they were certainly in production during that time). While Laird’s applejack is not currently a “pure” apple brandy, as it contains a substantial portion of neutral grain spirits, in 1895 it was still composed purely of apple distillate, and it’s the closest thing I have on hand to a domestic apple brandy. Should you have access to Laird’s bonded apple brandy, you should certainly use it in this drink (it’d probably be nice with a Calvados, too).

The Star is a very gentle cocktail, with the slight bitterness of the vermouth nicely touched by the fullness of the Peychaud’s. I think the applejack fades into the background a bit too much–all the more reason to break out the real apple brandy deal when giving this one a try.

Tags: Applejack, Books, Calvados, Drinks, Vermouth by Paul
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A good drink at the proper time
has a welcome in every clime.

I’ve been collecting bartending manuals for a few years now, and for the most part I’ve managed to obtain either originals or reprints of some of the most influential and sought-after books on the topic. Still, there are a few major works that are very hard to find, and even when a stray copy turns up on eBay or Alibris, the price is frequently so outrageous that I can’t even consider buying it (today, for example, I saw several copies of David Embury’s The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks listed on bookfinder.com. Starting price? About $150.)

So it’s all the more satisfying when the odd reasonably priced original of a vintage, influential book appears out of the blue. Such is the case with the latest addition to my library, an original copy of George Kappeler’s Modern American Drinks from 1895.

I’ve read about Kappeler’s book for years–David Wondrich and Robert Hess have referred to it as the first printed reference for the Old Fashioned, and Ted Haigh mentioned it in Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails as the original reference for the Widow’s Kiss.

There’s no fluff or nonsense from Kappeler–this book is all drinks with no commentary or editorializing, from Absinthe, California-style and the Bosom Caresser to the Star Cocktail, the Whiskey Fix and the White Plush (though he does append a somewhat out-of-place chapter on “Frozen Beverages such as Water Ices, Sherbets, and Frozen Punches”).

I’ve only started flipping through the book, but I can see already why it has caught the interest of drink historians. With its many references to old Tom gin, pepsin bitters, calasaya and Horsford acid phosphate, Modern American Drinks illuminates a particular period in the evolution of the American cocktail.

Tags: Books by Paul
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