The generality of Christmas-keepers observe that festival after such a manner as is highly dishonourable to the name of Christ. How few are there comparatively that spend those holidays (as they are called) after an holy manner. But they are consumed in Compotations, in Interludes, in playing at Cards, in Revellings, in excess of Wine, in mad Mirth…

– Increase Mather, 1687

Now that the turkey carcass has been stripped clean, it’s officially the season for waffle-iron riots and fruitcake, for Salvation Army bellringers at the mall and for pepper spray at the Walmart, the time of year that’s the dominion of ugly sweaters and store-brand eggnog.

I can’t do a damn thing about softening our holiday-season hysteria, or the impending extinction of civility and good taste. But the crappy eggnog? That, at least, I can fix.

Here’s how I do my part: On December 10 & 11, I’ll be presenting a session as part of SwigWell Drinking Academy on Holiday Drinks (that don’t suck).

As tempting as it might be to simply set up rounds of Horny Ho Ho Mojitos, Noel’s Nooners and Candy Cane Martinis (by the way: I didn’t make up any of those things) on the bar and simply blast away at them with a candy-striped baseball bat, I’m more of the civilized (not to mention, clumsy) type, so I’ll take a bit of a different approach — in essence, my goal is to use the best of both classic and contemporary holiday cocktails to swamp the boat of horrible drinks that make the rounds at this time each year, so nobody (including me) has to go to a holiday party and endure being served a Christmas Cosmo or a Grinch (Midori, lemon, sugar — again, not making this up) ever again.

Plus, I’ll cover some of the history of holiday drinking (short synopsis: even the most boisterous of today’s Santarchy cells pale in comparison to the wassail mobs of Christmas past), and look at how what we drink and how we drink over the holidays has changed over the centuries.

And, in case you were wondering: we’ll be serving drinks! There will be rum, and brandy, and fire….

There’ll be two opportunities to catch the session: Saturday, December 10, from 1:30pm to 3:00pm at Rob Roy in Seattle; and Sunday, December 11, 1:30pm – 3:00pm, also at Rob Roy.

Plan ahead! Advance reservations are required. The price for each session is $75; to reserve a spot, visit SwigWell and provide your details.

Tags: Events by Paul
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There are few compounds that are more sinful than the applejack of New Jersey. The name has a homely, innocent appearance, but in reality applejack is a particularly powerful and evil spirit. The man who intoxicates himself on bad whisky is sometimes moved to kill his wife and set his house on fire, but the victim of applejack is capable of blowing up a whole town with dynamite and of reciting original poetry to every surviving inhabitant.

– “A Wicked Beverage,” New York Times, April 10, 1894

You can learn a lot about a civilization by looking at what it drinks — and when that civilization is an early ancestor of your own, an exploration of the drinking habits can result in not only an interesting anecdote or two, but hopefully a better picture of who we are as a society.

In our early years, Americans drank pretty much anything that was available — but “available” is the operative term here. Our ancestors drank beer and wine, when it was available, which after the initial supplies ran out, wasn’t very often; soon, brandy and, more importantly, rum entered the picture, and eventually whiskey worked its way into the mix. But for much of America’s history, from the earliest Colonial days and for the more than two centuries that followed, Americans sated their thirst for beverages that conveyed a buzz mostly with libations that came from the fruit of the apple tree — primarily in the form of hard cider, which was EVERYWHERE and in tremendous quantities, but also in its harder, sharper and, at times, burly and boisterous relative: applejack, the distinctive American interpretation of apple brandy.

For a drink that so enamored our American ancestors (especially in the Northeast), we know awfully little about applejack and American apple brandy today. If your reading habits have brought you to this blog, you’re no doubt already familiar with Laird’s applejack and probably their bonded apple brandy, too, and you may even know of newer, small-scale producers somewhere (legal or, um, “artisanal”) who are making the stuff. But what else do you know about American apple brandy?

The answer, probably, is “not much.” A year or so ago, I was lamenting my own ignorance of a category that I still found pretty fascinating, so I started putting together bits of historical info that eventually made their way into my “As American as Apple Brandy” presentation at Tales of the Cocktail in July (where I was joined by another ardent fan of apple brandy, my good friend Misty Kalkofen, from Drink in Boston).

In case you missed my applejack schtick at Tales, there’s another opportunity coming up where you can see me get way too excited about this style of spirit that’s undergoing a bit of a comeback: on Saturday, November 19, I’ll be talking about American apple brandy as part of Swig Well: Seattle Drinking Academy, at Rob Roy.

Among the things I’ll babble about are bits of apple-brandy history such as:

• In 1830, near the end of the farmstead epoch of American distilling, there were 430 distillers operating in New Jersey. Even after liquor production moved primarily to large, centralized distilleries, there were still approximately 60 distilleries in southern New York producing apple brandy in 1890, and in 1892, more than 70 distilleries in New Jersey produced around 13,000 barrels of the stuff.
• Long ignored by the temperance movement, apple growers eventually came under Prohibitionist assault around the turn of the 20th century. The result? Thousands of apple trees were destroyed to disrupt the production of cider; facing this threat, apple growers embraced what became one of history’s most memorable marketing slogans: “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
• In anticipation of the demand that would follow Prohibition’s repeal, Laird’s & Co. announced in October, 1933, that they’d begun production of 1 million gallons of apple brandy—“for medicinal purposes.”

Oh — and there’ll be cocktails.

This is my first scheduled class at Swig Well, and while tickets are limited, I want to make sure every seat is full. The class is an hour-ish long (I get chatty sometimes), and takes place on the afternoon of Saturday, November 19 (I don’t have a set start time yet, but it’ll be between noon and 3pm) from 1:30pm to 2:30pm; tickets are $75 each.

Check out my original post about Swig Well, then head over to their site to see the syllabus and to sign up for tickets (you’ll need advance reservations — like I said, tickets are limited). And, while you’re at it, check them out on your social-media platform of choice: Swig Well on Twitter, and Swig Well on Facebook.

Tags: Applejack, Events by Paul
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Drinking is easy.

Learning how to make a decent drink — well, that’s easy, too, but it requires a little more attention … attention, and resources, and most useful of all, some guidance from those who’ve ventured down the good-drinking path ahead of you.

For resources, you’ve got stuff like this blog, and this magazine, and these videos, and there’s a whole slew of other books, websites and whatnot that can teach you everything from which brand of bourbon to buy to how to clarify lime juice or break down a spirit into its constituent elements.

And now, if you live in Seattle, there are classes. Swig Well is a cocktail-education program (the preferred term is “drinking academy”, with all its intended unfussy “drinking-is-fun” implications) organized by Rob Roy mastermind Anu Apte along with business partner Hallie McGee. Like similar programs around the country, Swig Well focuses on teaching its “students” how to drink (and prepare drinks) better, and how to better understand the character of what’s in the glass.

Where Swig Well gets distinctive is in its approach: while Apte is teaching the inaugural class (this weekend!) along with other courses to come, she’s reaching out to the broader bar community in search of instructors and topics. As a result, sessions may be relatively simple (as with this weekend’s Halloween-themed class), designed to appeal to adventurous consumers, or the event can be an intensive look at aromatic compounds in cocktails or the science of shaking vs. stirring, designed for audiences of advanced cocktail nerds and longtime bartenders.

Most sessions will take place at Rob Roy and have an audience max of 10-ish, to provide a more intimate and interactive experience, though there will be some exceptions to both location and class size, depending on topic. Most classes will be in the afternoon (to work around bar opening times), largely weekends, though again, there may be exceptions. Class prices start at $75, which gets you a few drinks, an hour or hour-plus of a seminar by a learned professional, along with whatever swag that session may feature (there’s talk of Swig Well-branded Moleskine notebooks for participants, along with items liquor brands or other sponsors may offer).

Anyway, Swig Well’s first full-bore class is this weekend, the start of hopefully many more to come. For more info, swing by Swig Well’s site, or go all 2011 and “Like” them on Facebook and follow Swig Well on Twitter.

Tags: Events by Paul
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As I mentioned back in February, I recently had the poor judgement to agree to participate in an event put together by Small Screen Network, dubbed “Jim and Rocky’s Barback Pro-Am.”

The idea behind the series was simple: Seattle bartender Jim Romdall and bartender/bon vivant Rocky Yeh would travel along the West Coast, recruiting bloggers, writers and other miscreants to work / take abuse as a barback for the night in kind of a boozy take on “Not My Job,” while SSN’s cameras caught all the humiliation on video for the amusement of…well…sadists, really.

The good news: I didn’t seriously damage anything, with the exception of my dignity and my reputation. The bad news: I managed to screw up a few orders, a credit history or two (goddamn credit cards) and to somehow spill Simon Ford’s champagne from the other end of the bar. Plus, I got to experience the awkwardness of watching Romdall douse a big round of Ramos Fizzes with the smoky violence of Ardbeg.

Yes, really — here, watch the whole thing for yourself:

Tags: Events by Paul
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Five years, almost six.

That’s how long I’ve been writing about drinks, and bars, and hanging out in bars to write about drinks. Throughout this time, I’ve always been keenly aware that my position in the bar equation is firmly on the barstool side of the action. Except for a short stint when I was 22, pouring pitchers of 3.2 beer in Norman, Oklahoma for college students — you could get Bud Light OR Coors Light, or if you were on a fancy date, there was Michelob in the cooler — I’ve never actually broken a sweat behind a bar. Middle-age escapist daydreams aside, I’m okay with that.

This all changes on Monday.

Against my better judgment, this Monday, February 28, I’ll be taking my turn in “Jim and Rocky’s Barback Pro-Am,” a series of events up and down the West Coast that basically entails taking drink bloggers, writers and related boozy hangers-on, and setting them up as free-labor barback piñatas for Jim Romdall, formerly and soon-again-to-be of Vessel, and Rocky Yeh, bar regular turned bartender and ambassador for, oh, everyone. My job? To try not to fall to the floor stricken with cardiac arrest, or otherwise embarrass myself like the aging keyboard monkey I am. I know, not likely, but I have a hard time saying “no” in these kinds of situations.

Anyway, if you’re in Seattle on Monday and possess the kind of high discomfort threshold you’ll need to watch a wheezing man in his 40s attempt to do a job better suited for someone half his age, then come watch this spectacle. It all goes down — and by “it all,” I mean “me and my dignity” — starting at 6pm at Needle & Thread, the upstairs bar at Tavern Law, at 1406 12^th Ave. on Capitol Hill.

If you’re the Facebook type, details are here, but even if you can’t make it, you can feel some of my pain courtesy of Small Screen Network, which will turn their cameras on the event to preserve the ugliness for posterity, damn their souls. There’s also apparently a competition involved, which I’m pretty much giving up on right now, but whatever.

If you’re around, please come to Tavern Law to witness the full horror of the event. Plus, I’m anticipating I’ll need someone to buy me a beer after the whole thing’s over, so it might be a good idea to bring some extra coin. Oh, and are you finished with that?

Tags: Events by Paul
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