I’ve been in a rut. Aside from Mixology Mondays, I haven’t written straight-out about a cocktail since the holidays.

There’s a reason for that, mostly — I’m usually motivated to write about new drinks I’m playing around with and enjoying, but over the past few months those drinks have primarily been things I’ve been working on for an article, and so I keep them to myself until the story comes out; drinks I’ve been playing around with for Tales of the Cocktail-related events, so ditto on keeping them close to the chest; and new drinks I’ve tried out that, well, weren’t really worth going on about. (Plus, your standard, run-of-the-mill too-lazy-to-post factors in there somewhere.) In between, I fall back on the standard comfort-food cocktails, with little variations — I’ve grown really fond of knocking just a few drops of Jade’s Eduouard absinthe into a Rittenhouse Manhattan or an Old Fashioned made with W.L. Weller or Buffalo Trace bourbon, and the drink I continue to be astonished that nobody has added to their bar menu, the Police Gazette Cocktail, remains a soothing standard for those times when I’ve been disappointed by lackluster recipes I’ve taken for a spin.

But it’s time to snap out of it. In getting serious about jump-starting my jaded tastebuds — and with them my enthusiasm for digging up old recipes — I’ve reached for the a volume on my bookshelf that’s unlikely to let me down: The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. David Embury not only knew his spirits and cocktails backward and forward, but he was also highly opinionated, and not afraid to share his thoughts on a drink with his readers. While relating a recipe, Embury occasionally indulges himself with a backhanded remark that makes it clear, “Your guest may want one of these — but you certainly shouldn’t.”

After flipping around a bit, I settled on this to help get my pistons firing again (I translated Embury’s recipe from parts to ounces):

Honeymoon (a.k.a. Farmer’s Daughter)

• 2 ounces applejack (I used Laird’s Bonded Apple Brandy)
• 1/2 ounce lime juice
• 1/8 (3/4 teaspoon) ounce curacao (Marie Brizard)
• 1/8 ounce Benedictine

Shake with ice, strain into chilled cocktail glass.

Why this one? It’s been my experience that little touches of Benedictine work wonders for surprising the palate, and right now, mine could use some surprising. Plus, there’s the apple brandy factor — I don’t break out the Laird’s that often, and if nothing else, it’s something different.

And “different” certainly describes this drink. Embury’s taste skews to the dry & tart, so I wound up doubling the liqueurs to about 1 1/2 teaspoons of each to keep the lime juice subdued. Also, Laird’s bonded apple brandy just has a more “apple-ey” taste than does their applejack (though back in Embury’s time, Laird’s applejack was made purely from apples, whereas today the apple distillate is mixed with grain alcohol, so the bonded version may be more in line with what Embury had on his shelf).

The Honeymoon takes a few sips to grow on you, and it’s still a bit wooly around the edges, but it’s an agreeable enough concoction. And when you’ve been in a rut, “agreeable enough” is still pretty good.

UPDATE: Except when it’s not. After clicking on the little “publish” button and sitting back with my Honeymoon, I found its flavor less and less satisfying. By the time I was 3/4 of the way through the drink, I was ready to toss it and give Embury another stab at redemption.

Since I already had the apple brandy out, and still had 1/2 a lime, I decided to play it safe and go with this one:

Supreme

• 2 ounces apple brandy
• 1/2 ounce lime or lemon juice
• 1/4 ounce orgeat
• dash grenadine

Shake with ice & strain into chilled cocktail glass.

“Play it safe,” because I’m a total sucker for orgeat — I’ll forgive most second-class recipes as long as they give me a little hit of that ethereal almond experience. True, I found it necessary to bump up the orgeat to somewhere around 1/3 ounce, but this one is much more of a winner — the almond and the apple play very nicely together, and the little touch of grenadine adds an additional fruity note, while everybody is kept on their toes by the tartness of the lime.

Honeymoon is over; go for the Supreme.

Tags: Applejack, Drinks 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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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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Even though it’s still only mid-November, it feels like autumn is in its final days in Seattle. Last week’s wind storms blew most of the yellowed leaves from the maple in front of our house, so now a glance out the living room window finds a scraggle of bare branches destined to remain our primary view until April rolls around again. Venture out–a less pleasant effort now, with the temperature starting to drop and the rain whipping about–and it becomes clearer that winter proper has yet to set in, but autumn’s number has definitely been called.

On rainy November Sundays such as these, it’s important to remind yourself that it’s still autumn, and that winter’s monotony has not yet captured the day. To do this, I like to turn to aged spirits and the fruits of the season to keep things in perspective. Despite all my recent excitement over the allspice richness of pimento dram, I’m not yet ready to give up my Fallen Leaves and other calvados cocktails in favor of festive holiday-appropriate drinks such as Stingers and Tom and Jerrys. The time for those will be here soon enough; tonight, I need something rugged and autumnal, with enough muscle in it to beat back the chill of the night.

The Stone Fence is a drink of antiquity; it was old hat by the time Jerry Thomas set about writing his drinks guide, having been a mainstay at taverns and inns since at least the early 1800s. Easy to prepare–simply hard cider emboldened by a hearty dose of whatever amber spirit happens to be at hand–the Stone Fence is well-suited for a November evening. The drink takes the simple, honest purity of a glass of hard cider and touches it with a little savagery, making it a beverage that’s easy to approach, yet unforgiving when underestimated. As David Wondrich quipped in Esquire Drinks, the Stone Fence has “a name which hints at the effect produced by getting outside too many of these, which is not unlike that produced by running downhill into one.”

Take these gently–but on a nasty evening, take one.

Stone Fence

• 2 ounces brandy (or applejack, or Scotch, or bourbon, or rye, or rum)
• hard cider

Pour the spirits into a pint glass; add two lumps of ice and fill with cider.

Technorati tag: cocktails

Tags: Applejack, Bourbon, Brandy, Drinks, Rum, Rye, Scotch by Paul
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