It’s here.

The rain started Sunday, less than 24 hours after I noticed that the old-fashioned globe lightpost in front of our house was becoming surrounded by a corona of red-and-yellow maple leaves. As I waited outside with my son for the school bus this morning, the first leaf, a scout, dropped from the tree and settled onto our thick green patch of yard.

Even though we’re still a few days from autumn’s official opening bell, the season is already here in Seattle, and here at the Cocktail Chronicles that means one (okay, many) things: it’s time to put away the tall, minty drinks of summer and start snuggling closer to the whiskey and absinthe of fall.

Given that probably 90 percent of the fizzy drinks I consume are enjoyed in the narrow window of Seattle’s summer (and that probably nine of the remaining 10 percent is accounted for by beer), having a Mixology Monday that focuses on Fizz (as host Gabriel has chosen) take place just as autumn is coming onto the scene left me a bit befuddled. As the days shorten, I lose my taste for sparkly coolers, and even champagne cocktails don’t seem quite as enticing. As recently as this morning, I was still undecided, and for a moment I thought I might have to do a counterintuitive run on a Cuba Libre, simply because I think there’s an interesting story attached to it.

Then I remembered the Morning Glory.

If the typical collins or highball seems too summery to my season-shifting palate, then the answer could be to run with the spirits that, for me, are as much a part of autumn as are sun breaks and leaf-clogged gutters, and the Morning Glory Fizz seems to be an excellent candidate.

Please excuse me while I geek out for a minute (and feel free to skip down to the recipes): I’m not sure how or when this drink originated, but the earliest reference I’ve found is in George Kappeler’s Modern American Drinks, from 1895. It seems fairly straightforward: Scotch, lemon juice, sugar and a touch of absinthe, fortified with an egg white and brought to life with a little effervescence. Served short and without ice, the Morning Glory isn’t meant to be savored — instead, as the name implies, this drink is designed to quickly and efficiently deglaze the brain after a long night of revelry. Ordered in a mumble while still wincing from the daylight and meant to be consumed before the bartender has returned with your change, the Morning Glory Fizz isn’t recreational — it’s medicinal, as evinced by the description in Cocktails: How to Mix Them by “Robert” [Vermiere] (1922): “That will give one an appetite and quieten the nerves.”

The Morning Glory must have had quite a run. It appears (with subtle variations in recipe, mainly involving the quantity of lemon and/or lime juice, the quantity of absinthe and, occasionally, the type of whiskey, though Scotch is the big favorite) in books ranging from Albert Stevens Crockett’s Old Waldorf Bar Days (1931), “Cocktail Bill” Boothby’s World Drinks and How to Mix ‘Em (1934 — my edition, anyway), Lucius Beebe’s The Stork Club Bar Book (1946) and David Embury’s The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks (1948).

Seems pretty easy, right? Hold on — as with any drink that enjoys a certain popularity, some offshoot — whether related by ingredients or by simple coincidence — is bound to crop up, and this is no exception. Keep the key characters of whisk(e)y and absinthe, decrease the fizzy water to a splash or a squirt, replace the egg white and the citrus with some curacao and a dash or three of bitters, drop the “Fizz” from the name, and you find a Morning Glory, with similar recipes in Gordon’s Cocktail & Food Recipes from 1934, Baker’s Gentleman’s Companion from 1939 and Burke’s Complete Cocktail and TastyBite Recipes from 1941.

To make it even more confusing, those great category straddlers Patrick Gavin Duffy and Harry Craddock include recipes for both drinks in The Standard Bartender’s Guide (1934) and Savoy Cocktail Book (1930), respectively. By 1947 things are really off the rails when Bartender’s Guide … by Trader Vic features three Morning Glory cocktails (two have no resemblance to any of the other Morning Glory drinks I’ve mentioned — one is a truly blech-worthy mix of gin, lime juice, a whole egg and green creme de menthe, a version that also appears in Baker’s book), along with a Morning Glory Daisy and our old friend, the Morning Glory Fizz. Seeing that all bets have been off for quite some time, Gary Regan enters the fray in 1991 with The Bartender’s Bible, which features a Morning Glory composed of vodka, cream, dark creme de cacao and nutmeg.

Which brings me back to whiskey and absinthe, thank god. Given that the two primary recipes — those for the Morning Glory Fizz and the Morning Glory — both contain these two ingredients, and that each of them also calls for varying degrees of fizz, the only sensible thing this Mixology Monday is to tuck into both drinks. Considering the day I’ve had, I welcome the task.

Morning Glory Fizz (adapted from Modern American Drinks, by George Kappeler)

• 1 1/2 ounces Scotch whisky [I used Famous Grouse]
  
• juice of 1/2 a lemon [3/4 ounce or so]
• half a tablespoonful sugar [reduce to 1 tsp, to taste]
• 2 dashes absinthe [Lucid]
• white of one egg

Shake thoroughly with ice, strain into a fizz glass and fill with seltzer.

Wow … for a breakfast drink, the old Mimosa’s got nothing on this. Much lighter in taste than I’d expected, and with a heady foam (I shook the hell out of the mix without ice, then again with cracked ice) that makes it both gentle and robust. I can see our forefathers — the lushes, that is — knocking these back on a bristly a.m., to sweep the cobwebs out of the mind and the malice out of the soul. Seriously, I can see serving this to adventurous guests at brunch just to get the conversational ball rolling.

Morning Glory (adapted from Charles H. Baker’s The Gentleman’s Companion)

• 1 jigger rye or bourbon [decrease to 1 oz. Rittenhouse bonded]
• 1 teaspoon gomme syrup
• 1 teaspoon curacao
• 1 jigger cognac [decrease to 1 oz.]
• 3 dashes orange bitters or Angostura [The Bitter Truth orange bitters]
• 1 teaspoon absinthe

Says Baker: Mixing technique seems torn between stirring in a bar glass with ice, straining into a whisky glass, and adding a little seltzer topped off with a twisted lemon peel — or stirring in the same bar glass, and turning into an old fashioned glass with a lump of ice, a squirt of club soda, and a twist of peel … Some sane folk merely shake with ice and a jigger of soda or seltzer. The latter works more suddenly than the more diluted drink … Absinthe is difficult to recommend to suit others — increase or decrease to taste. Pernod Veritas will do. [My answer: stir with ice, strain into whisky glass, add a little seltzer and a twist of lemon.]

Gadzooks, that’s tasty, too. I probably added an ounce or so of seltzer (just a short burst from the siphon), which lightens up and saves what might have been a too heavy and aggressively flavored cocktail. The curacao and the absinthe also complement each other surprisingly well, and the drink has a robust fruitiness that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Another one to keep in mind.

So, there you have it — whisk(e)y, absinthe, fizzy water and assorted characters. Head on over to Cocktail Nerd to see what everyone else came up with this Mixology Monday.

Tags: Absinthe, Brandy, Mixology Monday, Rye, Scotch by Paul
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Remember the old saw about how, if you took a million monkeys and gave them each a typewriter, they’d eventually come up with the works of Shakespeare? Well edit “typewriter” to read “cocktail shaker,” and stick the monkeys in a well-stocked bar, and the banana-addled mixologists would come up with a Cameron’s Kick in about the same amount of time it’d take that set of simian scribes to work their way around to Titus Andronicus.

Along with other head-scratchers such as the Blood & Sand, the Floridita and the Last Word, the Cameron’s Kick has a distinctive air of the implausible about it. With two (related, though still very different) base spirits in equal measure matched with lemon juice and — of all things — orgeat in the sweetness role, the Cameron’s Kick seems like something that no bartender would ever intentionally put together, and it’s a mix that, for all reasonable purposes, just –shouldn’t — WORK. But somehow, it does.

This cocktail first pops up (to the best of my knowledge) in Harry Craddock’s Savoy Cocktail Book from 1930. Craddock doesn’t list the bartender behind the Cameron’s Kick (or the basis for the weird name), so it’s left to us to wonder if the creator was blessed with divine inspiration, or was maybe just tossing stuff together like a bunch of monkeys trashing a bar. I’d come across the recipe a number of times while browsing the book, and kept ignoring it, put off by the use of two spirits in the base — two notoriously difficult-to-mix-with spirits, at that — and the funky-sounding recipe. Chances are, I’d still be neglecting this drink if David Wondrich hadn’t resuscitated it for Killer Cocktails, and served it to the assembled guests (myself included) during the Spirited Dinner he hosted at the most recent Tales of the Cocktail. Wondrich uses Craddock’s recipe, with the addition of a piece of orange peel for garnish. It’s a nice touch, and lends a hint of freshness to this long-forgotten drink that deserves to be discovered all over again.

Cameron’s Kick

• 1 ounce Scotch (blended, please — Famous Grouse works well)
• 1 ounce Irish whiskey
• 1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 ounce orgeat

Shake with ice and strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with orange twist.

Of course, not everything with the Cameron’s Kick can be as easy as it looks — search for the recipe on cocktaildb.com or any of a number of other web sites, and you’ll find a similar though very different recipe, one that uses the Scotch and Irish base (in different proportions), but then swaps the orgeat for orange bitters. In a word, no.

Tags: Drinks, Irish Whiskey, Scotch by Paul
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It’s over.

The lights are coming down from the windows, the ornaments are going back in their boxes, the tree is destined for the compost heap. From here on out, there’s no gaity to winter–it’s all leafless branches, bitter mornings and sullen gray skies until April. I’ve spent most of my life in drier, colder climates where–instead of Seattle’s incessant drizzle–winter mornings are marked by a crisp, dusty haze, as if the air itself had frozen, ready to shatter into shards should you yell too loud.

To survive the grim patch of calendar that we call ‘January,’ hibernation is in order. But, for those of us who can’t afford the luxury of simply burrowing under the covers until the days grow longer, an adversarial approach to the season is the next best thing. Rather than simply resigning oneself to a monotonous trudge toward springtime, it’s best to come out swinging, kicking January in its icy crotch and throwing elbows at its nose.

And that’s where whisky, no ‘e,’ comes in. Few things shake winter’s grip like this smoky spirit. I once spent a January (and a February, and a March) in Edinburgh, and developed an appreciation for whisky’s inimitable power to smash winter right in its teeth. I’ll never debate the value of a touch of a nice single malt–but for people like me, who just have to start fiddling with things in a glass, there’s a nice, gentle drink that uses whisky as its mainstay, and smoothes and fortifies itself with, basically, more whisky: the Rusty Nail.

The Rusty Nail couldn’t be simpler to make–pour some Scotch over ice, add some Drambuie (a whisky-based liqueur flavored with herbs and sweetened with honey), stir if you like (or don’t, if you like), and follow your instinct for the rest. Recipes vary on proportions, with some calling for equal parts of the two ingredients, ranging down to four parts Scotch to one part liqueur. It’s a good idea to lean toward the dry side–Drambuie is one of the loveliest liqueurs in creation, but too much will clip the whisky’s wings. Oh, and use a blended Scotch for this–put aside your Laphroig and break out that bottle of Chivas or Johnny Walker you got for Christmas. If you’re paying for the bottle yourself and you’re looking for a good, affordable mixing whisky, you could do much, much worse than Famous Grouse.

Whisky, mixed with whisky. January hasn’t got a chance.

Rusty Nail

• 2 ounces blended Scotch
• 1/2 ounce Drambuie

Fill an old fashioned glass 3/4 full of ice; add Scotch, then Drambuie. Stir, if you like. A twist of lemon may be added, but is entirely optional.

Technorati tag: cocktails, Scotch.

Tags: Drinks, Scotch 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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File this one in the “Annoying Name, Excellent Drink” category.

When I encountered this cocktail in various bartending guides, I usually breezed right past it, put off by its back-slapping, overly familiar name, attached to the drink no doubt to serve as a flippant flag to the unwitting drinker that the Bobby Burns is a Scotch-containing concoction. (Why the hell they gotta do that? Scotch has the Rob Roy, the Glasgow, the Highland, the Thistle and the Bobby Burns, and Irish whiskey has the Emerald, the Blarney Stone, the Shamrock, the Tipperary and the Paddy Cocktail, among others–annoying trend, in my humble opinion). But once I got past the name, I discovered the Bobby Burns is a truly excellent cocktail.

Origins are hazy, but in his Joy of Mixology, Gary Regan says Old Waldorf Bar Days, by Albert Stevens Crockett, strongly suggests the drink originated in that venerable establishment. But I have my doubts–Crockett’s book was published in 1931, and features not a Bobby Burns but a Robert Burns, which has a similar base of Scotch and Italian vermouth (basically a Rob Roy), but then completes the drink with a dash each of absinthe and orange bitters. But just a year previous, Harry Craddock’s The Savoy Cocktail Book printed a recipe more familiar to contemporary guides, with the Scotch and Italian vermouth base, but finished with dashes of Benedictine. “One of the very best Whisky cocktails,” Craddock wrote, “a very fast mover on St. Andrew’s Day.”

Though Craddock’s recipe has changed over time–he called for equal parts whisky and vermouth, whereas recent recipes typically list around a 2:1 ratio–the Bobby Burns is still distinguished by its finishing touch: 2 dashes of Benedictine.

Well, usually.

In The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, David Embury lists two variations for the Bobby Burns, one with Benedictine, and the other–Embury’s preferred variation–with Drambuie. (Embury was also working with a recipe that called for a dash of angostura–but says an interesting variation may be obtained by substituting Peychaud’s for angostura, as Peychaud’s tends to marry better with Scotch.)

Having tried the cocktail both ways, I come down on Embury’s side–Drambuie makes a smoother drink, though the Benedictine version is no slouch. Whichever way you choose to try it–and you should try both, to see which you prefer–the Bobby Burns is worth a shot. Just summon up your nerve to get past the name, and go for it.

Bobby Burns

• 2 ounces blended Scotch whisky
• 1 ounce Italian vermouth
• 1 dash Angostura bitters (or if you have Peychaud’s on hand, give that a spin)
• 2 dashes Drambuie OR Benedictine

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass; twist a piece of lemon peel over the drink, and add the twist as garnish.

Technorati tag: cocktails

Tags: Drinks, Scotch, Vermouth by Paul
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