Tomorrow is Cinco de Mayo, and many of you will be sloshing down the compulsory Margaritas and tequila shots, which in no way would I want to stand in the way of. But if you’re an adventurous drinker like I am and want to try something new (but no less fitting of the festivities), you might be interested in the cocktail that follows.

The common misconception is that Cinco de Mayo is Mexican Independence Day–it is not. It’s a commemoration of the Mexican army’s defeat of Napoleon’s French forces in the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. Cinco de Mayo is not widely celebrated throughout Mexico, except in the city of Puebla where the victorious battle took place. In the U.S., however, Cinco de Mayo parallels St. Patrick’s Day as a national excuse to get drunk, although in California and some of the Southwest states it has also become a celebration of Mexican heritage–in addition to an excuse to get drunk.

This week’s cocktail, the General Ignacio, is one I recently created. The name is significant for a couple reasons. First, it’s a small present for one of my dearest friends, Ignacio, who’s birthday is actually tomorrow. Tom Cruise may be born on the 4th of July, but that doesn’t top a Mexican born on Cinco de Mayo!

Secondly, the name is significant to Cinco de Mayo itself, because it was under the leadership of General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguin that the Mexican army defeated the French.

The ingredients in the cocktail are also inspired by the spirit of Cinco de Mayo. Chartreuse, an herbal liqueur made in France, and June, a liqueur made from grape vine flowers, also from France, join forces to topple the smoky full-flavored Mezcal. But despite being outnumbered by a half ounce, the Mexican spirit holds its own against the French liqueurs by enlisting the help of its reliable old pal from the citrus family. And although it might first appear that there’s a real battle taking place in the cocktail shaker, the ice convinces everyone to chill out, producing a surprisingly harmonious outcome despite seemingly competing elements.

General Ignacio
1 oz Del Maguey Mezcal Vida (hands down the best value in Mezcal)
3/4 oz Chartreuse
3/4 oz June Liqueur
3/4 oz fresh lemon juice
lemon peel

Tools: shaker, strainer
Glass: chilled coupe or cocktail glass

Place everything besides the lemon peel in a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice; shake hard until well-chilled; strain into a chilled cocktail glass; twist lemon peel over drink to release its oils then discard.

Happy Cinco de Mayo, and may fortune be with you in the Battle of the Hangover.

*Got a cocktail question? Hit me on twitter @paystyle, email me at payman(at)lifesacocktail(dot)com, or simply drop me a comment below.

“… just as there is no such thing as a 1/2-good girl there is no such animal as a 1/2-good drink.  A mixed drink is either made correctly out of correct stuff: good; or it’s La Bebida Piojosa (lousy drink). Even a homely gal can, with cunningly-employed paint, powder, patches, rouge-pots, whale-bone and falsies, fool part of the people part of the time; but a poorly-built drink betrays itself with the first sip. The only person our lazy drink-mixer is fooling is himself; he is a traitor to his art and there is no health in him.”
- Charles H. Baker

Amen. Charles Baker, who lived through Prohibition and wrote about his travels across the globe enjoying cocktails where it was still legal, lived long enough to see the slow erosion and near death of the cocktail culture he so colorfully celebrated in his writings. When he died in 1987 at the ripe age of 92, cocktail culture was in full cardiac arrest. Though he couldn’t have predicted its revival just over a decade later, his work was without a doubt instrumental to it. Having experienced American cocktail culture prior to, during, and after Prohibition, his writing is a rare glimpse into our lost identity.

In addition to contributing to Gourmet and Esquire, he published various books including The Gentleman’s Companion, a seminal piece in which he recounted his bibulous adventures around the world, complete with unique cocktail recipes and even more unique stories about them.

This week we celebrate one of those cocktails, Remember the Maine, one of my favorite wintertime potions. In terms of ingredients, it is a clear variation of the classic Manhattan, but Baker’s description of the cocktail takes us to an entirely different island (all emphasis is Baker’s own):

“REMEMBER the MAINE, a Hazy Memory of a Night in Havana during the Unpleasantnesses of 1933, when Each Swallow Was Punctuated with Bombs Going off on the Prado, or the Sound of 3″ Shells Being Fired at the Hotel NACIONAL, then Haven for Certain Anti-Revolutionary Officers.”

REMEMBER THE MAINE
2 oz. rye whiskey (Old Overholt’s the way to go)
3/4 oz. sweet vermouth
2 barspoons Cherry Heering
1/2 barspoon absinthe (its prominent aroma of fennel, anise, and mint make Vieux Carre a great choice if you can get it)
Brandied cherry as garnish

Tools: mixing glass, barspoon, strainer
Glass: chilled cocktail or coupe glass

Place ingredients in a mixing glass with plenty of cracked ice. Stir until well-chilled. Strain into glass and garnish with the brandied cherry.

If you recall from high school history class, “Remember the Maine!” was the  rallying cry of jingoistic Americans seeking to provoke war with the Spanish by falsely accusing them of blowing up the USS Maine. But Baker, rather than boring us with a history that we should already be familiar with (especially during his time), instead paints for us the scene of his own enjoyment of the cocktail. And he does this throughout the book. He brings the reader as close as possible to enjoying the cocktail without ever setting lips to glass. To Charles Baker, the cocktail was always an experience of the present, not the past.

How ironically fitting then that through the unearthing of his prose we learn to live as we should have all along. Cheers!

*Got a cocktail question? Hit me on twitter @paystyle, email me at payman(at)lifesacocktail(dot)com, or simply drop me a comment below.

Thanksgiving has long been the source of mixed emotions for me. On one hand it’s a day when I can unleash my monster appetite without abandon. I love to eat, and I love to eat well. Yet on the other hand I consider myself a person of conscience, and Thanksgiving is a yearly reminder of how much a particular group of people have sacrificed, usually by force (I’m speaking of Native Americans here), so that another group could thrive (I am, of course, referring to the European immigrants). In my younger years I felt a sense of guilt when celebrating the holiday, as if somehow I was compromising my principles.

Later in life I realized I wasn’t ever really compromising anything (other than my caloric intake limit) because I was never really celebrating Thanksgiving. Nobody in my family did. It’s not like we ever prayed or performed any pre-meal ritual to honor the day. That wasn’t ever my family’s style, and that’s something I’ve always been thankful for. Of course we served turkey along with many of the other obligatory Thanksgiving items, but even then it was usually a mashup with dishes found on a traditional Persian table. Rather than traditional stuffing for example, our turkey was stuffed with saffron-scented Persian rice and barberries.

Eventually I concluded that in my family Thanksgiving was simply an excuse for everyone to get together over great food, and I suspect that’s the case for many other families as well, especially families like mine whose members are predominantly first generation immigrants.

The immigrant perspective as it relates to Thanksgiving is an interesting one too because it’s the perspective that tells us everything we know about that so-called first Thanksgiving gathering at Plymouth. As the story goes, the Pilgrim immigrants were set to freeze their asses if not for the generosity of their native hosts who shared with them their bountiful harvest. And per that old axiom, the natives not only provided fish, but also taught the visitors how to fish so they could survive in this strange new world.

So at its most basic, the story of Thanksgiving is a lesson on how to be a great and generous host. And whether we’re talking about a bunch of family members coming over to your house or a bunch of poor families coming over to this country, the same lesson applies. Just be a good fucking host and stop whining about how somebody broke the gravy dish or drank too much wine.

So does all this have anything to do with cocktails? Well, a little. The stuff above is what’s been on my mind all week, so I channeled it into this week’s creation which I call Dolores’ Huerto, made with tequila, Chartreuse, lemon, ginger, and apple butter.

The name of this drink is a play on the name Dolores Huerta, a woman that’s been on the forefront of immigrant rights for over four decades. Along with Cesar Chavez she founded the United Farm Workers in the 1960s which helped propel the Chicano movement. The drink’s name literally translates to “Dolores’ Orchard,” (the word ‘huerto’ means orchard in Spanish) which is both a reference to the fruit fields where she led numerous strikes and the apple flavor found in the drink.

When I was coming up with this drink it was clear that tequila should be the base, because it represents the farm workers and immigrants who were the base of the UFW. But just as symbolically important as which ingredients I included is also which ingredient I didn’t include, grapes. “No uvas” or “no grapes” was the chief rallying cry of the great Delano grape strike and boycott of the late 1960s that first put the UFW on the map and helped the struggle of the farm workers gain national attention, and eventually won over Bobby Kennedy as their champion in Washington. For that reason I made sure there was nothing in the recipe related to grapes.

Dolores’ Huerto
1 1/2 oz tequila blanco
1/2 oz Green Chartreuse
1/2 oz fresh lemon juice
1/4 oz ginger syrup (see recipe near bottom of this post)
2 barspoons apple butter (about 2 tsp)
Apple slices for garnish (optional)

Tools: shaker, strainer
Glass: cocktail or coupe, chilled

Shake all ingredients fervently as if you’re shaking your fist at the man. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Here’s to being a great host. Cheers!

*Got a cocktail question? Hit me on twitter @paystyle, email me at payman(at)lifesacocktail(dot)com, or simply drop me a comment below.

Our Editor has named “death” as the theme for the remainder of October here on Umamimart, and it’s quite fitting because for most readers death is an apt description of the state of the Happy Hour column. As some of you know I haven’t written in over a month, having started a sabbatical to begin preparing for the B.A.R. course and exam, which is one of the most intensive spirits and mixology education programs that exists and offered only once a year at the end of September.

Over the course of the month of September I put practically everything–Happy Hour, bills, marriage, social life–on hold to study and prepare. You could see all my student loan lenders by simply glancing at the list of missed calls on my cell phone. And even though the course and exam concluded several weeks ago, I needed some more time to tend to all the things that were swept under the rug.

Thankfully the Happy Hour column is not dead, largely due to the effort of friend and fellow booze blogger Fredo Ceraso of Loungerati, who swooped in at my request to administer the necessary CPR that kept Happy Hour alive. If you haven’t read his two Happy Hour posts yet, you really ought to, as he provides wonderful cocktails for the Autumn season. Needless to say you should bookmark his blog if you’re a fan of great style and great cocktails.

Now that I’m back I figured I’d share a bit about my experience at the B.A.R., and afterwards share a recipe for an original cocktail I recently created while away.

Having taken and passed both the New York (two days, six hours each day) and California (three days, six hours each day) Bar Exams, I can confidently assert that I’m not easily phased by the rigors of academic examinations. That said, the B.A.R. exam administered on the final day of a week-long intensive course was not like any examination I had taken before; neither the Bar Exams, nor the LSAT or SAT compare.

The primary difference is that unlike previous academic tests, this one wasn’t purely academic.  In fact, the academic portion was the easiest section of the exam. The remaining sections (five total, and you must pass each section to pass the entire test) tested an array of skills from the ability to mix classic cocktails with speed, dexterity, and congeniality (yes the ability to converse matters in real bartending) to the ability to tell the difference between different classic cocktails or different spirits in blind tastings. And by “taste the difference” I mean not only be able to discern one spirit type from another (e.g. Bourbon from Rye whiskey), but also be able to say something about the relative proof, age, and other critical elements of each spirit. Not easy.

It’s not enough to memorize different taste and aroma characteristics of various spirits, as one must also be able to detect them physically on the palate. In this way it is the interaction between the cognitive (knowledge) and neural (sensory) functions that made this exam a different animal altogether, and those best able to negotiate that intersection were the most likely to pass.

How did I do? The truth is I don’t know yet–none of us do, and we probably won’t find out for another few weeks. In that agonizing regard, it is very similar to the Bar Exams.

Regardless of my performance on the exam, I can confidently say I exited the course with an exponentially higher level of knowledge than when I entered. That’s because the entire week was a grueling affair, with each day’s class beginning at 9am and concluding at around 9pm. Over the course of each 12 hour day we learned everything there is to learn about the history of alcohol distillation, the history and evolution of the cocktail, and the rules and regulations governing the production of all the major spirits categories which exist today. Peppered throughout these lessons were multiple sessions of spirits tastings, often beginning first thing in the morning, so that by week’s end we easily tasted over 100 different spirits (I lost count by day 2). Tough, but delicious, as I got the chance to taste many rare and expensive spirits that probably cost more than my life. The toughest part was spitting them back out (on Cognac day I learned a valuable lesson on the importance of spitting, having gotten nearly wasted before lunch).

The greatest lesson from this whole experience was coming to realize how little I knew, affirming more than ever that famous phrase, “the more you learn, the less you know.”

But enough dribbling on about academic stuff, it’s time for a cocktail. This week’s recipe is for a cocktail I call the Bear Trap, made with gin, mezcal, honey liqueur, and a couple other good measure modifiers.

Bear Trap
1 1/2 oz gin (I used G’vine Nouaison)
1/2 oz honey liqueur (Barenjager works)
1/2 oz mezcal (Mezcal Vida is a great, well-priced choice)
1/4 oz Pelinkovac (used Maraska brand)
1/4 oz Vermouth Perrucchi Blanco
2 dashes Bitter Truth Xocolatl Mole Bitters
Lemon twist

Tools: mixing glass, bar spoon, julep strainer
Glass: chilled coupe or cocktail glass

Pour all ingredients in a mixing glass filled with ice. Stir until very well chilled. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and twist the lemon peel over the drink to release its oils then place in drink as garnish.

You can use any brand of gin you like in this cocktail, but I much prefer the G’vine Nouaison here if you can get your hands on it. What distinguishes this gin is that whereas gin is usually a grain-based distillate (distilled from beer), this is a grape-based distillate (distilled from wine, like Pisco) flavored with the botanicals commonly found in gin. Specifically it’s distilled from the Ugni Blanc grape so it’s actually closer in relation to Cognac prior to being placed in barrels for aging; and the specific botanical notes in the gin are of green grape flower, nutmeg, coriander, ginger root, liquorice, cassia, dried lime, and of course, juniper berries. It’s less juniper-defined than the traditional London Dry category of gin, and has floral and very strong coriander top notes that work well in this cocktail.

This cocktail utilizes a few ingredients that might seem obscure to some of you, so let me try my best to offer alternatives for those who can’t find some or all of the products in this recipe. If you can’t locate Barenjager liqueur try substituting Drambuie instead, which is more commonly available. Mezcal is much more easy to acquire and any smoky mezcal will do the job here, although I particularly like Vida from Del Maguey for its flavor profile, quality, and relatively low price point. If you can’t find a Pelinkovac simply substitute another digestif amaro like Del Capo, Ramazzotti, Cynar, or even Jagermeister (yes, the much maligned Jagermeister is an amaro). As for the Vermouth Perucchi Blanco, if you can’t find it substitute Lillet Blanc, Cocchi Americano, or even a Pineau des Charentes; they’re not perfect substitutions but they’ll allow you to end up with a generally balanced cocktail that’s a rough approximation of the one above. Lastly, if you can’t find the Xocolatl Mole Bitters then just make the drink without it, as there’s really no adequate substitute. Again it won’t be the same but it won’t be the end of the world either.

It’s great to be back!

*Got a cocktail question? Hit me on twitter @paystyle, email me at payman(at)lifesacocktail(dot)com, or simply drop me a comment below.

Since returning from New Orleans it seems like the pace of my life has only sped up, so I was thankful to be able to take a breather last week and have Kayoko fill in for me with an awesome post about Savoy Night at The Alembic in San Francisco. Truth be told, I would have been quite content with having another week off, as it Sloth Season this month. But too much sloth can mean a slow death, so it’s back to the grind this week. But just in case you feel like being slothy yourself, not only will I keep this post short and sweet, but the cocktail recipe’s quite a simple one this week as well.

Last week highlighted the amazing cocktailery going on at the Alembic, so I figured I’d give some Yay Area love this week as well. In fact when it comes to craft cocktailing, SF is probably the only big city that can really give NY some competition, as  LA’s cocktail renaissance is still nascent; Seattle and Portland, as wonderfully creative as their cocktail scenes are, are not big cities; and Miami isn’t even on the map–I think someone in Miami recently discovered bitters.

This week’s cocktail is called the Cherry Samba, a drink born in the Bay. It was created by Neyah White, the former bartender at Nopa in SF, and now brand ambassador for Yamazaki Whisky.  It’s a refreshing and fantastically easy cocktail to prepare  I present it to you here with a minor change that to me improves and simplifies the drink a bit.

Cherry Samba
2 oz. cachaca (Brazil’s version of rum)
1 oz. Cherry Heering
3/4 oz fresh lemon juice
5 dashes A.B. Smeby Highland Heather Bitters
brandied cherry for garnish

Tools: shaker, strainer
Glass: chilled cocktail or coupe

Fill a shaker with the ingredients and plenty of ice. Shake well while doing the Samba and strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a brandied cherry.

If you’re wondering why my cherry looks a bit off, it’s because it’s homemade, and in the process of slumbering for several months in a mixture of cognac, maraschino liqueur, and sugar, it developed a few wrinkles here and there. But it tastes just fantastic. If you don’t feel like making your own brandied cherries, pick up a jar of Luxardo cherries if they’re available in your area. Under no circumstances, however, should you use those atomic-red abominations we now refer to as maraschino cherries.

I mentioned that I modified this recipe a bit from the original, and the way I did so in a couple of ways. First, I dispensed with the egg whites–about .75 oz or half the whites of an egg to be precise–asked for in the original recipe. After making the drink numerous times with the egg whites, I concluded the egg whites were unnecessary in this drink.  Normally their purpose is to provide a silky top texture, but I felt that it clouded the drink too much, and that the drink was much more refreshing made in the traditional Daiquiri style. Hence there was no need for a dry shake (without ice) to properly aerate and froth the egg white (this is Sloth Season of course), and instead you can save your energy on making seconds and thirds.

Secondly, the recipe asked for 1/2 oz of a smoky Scotch such as Ardbeg, Laphroaig or Lagavulin, and since I had none on hand, I achieved the smoke-flavored effect by subbing in several dashes of the wonderfully smoky and peaty Highland Heather Bitters created by A.B. Smeby.

While I have no criticism of the recipe as originally intended–and you should try both to see which you find preferable–I think the modified version is a bit more streamlined and simplified, two qualities my life could sure use a lot more of.

Cheers!

*Got a cocktail question? Hit me on twitter @paystyle, email me at payman(at)lifesacocktail(dot)com, or simply drop me a comment below.

Do you remember my pickle pear liqueur, which turned out to really be called sickle pear liqueur?  Making fruit liquor is pretty easy. In Japan, when green plums (unripened plum) are available in June, many people make their own umeshu (plum wine). I know Mitsuwa market in New Jersey has the whole kit (plum, liquor, rock sugar and a jar) for a very very limited time in June, and I asked my colleague to check and see if they have it. He forgot, and now it’s already July, the season is over. Damn.

So I was walking through the Greenmarket the other day, and found green plums. They are definitely different from what is used in Japan, but I liked the color, and decided to tackle another batch of fruit liqueur. This time, this will be a New York State green plum liqueur.

As you can see, they are green, and although they look unripe, they are actually ripe. I researched around to see if I can make plum liquor with ripened plums, and there was some mention of, “you can also use ripen plums, which will be sweeter than regular plum wine”. Sounds good enough for me.

So I washed them, try to pick the belly button (which results in bitter aftertaste, apparently), and dumped them into a big jar.

No local Japanese grocery store had rock sugar (koori-sato), so I rented a Zipcar and went to Mitsuwa. I don’t know if the FDA has changed some regulation, but even Mitsuwa didn’t have rock sugar. I was pissed, but then saw brown rock sugar. I remembered that “brown sugar plum wine” is getting very good reviews in Japan.

I had no idea about the validity of using brown rock sugar, but I was like, what the hell, I need sweetness of sugar, brown or white, it’s the same difference.

So I had two pounds of plum, 300gram (1 package) of brown rock sugar, and magnum bottle (1.75 liters) of cheap vodka in a jar.  It looks a bit poopy.

Two days later, the liquid is very dark.

I will be able to drink this in the fall, and will let you know how good or bad it turns out.

Of all the names one could choose for a cocktail, the Blood and Sand is one of the oddest. It sounds odder when you consider the stuff that goes into the drink–Scotch, cherry liqueur, sweet vermouth, and orange juice, all in equal proportions.  But of the relatively few classic Scotch cocktails out there, the Blood and Sand, despite its strange name and ingredient combination, is one of the most noteworthy.  It is a prime example of the old adage that warns against judging a book by its cover. 

The Blood and Sand, in fact, deserves a place on the short list of cocktails I consider essential.  It is a classic that any bartender worth his Margarita salt should know how to make; and if you’d like your home bar to garner the respect and admiration of your guests, it’s something you should familiarize yourself with as well.

As with many of the great classics, the Blood and Sand comes with an interesting story.  While a few facts—like who created it, when they created it, and where—seem to have fallen into history’s lost items bin, we do know that the drink gets its name from a 1922 film starring Rudolph Valentino, who plays a bullfighter caught in a love triangle.  Also, we know that the first printed recipe for the drink appears in the 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book, which was a compendium of the popular cocktails of the day. 

What is interesting, and potentially informative, is the date range involved here, because from 1920-1933, alcohol sale and consumption was banned in the U.S. as part of Prohibition, making it unlikely for the drink to have been created in the states.  Even assuming you could get your hands on the necessary spirits, who would want to create a drink that couldn’t be shared with anyone for fear of legal reprisal?  Despite the oft-romanticized images of the Prohibition Era, the fact is that it was a dark time for cocktail creativity, and more ruin than respect came from that time period with respect to cocktail culture.

If the Blood and Sand was created during the Prohibition years then it had to have occurred overseas, most likely in Europe.  Consider the other pieces of evidence that bolster this theory: First, the ingredients (Scotch, sweet vermouth, Cherry Heering) were all of European origin; second, the Savoy Hotel, which was the source of the aforementioned cocktail book (even though not all the cocktails listed in the book were created there) is in London; third, before the Blood and Sand was a film, it was a Spanish novel called Sangre y Arena, written by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez; finally, the first American publication to feature the Blood and Sand recipe was the 1934 edition of “Cocktail Bill” Boothby’s World Drinks and How to Mix Them, published a year after the end of Prohibition—perhaps the Blood and Sand was one of the “world drinks” alluded in the book’s title.

Europeans don’t get credit for many of the classic cocktails, but it seems they deserve it here—although it could have been created by one of the many American barmen who fled to Europe to legally practice the craft that was outlawed in the U.S.

Credit, schmedit you say? I see, you wish to get your drink on.  Well, say no more.

Blood and Sand
¾ oz Scotch (Famous Grouse, Chivas, or other blended Scotch recommended)
¾ oz Cherry Heering
¾ oz sweet vermouth
¾ oz fresh-squeezed orange juice

Tools: shaker, strainer
Glass: chilled cocktail glass or coupe
Garnish: brandied cherries or orange twist, or both

Shake ingredients with plenty of ice and strain into your glass.

The recipe above is the original version as first published in the Savoy Cocktail Book. A few modern mixologists have found it useful to modify the recipe slightly by bumping up the Scotch and orange juice to 1 oz to create a drink that allows a little more Scotch and acid (from the orange) to shine through, which balances the sweetness better. I enjoy the original version, but can attest that the slight tweak does bring the drink a step closer to perfection, if not achieve it altogether.

A few notes on ingredient choices: First, you should reach for a blended Scotch here. Famous Grouse or Chivas are quality ones to use, as is Johnny Black—save the big bucks for a drink in which the other ingredients play more of a backup role to the Scotch.  Second, there are a few other cherry liqueurs on the market, and some are good, but I like Heering the best in this cocktail.

Last, and probably most important, is to use fresh juice.  You see, the drink has enough sweet ingredients in it that you don’t want to completely tip the scales by using a store-bought brand, even if it’s not made from concentrate.  There is a mild sweetness and light tartness that you can only get with fresh-squeezed orange juice.  This tartness is crucial for the flavor balance of the cocktail because you don’t have any other source of acidity—and the store-bought juices don’t have that same tart bight.  Besides, why go through all the trouble to source other quality ingredients just to use an inferior, overly-sweet substitute for the juice? 

It is an invariable truth that a cocktail is only as good as its lowest quality ingredient.  Cheers!

*Got a cocktail question? Hit me on twitter @paystyle, email me at payman(at)lifesacocktail(dot)com, or simply drop me a comment below.

Looking for an angle when writing about a cocktail is for me the most time consuming–and sometimes agonozing–aspect of blogging.  Well, today I’m dispensing with the longwinded introductions about the reasons for talking about a particular cocktail, and instead featuring a cocktail for no reasons other than it’s deliciousness, and the fact that it’s a drink I’m mixing for myself on a fairly regular basis.  It’s my cocktail of the moment, and there’s a decent chance it’ll become yours too.

The cocktail is called the Coronation, and it is one of several cocktails bearing the same name, each with a completely different set of ingredients.  The recipe below is probably the first of the Coronations created, and also one of the best.

The Coronation
1 oz. applejack
1 oz. sweet vermouth (I used Vya)
1 oz. dry vermouth (Dolin works nicely)
1 dash (oh what the hell, a splash) apricot liqueur (I used Rothman & Winter)

Tools: barspoon, mixing glass, strainer
Glass: chilled cocktail glass or coupe

Place everything in mixing glass with cracked ice and stir until well mixed and chilled; strain into your glass.  A garnish isn’t necessary in this drink, but I chose to garnish with a calvados-soaked pomme (mini apple).

I treat the apricot liqueur in this drink as a variable that can and should be adjusted to your preference, while treating the remaining items as well-balanced constants. So while I use a healthy dash, feel free to use the amount that suits your palate.

This iteration of the Coronation makes its first print appearance in a 1931 cocktail recipe book called Old Waldorf Bar Days by Albert Crockett. The book was a recipe-filled chronicle of the history of the original Waldorf Astoria built in 1893, when it was located where the Empire State Building now stands.  Despite the book’s publication date, all the cocktails found within were created and served at the old hotel’s bar prior to Prohibition.  The Coronation recipe above was created to commemorate the 1902 crowning of King Edward VII, which likely gives it seniority over the numerous other cocktails with the same moniker, the recipes for which can be found here, here, here, here, and here. 

As you can see from all the recipes, there was lots of competition for the crown–I guess royalty was all the rage back then–but the recipe above is the true king.

Here’s to drinking like one.

*Got a cocktail question? Hit me on twitter @paystyle, email me at payman(at)lifesacocktail(dot)com, or simply drop me a comment below.

Classic cocktails make frequent appearances here, as dedicated readers are well aware. Since many of you aren’t cocktail geeks like myself, I do my best to keep that in mind when I write, particularly in terms of tone and content—believe me, we can get pretty esoteric if you let us.

I’ve also come to realize that some of you may be interested in building up your bar, but don’t have the time or money to buy everything needed to make every classic cocktail invented. You have to make some tough choices, but how do you know you’ll even like a particular cocktail after you seek out the ingredients called for in a recipe? Sure it’s considered a classic, but it may not be your cup of tea.

To make the process a bit easier, I’ve decided to compile a list of about 20-25 cocktails (haven’t decided exactly how many yet) that I consider essential for every burgeoning cocktail enthusiast to know. The cocktails on the list are mostly old mainstays, save for a few from the modern era (a couple might surprise you). You may not love all of them, but if your bar is equipped to make them, you’d be hard pressed to encounter a guest you couldn’t please.

The catch, however, is that I won’t simply post a list (which is yet to be finalized). Instead I’m going to write about each of them individually, for various Happy Hour columns whenever the fancy strikes. This way you’ll have ample time to gather the ingredients for a particular drink and become familiar with it before having to learn about the next one. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is a good home bar.

You’ll know if a certain week’s cocktail is on this list because at the bottom of the post you’ll notice the tag “Essential Cocktail.” Click on the tag and you’ll see all the drinks with this tag, and you’ll be on your way to a well-stocked bar. Some of these essential cocktails have already been featured in previous Happy Hour columns, and as soon as I have the time I will go back and add the appropriate tag to those as well.

Since we’re talking about essential cocktails, there’s no better way to kick this off than with the top of the alphabet, the Aviation.

Aviation
2 oz Gin (enough with the “I can’t do Juniper” bullshit already, we’re talking serious cocktails for fuck’s sake!)
½ oz Maraschino liqueur (NOT Maraschino cherry syrup, but a bittersweet liqueur made from Marasca cherries)
½ oz fresh lemon juice
1 barspoon Crème de Violette (optional)

Tools: shaker, strainer
Glass: chilled cocktail glass or coupe

Shake ingredients with ice and strain into your glass.

The Aviation is one of the last great pre-Prohibition cocktails, having been invented just a few years before the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment. It made its first appearance in print in 1916 in Recipes for Mixed Drinks by Hugo Ensslin, who bartended at the Hotel Wallick in Times Square near 43rd and Broadway.

It’s unclear whether Mr. Ensslin created this cocktail as an homage to a specific aviator—perhaps Adolphe Pégoud or René Fonck, who were some of the first flying aces, battling the Germans in the air during World War I—or as a more general tribute to the Pioneer Era of human flight. What is clear, however—as clear as the blue sky in fact—is Ensslin’s purposeful use of Crème de Violette to achieve a light violet hue reminiscent of the skies that mankind was barely beginning to explore.

By 1930, however, it appears that barmen began dropping the Crème de Violette from the Aviation recipe, as evidenced by its omission from the Savoy Cocktail published that same year. Perhaps this was because Crème de Violette was an increasingly difficult ingredient to come by, and only its recent availability in American markets has gotten mixologists reinterested in making an authentic Aviation.

Truth be told, however, the Crème de Violette is a non-essential ingredient in this otherwise impeccably balanced, essential cocktail. If you have or can easily acquire it then surely do so, as it adds a violet hue and a lightly floral top note that the drink’s creator intended. If not, I wouldn’t fret over it. In fact, despite the availability of the floral liqueur, many mixologists still prefer the version without it.

I enjoy both.

*Got a cocktail question? Hit me on twitter @paystyle, email me at payman(at)lifesacocktail(dot)com, or simply drop me a comment below.

Today is St. Patrick’s Day, which along with Cinco de Mayo, make two of the year’s best excuses to get hammered early. Like other revelers, I’m looking forward to a day filled with shots of Irish whiskey and pints of Guinness, and harassing whoever dares walk into the bar without sporting any green.

This year however, the green I’m wearing has a deeper significance than it did in years past. For me, the green has come to represent the aspirations of my people in Iran, having become the color adopted by the renewed freedom movement in Iran. Green is also the color of Spring, which makes it all the more appropriate that the Persian New Year is just a few days away (the first day of Spring, March 20th), with the two-week long festivities having already begun.

So this year I decided to create a drink in celebration of the Persian New Year. The traditions of the Persian New Year, or Norooz as we Persians call it (which means “new day”) date back thousands of years to the time of the ancient prophet Zoroaster, whose philosophies were the basis of the Zoroastrian religion. Zoroastrianism, which predates the three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam; ironic how closely related those three religions are, right?), was the primary religion of Persians until the brutal Arab conquest in the 7th century.

The cocktail I created highlights traditional Persian flavors and ingredients, and as you can see, is not green in color. Ultimately it was too difficult to make a green-hued drink without coming off as supremely corny and contrived. In the end I realized it was more important to represent culture and history through ingredients and flavors common to Persian cuisine, than to simply present a color, which could have easily been done with a few drops of artificial food coloring. But as we’ve learned from the environmental movement, green is a mindset before it is anything else. And that’s something I try to bare in mind in every cocktail I create, and that’s why you always see me pushing folks to use fresh, seasonal, and organic ingredients whenever possible and practical.

That being said, behold the Persian Rose.

Persian Rose
2 oz Gin
1¾ oz sweet lemon juice (not regular lemon, not Meyer lemon; see info below)
½ oz lemon juice
½ oz Cherry Heering (can substitute other cherry-flavored liqueur)
¼ oz rosewater
¼ oz agave nectar (can substitute simple syrup)

Tools: cocktail shaker, strainer
Glass: chilled cocktail glass or coupe
Garnish: rose petal

Place ingredients in a shaker filled with ice and shake well.  Strain into your glass and garnish with a rose petal if you have one handy.

Those of you not familiar with Persian cuisine may be wondering about this thing called the sweet lemon—I’ve even seen a totally misinformed thread on Chowhound discussing this. Sweet lemons can be found at many middle eastern grocers. They may look like lemons but they don’t taste anything like regular lemons, as they have a subtle honey-like sweetness and none of the sourness that’s characteristic of both regular and Meyer lemons. They also have a very bitter pith, so rather than peeling and eating as one would an orange, it’s better to also peel the membrane holding the fruit, and eat only the lightly sweet flesh. You can also drink the juice or use it in a cocktail as done here, but bare in mind that as with all citrus, the juice is best when fresh.

Because the flavor of the sweet lemon is so subtle, I used more than I normally would when I use juices in cocktails, and had to be really careful with the other ingredients so as not to overpower it. You especially have to watch the rosewater, as it can easily dominate.

Rosewater and cherry are also common ingredients in Persian cooking, especially in our desserts. The combination of rosewater, cherry, and lemon juice is one of my favorites, most commonly used in a dessert called Faloodeh, which is essentially a Persian noodle-sorbet flavored with the aforementioned ingredients.

Cherry Heering can be found at many liquor stores (though you may have to go to a specialty or higher end one), and is still probably the best cherry-flavored liqueur out there. You can use another cherry liqueur, or a cherry syrup if you can’t find Heering. The same goes for the agave nectar. If your nearby health store doesn’t carry it, you can use simple syrup instead, which you can make by simply dissolving sugar in an equal amount of hot water, then allowing it to cool.

Now I must go get my drink on. Cheers! Sláinte (Irish)! Salamati (Persian)!

*Got a cocktail question? Hit me on twitter @paystyle, email me at payman(at)lifesacocktail(dot)com, or simply drop me a comment below.