One thing this country has always enjoyed is a good drink. Whether it was rum on the Atlantic, bourbon at the races or that Bloody Mary at Sunday Brunch, alcohol is the American Drink.
I was riding shotgun for my wife, out on Saturday errands when the email came. I never check email on weekends, but it’s even less common to find myself in a passenger seat with some free iPhone time, so the rare combination of freedom and boredom broke me down.
From a glance, the subject line didn’t seem out of the ordinary. Credit – You’ve been approved.
Ugh. DELE-but wait. There was something about the sender. The name was familiar. It was one of those names you don’t know, but you know. I read the subject again. Media Credentials – You’ve been approved.
Holy shit.
“What?”
Holy shit.
“What? Holy shit what?”
We got in. I can’t believe we got in.
“We got in what?”
Huh? No, I mean… not We me and you. We me and Albert. Holy SHIT.
“Albert and I. You got in what?”
Tales of the Cocktail. We got media passes. HA! The fools gave us media passes!
“What’s Tales of the Cocktail?”
The huge cocktail convention? In New Orleans? Tales of the Cocktail? HOLY SHIT THEY GAVE US FULL MEDIA PASSES.
“Whatever.”
I scrambled to forward the email to Albert. I needed to get this message in front of him asap, if only so I could know at least one other person was as giddy and as giggly and as pleasantly perplexed as I was. I’m not even sure what I wrote in the FWD, but it was something to the effect of, “HOLY SHIT.”
Readers of more serious cocktail blogs are well familiar with Tales of the Cocktail⎯the New Orleans event that attracts thousands of media, bar owners, mixologists, historians, distillers and product-humping brand managers each year, turning the historic French Quarter into a writhing, swirling, sweat-soaked carnival of booze. Even more than usual, I mean.
The heart of the event is the Hotel Monteleone, where the revolving Carousel Bar once gave birth to a drink called the Vieux Carré, a mixture of brandy, whisky, vermouth, Benedictine and bitters that’s as beautifully weird as the city itself. For five days and nights, the Monteleone is like a fancy drunk tank where all the inmates wear nametags and share drinking stories over Sazeracs and milk punches. There are dozens of seminars on everything from absinthe and Irish whisky to barrel aging and bitters. There’s a seminar on swizzle sticks. AND IT’S SOLD OUT.
But that’s just the front of the house. Throughout the Quarter there are spirited dinners hosted by bar and bottle legends like Wild Turkey’s Jimmy Russell and Cocktail God David Wondrich. There are competitions, testing bartenders on speed and creativity. There are guided tours of some of the oldest bars in America. There are tasting rooms staffed by liquor reps wielding trays full of spirits, some not yet on the market, others looking to find a new niche. There are parties, after-parties, after-party after-parties, and top-secret late-night after-after party-parties. All this against the steamy gumbo-tinted backdrop of America’s most American city. And all with me and Albert right in the middle of it. Albert and I.
If you’re not picturing some twisted fisheyed scene out of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas⎯a Kimono’ed Albert barricaded in a hotel bathroom with a shotgun and a pit bull, and myself, eyebrows singed-off, feverishly scrubbing blood stains out of a rented clown suit⎯then you haven’t been reading American Drink very long.
The rest of you are already thinking what I was thinking the second that email subject line became clear: Oh, my God. Tales of the Cocktail fucked up.
So yeah. From some time next Tuesday, July 19, through the following Sunday, we’ll be “covering” Tales of the Cocktail from New Orleans. What that means exactly (posts, live tweets, drink reports, pleas for medical assistance) we honestly don’t know yet. But if not informative, it should at least be pretty entertaining, as evidenced by Albert’s one-sentence response to my email that Saturday with my wife.
“As your attorney, I advise you to take a hit out of the little brown bottle in my shaving kit.”
Wish us luck. And don’t try this at home.
Bourbon, Straight by Julia Jacquette from her exhibit Water, Liquor, Hair
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Reblogged from the-cortex|1,281 notes
A thing I do sometimes is around 11am on a Sunday go to the houses of friends who partied like Andrew WK the night before and bring a bag of ice, a bottle of vodka, some celery, Tabasco, Worcester, some Spicy V8, lemons, and a whole bunch of other shit (liquid smoke - bam), and make them the best hangover drink of their lives.
Then I leave.
You should do it for your friends some time.
Reblogged from ourpresidents|90 notes
What’s Cooking Wednesday: FDR’s Unusual Martinis
FDR had a long-standing practice of hosting a pre-dinner cocktail hour in the White House residence during his presidency. Topics related to politics or government policy were banned from discussion.
FDR always mixed the drinks at these events. The President especially enjoyed making unusual martinis, mixing together copious amounts of vermouth with whatever liquor or juice he had on hand. He was also known to add a few drop of absinthe “for flavor” according to his personal secretary, Grace Tully. The Pernod absinthe bottle seen above is from FDR’s tray of liquor in the White House.
FDR even indulged in the practice at diplomatic meetings. “It is cold on the stomach,” remarked Stalin, after being served one of FDR’s concoctions at the Teheran Conference.
Below is the recipe for the “FDR Special” found in the Val-Kill Cookbook:
2 parts gin
1 part dry, light vermouth
olive or lemon peel for garnish
crushed iceShake up gin and vermouth in a container half filled with chipped ice. Pour into chilled martini glasses, straining out the ice. Add garnish.
-via In Roosevelt History from the Roosevelt Presidential Library
For more on how America eats, check out our new exhibit What’s Cooking, Uncle Sam? at the National Archives.
(h/t @potjie)
posted byReblogged from thememegeneration|199 notes
The Bruins partied at Foxwoods this weekend. Nice tip.
(This was on Boston.com with an accompanying story, but it’s since been pulled.)
(EDIT: The story is back.)
3 bottles of Captain Morgan: $300 each
35 Jager Bombs: $525
Partying like a world champ rockstar Lotto winning frat house: Priceless. 
UPDATE: That $100,000 bottle of Ace Midas champagne was one of the six (large) bottles in the world. It’s known for its floral notes, subtle yeast accents and long creamy finish. The Boston Bruins guzzled it from the Stanley Cup and directly out of the bottle.
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Overpriced barware and flavored vodkas aside, there aren’t many drinking topics I find more off-putting than the far-flung and flowery language of tasting.
Whether it’s Bourbon or Bordeaux, nothing turns my curiosity into contempt like having to trudge through some gasbag’s highbrow appraisal of a spirit’s “initially buttery palate, transitioning into a smooth, fresh body of crisp hazelnut wafer, kissed with Oolong and wild lavender.” Hey, Robert Frost. You gonna drink that thing or fuck it?
This isn’t to say all that pantytalk is a sham. Listen, I’ve drunk my share of whisky. Maybe your share, too. And yes, I can pick out flavors most people don’t notice. But it’s not—as many reviewers would have you infer—because I’ve achieved some level of refinement that you haven’t.
You can taste all these things. Tonight. Not by putting your whisky in the right glass, but by putting it in the right context.
For most folks, whisky tasting works like this:
Weekend 1
1. Buy pint of Jack,
2. Drink pint of Jack,
3. It tastes like Jack.
Weekend 2
1. Buy pint of Beam,
2. Drink pint of Beam,
3. It mostly tastes kind of pretty much like Jack.
Your brain is wired to categorize things. To put everything you see, feel, taste and otherwise experience into buckets with similar things to help it identify stuff later. And it likes BIG DUMB buckets. Buckets like TREE and CAR and WHISKY and GIN. Put your brain in a room with a bicycle and a bird and it can sort things out pretty quickly. But put it in there with 50 birds, and it starts doing something extraordinary, subcategorizing the birds based on things it didn’t bother to notice before. Colors. Beak shapes. Wing patterns. Vanillas. Peppery notes.
Point is, your brain is awesome. But it isn’t awesome enough to freeze-frame the immeasurable subtleties that lie beneath the initial quaff of a well-aged or blended whisky. That is, unless you make it.
Next weekend, instead of your usual Jack or Beam, buy both. Better still, buy a nice selection of four or five bourbons and whiskies (or aged rums, or tequilas or whatever you’re into). Sit down, pour a half shot of each, and taste.1
I swear, if you’ve never done this, you’ll be amazed at your sudden ability to pick out very specific flavors you never detected before.
The most obvious ones, at least for me, are:
Vanilla
I think I read once that of all the organic chemicals oak can impart on whisky, a couple hundred or so taste like variations of vanilla. (Funny we use “vanilla” to denote a lack of variety.) Good Example: Buffalo Trace
Pepper
Whiskies with a lot of rye in them tend to be spicier, so when tasting, definitely throw a rye or rye-heavy choice in the mix. Good Example: Sazerac Rye
Wood
Older whiskies obviously take on more of the characteristics of their oak barrels. As such, they start tasting fatter, more robust and, well, oakier. Good Example: Knob Creek
Peach and almond are fairly common, and more noticeable as you go along. You’ll find others, too, and not all of them good. I swear to God I can taste mint in Bulleit rye. Eagle Rare has a patent-leather quality that’s not as sexy as it sounds. For the longest time I couldn’t put my finger on why I didn’t like Old Overholt rye. Then a few friends and I tried it with five other whiskies one night, and suddenly the answer was both obvious and unanimous: lawn clippings.
None of this is in defense of the average whisky review, which is still 80% bullshit and 95% useless. I’ve never tasted a “hibiscus note” or a “subtle breath of roasted sugar beet” in my life. I don’t doubt there are those who think they can, but I don’t live in their brains. Like you, all I have is my own tongue, my own experiences, and my own vocabulary.
And these six bottles of whisky that ain’t gonna drink themselves.
Photo by Albert
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Don’t make it too easy on your brain. For instance, don’t compare a Scotch with four bourbons. Your brain is likely to just toss the Scotch aside as a reject and focus on the other four. (This is also a great way to ensure that you never develop a taste for Scotch.) Sample things that are similar, but different. If you’re going the whisky route, try 2-3 bourbons, and throw in a TN whisky and a rye. ↩
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