Liquor and Its Myths

If you cover the drinking world, you can't help but take note of the ludicrious notions and habits people pick up in regard to how they order, drink and think about liquor. As much as mixologists like to think of the modern bar as a classroom, few barflies learn their lessons. Instead they cling to myth, superstition, marketing notions, and stuff they learned back in college or on television. Recently, I collected a number of the misguided, but stubborn beliefs stubbornly held by the American drinker into an article for the New York Times, drawing on the experiences and viewpoints of a couple dozen notes bartenders and distillers (of which I managed to cite an even dozen in the piece). As expected, the feature got a strongly positive response from the bartending community. What the public thought of it, I do not know. But if I've caused just one person to stop asking about the worm in mezcal or order their whiskey based on the age statement, I've done my work.

The Myths of the Bar, Debunked

By ROBERT SIMONSON

EDUCATING the average drinker on the qualities of firewater, and how to best enjoy it, has been one of the central credos of the new generation of mixologists. “Knowledge!” they cry, as they throw back shots of Fernet-Branca.

But some booze-addled misconceptions continue to cling like vines to the lizard brain of the American tippler. An army of bartenders can protest that a wetter martini is both more delectable and historically accurate, but certain committed fanciers of the cocktail, channeling their inner Gray Flannel Suit, will still maintain the drink attains perfection only at its driest, when vermouth is banished from the barroom.

Such antiquated contentions are like “nails on a chalkboard,” said Eric Alperin, an owner of the Varnish in Los Angeles. “I think the reason people stand by those myths is because it is a sound bite they’ve acquired, and a bar is a place to feel confident with yourself and exude a little know-how.”

Many reinforce a drinker’s virility, particularly with regard to the most manly of spirits — whiskey.

Some of those idées fixes:

OLDER IS BETTER “It’s absolute nonsense,” said Ronnie Cox, director of theGlenrothes, a Speyside Scotch. “It’s not about oldness, it’s about maturity. Age doesn’t mean anything other than that whiskey’s been in that cask for that amount of time.” Making whiskey requires finding the right balance among myriad elements. A few whiskeys prosper with advanced age, but many fall off a cliff into sensory disharmony at a certain point. Rittenhouse Rye 100, from Kentucky, takes only four years to reach the chewy, spicy sweet spot bartenders swear by. But the Old Pulteney 21-year-old Scotch probably needed to attain drinking age to hit its briny perfection.

Tonia Guffey, a bartender at Dram in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, offered an anthropomorphic analogy. “Not every human hits their peak of beauty at the same age,” she said, “and neither does every spirit.”

WATER IS AN ABOMINATION John McCarthy, head bartender at the Lower East Side bar Mary Queen of Scots, thinks the aversion to diluting whiskey is a matter of machismo. “We’re American men,” Mr. McCarthy said, “and if it doesn’t hurt, it’s not good!” But softening the blow, said Franky Marshall, a bartender at the Monkey Bar, is far from a bad thing. “Adding a little water to whiskey serves to ‘open up’ the spirit, releasing an array of subtler flavors. It can truly show you a completely different profile of a whiskey.” It’s also what most Scots do, and they ought to know. Alla Lapushchik, owner ofPost Office, a Williamsburg bar with a vast whiskey list, offers water even when customers don’t ask for it. “You don’t put water in beer or wine, so it doesn’t occur to people to do it with whiskey,” Ms. Lapushchik said. “I’ve had people order Booker’s 127 proof neat.”

SWEET IS SILLY Another fallacy that hurts the pride of many a modern mixologist is the widely held belief that sweet cocktails are inherently insipid. “I think expectations are still informed by the cocktails of the pre-craft era, when people added sour mix and cranberry cocktail,” said Tom Chadwick, owner of Dram, who insists that all his cocktails, even the sweet ones — like the bar’s current Loose Noose, a mix of bourbon, sweet vermouth, amontillado sherry, and touches of cinnamon syrup and allspice dram — are balanced, with the spirit, citrus, sweetener and other elements cohabiting in the glass. “It’s a way of communicating that you’re sophisticated — ‘I don’t want a Mudslide. I want something complicated.’ ”

GIVE THEM THEIR PROPS The reputation and quality of tequilas and mezcals has risen recently. But drinkers fall back on frat-boy practices, like asking for a lime and salt, a ritual that dates to the days of lousy tequilas. “I say, ‘Whatever spirit I serve you is good, ” said Ivy Mix, a bartender at the Clover Club in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, “and you don’t need to cover it up.’ ” Then there’s the worm in the mezcal bottle. “It was created by Gusano Rojo in the 1950s,” said Steve Olson, an owner of the Lower East Side tequila and mezcal bar Viktor & Spoils, of the widely sold mezcal brand, “when the tequila market had boomed and left mezcal far behind, as an enterprising marketing attempt to get mezcal away from its image as moonshine.”

MISCELLANEOUS MYTHS Despite the avalanche of articles after absinthe’s reintroduction to the United States a few years ago, some ideas about it remain rooted in the 1890s. Customers “really hope they’ll hallucinate,” said Maxwell Britten, beverage director at Maison Premiere, a Williamsburg bar well stocked with absinthe. “I tell them, ‘If you drink enough alcohol of any category, I guarantee you will hallucinate.’ ” Karin Stanley, a bartender at Dutch Kills, in Long Island City, Queens, rattled off her litany of ripostes: “ ‘No, you aren’t going to see anything’; ‘no, you aren’t going to cut your ear off’; and ‘yes, it is supposed to taste like that.’ ”

Other delusions as tough as jerky: that vodka has no calories and is better for you, Ms. Stanley said; that “Jägermeister is made with deer’s blood,” offered St. John Frizell, owner of Fort Defiance in Red Hook, Brooklyn; and that Irish whiskey brands are Catholic or Protestant, depending on where they’re made. “If you look into the ownership, it’s all international corporations,” Mr. Frizell said. “I don’t think the Irish even care.”

Odds are, many misconceptions will survive. The bar has ever been a greenhouse of hyperbole, folklore and rumor. “I’d say a good 30 percent of what’s said over the mahogany is generally baloney,” said Derek Brown, owner of the Passenger and Columbia Room in Washington. “Why wouldn’t that apply to myths about alcohol, too?”

"Mad Men" Drink With Accuracy

Get me writing about "Mad Men" and cocktails at the same time, and you have a happy reporter.

I've spent a good portion of the past month researching and writing a piece for the New York Times on whether the period experts over at "Mad Men" know what they're doing, history-wise, when they hand Don Draper an Old Fashioned and give Roger Sterling a Vodka Martini. Turns out: Yes they do.

Of the experts I interviewed for the article, none proved more valuable than Brian Rea, the 82-year-old career New York bartender ("21" Club, Little Club, etc.) who remembers who and what he served when he was 32. The man's memory is sharp as a tack.

Sixties Accuracy in Every Sip

By ROBERT SIMONSON

EARLY in Season 1 of the AMC series “Mad Men,” Don Draper, the mysterious advertising executive at the core of the show, was seen at home emptying can after can of Fielding beer. Bloggers afflicted with the fact-checking gene quickly noted that there was no Fielding beer in the United States at the time.

“That was a huge mistake,” said Gay Perello, the show’s prop master since the second season. “I hated that label. Hated it.”

Ten years ago, few would have cared whether the executives at Sterling Cooper — the fictional 1960s advertising firm featured in the show, which begins its third season on Sunday — entertained a client with mai tais or bloody marys. But it was the show’s good fortune (or misfortune, depending on how you look at it) to unveil its drink-centric world at a time when a growing fraternity of alcohol enthusiasts is rediscovering America’s rich drinking history. Now, the goof police are out.

Cocktails have been a vital element of the show right from the opening scene, which showed Don Draper sitting in a bar. Before the audience learns his name or his profession, he expresses his drink preference: “Do this again — old-fashioned, please.”

Other than the Fielding lapse, drink historians and barmen of a certain age say that “Mad Men” mostly gets its bibulous world right. Dale DeGroff benefits from a twin perspective. A former bartender at the Rainbow Room, he is often credited with rekindling interest in classic cocktails. But in the early 1970s, he worked at the influential advertising firm Lois Holland Callaway. One of the agency’s clients was Restaurant Associates, which ran such sensations as the Four Seasons and Forum of the Twelve Caesars.

“These ad guys made themselves experts on all the details that needed attention, including everything at the cocktail bars and even the wine lists,” Mr. DeGroff, 60, remembered.

That many ad men drank deeply seems unquestioned. The bartender and bar lore archivist Brian Rea, 82, worked in the 1950s at the Little Club, a popular Midtown restaurant. “Lunch was a big thing,” he said. “They took two and a half hours. We had a lot of agency people come in, from Cunningham & Walsh, BBDO, all having serious lunches with drinks.”

Carlo Marioni, 65, a New York bartender with more than 40 years’ experience who now works at Pietro’s, agreed: “Those years, for lunch, they used to drink three martinis. Then they’d come back before dinner for rusty nails, white spiders.”

If Mr. Rea and others give “Mad Men” high marks for nailing its milieu, part of the credit for this achievement goes to Ms. Perello, 43, who prepares every drink seen on the show, using nonalcoholic ingredients. “We’re definitely the alcohol department,” she said. “I can make an old-fashioned in my sleep now.”

To get an idea of the popular cocktails of the time and how they looked, Ms. Perello relies heavily on a volume from 1992 called “The Art of the Cocktail: 100 Classic Cocktail Recipes,” by Philip Collins. Little is left to chance. “We’re very picky about our glassware. Things are bit bigger and bulkier now. For a martini glass, we go a little smaller and thinner.” Period bottle labels and caps (old-style tax stamps, yes; bar codes, no) are recreated by the graphics department, using old ads as guides.

Occasionally, expediency dictates a decision. When an accounts executive was sent a case of gin by some British colleagues last season, Ms. Perello chose Tanqueray, though Beefeater then dominated the London dry gin market in the United States. “Tanqueray has not changed their bottle,” she explained. “With Beefeater, the bottles are completely different than they were. And I needed 12 bottles.”

Liquor is not only an integral part of many plotlines (last season, it played a pivotal role in a car crash, a divorce, a rape and two career implosions), but often a telling sign of character. When it comes to choosing a character’s poison, Ms. Perello said, many people have input, starting with the show’s creator, Matthew Weiner: “Matt will say, ‘I want them to have a brown liquor.’ And I’ll go, ‘Let’s do a nonblended Scotch, because this is a person who would appreciate that.’ ”

The cocktail historian David Wondrich, 48, thinks an old-fashioned is a conservative choice for the young Draper, but considers his preference for Canadian Club “exactly right. We’d had years of destruction of the American whiskey industry up until then. So the Canadian stuff was viewed as being pretty good.”

“The big Scotches were Bell’s, Black & White, Teacher’s, White Horse,” Mr. Rea said. “When you’re drinking Canadian Club, you’re showing people you drink a better brand” of whiskey. He and Mr. Wondrich also said Betty Draper’s taste for Tom Collinses and vodka gimlets was spot on.

Thirsts on “Mad Men” have not slackened in Season 3. Draper will vary his rye intake with Old Overholt, while Roger Sterling, Draper’s boss and the show’s resident booze philosopher, broadens his palate. About Sterling’s beloved vodka (bottles of Smirnoff made frequent cameos in earlier episodes) Mr. Rea said, “Martinis were the big thing in those days. Vodka was just beginning to come on strong.”

This season, Sterling gets his hands on some prized contraband: Soviet-made Stolichnaya (then not available in the United States). His priorities remain solidly in place. “Help yourself,” he tells a colleague. “Not the Stoli.”

The Sipping News

The New York Times reviews Phil Ward's Mayahuel.

So does Time Out New York, again positively.

Eric Asimov writes about Shinn Estate Vineyards, whose Long Island wines I like fine. I was just drinking their rose last night. Substantial, deep red, dry yet full.

Alice Fiering bemoans how blogs (like this one? like her own?) have devalued writing and caused publishers to expect copy in exchange for "exposure," as opposed to money. I know from what she speaks. But I also embrace the positive side of blogging, the immediacy, the freedom, the personal tone.

The annual Tales of the Cocktail Spirit Award nominees were announced, Camper English among them.

St. John Frizell's new Red Hook joint, Fort Defiance, will open this weekend. Liquor license to come in July.

Dr. Bamboo has a very bad Martini.

What to Do With the Astoria

I was at Dutch Kills, Sasha Petraske's new joint in Long Island City, Queens, where they feature various Queens-themed drinks, including the Astoria, which was invented back in the 1930s.

"Yeah," I said to the bartender, "basically a Martini with orange bitters, right?" (More like it than you might think. Some experts think the original Martini sported orange bitters, actually.)

"Except we do ours 1 to 1, gin to dry vermouth," he replied.

Oh, I thought. Interesting. Might give me a reason to order it. Some other time. But I had to run that night.

Later, I went home and thought of mixing up an Astoria for myself.

I first looked in Harry McElhone's "Barflies and Cocktails." It was there, but asked for 2/3 gin and 1/3 dry vermouth. Hm. The Savoy Cocktail Book asked for the same ratio. So I looked in the Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book. It asked for the opposite: 2/3 dry vermouth and 1/3 gin. Old Tom gin, actually. What the heck? Is Dutch Kills just trying to split the difference between warring recipes with their 50/50 mix?

Anyway, I mixed one up according to the DK formula, using Dolin vermouth and Beefeater. Not bad. Not great. All said and done, I'd rather have a Martini. Which I sorta did. But not quite.

The Colony Martini

I recently purchased a 1945 book-length assessment of The Colony, written by a Gourmet writer with a flowery writing style and a name to match: Iles Brody. The Colony, for those who don't know, was the first haven of New York's Cafe Society, an Upper East Side restaurant that from the speakeasy days of the 1920s through the 1950s was the gathering place of bluebloods, artists, gourmands, royalty and celebrities. The Stork Club and El Morocco pulled off the same trick later, but The Colony was first.

Being of a drinking frame of mind, I turned to the chapter about the Colony's bar first. It was ruled by one Marco Hattem, a Turkish gentleman who was with the place for decades and was beloved for his gentle, soft-spoken ways. Hattem began working at the Colony during Prohibition, a situation which caused him to create the boite's most lasting liquid legacy. The Colony, you see, thumbed its nose at the Volstead Act, as did all the smart places in Manhattan at the time. If people wanted booze, they were served it (and some of these people were upstanding citizens named Vanderbilt and such.) He kept all the bottles in an elevator. If the Feds paid a call, he pushed a button and sent the liquor to the top floor.

Marco was dealing with bathtub gin. As Brody tells the story, "to take away the dreadful, raw taste of that poor gin, Marco added to his Martinis a dash of absinthe (later, when there was no more real absinthe, he added Pernod)." A nice trick. Basically an Obituary Cocktail minus the vermouth.

Whaddaya mean, no vermouth, you say? Didn't he say "Martini"? Yes he did. But Brody is not a terribly precise writer. His description would lead the reader to assume the inclusion of vermouth. But research into all known recipes for the Colony Martini shows that vermouth plays no role. Additionally, almost every recipe I've found for a Colony Martini runs this way: 3 oz. gin, 1 barspoon of Pernod, 4 dashes of orange bitters.

Orange bitters? Brody didn't say anything about that! Who's right here? The book, or everybody else? (The book, by the way, calls this drink the Colony Special.) Who knows? So, I decided to conduct an experiment. If I couldn't find out which recipe was the correct one, I could at least decide which one made the better drink. I stirred up two Colonys, one with the orange bitters, one without, and tasted them side by side. I used regular Bombay Gin, thinking it was a brand Marco would have had access to after Repeal. And since he originally created the drink with absinthe, I opted for that, rather than use any substitute.

So, no contest. The bitters makes the drink. The gin-absinthe combo isn't bad. The two liquors go together, and there's no question the absinthe adds something. (I tried to imagine how thankful I would be for the absinthe if I were drinking rotgut gin.) But, in the end, it was just gin and absinthe. Not much depth. The addition of the orange bitters increased interest manifold. The anise and orange flavors played with each other on the surface of the gin, and kept you interested.

One more step was needed. According to Brody, Hattem did something that is unspeakable to most Martini drinkers, once he has assembled the gin and absinthe. He shook it. "At other places, and at home, Martinis are usually just stirred," writes Brody, "because tradition has it that they get cloudy if they are shaken. Marco terms this a gross superstition, shakes his Martinis merrily, and pours them into their appropriate glasses where they glitter like crystal."

I tried this (minus the bitters). My Martini did not glitter like crystal. It was as clear as soup, and tasted similarly. If this is what the Colony swells were drinking, I feel sorry for them.

Duking It Out

When I told San Francisco-based spirits journo Camper English that I planned to pay a call on the Dukes Hotel in Mayfair to sample their world-famous Martini, he scrunched up his face. "What's wrong?" I asked. "Dukes is kind of whacked," he said. "It's one of those destination places."

Well, he's right about that. The destination part, anyway. The posh Dukes has made its culinary reputation on the idea that it serves the best Martini in all of London—some say the world. This is, of course, rot, because a "good Martini" is largely a matter of taste to many people. No one can be said to serve the best. But Dukes is certainly no slouch at it. Part of the allure of the drink is they prepare the cocktail at your table, using the gin or (sorry) vodka of your choice, and to the proportions you specify. It's all very pampering and seductive.

I wrote about the American version of the Dukes ritual, at Danny Meyer's Eleven Madison Park, so I decided next time I was in London I would have to sample the real deal.



Dukes has the discreet sophistication thing down pat. It's situated down a quiet side street off ritzy St. James, all cozy on its own private courtyard. There are no signs guiding your way. You have to know where it is. The lobby is small and strangely silent. The bar is so low-profile, you'd almost miss it. Only a small sign saying "Cocktail Bar" above a door frame gives it away. Entering is like crossing the threshold of someone's private library. Two small rooms divided by a fireplace, and a tiny bar make up the bar. Maybe 20 people could be seated at most. I was there at around 3 PM, so had no difficulty in getting a table.


The bartender was very deferential and appreciative of the gravity of his role (as he saw it). He listed the gins I might select, and I opted for Beefeater's Crown Jewel, since I'd never tried it and I knew it would soon be off the market. He rolled a cart up to my table. Into a Martini glass (considerably smaller than the fish bowl they use at Eleven Madison Park, I'm happy to say), he poured in a modicum of vermouth and then, with one hand behind his back, and one of the bottom of the frozen bottle (the way some waiters serve Champagne), he smoothly poured the Beefeater gin into the glass until it reached a point just below the rim. (No stirring with ice, my purist friends.) He then cut a section of lemon peel, twisted it over the drink and dropped it in the cocktail. To accompany the drink, I was given a bowl of cashews and some sort of small, spiced, cheese-flavored crackers. I ate a great many of these, so that the extremely strong drink wouldn't get the best of me. (They make a great show of only allowing guests to order two Martinis each visit.)

It was a good Martini. I'm not prepared to say it was the best I've ever had, but there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. Let's put it up there in the top five, OK?

Soon enough, I got into a conversation with a Czech journalist who was there on a similar mission. We talked gin, cocktails, the scenes in New York and Prague. The bartender was soon drawn in. He said people come from all over the world to sample the Dukes Martini. He showed me around his bar, which was well-stocked. Gin and vodka Martini customers are about evenly split, he said. Ah, so.

So, "whacked"? No. A "destination place"? Yes. But there's nothing wrong with that, as long as the place is actually worth the trip.

Martini Time

The Summer Drinking issue of Time Out New York just came out (and isn't it just very Time Out-y that they even have a Summer Drinking issue?), and my microscopic piece on the tableside Martini service at Danny Meyer's Eleven Madison Park received very prominent placement. I wish I could give you a link and reprint the fabulous photography, but Time Out's website won't make the article available until next week. But I wrote the thing, so I wrote the thing so I feel I'm well within my rights to run it here for your perusal.

In truth, my objections to EMP's preference of vodka over gin in this signature Martini are more strenuous than I state in the article. When I next go to the restaurant and order this service, you can bet your boots I'll insist of Bombay (regular) or Beefeater's. I also wish the glass weren't 12 ounces. I don't like to get smashed on my first drink. But patrons equate value with size these days. And shame on Riedel for even making a 12 ounce Martini glass!

Critics’ pick

How we roll

When a cart comes your way in a swank Manhattan restaurant, it usually means cheese or dessert. But diners at Eleven Madison Park (11 Madison Ave at 24th St, 212-889-0905) shouldn’t make any assumptions when they hear approaching wheels. The high-ceilinged, high-end eatery recently introduced tableside martini service, which allows diners to enjoy the voyeuristic privileges of sitting barside, without leaving the comfort of their seats. Owner Danny Meyer got the idea during a visit to London’s posh Dukes Hotel, where the world’s most famous cocktail has been prepared in the same showy manner for years. "I am not an inveterate martini drinker by any stretch," said Meyer, "but I have been so captivated by the Dukes Martini that I've made at least three
pilgrimages there just to have one." Indeed, everything about the mobile operation is hyper-elegant. Just a touch of vermouth is dropped into a 12 oz. Riedel Martini glass by way of a sterling silver Tiffany dispenser that resembles a small oil can. The glass is then filled out with ice-cold Potocki vodka, a soft spirit distilled from Polish rye, and the brand favored by Dukes. (Customers can request a different brand of vodka or, for the cocktail classicists, gin.) If olives are the preferred garnish, a small dishful are left at the table with a silver toothpick. Lemon twists are cut by the captain. “At night, doing the twist by candlelight, you can actually see the oils coming off the lemon,” says general manager Will Guidara. Cost: $18. And people seem happy to pay. Though traditionalists may bemoan the omission of three things I consider essentials—gin, a bit of stirring and a glass smaller than a birdbath—the cocktail is superb enough, and big enough, to make me forget.—Robert Simonson