Name Change

You may have noticed that the title of this blog has changed.

When I began this liquor-soaked chronicle in January 2007, "Off the Presses" seemed an appropriate play on words, as my posts were mainly about wine. Since then, however, I've come to write as much about cocktail, spirits and beer as I do about wine. (I choose no favorites among those four.) So the name seemed a bit off, or at least not as all-encompassing as it ought to have been.

So—even though the name-change will no doubt cause me a few months of transitional headache—I have made a switch to "Make It Simple, But Significant." "Mad Men" fans will recognized that as a quote from the Aug. 29, 2010, episode of the show. Don Draper, asked for his drink order, makes that eloquent request. The wording matches my tastes. There's nothing I like more in a drink than something done expertly well, but simply presented. No doubt, Don was asking for either a rye, or an Old Fashioned. No objection to either.

Pegu Club Fifth Anniversary Menu Celebrates Half a Decade of Significant Drinking

It's strange to think that The Pegu Club celebrated its fifth anniversary this past Sunday, August 29. It feels like it's been around forever. Maybe that's because, in 2006, when I first immersed myself in the cocktail world, there was little else beside The Pegu Club around if you wanted to purchase yourself a quality drink. Milk & Honey, yes, but you needed a compass and a secret password to get to it.

Since it opened in August 2005, Audrey Saunders drink den has directly spawned a second generation of cocktail joints. Pegu bartenders Phil Ward, Jim Meehan, St. John Frizell and Toby Maloney went on to found Mayahuel, PDT, Fort Defiance and Chicago's Violet Hour, respectively. The fifth anniversary menu represents them all with drink they formerly brought to the Pegu menu. Also in attendance on that list: Chad Solomon, Jim Kearns, Kenta Goto, Naren Young and others. Here's the

Royalton's Forty Four Bar to Open Sept. 20

The opening date for Forty Four, the revamped lobby bar at midtown Manhattan's Royalton Hotel, will be Sept. 20. As for the menu composed by the so-called Cocktail Collective—Richard Boccato from Dutch Kills and Painkiller in New York City; John Lermayer from the Florida Room in Miami Beach, and Woodward in Boston; Simon Ford, a former London bartender, and now a global cocktail ambassador employed by Pernod Ricard USA; Willy Shine, one of the founders of Contemporary Cocktails, a prominent cocktail consultancy based in New York City; Misty Kalkofen, who tends bar at Drink in Boston; and Eric Alperin, head bartender at the Varnish in Los Angeles—that's still be worked over, but expect something soon. After all, once that sextet settles on a list, they will have to teach the drinks and their methods to the Royalton's union bar staff, which may prove a tricky task. Union bartenders don't alway possess the same fervor for fancy drink-building that today's young mixologists do.

Mad Men and Drinking, Season Four, Episode 6: Blotto!

Get a couple hundred ad men in a room and you're going to see some serious drinking.

Episode six, titled "Waldorf Stories," of "Mad Men"'s fourth season, whirls around the sixth annual Clio Awards, held—natch—at the Waldorf=Astoria. Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is up for a trophy, for the oft-mentioned film-like Glo Coat floor wax TV commercial—and Draper can barely conceal his wish to take home the prize. He does. But this, of course, gives him a grand excuse to celebrate. And in the world Don Draper, celebrating means two things: heavy imbibing and carousing.

A Visit to Strong Place

Strong Place—which is not on Strong Place, but a block away, on Court Street—is the third Cobble Hill venture by the folks behind the juice bar Nectar and the wine bar Bocca Lupo, and to my mind the most successful. (As a wine bar, Bocca Lupo always felt like a missed opportunity to me.) The look is very clean, stark and wooden, with a couple of wood booths up front, a long bar to the right and a few more small booths at back.

Beer is the story here, drink-wise. There are wines, but nothing to shout about. 24 drafts in all, mainly craft beers and all from the U.S. Fine and reliable names such as Captain Lawrence, Sixpoint, McNeill's, Avery, Allagash and Victory are all in evidence. I like how they've zeroed in on a few excellent, smaller breweries and stood by them, offering a few beers by each. The draft names are displayed on little pieces of rough paper in front of each tap. (There's a printed menu as well.) I had the Captain Lawrence's Kaptain's Kolsch, a worthy version of this top-fermented Cologne style, and tasted the Allagash Black and Avery Ellies Brown Ale. (The bartender, who was friendly, was liberal with tastes.) Beers were between $5 and $8. There were also a dozen beers in bottles and a couple in cans.

More on the New Lambs Club

I stopped by the softly opening Lambs Club in the Chatwal Hotel yesterday and learned a bit more about the Sasha Petraske-created drinks program.

First of all, the space, while a bit garish, is also gorgeous, and reminds one of the glamour that was once associated with the theatre district. I suspect it will become catnip for theatre types, who are always looking for an attractive backdrop. The mezzanine bar (seen above in the rear of the picture) is long and luxurious, its top a warmly glowing red glass, Empire State Building-shaped silver light fixtures above, the barmen in white jackets, hands folded behind their backs when they're not working.

The Sipping News

Bartender Nick Jarrett put in his final shift at Philadelphia's Franklin Mortgage & Investment Company on Aug. 24. Now, New York has his full-time.

An unsavory-sounding vodka gets the perfect spokesman. [Refinery 29]

Albert Trummer of Apoteke defends flaming cocktails [NY Post]

Cold River of Maine comes out with a gin. [NY Barfly]

Eric Asimov looks at the soulful side Bordeaux. [NYT]

Official Drinking Day du Jour: Whiskey Sour Day

I thank Michael Collins Irish whiskey for clueing me in on the significance of Aug. 25, which is apparently National Whiskey Sour Day.

"The whiskey sour is not only one of the oldest and most classic of cocktails of all time but also one of the most well known," they inform me. Then the press release spins a tale about sailors and scurvy which I found rather suspect. I've heard that sailors used to mix a bit of citrus in with their daily ration of rum, and found the tonic had healthful properties. But whiskey? 

Ah well. Could be. Certainly, the Whiskey Sour is an old refresher, dating back to the 19th century at least. And certainly, nobody really gives much thought to the drink these days, though it is a reliable refresher.

Sasha Petraske Keeps It Simple at Lambs Club

I must say I do appreciate cocktail man Sasah Petraske's unflagging classicism. When all others are dabbling in this trend and that new fad, he pretty much sticks to the pre-Prohibition playbook. The menu he's come up with for midtown's newly refurbishing Lambs Club, set inside the Chatwal Hotel, may be his starkest yet, a mere five selections long. In a nod or two to modernity, it makes room for vodka and St. Germain.

The Lambs is on W. 44th between Broadway and Sixth. It's location it no mistake. It was once a prominent theatrical club, with origins in London. It was founded in 1869, named after Charles and Mary Lamb, who apparently were the objects of much actor freeloading back in the 19th century. The American version came in 1874. Members included Irving Berlin, Fred Astaire, Bert Lahr and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Alan J. Lerner and Frederick Lowe first met at the Club. 

I was unhappy to see the old interior ripped apart. But perhaps, how, it will become a theatrical hangout again.

Here's the lists:

Mad Men and Drinking, Season Four, Episode 5: Sake!

Sake makes a splashy debut in "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword," episode five of the fourth season of "Mad Man." From the second scene, in which we learn that accounts man Pete Campbell has won Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce a shot at the Honda motorcycle company's business, you sort of knew it would. Despite Roger Sterling's objection—he fought in the Pacific theatre during World War II and has not forgiven his former enemies—Campbell, Don Draper and Eastern-leaning Bert Cooper go after Honda's business, reading up on Japanese business practices and practicing their bows. As a "modest gift" to the two Honda execs and their translator, Campbell presents them with two bottles of Johnnie Walker Black (what? no American whiskeys were available?) and, um, a cantaloupe.

Oddly enough, the bottle of sake which arrives for Draper two days later is not from the Honda people (the meeting did not go well, thanks to Sterling's embarrassing race-baiting), but from Ted Chaough, the Don Draper of rival ad agency Cutler, Gleason and Chaough. CGC has been openly taunting SCDP in the press (via the advertising columnist at the New York Times) and stealing their cast-offs, like Clearasil and Jai alai. It is now competing directly with SCDP for Honda's business. The disdainful Draper calls Chaough "a fly I keep swatting away."

Mayahuel at Jake Walk

I was throwing a leg over a stool at Carroll Gardens' Jake Walk when I noticed a new cocktail on the menu. Set apart from the rest by being framed in a box, it was called the Tequila Gumption, and included  reposado tequila, mezcal, maraschino liqueur and Angostura and orange bitters. Below the ingredients was the line "Created by Katie's Boyfriend, Mayahuel, NYC."

In cocktail circles, that's fairly easily decipherable code for Phil Ward. Katie is Katie Stipe, a bartender alum of Flatiron Lounge, Clover Club and others. Since it opened two years ago, Jake Walk has established itself as a favorite hang of neighborhood bartenders, Stipe and Ward being among the most loyal. Phil created the new cocktail as a favor to Jake Walk owners Ari Form and Matt DeVriendt.

The Tequila Gumption is an unmistakable Phil Ward cocktail, fruity and smoky, with notes of orange, rhubarb, grapefruit, avacado and bell pepper. Close your eyes and sip it, and you are instantly transported from Carroll Gardens to the East Village and Mayahuel.

Later that evening, I stopped by Vandaag, the new genever bar on Second Avenue, where Katie Stipe is doing some consulting. Stipe was there, and Phil Ward happened to be hanging out at the bar. I asked them about the Tequila Gumption's amusing attribution. "They said we could credit it any way we wanted," said Stipe.

Three Parts New York, One Part L.A., One Part Boston...

What kind of bar do you get when you mix Pernod Ricard USA brand ambassador czar Simon Ford, cocktail consultant Willy Shine, tiki master Richard Boccato, Boston bartendress Misty Kalkofen, L.A. bar wizard Eric Alperin and Miami Beach mixologist John Lermayer?

We shall find out in mid-September when Forty Four, the bar revamp at the Royalton Hotel in midtown Manhattan, reopens. They are all part of the group the hotel has put together and called The Cocktail Collective. Heard of Ocean's Eleven? Call them Royalton's Six.

At Royalton's Bar, a Collective of Cocktail Talent

By Robert Simonson

Like a Danny Ocean of the cocktail world, Howard Wein, senior vice president of food and beverage of Morgans Hotel Group, has cherry-picked some of the most prominent and talented bar figures from across the United States to create the liquor program at Forty Four, the lobby bar and restaurant of Midtown Manhattan’s Royalton hotel, which closed this summer for a revamp and is set to reopen in mid-September.

The group has been christened the Cocktail Collective by Mr. Wein, and includes: Richard Boccato from Dutch Kills and Painkiller in New York City;John Lermayer from the Florida Room in Miami Beach, and Woodward in Boston; Simon Ford, a former London bartender, and now a global cocktail ambassador employed by Pernod Ricard USA; Willy Shine, one of the founders of Contemporary Cocktails, a prominent cocktail consultancy based in New York City; Misty Kalkofen, who tends bar at Drink in Boston; and Eric Alperin, head bartender at the Varnish in Los Angeles.

A Beer At...Grassroots Tavern

If Bob Dylan never drank here, I'd be very surprised. I've never been in a bar that reminded me more of the folk music movement of the late '50s-early'60 than Grassroots Tavern. Even the very name seems a reference to that time. My latest from Eater:

A Beer At...Grassroots Tavern

The Grassroots Tavern—one of the only worthwhile businesses on the Bohemian theme park that is St. Marks Place between Second and Third Avenues—has a basement-level, cement bunker of an entrance. One would expect a cramped, cold interior beyond those mismatched double doors (one is weirdly wider than the the other). Instead, it's warm and bizarrely enormous inside. A boisterous group of 13 at one table doesn't begin to cramp the place. Sit at the back, near the three dart boards and the strange series of locked wooden cabinets, and the East Village sidewalk circus seems a million miles away.

Obamas Disappoint Cocktailians

Well, they can't do everything with style.

The First Couple, which frequents interesting restaurants when they come to New York, and has sponsored some adventurous dinners at the White House, apparently has lousy taste in cocktails.

Wayne Curtis, cocktail expert and contributor to The Atlantic, recently dropped by the Maine resort town of Mount Desert Island, where the Obamas vacationed in July. Curtis visited the bar Havana, where the President and his wife were known to have gone, and asked the bartender what libations they had orders.

Grey Goose Martinis. Vodka Martinis. Not-even-very-good-vodka Martinis. 

Maybe now the American people will believe the President when he says he's one of them.

New Brooklyn Brewery Beer Detonates in Prospect Park

Holding a launch party for its latest Brewmaster's Reserve release, Detonation Ale, at Prospect Park's Boat House was a pretty savvy idea from a marketing angle. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate, dumping torrents of rain into the mossy lake that borders the Boat House, and effectively creating the most muggy, hot and uncomfortable day yet in August.

The beer, however, mitigated matters. Brooklyn Brewery called Detonation the "big brother" of Blast!, a  robust IPA it trots out every not and then. It's well-named. The beer's alcohol content is a whopping 9.2%. But you don't taste it when you drink it. The amber-colored, medium-bodied, hoppy ale goes down pretty sweet, it's alcoholic potency "detonating" later. They use seven different kinds of American hops it this, and three malts, two British and one German. Worth a try if you see it around.

Mad Men and Drinking, Season Four, Episode 4

"He's a drunk."

That's how Don Draper was described in the episode "The Rejected," and for the first time in the history of "Mad Men." The utterer of this until-now-unspoken truth was Alison, the sweet and faithful secretary Don used one night and discarded the next morning earlier this season. (The idea has been obliquely hinted at previously this season, though. The nurse neighbor of Don's mentioned her father was a drunk when she helped him to bed. And, last episode, when Lane poured out for Don some of the Irish whiskey his dad sent him as a present, he referred to dad as an alcoholic, therefore tying Don together with his father's habits.)

I think it's official with this episode—Don Draper's drinking is no longer fun. It's not romantic or charismatic or manly or even funny. It's overdone, and it's rendering him irresponsible and, as young Joey in the office said a couple episodes back, pathetic. He reaches for the bottle at all hours of the days and usually ends up soused, falling asleep on the couch in his Village apartment, which always seems to be draped in eternal darkness no matter how many lamps are turned on. "Why is this empty?" he asked in the first scene, shaking a drained bottle of Canadian Club during a morning conference call with Lucky Strike. "Because you drank it all," replies Alison, who's just about had enough. Don reacts by grabbing the bottle of Smirnoff instead.

Is Don headed toward Freddy Rumsen Land, set to hit bottom and then grab the life raft of AA. Hard to imagine a man as stubborn and proud as Draper would accept that reality. And, if he did, I think it would present the series with a style problem. Cocktails and drink has been such an integral park of the series' aesthetic, it would be hard to adjust to a sad-sack, on-the-wagon Draper who's no longer man enough to handle an Old Fashioned or six. A lot of the wit and edge and, yes, plotting of the show comes from that constant drinking and smoking and carousing. Well-behaved, reformed Mad Men just don't have the same appeal as the private rogues we've come to know.

At a bar with his father-in-law, Pete Campbell gave a brand shout-out, ordering "Dewer's on the rocks." Peggy, meanwhile, goes to a radical downtown "happening" where pot and beer are the primary stimulants. The event makes Don's encounters with beatniks at the Gaslight in season one seem positively quaint.

Another old New York restaurant got a big cameo, as Pete, Harry Crane and their old colleague Ken Cosgrove met for lunch at Jim Downey's Steakhouse. The restaurant was located at 49th and Eighth Avenue, and attracted a lot of show folk. Downey's closed in the 1980s.

As a side note, I'm enjoying how Harry, head of the television department, is now peppering his talk with Yiddish expressions the more he travels to L.A. on business. "Those ganefs at CBS are killing me," he remarks at Downey's, to which WASPy Pete can only wrinkle his brow and say, "Those what?"

Official Drinking Day du Jour: Rum Day

I thought Aug. 16 was just another Dog Day Monday. But the folks at Koloa Premium Hawaiian Rum have shown me how wrong I was.

August 16th is actually much better known as National Rum Day. This has been going on for a few years, apparently. How have I missed it?

What greatly surprises me is it comes just a month after National Daiquiri Day, which ought to have provided enough rum celebrations to last the summer. But whatever. When's National Mai Tai Day?

Brands and Their Ambassadors

The first time I ever heard the term "brand ambassador" was in 2006 at Tales of the Cocktail, when I first met Charlotte Voisey, then new to the U.S. and a rep for Hendrick's Gin. It's not surprising the English Voisey should have been one of the first I encountered. The brand ambassador trend began in England and Voisey and the-Plymouth-Gin-man Simon Ford, another Brit transplant, were among the first high-profile ambassadors in the American industry.  Both former bartenders have moved up the ladders at William Grant and Pernod, respectively, fairly quickly.

I've seen dozens of bartenders become brand ambassadors since then, of course. And with every year, it seems more bartenders are recruited by the large liquor corporations. The profession's prospects as a career have altered dramatically. A person who becomes a mixologist these days isn't a slacker who wants to avoid having a "real job." They're someone with a business plan and a career trajectory in mind. I've come to naturally assume that any mixologist of note that I know will eventually make this career transition—or at least be offered the chance to do so. (It's a surreal creature, I have to tell you, the Ambitious Bartender. Such a seeming oxymoron. Not sure if I'll ever get used to it.)

I wrote a piece about the phenomenon for the New York Times recently:

UPDATE: This is my first liquor article in the Times to be picked up by the International Herald Tribune. Gotta love the headline they came up with: "Set 'Em Up Joe, I've Got a Little Corporate Pitch I Think You Should Know."

From Bartender to Liquor Brand Promoter

By Robert Simonson 

AT the recent Tales of the Cocktail, the liquor convention held every July in New Orleans, Erick Castro was working hard pouring drinks. Nothing new there. A San Francisco bartender, Mr. Castro has a decade’s experience doing just that, most recently at the tippling den Rickhouse.

But at Rickhouse he poured all sorts of liquors, while at Tales he was more focused, making drinks only with Beefeater and Plymouth gins. The reason is that Mr. Castro now works for Pernod Ricard USA, whose portfolio includes the two gins. Like more and more bartenders, he has become what the industry calls a brand ambassador, and a layman might call a liquor salesman.

Not long ago, bartending was, for some, one of the classic dead-end jobs, the choice of wannabe actors and the terminally unambitious. The only way up the drink-slinging ladder was to own a bar. But with the cocktail renaissance, today’s star mixologist is tomorrow’s brand representative, hawking various products for liquor conglomerates, or tomorrow’s cocktail consultant, setting up drink programs for new taverns and restaurants.

Some in the industry have misgivings about the shift — it distracts working bartenders from doing the job at hand, they say, and drains off the best talent. But nowadays, any entrepreneurial bartender worth his tattoos has a vest pocket full of business cards.

Last year, Jeremy J. F. Thompson was the head bartender at the Raines Law Room, a neo-speakeasy in the Flatiron district. This year, he is a spokesman for Russian Standard Vodka. “I knew I wanted to pursue an ambassadorship,” he said. “I know a number of bartenders who consider this their career.”

“Brand ambassador” may seem like a highfalutin term, but it captures nicely the porous and peripatetic nature of the liquor promoter’s job. These employees are hired not just to push, but also to personify a brand. They talk to distributors and members of the news media, conduct educational seminars and cocktail demonstrations, and host parties.

The habit of tapping bartenders as liquor reps began in the late ’90s in England, said Simon Ford, an English bartender who is now the director of trade outreach and brand education at Pernod Ricard USA. In the last few years, the United States has adopted the approach with a vengeance.

Many bartenders leap at these gigs to escape the sore muscles and long hours that are their lot. But they often enter a world where the shift never ends. “If bartending is an evening job and marketing is a day job, then a brand ambassador is both,” Mr. Ford said. “Your boss needs to see you in the morning, and the bartenders expect to see you in the evening.”

Still, he said, he fields inquiries about such jobs from hungry bartenders “all the time.” The reasons are clear. A full-time brand promoter can earn $60,000 to $100,000, receive health insurance and other perks, and enjoy travel, parties and lavish dinners.

“They see it as a very glamorous job,” said Charlotte Voisey, a former London bartender now working as a portfolio ambassador for William Grant & Sons USA, whose products include Hendrick’s gin and Sailor Jerry spiced rum.

For liquor companies, these employees bring a ready-made camaraderie and knowledge of the profession to the bartenders they woo. They “speak bartender,” as Mr. Ford said. Although in the United States companies cannot give free products to bars, the bartender-spokesman can mix cocktails and show fellow bartenders how the product can be used. A plain salesman could not.

But there are risks in this development. “One thing we noticed in London is you scoop out all the great bartenders to be brand ambassadors, and suddenly you’re left strapped for talent in the bars,” Ms. Voisey said. “That’s something we have to watch out for as an industry.”

Mr. Ford termed this danger “a loss of personalities.”

Also worrisome is a tendency among eager young mixologists to jump into corporate jobs and consulting earlier and earlier. “I do meet more people, they’re still a little new and they have already formed an L.L.C. and have an agent,” Mr. Castro said.

Tad Carducci, a partner in Tippling Brothers, a consulting firm, said, “The mind-set is, I’ll be a bartender for a little while, get the recognition as quickly as I can, and get out from behind the bar and become a brand ambassador.”

Mr. Thompson does not fault bartenders for long-term planning — “The competition is increasing as word spreads that mixology has gone from trend to career path,” he said — but no matter how it is characterized, some customers feel the loss of talented bartenders keenly.

Adam Kolesar, a resident of Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, met Frank Cisneros at Prime Meats, a local bar that he visits two or three times a week. “Being a regular, having a guy like Frank, a real personality with opinions about how drinks should be made and a depth of knowledge about what he was serving — that made a real difference,” Mr. Kolesar said. But no longer: Mr. Cisneros has become a liquor spokesman for Lucas Bols, the Dutch liquor company.

Even Ms. Voisey, who has helped anoint her share of brand ambassadors, admitted that when she heard that Mr. Castro was joining Pernod Ricard, it “secretly broke my heart.

“It’s such a joy to go into Rickhouse and see him there.”

But Mr. Ford said: “You don’t go to the Rickhouse and get a bad drink if Erick’s not working. He’s trained the team. Hopefully, what you’re doing is Erick can train more people than just the bartenders at the Rickhouse.”

A Summer of Beer Gardens

Growing up in Wisconsin, I was no stranger to beer gardens, even as a child. Every summer, at the Wisconsin State Fair, my family spent some time hunkered down in the Schlitz Beer Garden, one of the more popular permanent attractions at the fair. The beer was Schlitz, of course. The food was local bratwurst.

I did not know at the time that was basically a kitsch beer garden, a mock-up of the real al fresco brew taverns that dotted the Milwaukee landscape in the late 19th century and early 20th century, when it was a brewing capital, and the home of tens of thousands of Germans. Still, I liked the open, convivial atmosphere, and the sense of tradition.

Here in New York there had also been a great German population once. But their main outposts, the Lower East Side and Yorkville, are today shadows of what they were, betraying little of their German past. Certainly, there were no beer gardens left when I arrived in the city two decades ago. If you wanted that, you had to journey out to Astoria and enjoy the Czech survivor Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden.

That has changed dramatically. Today, you can choose from nearly a dozen new beer gardens. And more are on the way. You'll find them in the Meatpacking District, Lower East Side, Long Island City, Fort Greene and, mostly, Williamsburg. I credit the economy with their rise. Beer gardens are cheap and democratic. When times are tough, people need to know that they can get in and out of a bar for $10 if needs be, and they also don't wish to have their pride bruised by punishing entrance policies. Even in New York, no one's turned away from a beer garden.

Here's the beer garden round-up I wrote for the New York Times:

The Sipping News

Albert Trummer, the P.T. Barnum of the cocktail world, plans to open a cocktail bar even more ostentatiously theatrical than Apothéke. It will be  "almost like 'Top Chef.' " Name: Theater Bar. [Wall Street Journal]

Beer Advocate has completed the entirely useful and productive not-at-all meaningless task of naming the best 100 beers on the planet. [BA]

Eric Asimov preaches the gospel of the hard-to-pronounce, but hard-not-to-like, Basque grape Txakolina. [NY Times]

Heaven Hill is adding two new rickhouses. [Cowdery]

Mad Men and Drinking, Season Four, Episode 3

A mysterious bottle from overseas cemented the friendship between Don Draper and Englishman Lane Pryce during "The Good News," the third episode of the fourth season of "Mad Men."

"I received something special from my father for my birthday," said a rather sad and lonely Pryce, working on New Year's Eve at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Don, having foregone a trip to Acupulco, and feeling equally forlorn (even if he would never admit it), was receptive. What was it? "Who knows?" said Lane. "He's one of those alcoholics who thinks that he's collecting."

He poured from a bottle with a red cap and some small type on the label. The bottle was too blurred to identify, but someone sitting next to me while I watched was sure it was Redbreast Irish whiskey. Could be. The red cap is right, and the slight bulge in the neck of the bottle. And I thought I glimpsed the small red, oval illustration found on every Redbreast label.

Don tasted it. His face showed he was impressed. "It has no bite at all," they agreed. That comment would seem to indicate Irish whiskey, which is triple distilled. And Redbreast is known for its smooth character. Certainly they couldn't have been talking about Scotch. Don and Lane subsequently decided to go to the movies and then to dinner. To fortify themselves, Don (sloppily) pours the rest of the mystery bottle into a flask. 

Otherwise, a bottle of Famous Grouse appeared at the home of Anna Draper, the California woman who lent Don her late husband's name. Don paid a surprise visit to her, only the second such since the series began. And they went out to eat at "that place with the beer and the abalone."

Mexican Coke in My Midst

A month ago I posted an item about mixologists' lavish thirst for Coca-Cola made south of the border—the kind made with cane sugar, not corn syrup—and about those bartenders' unwillingness to reveal where they located specimens of such soda in the contiguous 48.

Well, today I finally found a source of the Holy Grail. It was not in some out-of-the-way bodega, but in a huge supermarket, one I visit thrice a week. They sell the stuff for $1.29 a glass bottle. How and why they have it in stock, I do not know. How I happened never to spot it, I also do not know.

I'd like to tell you where to get it. But I've decided to follow the model of the mixologists who so stonewalled me in the past, and not let out the secret. More Mexican Coke for me.

Sixpoint Beer, Now Made in Pennsylvania

Sixpoint Ales, the massively popular brewer headquartered in Red Hook, has made a career out of marketing its Brooklyn roots, becoming the darling of Kings County locavores over the past few years. It's well-hone image—not to mention its many excellent beers—have led to soaring demand. So much so that it long outgrew it tiny digs on Van Dyke Street. Since late 2007, many Sixpoint ales have been brewed at the larger Green Point Beerworks, on Waverly Avenue in Clinton Hill, home of Kelly Taylor rival Brooklyn brew-line Kelso. But that was still Brooklyn.

Now, for the first time, some Sixpoint beer will be made outside of the borough. Eater reports that owner Shane Welch has moved a portion of Sixpoint's production to the Lion Brewery in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Welch confirmed the move. "Shane also tells us that they are considering two other options and that there is a 'different and unique project on the horizon' but doesn't reveal any details."

The development is particularly interesting because Sixpoint has often boasted of their utter Brooklynishness, faulting competitor Brooklyn Brewery for not really being a Brooklyn brewery because much of its bottled product has been made by contract in Utica. I suspect Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster Garrett Oliver is having a good laugh over this.

A Beer At...Jackie's Fifth Amendment

How can you not love a bar called Jackie's Fifth Amendment?

 A Beer at... Jackie's Fifth Amendment 

Jackie's Fifth Amendment is a Park Slope dive bar which may have the coolest name of any saloon in town. Unfortunately, the decades-old place recently had its wonderfully ratty, old awning replaced. The new one just says "Jackie's" on the Fifth Avenue side. You have to walk over the 7th Street side to take in the full glory of its title. Some say the curious label goes back to bygone Mob connections from the bar's early days, but one assumes it also refers to the regulars' right to protect themselves from self-incrimination. These folks are talkative, but they don't talk.

Though it probably dates from the Depression, the bar looks frozen in the 1970s. The furniture is brown and cheap. In the back is a metal coat rack, an accoutrement which, to me, is shorthand for Old Dive Bar. There's a pay phone sign—but no phone under it. Jackie's working phone is an old black rotary job with a ring that could wake the dead. Best of all is the 8-track/radio set behind the bar. The radio works. As for the 8-track—"I don't know," said the barmaid. (So why is a cassette of Nat King Cole's greatest hits sitting on top of it like it was just played?)

The patrons, meanwhile, are in their 50s, 60s and 70s, and look exactly that old. One of the oldest is the white-haired bartender, a kind lady who limps, hates reality television and keeps her purse open on the back bar. These guys keep each other comfortable company. They razz one another, buy take-out and eat it down at the end of the bar, and take communal smoking breaks, sidling out the side door onto the sidewalk. On a recent night, no one played the jukebox and no one watched the TV. "You go to a bar to drink, stupid!," the regulars might tell you, if they told you anything. And see your friends.

—Robert Simonson

The Sipping News

Woodford Reserve's future Master's Collection whiskeys will include a maple finish, wine finish, tequila finish and rum finish. [Whiskey Magazine via Chuck Cowdery]

One man's backlash against the craft whiskey movement. [Sku's Recent Eats]

Camper English lists every drink he had at Tales of the Cocktail. (Not for the faint of heart.) [Alcademics]

The new head of the Minnesota Department of Human Rights is cracking down on bars and restaurants that offer "Ladies Nights," calling them a form a discrimination. Genius. [Reuters]

Argentina has surpassed Chile in U.S. wine exports. All hail Malbec. [Wine Enthusiast]

Capsouto Frères has added a Combier Rouge Cherry Soufflé to its menu, made with fresh cherry jam, crème anglaise, and Combier Rouge liqueur cherry sauce. [Grub Street]

Mad Men and Drinking, Season Four, Episode 2

"Duck doesn't understand this business. He's dry as a bone." That was Freddy Rumsen back in Season Two, just before he was going to be sacked for his excessive imbibing, complaining about teetotaler (and former drunk) Duck Phillips, who forced him out. Freddy unexpectedly returned in episode two of season four, titled "Christmas Comes But Once a Year," and much has changed for him. Now he's dry as a bone. "I'm clean and sober now. 16 months without a drop," he tells Roger Sterling after refusing an offer of "something brown." The intimation is he's in AA; he brings the Ponds cold cream account to Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce owing to the fact that his connection at Ponds is a fellow brother in that "fraternity."

The irony of Freddy's return is that the men who fired him, Roger and Don, are still drinking, and not drinking well. And they are seen as increasingly out of step with the times because of their habits. Both men bend an elbow in their offices well before noon. Don is either hitting it harder (very likely due to his misery and regret over his divorce and the prospect of spending Christmas alone) or not holding it as well as Roger. Even Roger says "A little early for that isn't it, Don?" as Draper pours an AM glass of rye, to which Don replies, "You're joking, right?"