Dale DeGroff Release Own Brand of Bitters

Branding bitters is not new. Writer Gary Regan started off the trend with his ground-breaking orange bitters several years ago. Now, legendary barman has followed his lead. Following a two-year effort, he has produced his own brand of cocktail bitters. I don't expect he is the last contemporary figure in the cocktail world who will slap his name on a bottle. Simon Ford, who recently left the employ of liquor giant Pernod-Ricard USA, will soon release a gin bearing his name. And I know of one bartender is in talks to lend his name to a new amaro. 

Here's the story I wrote on the new product for the Times: 

Bringing Back a Bitters With a Twist

By ROBERT SIMONSON

When Dale DeGroff, the pater familias of the craft cocktail movement, was working regularly behind a bar decades ago, he liked to use a strong, spicy liqueur called Pimento Dram to accent his drinks. But in the 1980s, the liqueur, made by the Jamaican rum distiller J. Wray & Nephew, disappeared from shelves in the United States.

“When they pulled it off the American market, I just couldn’t find anything like it,” Mr. DeGroff said. “I had to leave that flavor out of drinks.”

Now he has brought it (or something like it) back, but in the form of a bitters. After two years of work with the American-born, French-based distiller and chemist Ted Breaux — the man largely behind the absinthe revival of the past five years — Dale DeGroff’s Pimento Aromatic Bitters is finallyon sale online.

The past few years have seen a bitters boom. Where there were once two reigning products, Peychaud’s (needed for a sazerac) and Angostura (needed for almost everything else), there are now dozens, with a dizzying variety of flavors that lend themselves to very specific applications. That sort of narrow profile wasn’t what Mr. DeGroff was after.

“What I was looking for was a real versatile bitters,” Mr. DeGroff said. “It’s a combination of all those baking spices that you find in Angostura Bitters — which is to say ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, clove — along with just a touch of anise. And there’s a touch of dried orange peel.”

On his Web site, he suggests several cocktails, original and classic, into which a dash or two of Pimento Aromatic Bitters might be dropped. He even boldly suggests that it could supplant Peychaud’s in a sazerac. (“I offer this variation with humility and reverence for the original drink,” he writes.)

For now, curious drinkers can order only a 250-milliliter collector’s edition bottle, priced around $19. Standard 150-milliliter bottles will be available for sale online in September for $10. The bitters are currently made by Mr. Breaux at the Combier distillery in Saumur, France, but production may be moved to the United States in time, Mr. DeGroff said.

Do Not Resuscitate

The cocktail world can get pretty sanctimonious about the Mixed-Drink Beforetimes. So it's always pleasure for the ears when some dearly held conventional truths are torn down for shibboleths that they are. During the recent Manhattan Cocktail Classic, the most talked-about panel was called "Do Not Resuscitate." It was packed with some of the most unassailable authorities in the cocktail demi-monde, and they dared to make such blasphemous statements as the Aviation isn't as good a cocktail as we think, and the Brooklyn is, when it comes down to it, not as tasty as a Manhattan.

Shortly after the seminar wrapped up, I met a bartender and told him which cocktails the panelists had trashed. With the mention of each drink, he got more and more agitated. At that reaction, I knew the panel had done its job.

I wrote up the seminar for the Times. Here it is:

Cocktails for the History Books, Not the Bar 

By ROBERT SIMONSON 

A collection of cocktail world figures lined up Saturday at the Manhattan Cocktail Classic, the annual New York drinks convention, to shoot down some sacred cows. 

Many a pre-Prohibition libation has been glorified in recent years as the cocktail demimonde began to resurrect and lionize the drinks of Days Gone By. Not every drink deserved the honor. That was a point of the panelists gathered at the Andaz 5th Avenue hotel for “Do Not Resuscitate,” a seminar sponsored by Pierre Ferrand Cognac. The speakers included the legendary barman Dale DeGroff; the owner of the Pegu Club, Audrey Saunders; the mixed-drink historian David Wondrich; the owner of Fort Defiance, St. John Frizell; the tequila and mezcal authority Steve Olson; and the wandering cocktail generalists Robert Hess, Philip Duff and Angus Winchester. 

A few of the darlings of the cocktail renaissance took a heavy drubbing from the panel. Among them was the Brooklyn cocktail. Entirely obscure a decade ago, this mix of rye, dry vermouth, maraschino liqueur and Amer Picon (a French amaro), can now be found on bar menus across the United States. “This is not a good drink,” Mr. Frizell said with unhesitating definitiveness. As the owner of a Brooklyn bar, Mr. Frizell has seen his share of Brooklyn cocktails. Most of said concoctions bend over backwards to make up for the fact that you can no longer buy one of the drink’s key ingredients, Amer Picon, in America. “Drinking a Brooklyn makes you think, ‘Why am I not drinking a Manhattan?’ — a drink for which the ingredients are readily available,” he said. 

Mr. Degroff took aim at the aviation, a cocktail made of gin, lemon juice and maraschino liqueur from the early 20th century. Rediscovered in the early 2000s, it was one of the earliest and most celebrated reclamation projects of the mixologist community. “It was a darling of the Internet,” Mr. DeGroff said. But, “It tastes like hand soap.” And, if you use the blue-hued creme de violette called for in some recipes, “it’s more like hand soap.” 

The Papa Doble — a famous creation credited to Ernest Hemingway that contains much rum, some lime juice and almost no sweetener — also received no love from Mr. DeGroff. “Why should we have our drinking habits dictated by Hemingway’s diabetes problem?” he asked. He added, regarding the novelist’s way with mixing a cocktail: “Hemingway always got it wrong.” 

Of the vesper, the vodka-gin martini variation made famous by fictional spy James Bond, Mr. Winchester said, “I would not be sad if this drink disappeared.” He added that you couldn’t make it anyway, because one of its ingredients, Kina Lillet, hasn’t been produced for years. Ms. Saunders, meanwhile, berated the French Martini. She mainly disliked the blend of vodka, pineapple juice and Chambord for the way it made people behave. That is, badly. 

As the table’s resident agave ace, Mr. Olson trained his sights on the el diablo, a newly popular drink from the 1940s, made of tequila, creme de cassis and ginger ale. “It’s great that bars are starting to think outside the margarita when it comes to tequila cocktails,” Mr. Olson said. “But when they decide to put a different tequila cocktail on the menu, they’re moving to the el diablo. When you add ginger ale to tequila, you kill the agave. What makes it worse is a lot of that ginger ale is coming out of a soda gun.” 

A few of the drinks executed by the panel are still so little known that their deaths would be little noticed. Robert Hess lambasted the snowball cocktail, taken from the famed Savoy Cocktail Book. “When I see equal parts of ingredients in a cocktail recipe, I get suspicious,” Mr. Hess said. “It’s too convenient.” The stomach-churning, gin-based formula for the snowball boasts matching doses of Creme de Violette, Creme de Menthe, anisette and cream. “This may be the only bad cocktail in the Savoy Cocktail Book,” Mr. Hess suggested. 

Mr. Wondrich laid into the bath cure, the house drink at Chicago’s famous Pump House. Resembling an early ancestor of the Long Island Iced Tea, it called for six kinds of liquors, adding up to a full eight-and-one-half ounces of booze. “This drink should not only not be made, it should not even be thought about,” Mr. Wondrich said. 

Charles H. Baker Jr., the mid-20th-century cocktail writer and mixologist, was left bloodied and battered by the speakers. About Baker’s Holland Razor Blade — a blend of Holland gin, lemon juice and cayenne pepper — Mr. Duff said, “To say that the Holland Razor Blade is your favorite Baker cocktail is like saying you ride a T. Rex to work — it’s not possible, and it can’t be pleasant.” 

Mr. Duff further suggested that Hemingway and Baker, who were pals, may have represented the original “axis of evil,” cocktail-wise.

Bemelmans, the Bar That Daren't Speak Its Patrons Names

I suggested a feature story on Bemelmans Bar to Edible Manhattan before doing any research into how much access I would be granted at the swanky, timeless Hotel Carlyle watering hole. I won't make that mistake again. The Great and Powerful Oz didn't have better press security than do the well-heeled patrons of the Carlyle. Not only was I instructed that I could not talk to any of the customers at the bar, I was told to not even approach them and ask if they'd mind being talked to. (That would be an imposition.) Nor could they be photographed. So all the shots for the usually photo-heavy Edible feature "Back of the House" are devoid of people, as if a Neutron bomb had been dropped on the hotel. In the end, among the Bemelmans staff I only spoke to managing director Erich Steinbock and veteran barman Tommy Rowles, who functions as Bemelmans human mascot, as well as former employees Dale DeGroff and Audrey Saunders. Despite the paucity of sources, I managed to put together a piece that I think pretty well captures the saloon. Just imagine, as you read it, lots of people milling about.

Back of the House: Bemelmans

By Robert Simonson

In the last few years, a few of the paragons of the modern mixology movement have tried to recapture the lost art of the Manhattan hotel bar. They’ve romantically revamped the drinking dens of fusty old Midtown hotels like the Edison and Iroquois, bringing in sophisticated decor, soft lighting, cool music, jacketed barmen and old-fashioned service.

Dale DeGroff Sings

Dale DeGroff is so old school. He actually wanted to be an actor!

Long before this age of self-serious mixologists, most bartenders you met in New York were frustrated would-be actors. No they're frustrated would-be brand ambassadors. Dale's from another time. He began his bartending career in L.A., waiting to break into film. (Not the movie star good looks.) That didn't happen, so instead he turned the bartending world on its head.

DeGroff will be premiering a cabaret show at Cornelia Street Cafe in October. I've heard him sign. He's good, and has stage presence. Here's an item I wrote for the Times. It combines my two bailiwicks: liquor and theatre. I suspect this won't be the last time that sort of reporting mash-up happens.

Dale DeGroff, From the Bar to the Stage

By ROBERT SIMONSON

Dale DeGroff, the man called by many the father of the craft cocktail movement, began his career as many a bartender has — slinging drinks while waiting for his acting career to take off.

Mr. DeGroff will return to his roots on Oct. 5, when he’ll sing and tell tales in a show called “On the Town With Dale DeGroff: A Salute to Saloons, Neighborhood Bars and Legendary Cocktail Palaces,” at the Cornelia Street Cafein Greenwich Village.

The show “is an opportunity to reveal bar life in the way it naturally unfolds at the bar — telling stories,” said Mr. DeGroff, who has been known to croon a tune or two at liquor industry events and the occasional wedding. “As for the songs, ‘saloon singing’ has a long history and I, for one, want to hear more of it.”

The barman will lend his voice to Hank Williams’s “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” “This Is So Nice (It Must Be Illegal),” by Fats Wallers and George Marion Jr., “Lulu’s Back in Town,” by Al Dubin and Harry Warren, and “Scotch and Soda,” a hit for the Kingston Trio. While he is singing, audience members will sample three cocktails— an absinthe frappe, the Major Bailey and the yuzu gimlet — and hear the stories behind them.

“On the Town…” will play a longer run at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, N.J., next May.

“This show gives me a chance to bring performing together with bartending,” Mr. DeGroff said. “They aren’t that far apart to begin with.”

“On the Town With Dale DeGroff: A Salute to Saloons, Neighborhood Bars, and Legendary Cocktail Palaces,” the Cornelia Street Cafe, 29 Cornelia Street (Bleecker Street), Greenwich Village, (212) 989-9319. Tickets are $20, including three drinks.

Jill DeGroff Art to Hang in Red Hook's Sunny's Bar

Original artwork from bar-world caricaturist Jill DeGroff will hang in Sunny's Bar in deepest Red Hook, Brooklyn, come next month. The show, which will run for a month, will commence on Jan. 15. It will feature originals of the drawings currently to be seen in Jill's new book, "Lush Life," a compendium of etching depicting the greats of the cocktail demimonde. Given the subject matter, Sunny's—which is only open three nights every week, and is reportedly a favorite of Jlll's hubby, master mixologist Dale DeGroff—is exactly the right sort of "gallery" for an exhibition.