The Old Fashioned Bar

Some of the best ideas are the simplest. Bartender Neyah White has come up with one of the best, and simplest, I've seen in a long time: The Old Fashioned Bar.

Participating in SFChefs.Food.Wine in Union Square, San Francisco, he set up a station where drinkers would have access to every possible ingredient option on the way to cocktail hour: whiskey, sweetener, bitters. I'll let White tell the rest:

Rather than committing to one spirit, I decided to call upon my favorite producers and gather as big an array of whisk(e)y as the bar could hold. In the end I had a full 30 brands.

To compliment all the spirits, I went a little over on the bitters and sugar. In addition to Angostura, Peychaud's and Regan's, I brought 8 homemade bitters and tinctures. For sugar I had traditional cubes, Muscavodo, Rapadura, Agave Nectar, Lavender Honey and beautiful Japanese sugar that was light like confectioners sugar but tasted like cane.

I had this selection out front so guests would come up, I would hand them a glass and muddle and coach them through making and old-fashioned. We talked about the options and then I would cut ice chunks while they muddled and mixed. I went over pretty well if i do say so myself.

Someone should make this a permanent feature in a bar somewhere.

A Beer At….Killarney Rose

I take my $6 to the Financial District this week and buy a beer at the venerable old Killarney Rose, which looks like it belongs on Third Avenue and is a bit out of place in the sleek Wall Street area. Here's the Eater column:

Two tall, fit young men in gray slacks and striped, button-down shirts walk up to the bar at Pearl Street bar Killarney Rose and order beers and shots. The bartender, executing the request like he’s done is a thousand times, draws the Buds while tucking the bottle of Jameson under one arm. He places the beers before the men—one of a “half-yard”-er served a tall thin vessel that wouldn’t be out of place in a laboratory. The men down the shots in a show of rough, silent, male camaraderie. The small, empty glasses clank heavily on the wooden bar. The friends then return to their too-fevered discussion, in which one makes a fervent, juiced-up case for some aspect of his professional or personal life.

This happens again and again at this 41-year-old, Financial District watering hole, which is favored by jockish Wall Street types, with a smattering of older blue-collar men sitting on the fringes. These young bucks haven’t heard of many different kinds of booze: Bud, Sam Adams, Jameson, Glenlivet. Every now and then, you get a rebel. “I’m a Patron guy!” yells a blond, bespectacled lush. “I’m just saying!” Sometimes they get confused in their beer-shot-beer-shot-beer drinking circuits, until they wind up with two of the same thing. “Why are you drinking two beers,” asked one Dude of his Main Man. The Main Man wasn’t sure. He just picked up the two beers and took them to his table.

The Killarney Rose has two entrances, one at 127 Pearl Street, under an enormous red-and-green neon sign, and one, at the other end of the long, skinny room, on tiny Hanover Square. There’s a second entrance on Hanover to something called “The Hideout.” This is the second-floor party room of the Killarney. It’s purported to be nice, but few people seem to have ever seen it open.

For all its four decades of business, the joint doesn’t feel very old. Everything’s pretty lacquered and shiny in the modern tavern style. There are the usual Irish pub touches—Gaelic phrases on the walls, Shepherd’s Pie on the menu—and some nods to the 21st century, such as free internet access. Unsurprisingly, the place takes a hit on weekends, when the FiDi empties out. It offers $4 pints all day Saturday and Sunday to get people in, as well as events like the “$50 Beer Bus” to the Aug. 15 Mets game. “It’s a bus to the game,” the bartender explained, “only there’s beer on it.”

The trickiest thing about Killarney Rose is figuring out when the weekday happy hour is. There a bell behind the bar engraved with the words “Happy Hour.” When they ring it, prices go down; when they ring it again, prices rise. It’s never the same time any day. “If it was always at 5,” said the bartender, “they’d always come at 5.”
—Robert Simonson

The Point of a Rusty Nail

One of the interesting repercussions of the Cocktail Renaissance is that is has caused dusty old liqueur brands, worried about missing the marketing boat, to cling anew to the faded cocktails that once brought them fame and cash. Cherry Heering talks up the Singapore Sling. Galliano likes to bring up the Harvey Wallbanger. And Drambuie has a newborn affection for the Rusty Nail.

The Rusty Nail is the only famous mixed drink that calls for Drambuie, the family-owner, whisky-based liqueur out of Scotland. It's basically a slug of Scotch whiskey and a smaller quotient of Drambuie, served on the rocks. Given that it's whiskey with more whiskey added, the drink packs a considerable punch. It has a heft and power that fits in nicely with its heyday, the 1950s and '60s, when men were men and drank like it.

The Museum of the American Cocktail recipe book states that the Rusty Nail may have been invented at a Hawaiian bar in 1942 and named by artist Theodore Anderson. (Could be. You never know with these stories.)

The Drambuie people claim the Rusty Nail was the favored drink of the Rat Pack. I have to be honest; I had never heard this. But I don't doubt it much. Sinatra and the Boys always had a drink in their hand, usually of brown liquor, and some of them had to have been Rusty Nails.

Drambuie feels proprietary of the Rusty Nail for good reason. The drink sold so much Drambuie during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, that the U.S. became the liqueur's major market. Drambuie actually purchased the rights to the name of the drink and began bottling a pre-mixed version. The company still owns the rights. You can't serve anything called a Rusty Nail without there being some Drambuie in it.

Drambuie is currently at the end of a five-year plan to rejuvenate their brand. After peaking in the late '70s, the liqueur has lost market share every year since and now sells about half what it did then. They freely admit that their product's image could use some revving up. When someone mentioned Drambuie today, the reaction is usually, "Oh, my grandfather drank that." That's the problem in a nutshell. They want the young, rich crowd that covets their single-malt scotches. To that end, outside marketing experts were brought in to shake things up.

At a recent press event, the Drambuie people showed off their product in a variety of new cocktails (and one old one—the good old Rusty Nail made an appearance). To my thinking, the main battle the company has is in fighting the popular perception that Drambuie is rather heavy-going. Most of today's drinkers chase after light libations, typically based on vodka and tarted up with fruit flavors. Many of the drink served at the press event were delicious, but also a bit ponderous. One called Raising the Standard, made of Drambuie, Chivas Regal, Ruby Port, cherry syrup and Angostura, was dark as ink, and sumptuous. As long as you were eating some meat with it, it was fine. But you wouldn't necessarily want to drink it alone.

The most successful new cocktail was the one that surprised the most. Called simply a Summer Fruit Fizz, it contained Drambuie, apricot liqueur, green melon liqueur, egg white, lemon juice, lime juice and 7-up. It was frothy, airy and refreshing. It lifted up the Drambuie and made you forget what you thought it tasted like. More drinks like that, framing the honeyed liqueur in a new way, would seem to be the way to go.

(Above is a Drambuie bottle dating from the 1930s.)

"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.”

Your $10 Recession Wine of the Week: Domaine Pierre de la Grange Muscadet

This Muscadet Sevre & Maine Sur Lie—Domaine Pierre de la Grange—comes from the reliable importer Louis/Dresser, and is handsomely representative of its varietal. It has everything I look for in a Muscadet, but rarely fine—good bracing acidity, minerality, provacative vegetal notes—and at a wonderful price, $10.

Pierre et Monique Luneau-Papin head this 30-hectare estate in Le Landreau. Their estate has been in existence since the early 18th century when it was already planted with Melon de Bourgogne. Pierre and Monique are the eighth generation of winemakers in the family.

The harvest is done by hand, a rarity in the region, to avoid any oxidation before pressing. There is an immediate light débourbage (separation of juice from gross lees), then a 4-week fermentation at 68 degrees, followed by 6 months of aging in stainless-steel vats on fine lees.

The Sipping News

The Oyster Bar narrowly escapes losing its liquor license. [NY Times]

In praise of "orange wines." [The Pour]

What one cocktail blogger learned about shacking up with a bunch of other cocktail bloggers at the Tales of the Cocktail convention. [Dr. Bamboo]

Camper English tests the longevity of several simple syrup recipes so you don't have to. [Alcademics]

The year-long brunello di Montalcino investigation has finally drawn some conclusions, reports the NY Times. [NY Times] Read:

First, the seven wineries investigated by the Italian authorities were identified. They were: Antinori, Argiano, Banfi, Casanova di Neri, Marchese de Frescobaldi, Biondi Santi and Col d’Orcia.

Biondi Santi and Col d’Orcia were cleared of any wrongdoing.

The remaining five wineries were cited by the Italian authorities for having used unauthorized grapes to make their wines. Brunello di Montalcino is required to be 100 percent sangiovese. According to the official findings of the investigation, 17 people in the industry were found to have committed some form of transgression, from cheating in commercial transactions to falsely certifying public documents.

Both Banfi and Argiano are protesting the findings. The other three wineries have not commented.

A Visit to Smith and Mills

Smith and Mills had been recommended to me a number of times over the past couple months as a worthy spot to stop and enjoy a cocktail, so, when recently in Tribeca, I decided to drop by.

I was told it was a small space, and small it was. A couple tables to the right, a couple tables to the left, a low ceiling, a bar dead ahead with a few stools. As a Tribeca studio apartment, it would probably go for about $3,000 a month. The space was a former carriage house and the owners have done their ironic best to remind us at every turn of the structures working-glass past. A sliding metal door leads the way to the bathroom, which looks like (was?) an industrial elevator. There are pulleys and old construction lights on the walls. The perhaps too-precious atmosphere was that of an old tool shed crossed with an atmospheric, Old World rathskeller. It has a cellar-like feel that makes you think you're below street level (when, really, the street is two step away).

The menu was as small as the space. A few select wines, a few select beers. Of cocktails, seven or eight were listed, nearly all of them classics: Dark and Stormy, Old Fashioned, Negroni, etc.

If you offer just a handful of cocktails, you do them expertly, right? That was my hope. I ordered a Negroni. I knew they would automatically give it to me served up if I didn't specify, so I specified: on the rocks. I like that drink better that way, and many cocktail historians believe that's how the Negroni was first devised.

This is what my bartender did. He poured the three ingredients into a bar glass, bottles aloft, sans jigger, estimating with his eye. He added ice and stirred for about 30 seconds. Then he took out a rocks glass and dumped the contents of the bar glass, ice and all, into the smaller vessel. A twist and the drink was mine.

Sloppy doesn't begin to describe the execution. The drink was OK, but a bit watery and heavy on the Campari. That's what happens when you don't measure and use diluted mixing ice in your finished product.

I did not order a second drink after this disappointing experience. I'll have to give Smith and Mills another try. I know talented bartenders work there. They just weren't there the night I went.