Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, originally published in 2004, is the book that made me “get” this whole classic cocktail thing. I’d been dabbling around the edges of that world for years, drinking Martinis, Negronis and the occasional French 75, collecting vintage barware here and there. But most of the books I encountered failed to inspire me: they were either thick tomes listing, without context, every mixed-drink recipe of the last 50 years, or books for the serious bartender, dense with text about tools and techniques.
That’s why I was so thankful when I found VS&FC, with its mere 80 carefully chosen, carefully formulated classic recipes, snappy historical briefs on each drink, and as good a summary of cocktail history — including how cocktails got popular again — as I’ve ever read. The book was fun, accessible and smart. It guided me in stocking my home bar, and when I tasted the mysterious delights of Corpse Reviver 2’s and Widows Kisses, I never looked back.
If you missed VS&FC’s initial printing, don’t worry. The Revised and Expanded Deluxe Edition is now available. Besides a hard cover and a whole new (and improved) look, it’s got 100 recipes (still a quite manageable list), more photos of booze artifacts from the Doctor’s own collection, and added appendices, including one on “the 25 most influential online cocktail pioneers.” Hint: I’m on page 318. Ever seen yourself quoted in a book that influenced you to become that quotable person? It’s freaky.
Speaking of which, several of the bloggers mentioned in the “pioneers” section, including myself, are contributors to the blog for Tales of the Cocktail 2009. I recently contributed a post previewing a seminar on hangovers taking place Sunday, July 12. I’ll be filing additional stories later next week, so stay tuned.
Bartender profile
By the time I first encountered Ben Sandrof, a few years ago when he was working at the Charles Hotel’s chichi lounge, Noir, he had already done time at a few other high-end restaurants around Harvard Square, most notably Upstairs on the Square. His first bartending job, however, was in a Monterey, California, pub called the Britannia Arms. That is where, he says, “I learned to be fast.” In a not-uncommon trajectory, Sandrof started out in the restaurant industry with thoughts of becoming a talent in the kitchen, only to morph into a talent behind the bar.
Learning the fundamentals of speed is crucial for any bartender, but it has particular importance at Sandrof’s current place of employment, Drink. “Banging out” craft cocktails — with custom ice, muddled fresh herbs, house-made bitters and flawless technique, and with only the customer’s whim as a guide — is kind of a contradictory phrase, but it describes what Sandrof does at this marquee watering hole. I favor the nights when the place is bustling but not insane, and he has a few minutes to pour me a sample of milk punch he made, or tell me that he happens to be the grandson of Benjamin Ferris, the late Harvard doctor who pioneered air-pollution research.
My first impression of Sandrof was that “he’s a suave guy, which I mean in the good sense, i.e. ‘effortlessly gracious.’” That assessment holds. He is confident — some might say cocky — in his skills, which has yielded only good results for this customer. I give him the vaguest outlines of what I feel like drinking, and somehow he manages to set something exquisite down on my bar napkin every time.
Hometown
Lincoln, MA.
Past bartending jobs
Upstairs on the Square, Middlesex Lounge, Noir, No. 9 Park, Drink.
Favorite bar in Boston other than your own
Eastern Standard.
The drink you most like to make
Mint Julep.
The drink you least like to make
Dirty __________.
Most beloved bartending book
Jerry Thomas’ Bar-Tenders Guide.
If you weren’t a bartender, you’d be…
Out in the woods somewhere trying to distill whiskey.
People drink too much…
Flavored vodka.
People don’t drink enough…
Gin.
Drink for a rainy day
Rum Old Fashioned.
Least appreciated alcoholic beverage in Boston
Anything with tiki inspiration.
Most overrated alcoholic beverage in Boston
Anything that ends with -tini that is not a proper Martini.
The best thing about drinking in Boston
The cocktail culture is expanding rapidly. We have lots of creative bartenders.
The worst thing about drinking in Boston
Public transportation stops before the bars close.
» As I prepare to make my third annual trip to New Orleans for Tales of the Cocktail, two New York Times articles this week combined in my head to form a timely and contradictory message: “Booze is bad for you. New Orleans is good for you.” The first article, Alcohol’s Good for You? Some Scientists Doubt It, looks skeptically at studies that show health benefits from moderate drinking. The takeaway is this: “It may be that moderate drinking is just something healthy people tend to do, not something that makes people healthy.” If you’re reading this, I’m guessing you figured that out a long time ago. I’m guessing that, even if you are a moderate drinker (one drink per day for women, two for men), you aren’t drinking for your health, but because it’s fun. Imagine — doing something that confers no benefit other than fun!
» Which segues perfectly into the second article, The Way of the Bayou, about New Orleanians being completely out of step with “progress” and not fretting about it one bit. “While the rest of us Americans scurry about with a Blackberry in one hand and a to-go cup of coffee in the other in a feverish attempt to pack more achievement into every minute, it’s the New Orleans way to build one’s days around friends, family, music, cooking, processions, and art. For more than two centuries New Orleanians have been guardians of tradition and masters of living in the moment — a lost art.” This is a rosy view of the city, but there’s truth in it. It’s something you pick up on pretty quickly when you’re down there, especially during an event as joyously frivolous — and bad for your health — as Tales of the Cocktail.
» Speaking of Tales, the event culminates in the annual Spirit Awards, which recognize the best bars, bartenders, writers, brand ambassadors, products, etc. in the cocktail world. This year, Drink has been nominated for Best New Cocktail Bar. Cross your fingers and hope for the best, ’cause Gertsen and co. deserve to win.
» Some Boston bar proprietors received a strange promotional item this week: a tasteful looking box with the words “Thanks for nothing” on the outside and an empty bottle of Knob Creek bourbon on the inside. An accompanying letter explains that consumer demand has literally drained the barrels dry, and it thanks the recipient for “helping make it happen.” As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up. The letter continues, “We ask for your patience and your continued support. We plan to capitalize on this temporary shortage by creating customer communications and conducting outreach that underscore Knob Creek’s commitment to quality. Working together, I’m sure we’ll all be even more popular and profitable once supply is restored.”
Ooooh. Commitment to quality. Working together. Popular and profitable. The boutique bourbon market is wielding some fancy PR! The letter should’ve just said, “If you’re paying $10 more a bottle than you used to for our bourbon, bless your soul. By the time supplies are replenished, your customers will be used to paying the higher price. Genius!”
» And good gawd, y’all, MC Slim JB (food/drink critic and occasional contributor in this space) just posted There’s a riot going on in the cocktail world, an eloquent tribute to and smart summation of the rise of the craft cocktail scene in Boston. If you’re a regular here, a lot of the nuts and bolts of what he’s saying will already sound familiar, but his thoughtful take on things is well worth checking out. As he explains, his food-oriented audience and writing peers are often surprisingly ignorant of what’s been going on for the past several years, drink-wise. It’s time they knew.
Now presenting: a discussion of the lore behind Boston’s Ward Eight cocktail, and a demonstration of how to mix one, in a video starring the somewhat-ready-for-prime-time blogger behind drinkboston.com.
You may already be familiar with how2heroes (tagline: cook. eat. be merry.), a video website that “celebrates people’s passion for food [and drink] – the flavors, the presentation, the secrets to success, the cultural inspirations, and of course the ‘heroes’ who share their knowledge and experience.” In just a year, the site has produced 500 short videos featuring food and drink professionals and enthusiasts demo’ing and talking about particular foodstuffs and drinkstuffs. Besides myself, featured Boston folk in the Beverages category include:
There’s a lot worth checking out on this site. The how2heroes staff does a good job getting a bunch of people who aren’t used to being on camera to convey their knowledge of food and drink in a straightforward and often engaging way.
I did my damnedest to get Locke-Ober, where the Ward Eight was invented, to let me shoot my video there. Regrettably, they showed no interest. A special thanks to Tremont 647 for letting me (and some of the others above) shoot at their bar.
The first definition of “cocktail” appeared in a newspaper in 1806. The same year, Frederic “the Ice King” Tudor’s first commercial shipment of ice left Boston harbor. Coincidence?
Maybe, but there’s no denying that the ice trade and cocktails came of age together in the 1800s. Boston, and by extension New England, tend to get overlooked in cocktail histories, what with the likes of New York, San Francisco, New Orleans, L.A. and even London making greater claims to fame when it comes to actual drink invention. But cocktails wouldn’t have been invented in the first place without ice. Which brings us to Boston.
Ice from New England’s ponds and rivers had been harvested for a long time before Tudor came along, but he was the first guy to bet that people would actually pay for the stuff. His first markets were places where ice was hard or impossible to come by: the West Indies, New Orleans, Charleston. (His first ice source was Fresh Pond in Cambridge.) But he later extended his business even to cooler places by offering a uniform product that became cheaper and cheaper through innovation in harvesting and delivery. We’re not just talking ice cubes, we’re talking ice boxes and ice houses and a slew of industries becoming dependent on the refrigeration the ice provided: fishing, meat processing, brewing, hospitals. By the 1850s, Tudor was shipping ice all over the world. He got rich — he was one of America’s first millionaires — and he pioneered an entire industry with many competitors. The industry was a significant part of New England’s economy until machine-made ice made it obsolete in the late 1800s/early 1900s.
There’s a fascinating description of the rise and fall of the New England ice trade in a book by an MIT business professor, James Utterback: Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation. I’m not kidding. I never get tired of reading sentences about Yankee ingenuity: “It was the resourcefulness of Tudor, and other Bostonians who became his competitors, that prompted historian Daniel Boorstin’s remark that ‘Using the sea, New England versatility made the very menaces of the landscape [granite, ice] into articles of commerce,’” writes Utterback.
But my favorite passage in the chapter (sexily titled “Invasion of a Stable Business by Radical Innovation”) is about one of Tudor’s rivals — Gage, Hittinger and Company — trying to break into the British market in 1842:
Hittinger knew that the tradition-bound British would not use ice unless they were shown how, so he hired a number of Boston bartenders and took them to London on a ship scheduled to arrive before the ice. When the cargo of “cold comfort” arrived, Hittinger and his bartenders were already set up in an opulent and brightly illuminated hall and there “initiated the English into the mysteries of juleps, cocktails” and “Boston notions” of various types. Before long, fashionable Britons were hooked on New England ice.
“Boston notions!” What the hell were those, I wonder?
Boston drinkers, know the story of the Ice King, so that when you cross paths with some New Yorker or San Franciscan who thinks his city pioneered cocktails, you can give him a smirk and tell him that your city invented friggin’ ice for chrissake.
It’s the moment cocktailians have been waiting for. Bittermens bitters are finally going to be available in stores and more widely in bars. After years — yes, years — of battling various authorities to make and sell their bitters, all the while providing their products to select bars in Boston and elsewhere on a “pre-release” basis, Avery and Janet Glasser have finally and happily entered a partnership with the German bitters producer the Bitter Truth.
The first Bittermens products being released under the partnership are Grapefruit Bitters and Xocolatl (Chocolate) Mole Bitters. Hopefully the Glassers’ other artisanal flavors, like ‘Elemakule Tiki Bitters, won’t be far behind. The goods won’t be available for purchase stateside for another few months; for now you have to buy them through the Bitter Truth website (and pay dearly for overseas shipping, I’m afraid). The price of an individual bottle is listed at 10.90 euros, which is about 15 bucks.
The Boston Shaker already sells several varieties of Bitter Truth bitters (Celery, Jerry Thomas’ Decanter, etc.) and hopes to begin offering Bittermens bitters as soon as they are available.
I have happily been following Dann Paquette’s brewing career since about the mid-’90s, when he was at the Northeast Brewing Co. in Allston. Numerous brewing stints later, including a recent couple of years in Yorkshire, England, Dann started his latest venture: Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project. Look for Pretty Things beers in your local bar or packie, and drink them. They are really good. I’m partial to the American-style saison, Jack d’Or (left). It’s distinctive and delicious, yet versatile enough for everyday use.
Downtown Wine & Spirits in Davis Square, Somerville, has fairly recently expanded the “spirits” part of its name with hard-to-find bourbons, liqueurs, rums, etc. It also has the best combination website/blog of any liquor store in greater Boston. And they have regular tastings.
Scott opened the June Esquire, featuring the annual Best American Bars list, and asked me, “Which Boston bar do you think they picked?” “Drink,” I said. No brainer. (There’s also an RIP sidebar that bids farewell to the B-Side.) Speaking of Drink, on a recent visit I tried Josey Packard’s homage to the Marconi Wireless, the WiFi: Bonded Laird’s Applejack, Lillet Blanc, Drambuie. Strong, complex, stunning.
Todd Maul has rather quietly been insinuating craft cocktails into the Boston fine-dining scene. He recently moved from Rialto in Cambridge to Clio in Boston, where he has livened up a cocktail menu based largely on vodka and sake infusions with classically inspired mixtures using gin, tequila, whiskey and rum. As you can see from the pic, he also makes a helluva Ramos Gin Fizz. Go check this guy out.
Finally, an observation and a question: remember when people who patronized bars and restaurants were called “customers?” In the last few years, in some establishments anyway, they have become “guests.” What’s the origin of the switch? I suppose it’s nicer to be considered a guest than merely one end of a cash deal, even though being someone’s guest has traditionally implied that you enjoy their hospitality without having to pay for it.
OK, fellow imbibers, let’s pretend we’re at a group-therapy session. Let’s clear the air, shed our intellectual armor, spill some secrets. You know what I mean: talk about the embarrassing crap we used to drink before we discovered “real” cocktails, before we knew what Punt E Mes was, before we started saying things like, “You can’t make a proper Aviation without Creme de Violette.” And if you really want to dangle your cred off a ledge, admit that you’re still fond of these youthful potions on occasion.
I’ll go first. Hi, my name is Lauren, and I used to drink dirty Bombay Sapphire martinis. Loved ‘em. Go ahead and scoff at my faux sophistication, smartypants boozers, but this drink was truly my gateway to gin cocktails of all stripes. It’s been a few years since I’ve had a dirty martini, but lately I’ve been getting nostalgically thirsty for some olive brine in my juniper sauce.
And way back, before the taste of alcohol became desirable to me, I was all about taking my spirits in an envelope of cream and sugar. White Russians, Mudslides, that sort of thing. My mature self rolls its eyes at these boozy milkshakes, but my inner 21-year-old would suck one down in a heartbeat if no one was looking.
Stretch your Memorial Day weekend festivities by stopping by Deep Ellum’s Redneck Luau on Tuesday, May 26 starting at 6:00 p.m. for some down-home barbecue, hillbilly-tiki cocktails and … free glassware! Yep, if you tell the doorman that you read about the party on drinkboston, you will receive a totally random beer or cocktail glass logo’d with anything from Mahr’s Pils to Crown Royal.
No cover charge, no reservations required for the Redneck Luau — just good ol’ boys and girls hungry for barbecued pig (they’re borrowing East Coast Grill’s pig box to roast a whole one) and Dallas-style brisket, thirsty for whiskey and locally produced rum, and itching to usher in summer on the back deck of a bar in Allston. Yee-haw! A big plate of barbecue with a heap of sides (mac n’ cheese, cheddar-jalapeno cornbread, slaw, etc) and a pile of sliced watermelon can be had for $16. Drinks and beers are a la carte.
Bar manager Max Toste and his staff came up with a whole new genre of cocktails for this occasion. Imagine if Donn Beach had opened up the first tiki bar in Alabama instead of L.A. …
The Volcano: Ragged Mountain Rum, Cherry Heering, muddled orange and lime, aromatic bitters, orange tiki bitters (made by bartender Paul Calvert). Shaken and served over ice in a double-old fashioned glass, rinsed with absinthe and topped with an umbrella.
Suffering Hillbilly: rye, grenadine, pineapple juice, half a lime plus the rind, allspice dram, orgeat syrup. Shaken and served over ice in a double-old fashioned glass and garnished with mint.
The Grass Kilt: Blended Scotch, Creme de Apricot, honey ginger syrup, half a lime plus the rind, aromatic bitters. Shaken and strained over ice in a double-old fashioned glass, topped with ginger beer and garnished with lime zest.
The Shipwreck: Triple 8 Hurricane Rum, house-made Picon, Swedish Punsch, half a lime plus the rind. Shaken and served over ice in a double-old fashioned glass and topped with an umbrella.
Staying in town this weekend? Then stop by Burton’s Grill on Boylston St. Saturday between 11:00 and 3:00 for the first annual B4 (Boston’s Best Brunch Bartender) Challenge. The event, whose proceeds will go to I Hate Cancer, pits nine bartenders from nine different Boston neighborhoods against each other in a mix-off. The winner gets to showcase his or her cocktail on Drink this! a new segment on NECN’s TV Diner, whose co-host, Jennie Johnson, will emcee the B4 Challenge. The thing I like about all this, besides the good cause it’s benefiting, is that I will be one of the judges. Sweet.
You don’t need to buy tickets or make a reservation, just show up, order a drink and a plate of eggs, and enjoy the festivities. The sponsor of B4 is Absolut Mango vodka, which means that all of the competing cocktails will contain this spirit. I know what many of you are thinking. ‘Flavored vodka? Lame.’ But I like the idea of bartenders starting with any prescribed cocktail ingredient and creating something interesting and tasty with it. Here are the contestants and their bars (good luck to all):
» As I prepare to make my third annual trip to New Orleans for 
The first definition of “cocktail” appeared in a newspaper in 1806. The same year, Frederic “
It’s the moment cocktailians have been waiting for. Bittermens bitters are 
I have happily been following Dann Paquette’s brewing career since about the mid-’90s, when he was at the Northeast Brewing Co. in Allston. Numerous brewing stints later, including a recent couple of years in Yorkshire, England, Dann started his latest venture: 
Scott opened the June Esquire, featuring the annual 
Todd Maul has rather quietly been insinuating craft cocktails into the Boston fine-dining scene. He 
OK, fellow imbibers, let’s pretend we’re at a group-therapy session. Let’s clear the air, shed our intellectual armor, spill some secrets. You know what I mean: talk about the embarrassing crap we used to drink before we discovered “real” cocktails, before we knew what 
Stretch your Memorial Day weekend festivities by stopping by Deep Ellum’s Redneck Luau on Tuesday, May 26 starting at 6:00 p.m. for some down-home barbecue, hillbilly-tiki cocktails and … free glassware! Yep, if you tell the doorman that you read about the party on drinkboston, you will receive a totally random beer or cocktail glass logo’d with anything from Mahr’s Pils to Crown Royal.
Staying in town this weekend? Then stop by 