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Drinkboston.com reader Adam Machanic emailed me recently with the results of some exhaustive mixological studies of apple-based spirits from Laird’s & Co., the oldest producer of America’s oldest native distilled spirit, applejack. In addition to applejack (a blend of 35 percent apple brandy and 65 percent grain neutral spirits that puts the “jack” in a Jack Rose), Laird’s produces Old Apple Brandy, aged in oak for 7 1/2 years, and 100-proof, bottled-in-bond apple brandy that’s also 7 1/2 years old. It takes about 20 pounds of apples to make just one of these bottles of pure apple spirits. Wow. Adam’s findings made me think, ‘Man, I’ve gotta get my hands on some of this stuff!’ and I wanted to share them:

“I ended up ‘experimenting’ my way through an entire bottle of the 7 1/2 year old brandy over the past several weeks, and I have to say, if science class experiments had been that fun I might have studied a bit more often. Seriously, though, it’s great stuff. Compared with the ’smooth blend’ version, it hits you quite hard in the nose with apple essence the moment you remove the cap. Straight, it has a bit of sweetness, and is exceptionally drinkable neat or with an ice cube or two. Color-wise, it’s light, golden and exceptionally clear. Excellent in a Marconi Wireless with some good vermouth — but much better with Vya than with Punt e Mes; the latter overpowers it. I also thought it was wasted in a Jack Rose — the drink tasted no different to me than with the normal applejack. I really enjoyed it as an Old Fashioned, with 1/3 tsp of sugar, two dashes of Regan’s orange bitters, and a dash of Angostura.

“I enjoyed my experiments so much that I placed a follow-up order and got my hands on some of the 100 proof, bonded stuff. This is an entirely different beast — the liquid in the bottle has an almost rusty tone, and is slightly hazy compared with the brandy. And as an added bonus, there are a few floating specks of something in each bottle, visible if you shake it up a bit. Who knows what’s in there. The apple sensation is huge and overpowering both on the nose and the tongue, but thanks to the increased proof there is also quite a bit of heat — I don’t like this one neat at all. On the flip side, it stands up to the Punt e Mes just fine in a Marconi Wireless, and can even be a bit overpowering. I haven’t had a chance to do a Jack Rose yet, but that’s next on the list — I have high hopes for its success there.”

Many thanks to Adam for putting his liver to the test for the sake of experimentation. Unfortunately, he had to order the specialty Laird’s items online; I don’t know of any liquor stores in the Boston area that carry anything other than the blended applejack. Please, correct me if I’m mistaken.

Last night, the Boston Athenaeum, one of America’s oldest private libraries, threw a Roaring Twenties party for some of its members with the help of drinkboston. There was a password to get in (”Gatsby sent me”), a secret entrance to the Periodicals Room where the festivities were held, a jazz band, cucumber sandwiches and, naturally, vintage cocktails (see below). Also, every attendee was handed an antique playing card; the game was to find the other partygoer with the same card and write something down about that person in the guest book. In the end, a man in a smoking jacket tried to bribe the fuzz who raided the speakeasy, but nothing doing — they sent us off to where we belonged: the 21st Amendment.

The party was thrown for the Athenaeum’s “associate members” (aka members 41 and under), some of whom, like me, helped plan the shindig. Not surprisingly, I was in charge of making sure we had quality hooch. Enter some of Boston’s best bartenders — John Gertsen, Misty Kalkofen and Tom Schlesinger-Guidelli — and the signature cocktails they created just for the event. One of those drinks, the Red Rot Cocktail, was specially commissioned by the Athenaeum as an homage to book restoration. That’s right — many of the library’s old, red leather book covers suffer from “red rot,” a pinkish mildew whose remedy is a chemical solution known as “red rot cocktail.” The recipes below appear as I wrote them for the party’s program, in a style cribbed straight from Prohibition-era bon vivant Charles Baker, who wrote the Gentleman’s Companion.

The Athenaeum is trying to get the word out to potential younger members that you don’t have to be a Mayflower descendant to join. All you need is four references and $115 for a one-year associate membership. If you have even the faintest interest in history or are simply proud to say you live in Boston because of its intellectuals, join up and see how you like it. The recently restored building is gorgeous, there’s fine art all over the place, there are tons of events, and the items in the Special Collections are damned impressive. George Washington’s library? Yeah, it’s there. And they throw a smashing party, too.

Red Rot Cocktail, which Rather Resembles the Noxious Liquid Medicine for Moldy Red Leather-bound Books but Nonetheless Pleases the Palate

To one jigger of London dry gin add one half ounce each of St. Germain elderflower liqueur, Cherry Heering and fresh lemon juice, and two goodly dashes of Peychaud’s bitters. Shake vigorously with ice and turn into a champagne saucer. (Created by Misty Kalkofen of Green Street and Lauren Clark of drinkboston)

Foglia Noce (Walnut Leaves), being a Mixture Inspired by the Marconi Wireless and Evocative of Tuscan Autumns and Colonial Taverns

Into a bar glass turn two and one-half ounces of applejack, one ounce of Nocino and two judicious dashes of Fee’s Whisky Barrel Aged Bitters. Stir with lump ice, strain into a chilled Old Fashioned glass and finish with orange oil. (Created by John Gertsen of No. 9 Park)

Flowers for Murphy, being a Bracing and Bubbly Homage to Prince and Princess of the Jazz Age Gerald and Sara Murphy, who Inspired us with a Mixture Called the Bailey

Lightly chill one jigger of London dry gin, three-quarters ounce of simple syrup, a split of lime and grapefruit juices to equal another three-quarters ounce, and one-quarter ounce of green Chartreuse. Turn the mixture into a champagne saucer and top it with bubbly and a small mint leaf. (Created by Tom Schlesinger-Guidelli of Eastern Standard)

For those of you who saw the segment on NECN’s Chet Curtis Report, here’s the recipe for the Marconi Wireless, the cocktail I demo’d on the show:

1 1/2 oz applejack
3/4 oz sweet vermouth
2 dashes orange bitters

Stir all ingredients over ice in a mixing glass. Strain into a cocktail glass.

The reason I chose this cocktail is that, since it uses America’s oldest native distilled beverage — applejack — it is the perfect thing to celebrate one of our oldest holidays, Thanksgiving. Appearing as a founding member of LUPEC Boston and the publisher of drinkboston.com, I mixed this drink on the air. And there were no major spills. Here’s my original post about this interesting drink. Cheers!

Wow. As we say in New England, that was wicked awesome. The last time I was in New Orleans, I was a dumb college kid hanging out on Bourbon St. drinking Hurricanes with the rest of the tourists. Fast-forward many years to Tales of the Cocktail 2007, where I attended seminars on vermouth and pimento dram and drank Pimm’s Cups at the honorable Napoleon House. The older, wiser me had a much better time.

If drinking cocktails for breakfast, lunch and dinner, then going out at night for more cocktails, is your idea of heaven, this is the event — and the town — for you. At a 10 a.m. session on applejack, we were served a Golden Dawn, a Jack Rose and a Wicked Kiss (a Widow’s Kiss with the addition of rye whiskey). Haigh (Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails), Gary Regan (The Joy of Mixology, Regan’s Orange Bitters), and Chad Solomon and Christy Pope (Cuff & Buttons) presided over the seminar with an unofficial fifth panelist: Lisa Laird of the Laird family. Yes, that Laird family, the ones who have produced Laird’s Applejack since the 1700s and who had George Washington over for dinner before the Battle of Monmouth. The cocktails were made with bonded Applejack, which is distilled with 100-percent apples (no grain neutral spirits) and aged for four years — and which, as far as I know, cannot be had in the Boston area. Too bad.

At Prohibition’s Shadow, which featured Haigh, David Wondrich, Robert Hess (drinkboy.com) and John Hall (distiller of Forty Creek Canadian whiskey), we sipped samples of Forty Creek, a blend of rye, corn and barley whiskies, all distilled separately then blended. That stuff was righteously smooth and had flavors of an old ale, like Thomas Hardy’s. Why Canadian whiskey? Well, where do you think speakeasies got their whiskey during Prohibition? The session itself turned into a bit of a speakeasy when John Myers, bartender, cocktail historian and author of the Thirstin’ Howl, suddenly pulled a bottle of Fernet out of his bag and began dispensing shots. Perfectly appropriate at this sort of convention.

Cocktails and the Blogosphere, another 10 a.m. session (oh, my head!) involved Fancy Free and Police Gazette cocktails by way of illustrating how obscure drinks get re-discovered and popularized through blogs. Full of whiskey and bitters, these are two libations that’ll set the vintage-cocktail enthusiast’s heart aflutter. Paul Clark (Cocktail Chronicles), Chuck Taggart (Gumbo Pages), Darcy O’Neil (The Art of Drink) and Rick Stutz (Kaiser Penguin) presided. The session’s money quote (by Paul, I think): “At the 10th anniversary of Tales of the Cocktail, we’ll be talking about the recently launched 100,000th drink blog.”

The money quote from the session simply titled Vermouth (with Haigh and Martin Doudoroff, the geniuses behind cocktaildb.com) came from Haigh just as we started: “It’s 11:30 in the morning, and you guys are at a session on vermouth? Get a life!” We sipped a Marconi Wireless (speaking of bloggers rediscovering old drinks) and a Rose and learned that it’s really hard to get information from vermouth producers (Martini & Rossi, Noilly Prat, etc.) on the spices they use to turn red or white wine into a classic cocktail ingredient. One of the panelists did manage to get hold of some info, and she recited a list of ingredients used in M&R and NP, but I was way beyond note taking at that point.

The Lost Ingredients session was a trip. I had never even heard of pimento dram or Batavia arrack, much less tasted them, before that day. The session was basically a live interpretation of “Gone but Not Forgotten,” the article Clarke wrote for the current issue of Imbibe. I urge any cocktail enthusiast to pick up that issue, because Clarke’s article includes info (and some recipes) on some of the amazing, re-emerging spirits we sampled at Lost Ingredients, including: pimento dram, a rum-based, allspice-flavored liqueur rarely found outside Jamaica — we sampled Taggart’s homemade version; Batavia arrack, a sugar cane- and fermented rice-based spirit produced in Java (formerly the Dutch colony of Batavia) and the basis of Swedish punsch; and falernum, a low-alcohol syrup flavored with limes, ginger, almonds and clove and a key ingredient in many tiki drinks. Read more about the Lost Ingredients session here.

Finally, Sunday brunch: absinthe with a little sugar. I walked into that session a little late, and when I entered the room … wow, the licorice perfume enveloped me, a sensory experience I’ll never forget. Chemist and absinthe expert Ted Breaux gave a comprehensive presentation about absinthe history, myth and legal status, which is apparently still kind of fuzzy in the U.S. He devised the recipe for the new, legal-in-the-U.S. absinthe Lucid, which contains wormwood but only a barely measurable amount of wormwood’s active and feared ingredient, thujone. Anyhoo… somehow we were drinking real Swiss and French absinthe (the latter produced from a recipe of Breaux’s) in the traditional way, by very slowly letting ice water drip into the glass until the liquid became cloudy. This stuff was strong — over 130 proof! I don’t think absinthe should be banned, but I’m not sure if I recommend it as the first meal of the day.

In my next post, I’ll provide some snapshots of what happened outside of the Tales of the Cocktail sessions.

Here are the recipes for the drinks featured at drinkboston.com’s launch party, along with highly condensed versions of each bartender’s remarks about his/her drink. In order they were:

The Jack Rose (mixed by Jackson Cannon)
Some recipes call for lemon, some for lime. Applejack, a nearly forgotten spirit, is the base. Do not attempt to mix this drink without real pomegranate grenadine.
2 oz Laird’s Applejack
3/4 oz handmade grenadine (see recipe below)
1/2 oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice
one dash Peychaud’s Bitters

Shake over ice and strain, garnish with a lemon twist.

Grenadine: 2 parts pomegranate juice, 1 part cane sugar. Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer to thicken slightly. Remove from heat and finish with a touch of orange flower water. Let chill, store in refrigerator.

The Sazerac (mixed by John Gertsen)
Born of the mishmash of New Orleans culture in the early to mid-1800s and believed by many to be the first cocktail. Antoine Peychaud was an apothecary whose proprietary blend of medicinal bitters was mixed with cognac before rye became the preference (rye was America’s whiskey before bourbon became more popular).
1 sugar cube (4-7 grams)
7 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters
1 oz water
3 oz Sazerac rye whiskey
A few drops of Herbsaint (pastis)

Muddle first three ingredients in mixing glass. “Rinse” a pre-chilled, old-fashioned glass with Herbsaint (pour drops of Herbsaint into glass, swirl and discard). Add rye to mixing glass and fill with ice. Stir well for 30 seconds and strain into Herbsaint-rinsed glass. Squeeze lemon twist over glass and rub around rim. Discard peel.

The Widow’s Kiss (mixed by Misty Kalkofen)
Drinks like this fell out of favor as people’s tastes moved to fruit-flavored liqueurs rather than “scary” herbal liqueurs like Chartreuse and Benedictine. There’s no real story behind this drink (it probably originated in 1895). Let’s make one up!
1 & 1/2 oz Calvados
3/4 oz Benedictine
3/4 oz yellow Chartreuse
2 dashes Angostura Bitters
Stir. Strain. Garnish with a cherry.

The Millionaire Cocktail (mixed by Brother Cleve)
This is but one of several widely varying drink recipes that go by the name “Millionaire.” It appears in Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails, by Ted Haigh (aka Dr. Cocktail).
1 & 1/2 oz Myer’s Original Dark Rum
3/4 oz apricot brandy
3/4 oz sloe gin
juice of one fresh lime (about 1 oz)

Shake well in an iced shaker. Strain into cocktail glass. Garnish with lime.

There are a million old cocktail recipes out there. Sometimes, you’ll stumble upon one that’s really intriguing, as I did recently with the Marconi Wireless. It’s not only tasty, it’s got all sorts of cool historical and cultural connections.

I was flipping through a 1957 paperback that my significant other, Scott, picked up at a flea market recently: The Art of Mixing Drinks (”Based on the famous Esquire Drink Book” exclaims the book’s cover). I was looking for a recipe using applejack; luckily the book has an entire section on applejack cocktails. The Marconi Wireless caught my eye: 2/3 applejack, 1/3 Italian vermouth, 2 dashes orange bitters. ‘Hmm, I bet that’s good. And it’s so simple!’ I thought. Sure enough, it was a snappy, satisfying drink, and we had to find out more about it.

Part of our excitement about the Marconi Wireless had to do with the fact that we visit Wellfleet, Cape Cod frequently and always pass Marconi Beach, the stretch of sand where Guglielmo Marconi transmitted the first transatlantic wireless message from the U.S. in 1903. Cocktails, Wellfleet, historic events — that combination jazzed us. We thought, ‘Man, every bar in Wellfleet should be serving Marconi Wirelesses!’

With a little digging, we found a 1992 New York Times article that William Grimes wrote on historic New York City hotel bars. It turns out that the Marconi Wireless was among several potions invented at the Waldorf-Astoria, and it is listed in the Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book. When was the cocktail invented? Perhaps when Marconi was feted by the American Institute of Electrical Engineers at the Waldorf in 1902 for his role in pioneering radio communication. Or maybe later, in 1912, when Marconi gave testimony at the Senate hearings at the Waldorf on the Titanic disaster. One of the things he was questioned about was how Marconi Company wireless operators who survived the wreck came to receive payment from the New York Times for their stories. In 1902, the cocktail would be an homage. In 1912, a jeer. Thoughts, anyone?

Fun sidebar: our research also led us to the term “cocktail party effect.” The term emerged in the early days of air traffic control, when the difficulty of discerning the intermixed voices of pilots over one loudspeaker was compared to that of zeroing in on one conversation amid the loud chatter of a cocktail party.