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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)

A friend of mine recently asked me to create a cocktail for her wedding. I was honored. I immediately began imagining cognac and champagne mixtures with fresh citrus and exotic liqueurs. Then my friend forwarded me the contract from the bartenders she had hired for the occasion. That brought me back to reality. How do you create a festive, wedding-worthy cocktail out of the raw materials found in the standard Marital-Industrial Complex bar setup (a phenomenon that persists no matter how fancy or distinctive the wedding)? You break out the bitters, that’s how.

You know the kinds of booze I’m talking about: Canadian Club, Seagram’s VO, a couple types of vodka, and liqueurs that were big in the ’80s, i.e. Peachtree Schnapps. No bourbon, no cognac and, obviously, no fresh citrus juice. There’d be gin and champagne, though, so I decided to work around those. My friend loves French 75s, after all.

I realized that the cocktail would have to be very simple, given that I would need to batch up the spirits beforehand and transport them to the wedding myself in my Executair 101; there was no prayer that the speed-pouring M.I.C. bartenders would follow a recipe, even if I supplied the called-for ingredients. I could only rely on them to chill the spirit mixture and top it with champagne. Since I love the combination of bitters that make another champagne cocktail, the Seelbach, so distinctive, I thought I’d use two kinds of bitters to bring my gin-champagne mixture to life. After a few experiments, I settled on a 2:1 proportion of Regan’s orange bitters and Peychaud’s bitters.

The bride-to-be sampled my creation and proclaimed it worthy of toasting her union with a man named Jones. I think it’s pretty tasty. See for yourself:

The Mrs. Jones Cocktail
makes 2 drinks

1 oz gin
1 tsp simple syrup
4 dashes Regan’s orange bitters
2 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
Champagne

Shake first four ingredients in a mixing glass with ice and strain into 2 champagne flutes. Top with enough champagne or sparkling wine to make the cocktail light pink. Drop a very thin slice of lemon into each glass.

Endnote: I went to cocktaildb.com, and the only other drink I could find that combines orange and Peychaud’s bitters is:

The Metropole Cocktail

1 1/4 oz cognac
1 1/4 oz dry vermouth
1 dash Peychaud’s bitters
1 dash orange bitters
Add cherry

Stir in mixing glass with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

Looking for lost cocktail ingredients? Know where to shop for them? Read on.

OK, enough. It really shouldn’t be that hard to find ingredients for the pre-Prohibition cocktails we’re all crazy about and attempting to mix in our homes when we’re not ordering them in bars. In the past week, people have asked me where they can purchase Peychaud’s bitters, orange bitters, Amer Picon, Fernet Branca — even rye whiskey, for chrissakes! Then there’s the really weird stuff like Swedish punsch and creme de violette. One reader has taken it upon himself to purchase cases of bitters and absinthe online and then sell them (at cost) to fellow cocktail enthusiasts (thanks, Adam!). That is commendable. But, um, shouldn’t someone else be doing that on a larger, more profitable scale? Like, say, a liquor store?

Sure, some liquor stores mentioned here in the past — Blanchard’s, Wine & Cheese Cask, Downtown Wine & Spirits, Martignetti’s, Beacon Hill Wine, Atlas in Medford — carry one or two of these ingredients, but none of them stock a decent, dependable selection. Why not? I’m guessing it’s because not enough people have asked them to. Well, folks, it’s time. Please join me in Operation 1919 — a mission to make lost and rare cocktail ingredients readily available to the home mixologist. We must do the cyberspace equivalent of standing en masse outside Boston’s finer booze purveyors and chanting: “What do we want? Peychaud’s bitters! When do we want it? Now!”

Leave a comment on this post and tell me a) which vintage cocktail ingredients you’re looking for and b) whether you have found such ingredients in the Boston area — or anywhere in New England, for that matter. I will then pass our wish list on to the proprietors of the above and other establishments in hopes that they’re interested in serving a niche market. Ready, set, demonstrate!

As Independence Day nears, American drinkers, and particularly New England drinkers, will find validation for their passion for booze in the 2005 Salon article “The spirits of 1776.”

“The American Revolution was not about tea. It was about rum: the real spirit of 1776 … The real conflict between the colonists and Britain began over taxes on molasses, not tea. And that’s where the French come in. The Founding Fathers not only loved the French, but they also loved the molasses that Paris’ Caribbean colonies produced — and they loved even more the rum that New England distillers made from it,” writes Ian Williams.

I can’t flippin’ believe I didn’t know this. Maybe that’s because, as Williams puts it, “years of temperance pressure and Prohibition — and probably the Walt Disney Co. and Hollywood — have essentially shoved the real history of the Revolution down a memory hole.”

If you, like me, were in the dark about this bit of history, mix yourself a rum punch and give this article a read. Then go to your Fourth of July cookout and repeat the info to everyone there.

Extra credit: pick up today’s New York Times, whose Dining section is devoted to drinks of all kinds, and read “A Bit of History, Reborn in a Glass,” an article on bitters. The story is anchored on recent attempts to re-create Abbot’s bitters, which you may already have read about somewhere.

Yeah, it’s summertime, but that doesn’t mean you have to fight for sidewalk seating at a trendy Boylston Street restaurant and drink mango margaritas. Just find a dark, cool bar that stocks Fernet Branca and crushed ice and order a Fanciulli. This is the perfect drink to have when you quietly slip out of work at 2:30 on a sweltering afternoon to assume the role of an anonymous barfly in a film noir.

Fanciulli

1/2 bourbon
1/4 sweet vermouth
1/4 Fernet Branca

Frappé. (In other words, mix the ingredients together in a shaker and pour over crushed ice.) Tip: last Christmas, I received a Groggy ice crusher from Ikea; it’s a perfect home bar tool for frappé cocktails.

I found the recipe for this bracingly refreshing drink in that good, old yardsale paperback The Art of Mixing Drinks, based on the Esquire Drink Book, where I also found the Marconi Wireless.

Coming up … a back-of-the-napkin account of our recent trip to L.A.

Scott Holliday, former bartender at Chez Henri and an honorary member of our Best Boston bartender list, wrote me recently about a trip to the Zig Zag Cafe in Seattle (Scott moved to Sacramento last year but will soon relocate to Montreal). His account made me want to hop on a flight to the West Coast immediately:

“Had the very good fortune of hitting the Zig Zag Cafe while in Seattle and sitting at Murray Stenson’s bar for a spell. (Actually, Kacy Fitch and Ben Dougherty are the co-owners. As bar owners willing to have Murray take the spotlight, they are as rare and gracious as their star employee — and both damn fine bartenders themselves.) He’s a great bartender, amazingly gracious and inspiring. That bar, for me, was more exciting than Pegu, Flatiron or Milk & Honey. They put out some amazing drinks (with amazingly rare ingredients) without making it an exclusive or precious experience. All drinks $8.25 and most menu items $12 or so.

“Murray gave us tastes of liqueurs from a French company, Giffard — both the ginger and an Indian-spice blend called Mangalore. Both were beautifully pure and balanced. Murray and Kacy said anything they’ve tried from Giffard was excellent, though sadly it’s not available in the U.S. Also, just to satisfy my incredulity at what ingredients sat before me (see photo), they poured us tastes of Suntory Hermes Violets (you know, the nearly unobtainable descendent of dead-and-gone Creme Yvette) and, from the Firenze distiller L’Officina Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella, Elisir di Edimburgo (a bitters) and Alkermes (an ancient medicinal bitter and supposedly the predecessor to Campari). And then for comparison an Alkermic made for Murray in San Francisco. All the while I watched Murray and Kacy carefully mix drink after drink, and with few exceptions consistently reaching for one of the Zig Zag’s impressive collection of bitters and herbals including Zwack Unicum, Torani Amer, both Amer Picons, Cynar, Fernet Branca, Branca Menta, VEP and yellow Chartreuse, and multiple Absinthe substitutes …

“Then we started on cocktails. I know, I’m a name dropping bore, but I’ve been so starved for the talk and craft of good drink I can’t help myself.

“It was on my second visit that I had the chance to chat with Ben Dougherty, and he introduced me to the Creole (variation). If I had the ingredients at home, or if they existed anywhere in Sacramento (gingerale isn’t even stocked in the bars here — if you order whiskey and ginger you get whiskey and 7up with a splash of Coke), I’d probably be half fluent in Creole by now or at the very least constantly slurring, ‘Laissez les bon temps roulez.’ It was also he who handed me Ted Saucier’s ‘Bottom’s Up’ to show me the recipe, essentially making me about $50 poorer by pointing out yet another void in my library. Hello eBay!”

Keep in touch, Scott.

In certain Boston bars, if you see a group of people drinking shots of brown liquid poured from a dark green bottle, the people probably work in a restaurant and the liquid is probably Fernet Branca. Fernet (fer-NETT), as devotées call it, is among the broad range of intense, botanical-infused spirits classified as bitters. These include highly concentrated potions administered to drinks by the drop (Angostura, Peychaud’s, orange bitters) and herbal spirits that you can drink straight or base cocktails on (Campari, Aperol, Jägermeister, Fernet). Fernet is made in Italy with 27 different herbs (one of them, gentian root, will be recognizable to anyone familiar with Angostura bitters or Moxie) and is aged in oak casks for a year.

Fernet most often gets compared to Jägermeister, the German bitters that became so popular 15 or 20 years ago that it marketed its own chiller-dispenser to bars (yeah, it’s that rectangular metal box with the stained plastic tubes sticking out of it, right next to the Apple Pucker). However, it makes the sweeter, slightly lower-in-alcohol Jägermeister seem suitable for children. Jackson Cannon, bar manger at Eastern Standard, calls it “Jäger for men.” The first time you taste Fernet, it literally assaults your senses. It’s intensely bitter, peppery and mentholated. ‘I can’t believe I just swallowed that,’ may be your first thought. But, intrigued, you try it again. You like that cleaned-out buzz, that feeling that your insides have been sandblasted. The next thing you know, you’re working in a restaurant.

Why do waiters, bartenders and chefs gravitate toward this stuff? Well … It’s a badass drink that very few people know about, much less like. Drinking it conveys both that you have an advanced palate and that you embrace the ridiculous. And it’s the antithesis of all the insipid Cosmopolitans and Grey Goose martinis that restaurants churn out to earn their rent money.

I’m not sure when Fernet became the de rigueur libation among restaurant industry personnel and their companions. Many drink trends move from the West Coast to the East Coast, and San Francisco is by far the U.S. capitol of Fernet consumption. Check out SF Weekly’s detailed treatment of San Fran’s Fernet obsession, “The Myth of Fernet.”

Bostonians appear to have entered the race, though. Eastern Standard, Green Street, the Independent and Deep Ellum all serve cocktails made with Fernet. Jackson claims that Eastern Standard is the leader in sales. “It’s impossible that another account in Mass. is even close to ES!” I’m not going to argue with him; I was at Eastern Standard recently with a group of bartenders for whom mere shots of the liquor wouldn’t do; they ordered a whole damn bottle. Granted, they shared it with the kitchen staff.

By Scott N. Howe

It’s not quite Coke, it’s not quite root beer, and it’s not quite good. “It” is Moxie, and if you grew up in New England, you’ve no doubt sampled this dark, bitter, medicinal soda — and you probably didn’t like it. To be sure, Moxie is an acquired taste, but a few more folks may acquire it thanks to a new cocktail at Allston’s Deep Ellum. Last night, barman Max Toste turned me on to the Black Water, a new Moxie-based concoction they’ve added to their interesting and ample cocktail menu. (”Moxie,” Max explained, is a Native American word for “black water.” I took his word for it.) The drink is simple: Moxie on the rocks, mixed with rye and garnished with a lemon slice. What you get is, depending on your perspective, a loving update of New England traditions or a Jack and Coke for the highly ironic. Either way, it’s damn tasty, and, at $6 a pop, it’s priced to make even the thriftiest New Englander smile.

Fellow Boston drinks writer and Weekly Dig contributor MC Slim JB emailed me recently asking if I knew where to buy bitters locally. It seems this question came up recently on the Boston Area section of the Chowhound board. I told him what I knew: Eastern Standard stocks extra bottles of orange bitters (Fee Bros. and Regan’s) and Peychaud’s bitters to sell to those who ask. Christina’s spice shop in Inman Square, Cambridge sells Fee Bros. orange bitters (and also orange flower water for your homemade grenadine). Also, I seem to remember that Blanchard’s liquor store in Allston (617-782-5588) stocks Fee Bros. orange bitters and Peychaud’s, but you should double-check before you go.

Aromatic bitters like Angostura, Peychaud’s and all their defunct brethren are such a cool and mysterious part of cocktail history. They were medicinal potions made of top-secret blends of roots, herbs and other botanicals and consumed by the drop in a glass of whiskey or brandy to ease digestive troubles. “The Cocktail” wouldn’t exist without bitters. (See this Martini Republic post by Ted Haigh for more background and info on bitters.) After my conversation with MC Slim JB, I started some long-overdue research on bitters, particularly recipes one might be able to re-create at home. I remembered that there was a recipe in Haigh’s Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails for Boker’s bitters, a New York product that disappeared around the turn of the 20th century. Haigh reconstructed the Boker’s formula from a recipe he found in The Scientific American Cyclopedia of Receipts, Notes & Queries. Here it is:

3/4 ounce quassia chips
3/4 ounce powdered catechu
1/2 ounce cardamom
1 ounce dried orange peel
Macerate for 10 days in 1 quart strong whiskey. Filter and add 1 gallon of water. Color with Mallow or Malva flowers.

If anyone finds a local source for quassia chips, catechu and Malva flowers, let me know. Strangely, I didn’t find any of these at the well-stocked Christina’s spice shop mentioned above, but I did find Tonka beans there. Tonka beans were an ingredient in another defunct brand of bitters that cocktail geeks have been trying to recreate for years and that are probably worth more than their weight in gold on eBay: Abbott’s Bitters. Apparently, a Manhattan made with Abbott’s bitters is the Best Cocktail You Will Ever Drink. Robert “Drinkboy” Hess and some of the correspondents on his forum actually had a gas chromatograph done on an old bottle of Abbott’s and, for the most part, isolated the components of the formula. Read their recipe and ongoing discussion about Abbott’s here. According to Hess and others, one of Abbott’s key ingredients, Tonka bean, was banned by the FDA decades ago because it can cause intestinal bleeding (!). And yet, there they were: small plastic bags of Tonka beans on sale at Christina’s for $4.50. Now if I can only track down Pimenta Racemosa Bay leaves and Benzoin resin…

If you’ve been to No. 9 Park (see Best Boston bars), you’re familiar with the restaurant’s cocktail “flights,” three mini-cocktails served at the same time and based on a particular theme. The current offering, Flight of Heraldry ($14), features three great Italian spirits: the bitter liqueurs Aperol and Campari and the vermouth-like Punt e Mes. Everybody’s heard of the bright red, astringently bitter Campari, and Punt e Mes is showing up in more and more bars lately, but Aperol is little known outside Italy. It’s sweeter than Campari, is a beautiful coral color, and has a mild bitterness and a pleasant orange note.

No. 9 Park bartenders Ryan McGrale and John Gertsen invented a delicious, Aperol-based cocktail for the Flight of Heraldry: equal parts Beefeater gin, Aperol, and Cinzano dry vermouth with a spray of lemon peel. They call it the Contessa — as in wife of Count Negroni. The Count may or may not have had a wife, but he did pour a shot of gin in his Americano (Campari, sweet vermouth, splash of soda, orange peel) about a century ago and thus gave birth to one of the great bitters-based drinks, the Negroni, which lost the splash of soda somewhere along the way and is the only previously established cocktail in the No. 9 flight. (According to the New York Times’ latest Style magazine, “Negroni is the new mojito.” If only.) The third drink in the flight is another McGrale-Gertsen invention, the Patrician, which they named after the Count’s imagined “bitter laborer.” It’s equal parts Beefeater, Cointreau, and Punt e Mes and is actually on the mellow side compared to the Negroni. The Contessa’s the more delicate of the three but has a definite bite. I drank these three exquisite cocktails before a delicious plate of truffled gnocchi and felt like a contessa myself.