drinkboston.com

Erik Ellestad, who hosts the Spirits & Cocktails forum on eGullet.org, recently sent me a link to the second in a series of profiles he’s doing on San Francisco bartenders. He was partly inspired by drinkboston.com’s bartender profiles, but his profiles differ from the ones found here in their connection to a particular quest. Erik explains:

“Yes, I am making ALL the cocktails from the Savoy Cocktail Book in alphabetical order. I am currently on ‘D’. When I can get it together enough to work with a local bartender, I give them a choice of something like the next dozen cocktails and we taste a couple of them together. So far it has been pretty cool.”

I’ll say. His latest profilee, Josey Packard of the Alembic Bar, mixed up the Diki-Diki and the Devonia, in addition to offering a few other cocktail and biographical tidbits. Check it out. Apparently, Josey has ties to Boston, because she says she created the signature cocktail for the Boston Athenaeum’s 200th anniversary in 2006. I’m intrigued, since I’ve been involved, along with Misty Kalkofen of Green Street, in creating a cocktail for the Athenaeum’s Roaring Twenties party later this month. (Sorry, but the party’s only for Athenaeum members.) Josey, I don’t know you, but if you come across this post, email me!

Erik’s Savoy project is the framework for “Resurrecting Spirits,” a recent San Francisco Chronicle article about lost cocktail ingredients like absinthe, pimento dram, falernum and Batavia Arrack. The article’s author is Camper English of Alcademics. I’d like to send a heartfelt thanks to Camper for mentioning in his article my post, Operation 1919, about reviving lost cocktail ingredients in the Boston area.

Last Thursday at about 2:30 in the afternoon, a photo of me drinking a Jack Rose appeared on the homepage of Boston.com (the Boston Globe’s website) with an announcement that I would be available for an online chat at 3:00. The chat was an added feature of an article about me and drinkboston.com that appeared in that day’s edition of the Globe. When I recovered from the shock of sudden global fame, I hunkered down at my computer and got ready to type. “Don’t worry if you don’t see any questions at first. For the first 15 minutes, they just kind of trickle in,” a Boston.com staffer told me.

So, leaning back in my chair, I logged in at a fashionably late 3:01. Whoa! There were already five or six questions waiting for me. I started typing furiously and didn’t stop for a solid hour as the chat grew to 40-odd questions and answers. I had a blast. Many thanks to everyone who joined in, and apologies to those whose questions I didn’t have time to answer. If you missed it, here’s the transcript. (It’s free to view, but you have to log in to Boston.com with an email address to access it.)

Note: a couple of friends joined the chat to goof on me, and I goofed them back — hence the Zima cocktail recipe.

One of the Chartreuse cocktails that the boozin’ broads of LUPEC Boston created for Sunday night’s Chartreuse Cocktails event at Green Street is a winner in Salon.com’s first summer cocktail contest. Congrats, ladies! LUPEC is Ladies United for the Preservation of Endangered Cocktails, and the Boston chapter’s blog is here. The winning cocktail’s called the Irma La Douce. “Take a green French liqueur and a movie in which Shirley MacLaine plays a Parisian prostitute dressed in bright green stockings — and it adds up to a cocktail called the Irma la Douce,” the article reads. One Salon taster described the drink as “spicy and tart, like its namesake.” Santé!

This just in: the Boston Globe thinks drinkboston.com is inkworthy … and stylish. It’s publishing an article on me and the site in today’s Styles section. Not only that, I will be available for an online chat about the article, Boston bar culture, cocktails, etc. from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. today on Boston.com. Check it out!

If you’ve landed here from Boston.com or the Boston Globe and are a first-time visitor, welcome. Take a look around. Post a comment. Have a drink. Cheers!

If you’re not busy this Sunday night, join me and the Boston chapter of LUPEC (Ladies United for the Preservation of Endangered Cocktails) for Chartreuse Cocktails at Green Street in Cambridge.

Food & Wine magazine’s Mouthing Off blog featured a recent post about cocktail blogs and Mixology Monday, which Paul at Cocktail Chronicles started in April 2006. (Coincidentally, that’s when drinkboston.com started, too.) MxMo is “a monthly event for drink bloggers (and nonbloggers, too, using the drink forum at eGullet) to mix up themed cocktails and share recipes,” writes F&W’s Julia Bainbridge. I have to admit I’ve been a slacker, having only participated in MxMo once so far. The next one is tomorrow, August 13, at the Intoxicated Zodiac blog. The theme is orange (as in orange juice, orange liqueur, orange peel, orange bitters, etc.) Whether I’ll have my sh*t together to participate in that one is still an open question. Right now I just want to toot the drinkboston horn and mention the fact that I’m quoted at the end of the Mouthing Off post.

Here’s a loud clink of the glass to Paul Clarke, the Seattle-based cocktail writer (frequently for Imbibe) who publishes the well known blog Cocktail Chronicles. In a post called Link Love, he talks up several drink blogs, including this one and the LUPEC-Boston blog. I, for one, am excited to be part of such a vibrant nationwide community of cocktailians and barflies. Woohoo!

In a nice alignment of the stars, both drinkboston.com and one of Boston’s best bartenders, John Gertsen, are currently featured on Playboy.com. John, principal bartender at No. 9 Park, makes Playboy.com’s list of America’s Top 10 Bartenders. Congrats, John! Well deserved. You can see this guy in action at drinkboston.com’s upcoming champagne cocktail party at Green Street.

Another article, Brew Romance, describes 10 top American microbrews selected from votes by a panel of beer experts. That panel included drinkboston.com’s publisher, me. Yep, that’s right — it’s not all about cocktails for this imbiber. You can find a few of the Ms. Mug columns I write for the beer newspaper Ale Street News here.

Forgot to tell ya — drinkboston.com got a nice mention on Martini Republic a couple of weeks ago. An L.A.-based, multiple-blog site on drinks, culture and politics, Martini Republic is on our list of wicked good web hangouts.

On October 25, the Boston Herald’s “Food in Brief” section reported on a new website devoted to Boston bars and bartenders. Yeah, that would be this website, drinkboston.com. Note: the Herald’s recipe for the Marconi Wireless was a bit garbled in translation. Here’s a recipe that roughly follows the 2/3 applejack to 1/3 sweet vermouth ratio.