Comment on the “Sensation Cocktail” from The Conceirge regarding the never ending “Aviation Debate“.

I see from your link that you credit Gary Regan with the 2oz gin, 1/2 each of Maraschino and lemon juice recipe for Aviation. To my taste, even with Luxardo, Gary Regan does a fine job with this recipe (leaving aside any nomenclature debates). When you make aviations with 1/2oz of Luxardo Maraschino, are you using 2oz of Gin? If so, perhaps your fancy lemons are not as sour as the ones from the Concrete Jungle.

I don’t know who initially re-jiggered the Aviation, but Gary seems like a tough guy who can take a little lively discussion without taking it too personally.

Let’s take a look at the original Aviation Recipe, from Hugo Ensslin’s “Recipes for Mixed Drinks”:

Aviation Cocktail

1/3 Lemon Juice
2/3 El Bart Gin
2 dashes Maraschino
2 dashes Creme de Violette

Shake well in a mixing glass with cracked ice, strain and serve.

I’m sorry but I don’t think completely changing the ratio of a drink and leaving out an ingredient is a “nomenclature” issue.

The Ensslin Aviation recipe is 2 parts Gin, 1 part Lemon, and (generously) 1/8 part Maraschino Liqueur and 1/8 part Creme de Violette (Not Yvette!).

Changing the Aviation to 4 parts gin, 1 part lemon, and 1 part Maraschino isn’t “nomenclature”, it’s disrespecting the person who created the recipe.

I will say I think part of the problem is size.

An Ensslin Aviation made with a 2 oz (total) pour, chilled to perfection, is a bracing tonic, something to get your appetite and saliva going when you feel a bit down.

An Ensslin Aviation made with a 3 oz pour gets warm, catches in your throat, and is basically undrinkable half way before you are done.

As pour sizes have increased, many of these “tonic” drinks have had to be re-jiggered with more liqueur and simple syrup to allow them to be drinkable for people who like to linger over their (sadly warm and disgusting) cocktails.

On Sunday, a wait at Alembic asked what the name of the cocktail “Vieux Carre” meant.

I started to explain that it meant something like, “old quarter,” or, “old square” in French, and referred to the oldest section of the city of New Orleans.

Brandon pushed his glasses down his nose, hunched his back a bit and said, “Man, no, this is an ‘old square.’”

I laughed and said, “I am totally THE Old Square”.

He didn’t disagree.

Swine Flu, eh.  Twitter, maybe.

But Carne Asada Fries?

Frankly, if you’re going this route, why not go all the way?  To me, Chorizo, rather than Carne Asada would be doing it up in style.

Edit: My friends over at Married…With Dinner dropped me a note to tell me Carne Asada Fries are something of a Southern California phenomenon.  A friend of theirs recently wrote up a blog post about the subject.  Check it out: Carne Asada Fries. Bong Not Included.

In case you’re wondering where this mad mash up of Canadian Poutine and Mexican food can be had in San Francisco, I spotted it last Friday as a lunch special at Carmelina’s Taqueria in the Millberry Union on the UCSF Parnassus campus.  Perhaps next week, I will risk life and limb for an in the flesh photo.

One of the most common questions I get when friends and acquaintances find out about the Savoy Cocktail Book Project is, “Why?”

After these few years of making cocktail after cocktail, I have to admit I sometimes wonder the same thing.

To start from the beginning…

While planning a trip to New Orleans, I’d run across Chuck Taggart’s article about the Sazerac on his site Gumbo Pages. The level of detail and elaborate ritual involved for such a seemingly simple cocktail appealed significantly to my obsessive nature.

1) Chill the cocktail glass with ice.

2) Stir the whiskey, bitters, and syrup with ice.

3) Discard the ice from the cocktail glass.

4) Dash absinthe into the glass and swirl to coat.

5) Discard most of the Absinthe.

6) Strain the chilled whiskey into the glass.

7) Squeeze a lemon peel over the glass and serve.

When executed well, it is an amazing drink that completely eclipses every one of its component ingredients.

So when we went to New Orleans, we went on a bit of a Sazerac quest, asking for them at most of the bars we got to. While we got a few really good Sazeracs, most were just not quite as tasty as the ones I had been making at home.

That made me curious. What if the same was true for other cocktails?

What usually happens when I get curious about things is I get a bit obsessed. I read every thing I can find on the subject. I participate actively in online forums on the subject. I post questions to the same forums. In general, I stuff as much of the subject as I can find into my brain until it can hold no more.

As I’ve mentioned before, this has happened many times in the past. With Comic Books, Jazz Music, Computer Games, Computer Hardware, Cooking, Gardening, Botany, and now Cocktails.

But even after all that, I was still really only making the same few cocktails. Old Fashioneds, Manhattans, Sazeracs, and Margaritas. There was a whole world of cocktails out there that I didn’t know and hadn’t tasted. How would I familiarize myself with more of them? Where should I start?

Fortunately, Ted Haigh’s book, “Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails,” was published about this time, pointing a way towards both culinary and historical research into cocktails. Not to mention a gold mine of information regarding the historically appropriate ingredients to make those classic cocktails with.

About this time another participant on the eGullet.org Spirits and Cocktails forums started posting occasionally about obscure recipes he found in an edition of Patrick Gavin Duffy’s “Official Mixer’s Manual”. At the same time, another friend decided to familiarize himself with cooking by attempting to make all the recipes, in order, from a copy of “Joy of Cooking”.

The idea of making cocktails from one or another book, not haphazardly, but systematically and sequentially kind of appealed. It certainly wasn’t as quixotic as attempting to make all the recipes from the “Joy of Cooking”.

I scanned through my bookshelf, looking at the spines. From the start, I knew I wanted to do a vintage book, not a modern edition. I wanted to get back to the origins of modern cocktails. Delightful gentleman, though they are, Wondrich, Haigh, Regan, and DeGroff were thus out of the running.

Looking at what remained, four stood out: Jerry Thomas’ “The Bartender’s Guide”, “The Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book”, Charles Baker’s “Gentleman’s Companion”, and “The Savoy Cocktail Book”.

Jerry Thomas, at the time, just seemed too far in the past. Similarly, there seemed to be just too many defunct ingredients in the Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book. Charles Baker was very, very tempting, but his recipes seemed like they would be too much of a pain to transcribe and interpret. Besides, what few cocktails of his I had made, had never turned out all that well, without some serious massaging.

That left “The Savoy Cocktail Book”. In its favor, it didn’t seem to have all that many defunct ingredients, a modest variety of ingredients, most recipes were easy to read, and the cocktails were listed purely alphabetically, rather than by ingredient or some other categorical system.

In the deficit category, according to the back of the book, it contained 750 cocktail recipes. Even making one or two cocktails a day, this was going to take a while.

I mentioned the idea to some of the powers that were at eGullet.org and got a warm reception and some interest.

Well, then…

Not being one to shirk a challenge, on June 8^th, 2006, with a cocktail called “The Abbey,” I took the plunge and posted the first cocktail and picture to a topic I called, “Stomping Through the Savoy: A to Zed.”

The Rules:

• Make the recipes in order.
• Make the recipes as written.
• Try to get as close to the original ingredients as possible.
• Take a picture of every cocktail.
• Do some research into the cocktail’s name, history or ingredients.
• Don’t drink yourself to death.

Make the Recipes in Order

Being, by nature, a rather disorganized and undisciplined person, it’s often tough for me to submit to systems.  In fact, more often than not, I find myself, even when I think I am behaving, subconsciously subverting rules through selective memory.  If I just picked out random recipes and made those, I’d never get done with this book.  I’ll plod through, one after another, as best I can.  I am hard headed enough to follow through to the bitter end, once I get started.

Make the Recipes as Written

I have a small problem following recipes to the letter. No matter what, I always think there is some small thing that I can tweak to make them “Better”.

Probably this is partly a line cook’s attitude. For a line cook, there usually aren’t recipes. There are ingredients, your execution, and taste. There are no “This pasta has 1 tsp of garlic, ½ tsp of pepper flakes, ½ tsp of salt, and ½ cup tomatoes.” When you’re trained, it’s all visual. “The pasta has this much of this, a pinch of that, a scoop of that. It should taste like this. OK, you make it.”

When I first started making cocktails, I guess I thought there would be some sort of transference of ability. I could just start screwing around with cocktail recipes and be able to tweak them for the better without really knowing what I was making. At about the time I started The Savoy Project, I was beginning to realize how little I knew and how much I needed to learn. My portion sizes were ridiculous, I didn’t understand the qualities different spirits brought to drinks, or even how much difference a simple change of brands of spirits could make in a simple cocktail. I did understand it was important to use fresh juices and quality spirits, but that only gets you so far. What better way to learn than to submit to a higher authority and just make the recipes?

Try to Get As Close to the Original Recipes as Possible

Initially I interpreted recipes pretty literally. Only using traditional spirits, rather than modern styles. Trying to locate Cuban Rum for where Bacardi was called for. Using Canadian Whiskey where Canadian Club was called for. Only using old school gins from England.

But the more you learn, the more that seems to become a waste of time.

For instance, when you start researching recipes, you discover how much substitution was already going on. That almost every Savoy recipe calling for Canadian Club, originally called for Rye or Bourbon. It was only because of Prohibition and the limited availability of American Whiskies, that the Savoy bartenders substituted Canadian Club.

When I talk about “lost” ingredients now, I like to divide them into three categories.

1) Those no longer made, like Crème Yvette, Hercules, Caperitif, and a few others. For some of these we really don’t even have a clue what they might have tasted like.

2) Those which are still made, but are difficult to get. When I started in 2006, this was a much larger category than it is today in 2009. Absinthe, Pimento Dram, Crème de Violette, Swedish Punsch, and Old Tom Gin were all in this category. All could pretty much only be gotten by expensive mail order or by traveling to where they were made. Today, I am told, there are 53 Absinthes alone either on the market or waiting for TTB approval.

3) Those which are still made, but whose current formulation differs so radically from their vintage character that they may no longer be suitable for the recipes or cocktails originally created for them. This is always a grey area, but really the most vexing of the three categories. For example, many cocktail in the Savoy Cocktail Book call for something called, “Kina Lillet”. Is the character of modern Lillet Blanc really even close to Kina Lillet? Signs point to, “no”. The same with many ingredients, even those as simple as French and Italian Vermouths.

Take a Picture of Every Cocktail

I never try to get the most beautiful picture, or even the most beautiful garnish or glassware when taking pictures of my drinks. If I have any goal, it is either to capture some transient quality of a freshly made drink, or just to try to take a picture that presents a drink in a way that I’ve never seen before. Light glinting off the orange oils which I have just sprayed across the surface or the slight foam caused by a vigorous shake. But most of the time it is just to take an unvarnished and real picture. This is what the drink looks like. Not a glossy shot for a magazine.

Do Some Research into the Cocktails, Name, Recipe, or Ingredients

The Savoy Cocktail Book is a terse recipe book. Basically just lists of ingredients and the instructions, “Shake well and strain into cocktail glass.” If this journey is going to be interesting to me or the readers, part of it is going to have to be filling in those blank spaces between the names, ingredients, and recipes.

Researching ingredients has been among the most fun things. Particularly my little obsession with the nature of Hercules, proved to be of some value to the cocktail community. When I started making Savoy recipes, everyone agreed with Stan Jones, that Hercules was an “Absinthe Substitute” of some sort. At my prodding, and stubbornness, we uncovered that the commonly held assumption was completely wrong. We still don’t know exactly what it might have tasted like, but at least we now know it wasn’t an Absinthe Substitute, but an aperitif wine fortified with Yerba Mate.

For me, though, some of the most fun has been researching cocktail names. To find out who a Barney Barnato, Gene Tunney, or Odd McIntyre might have been. To turn up some clue as to why their name might have been honored or ridiculed with a cocktail. To gain some small insight into the culture and time that the book was written. Not to be over dramatic, but sometimes it does feel a bit like time travel, to discover these facts and try to taste the character of the time in the drink.

Don’t Drink Yourself to Death

750, or as it turns out 888, cocktails is a lot of drinking, and I’m far to cheap to throw out just about any crazy mixture I have concocted. As the folks at Burrito Eater say, “The site’s called ‘Burrito Eater’, not ‘Burrito Taster’”.

On the other hand, there are days when I don’t even feel like drinking alcohol, let alone fix up some liqueur laden, complex, early Twentieth Century cocktail. In addition, my obsession with beverages stretches across just about every species of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverage. From Straight Whiskey to First Flush Darjeeling Tea.

If I want to come out of this enterprise with some small sliver of a liver and a brain, some moderation is necessary.

As the project developed and I did some experiments on my own tolerance and ability to photograph and blog, about 5 Savoy cocktails a week turned out to be a good balance between sanity and the abyss. That compromise has pushed the duration of the project out a bit further than I initially intended. So it goes.

So, really, “Why?”

Initially just curiosity. As the project continued and other’s interest developed, it soon reached a point where there really was no choice not to continue. Even taking a small break, as I have been for the last couple months, has gotten me some quizzical emails. “What is up with the Savoy Stomp?”

To answer their questions in the affirmative, “The Stomp Goes On!“

A FEW HINTS FOR THE YOUNG MIXER

1. Ice is nearly always an absolute essential for any Cocktail.

2. Never use the same ice twice.

3. Remember that the ingredients mix better in a shaker rather larger than is necessary to contain them.

4. Shake the shaker hard as you can : don’t just rock it : you are trying to wake it up, not send it to sleep!

5. If possible, ice your glasses before using them.

6. Drink your Cocktail as soon as possible. Harry Craddock was once asked what was the best way to drink a Cocktail : “Quickly,” replied that great man, “while it is laughing at you!”

Thanks to some of my compatriots in the CSOWG for help on this post. Gabe from cocktainerd for invaluable editorial input and Blair from TraderTiki’s Booze Blog for cleaning up what seemed to me to be a hopeless morass of MS Word HTML.

Riding home on the N yesterday, with a sore throat and probably a fever, a group of fellow riders conspired to make my evening even more miserable.

First a gentleman got on the train, with an interesting strategy for getting contributions: Repeatedly and loudly saying, “Can anyone give me money for food? Can anyone give me money for a burrito?” over and over.

This sort of thing, you come to expect on the N. Typical, not that bad. Annoying, but harmless.

But when he passed another gentleman on the bus, that gentleman said, “Why don’t you just sit down and shut up!”

Well, fair enough. I looked at that gentleman and saw he was reading Neal Stephenson’s “Cryptonomicon”. Well groomed, with dockers and white sneakers.

The panhandling gentleman moved to the end of the train and sat down. But continued to loudly and repeatedly ask for money for food.

White sneaker dude also kept his end of the deal up. Glaring at the panhandler and occasionally yelling something at him. When someone accidentally bumped the panhandler he exclaimed, “Don’t touch me, I’ll call the cops!”

To which white sneaker guy countered, “Yeah, pan handling on MUNI, that’s against the law, isn’t it?”

At which point I’m beginning to wonder about the motivations here. Then I notice white sneaker dude has his hand in his pocket and is fingering something. I look a bit closer and see that it is a can of mace or pepper spray.

Looking at him, I see the look in his eye. It’s the hopeful look that a nerd gets when he thinks he’s got an ace up his sleeve that will enable him to finally beat the bully who has been torturing him. He wants the homeless guy to come at him. He’s baiting him so he can pepper spray him and maybe get in a punch or two.

They go at it some more. Yelling back and forth swearing at each other. White sneaker guy, with white knuckles around his pepper spray bottle sez, “Goddamn drug user, why don’t you go do some crack or heroin and kill yourself!” Thankfully, the panhandler seems to have enough sense not to approach the white sneaker guy.

At Duboce and Church, the MUNI train driver finally comes back to our train and asks the panhandler to get off the train.

Relieved that nothing worse would happen than shouting, I start to calm down.

Then someone else sez to white sneaker dude, “Man, the only thing that allows those people to survive in San Francisco is that we’re too afraid to touch them.” To which a middle aged woman in a jeans jacket and carrying a forever21.com bag replies, “Next time we’ll all wear hazmat suits and lay into him.”

White sneaker guy mutters something like, “Goddamn disgusting San Francisco,” and I have to admit I’m thinking the same.

I’ve made a couple changes to the blog.

I’m moved what was getting to be a ridiculously long Blogroll onto its own page:

Blogroll

I was trying to auto-generate this from my Google Reader, which seems to be broken at the moment. Hopefully the genius engineers at Google will fix this soon, but I’m not sure if I’m thrilled with the result anyway.  I’ve started changing it back to a regular old web page. Lots of links to add, though…

I’ve also added a page of what I guess I’d call my current “haunts”.  Often people ask for recommendations when they are visiting San Francisco.  I figured it would be easier to just write them down on a web page.  Not really meant to be reviews or anything.  It’s more just the places I’ve gone recently and enjoyed enough to recommend.

Haunts

Both are still works in progress. Well, as is everything else on the blog!

This is kind of related to the Baker quote regarding lazy drink makers and also to an excellent post I read over on line cook called “Pressure“.

Sure there is a lot of pressure at any fast paced food service job.  And there are good nights and bad nights.  We’re all humans, allegedly, and some shifts are just going to suck.  You’re hung over, slammed, not prepared, just had your heart broken, whatever.

But the thing that Richie didn’t talk about in his post is the pressure that you get to just put something out, even if you know it is wrong.  To compromise your own or the restaurants standards.

The wait staff wanted their order 10 minutes ago.  The customers are sick of waiting and you can see the look on their faces when you glance into the dining room.

The printer is clicking away and you just want to get some of these damn tickets off your back.

You over cooked the steak or messed up the proportion of the drink.

The wait person is standing there looking at you.  You just tasted the drink or felt the steak.  You know it is wrong.  You may even say to them, “I screwed this up, let me remake it.”  And they reply, “No, I’ll just take it out.  They won’t even know.”

What do you do?

Do you give in and just send it out?

Or do you have the character to gather up what little strength you have, regroup, and maintain your standards?

For better or for worse, the new model of nearly instant reviews by almost anyone on the internet has changed the balance of power between restaurant and critic permanently.

In the old days it was pretty easy to spot the one or two restaurant critics or VIPs in your town.

Sending that badly proportioned drink or overcooked steak out to Joe Schmoe, in town from Iowa, wasn’t likely going to have much consequence.

Today, Joe Schmoe may be Iowa’s most famous steak connoisseur or drink blogger.

His opinion may have more weight than the local restaurant critics.

Throw out the drink or refire the steak.  You owe it to yourself, your profession, your coworkers, and to your employer.

As the most common question I’ve been getting lately is, “How’s the Bartending Going?”, I should probably post about it.

The first week at Heaven’s Dog was kind of crazy.  I worked a party, a practice service, and a regular shift in addition to my other job.

The party was for Press and some other folks.  Not super busy.  Someone asked me early on if I was having fun, and I was kind of like, “It’s OK.”  I was really nervous and hadn’t known the drinks until I got there that evening.  But about two thirds of the way through the evening we had a nice rush, with people three deep from the bar.  I said, “Now we’re having fun!” and the person I had been talking to replied, “I know you’re being sarcastic…”  But, I wasn’t being sarcastic at all.  I totally love the point in working where you shift from having to think about everything to muscle memory and instinct.

The practice service was harder, as I had to learn the Point of Sale system to take food and drink orders for customers.  My boss remarked, “Saturday we’ll have you on the well, mostly making drinks for the dining room.  It will be similar to when you worked at Flora.  But tonight’s going to be sink or swim.”  Plus, we had a surprise new item on the menu: “Freedom From Choice!  Pick a Spirit and a Modifier and our talented bartenders will choose a drink for you!”  Fortunately, for most of the night I had sympathetic bartenders in front of my well, who ordered interesting drinks and were aware of the difficulties of opening a new restaurant and bar.  On the whole I’d say, while I didn’t break any Olympic records for the butterfly or Australian crawl, I didn’t sink either.

Heaven’s Dog opened for real on Friday and I worked my first shift in the newly opened restaurant Saturday night.  The restaurant was fully booked for the evening and I worked the service well, where you make the drinks for the dining room.

To be honest, I was amazed I was able to stand, talk, and make drinks all at the same time.  Between my other job and Heaven’s Dog, I’d worked a 14 hour day for the party and another 14 hour day for the practice service.  I was now about to work my sixth day in a row.

But by now, I knew the drinks, was familiar with my coworkers, the service staff, and slightly familiar with the POS system.

I’ve been re-reading Charles H. Baker Jr.’s South American Gentleman’s Companion recently.  I ran across the following choice passage this morning on the way to work and found it amusing.  Apologies to the more sensitive souls, for the nominally curmudgeonly and misogynistic content.

WHY DO SO MANY AMATEURS MIX La BEBIDA PIOJOSA?

Bebida in Spanish means “Drink,” and piojosa means “lousy”; and the 2 of them together means a disappointed guest anywhere, besides a demerit in the mixer’s reputation.  The 1st and great commandment in building mixed-drinks is that of not being lazy.  Results are sad for the poor chap who has to drink his brews; but sadder still is the realization deep down in our poor mixer’s heart-of-hearts that he has betrayed his callings, his finer mixing art, through refusal to do the right and proper things–yet still does nothing about them.

…

Summing this whole business up may we say that just as there is no such thing as a 1/2-good girl there no such animal as a 1/2-good drink.  A mixed drink is either made correctly out of correct stuff: good; or it’s La Bebida Piojosa.  Even a homely gal can, with cunningly-employed paint, powder, patches, rouge-pots, whale-bone and falsies, fool part of the people part of the time; but a poorly-built drink betrays itself with the first sip.  The only person our lazy drink-mixer is fooling is himself; he is a traitor to his art and there is no health in him.  Amen.

Suffice it to say, in these modern times I don’t believe that “Amateurs” are the only “lazy drink-mixers” in the world…

This is the Seventh in an ongoing series of bartender features on the Underhill-Lounge. Previously, I had experimented by asking the bartender at Montgomery Place to make me a Bombay Cocktail No. 2, but this just seemed to result in a grumpy bartender. To make it less of a shock, I thought I would contact some local bartenders and give them a choice of the dozen or so Savoy Cocktails that might be coming up in the book. Surprisingly, some actually were game.

—

*

Continuing The Savoy “J” Stomp with Daniel Shoemaker at Teardrop Lounge in Portland, OR.

The participants:

Daniel Shoemaker: Bartender Extraordinaire at Teardrop Lounge in Portland, OR.
erik_flannestad: Your itinerant Savoy Stomper.
Humuhumu: Tiki goddess and web developer.
Trott: Talented musician, friend and co-worker. It was Trott whose quixotic quest to make all the recipes from the “Joy of Cooking” originally inspired me to take on the Savoy Cocktail Book.
Tradertiki: Portland, OR blogger, Tiki enthusiast, proprietor of his home bar Reynolés Galley, and guide for the monthly “Tiki Tuesdays” at the Teardrop Lounge.

Also along for the ride were Mrs. Flannestad, who chose not to write up her thoughts and Trott’s friend Ken. Siobhan and her husband Ben stopped by a bit later.

—

J.O.S. Cocktail

1 Dash Orange Bitters. (Regan’s Orange)
1 Dash Lemon Juice or Lime Juice. (Lemon Juice)
1 Dash Brandy. (Christian Brothers)
1/3 Italian Vermouth. (3/4 oz Carpano Antica)
1/3 French Vermouth. (3/4 oz Noilly Prat Dry)
1/3 Dry Gin. (3/4 oz Plymouth Gin)

Shake well (well, stir, please) and strain into cocktail glass. Squeeze lemon peel on top.

Daniel stepped out for a moment, leaving us in the capable hands of Alyson for this and the next couple cocktails. This was perfectly fine, I suppose. A more assertive gin than the Plymouth might have saved this from being condemned as flat.

Humuhumu: I’m tired of vermouth. Tastes pretty flat.
Trott: J.O.S.=?? What could J.O.S. stand for? And who is Kaiser Solzheyn?
TraderTiki: A bit flat, flavor down low, watery.

Well, I’m pretty sure that J.O.S. doesn’t mean “Java Operating System,” but really have no other likely candidates. “Journal of Official Statistics”? There is a city in Nigerial called “Jos”, but that’s not an acronym.

Journalist Cocktail

2 Dashes Lemon Juice.
2 Dashes Curacao. (Bols Orange Curacao)
1 Dash Angostura Bitters.
1/6 French Vermouth. (1/2 oz Noilly Prat Dry)
1/6 Italian Vermouth. (1/2 oz Carpano Antica)
2/3 Gordon’s Dry Gin. (2 oz Plymouth Gin)

Shake well and strain into cocktail glass.

It’s always nice to come across a classic you have thus far avoided. I hadn’t tried the Journalist before and quite enjoyed it. Interesting to see the response among the group that a slight adjustment of proportions makes, as this is otherwise pretty identical to the J.O.S. Daniel mentioned that this was one of the classic cocktail specials that they’d run through lately, to good response. I can see why.

Humuhumu: Nice and Balanced.
Trott: Excellent ass-end. (Great Finish!)
TraderTiki: Balanced, spice at the finish.

The Judge Jr. Cocktail

1/3 Gin. (3/4 oz Plymouth Gin)
1/3 Bacardi Rum. (3/4 oz Matusalem Platino)
1/3 Lemon Juice. (3/4 oz Lemon Juice)
Powdered Sugar. (1 tsp. Cane Sugar)
1 Dash of Grenadine. (House made Raspberry Syrup)

Shake well and strain into cocktail glass.

In his 1927 book, “Here’s How,” Judge Jr. says about this cocktail, “This drink, I discovered later, was invented by someone else, but it’s good just the same!” I’m not sure which drink he’s referring to, but it is pretty similar to the Bacardi Special. Kind of funny that a guy would name such a pink drink after himself! I found it refreshing.

Humuhumu: Smells like watermelon, (the real stuff,) tastes too tart, without other flavors coming through->imbalanced.
Trott: I like that a lot, but I’m totally wasted.
TraderTiki: Too tart, grenadine not balancing.

The Judgette Cocktail

1/3 Peach Brandy. (3/4 oz Briottet Creme de Peche de Vigne)
1/3 Gin. (3/4 oz Plymouth Gin)
1/3 French Vermouth. (3/4 oz Noilly Prat Dry)
1 Dash of Lime.

Shake well and strain into cocktail glass.

I actually found this one fairly pleasant. Definitely dessert-esque, Humu really pegs it as similar to a dessert wine. It is a cocktail I could see enjoying after dinner. Maybe with a dash of bitters?

Humuhumu: Too sweet, tastes like dessert wine.
Trott: Sweet. Dry peach brandy would be… Oh gosh, I’ve had a lot to drink.
TraderTiki: Muscat like sweetness. Very sweet, but not cloying.

About this time, I hear Humu exclaim something like, “Nooooo! Not more vermouth! I’m vermoooooothed out!” There may have been some sobbing.

And I thought the “J” cocktails were safe.

I guess this is what happens when you involve civilians.

Of course, to be fair, if we were in Humu’s milieu and drinking 20 Tiki cocktails in a row, about this time I would be exclaiming, “No! Not more Pineapple Juice! I can’t take any more Pineapple Juice!”

It does make me wonder how warped my palate has become from drinking all these vermouth heavy cocktails. If you ask me to taste a cocktail, and I say, “Well, it could use a little more vermouth,” now you know why.

Jupiter Cocktail

1 Teaspoonful Orange Juice
1 Teaspoonful Parfait Amour Liqueur. (Brizard Parfait Amour)
1/3 French Vermouth. (1 oz Noilly Prat Dry)
1/3 Dry Gin. (1 oz Plymouth Gin)

Stir well in ice and strain. Twist of Lemon Peel.

I’ve been putting off the Jupiter for some time now, as folks usually descripe it as difficult to make. But Daniel really pulls it off. Just the hint of the Parfait Amour flavor is very subtle and enjoyable. The sort of cocktail I really enjoy. Where even after all these cocktails, there is something curious in the flavors that makes you want to take another sip and figure out.

Humuhumu: Simple–I think I have vermouth burnout, though.
Trott: See above.
TraderTiki: Calm orange flavor.

*

Obviously, it would have been wise to stop at about this point, but, well, few people have ever accused me of being a wise man. We also tried a couple Teardrop cocktails and some things that Daniel was working on. Then we settled up our bill and wandered off in search of dinner and, hopefully, to sober up a bit before the concert we were attending later in the evening.

First, let me say how great it was that Daniel and the other bartenders at the Teardrop were willing to play along with this little game. I’ve sort of wanted to do something like this myself, in celebration of 2 years of Savoy Stomping, but how much more fantastic to have Portland Monthly’s 2008 Bartenders of the Year mix the drinks instead? Not to mention wash the dishes!

To be honest, when I was going over the drinks in preparation for the trip, and then looking at Teardrop’s menu online, I was thinking to myself, “What the hell am I thinking? Why are we just not going to Teardrop to enjoy their drinks?” But then, who knows, maybe no one would have tried the John Wood cocktail for another 30 years. I certainly expect this may have been the first time anyone has made it in the last 30 years!

Speaking from my side of the bar, I know everyone had a great time and came away with a real respect with what they are accomplishing there at the Teardrop Cocktail Lounge. Just about everyone in the group was already making plans to return the next time they were in Portland.

I count myself lucky to have met these talented men and women and truly look forward to tasting what interesting things they are up to the next time I see them. I promise, there will be no Savoy Cocktails involved!

*These pictures by Mrs. Flannestad.

This post is one in a series documenting my ongoing effort to make all of the cocktails in the Savoy Cocktail Book, starting at the first, Abbey, and ending at the last, Zed.