Do you think that most people who are consumed by craft mixology can clearly pinpoint the genesis of their obsession, that single come-to-Genever moment at which they realized that perhaps salvation could be found in bottles and shakers? For me, it is not so difficult to determine when I was infected with the spirit of spirits. One night a couple of years ago I came home to discover that Tipsy had found this book at the Half Price Books store by our house. It set off a period of soul searching the likes of which I had never experienced. Sure, I had been through phases before, but I had never seen the light. It was a cocktailian coming out, a voyage of discovery that satisfied so many basic needs: Suddenly I had an academic excuse to spend time and money in liqour stores and bars. "Booze hound? Thanks for your concern, Mom, but this is research..." This mixological mission also breathed new life into my thrift store scavenging. I was growing tired of the search for the same old kitchen wares, now I had an entirely new category of unnecessary items to pursue.

And by that I mean booze. We needed a few supplies, so we went shopping...

For readers who are familiar with the Julie/Julia project, this will sound like a familiar gimmick: Begin by selecting one of the most significant works in the canon of gastronomical writing, set out to prepare and consume each recipe in the volume within the course of one year, and blog the entire process for the world to see. (The next steps, of course, are: get press coverage from The New York Times, gain an international readership and score big book deals/ quit day job/ start new job of being famous foodie person.) Julie Powell set out to cook and eat every recipe in Julia Childs’ Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year, 524 recipes in all. She was, as far as I can tell, a possessed woman for attempting such a feat. I am no Julie Powell. Julie toiled through Pate de Canard en Croute and Rognons de Veau Flambes. I have chosen a different path: I would instead like to attempt to drink my way into the blogosphere's stratosphere. I have selected The Craft of the Cocktail and intend to mix and drink each of Dale DeGroff’s 500 recipes in the span of one year, and hope that my liver, my wallet, and I live to tell about it. This will be in many ways a crash course in the classic cocktail cuisine, as MtAoFC was a crash course in French cooking for Julie Powell. Dale actually offers a brick & mortar cocktail course that he teaches in New York City. Someday I hope to muster up the $3k+ that the cocktail camp costs, and go spend a week with the master. In the meantime I will be taking the distance-learning approach.

This is no Julie/Julia Project (I can probably produce a Knickerbocker cocktail faster than I could a Mousseline de Crustaces) although I thank Ms. Powell for giving me the inspiration for it.

Why Dale? Why David? Why now?

The first drink of the Dale/David Project will be the Sazerac. According to cocktail legend, the drink has its early origins in the apothecary of Antoine Amedee Peychaud, who created his now famous bitters in New Orleans in the 1830's. Bitters were used at the time for medicinal purposes. According to one variation of the story, Peychaud mixed his bitters with Cognac in a "coquetier" (egg cup), and the "cocktail" was born as stubborn/ignorant/hard-of-hearing Americans mispronounced the word. (The word "cocktail" appears in print several decades earlier)

As certain as we can be in the murky depths of cocktail history, we can be reasonably sure that in the 1850's there was a 'coffee shop' (euphemism for booze den) by the name of Sazerac, so named for the brandy produced by Sazerac de Forge et Fils. According to Dale, the bar was opened by John Schiller, who in 1859 applied the name Sazerac Cocktail to a drink based on Sazerac Cognac, and Peychaud's bitters. John Handy supposedly took over the bar at some point and changed the base spirit to Rye whiskey. With the decline in popularity of Rye, Bourbon became substituted in some quarters. (Although according to Chris McMillan, it is NEVER made with Bourbon.)

Robert Hess reports that the bar was owned by a Sewell Taylor, a friend of Peychaud's. The absinthe was a later addition to the drink, as was the switch from Cognac to Rye.

In honor of the cocktail's early heritage, Dale uses both Cognac and Rye in his Sazerac, in equal parts. To that he adds a small amount of simple syrup and equal parts of Peychaud's and Angostura bitters. He chills two cocktail glasses; one will be rinsed with Absinthe and have the cocktail strained into it and garnished with a lemon peel.

For this entry we decided to do a tasting of several Sazeracs with different ryes, from Jim Beam (when did we polish off the Old Overholt?) on the low end to Sazerac 18 on the high end. I know it is bad form to use this latter whiskey in a cocktail but I couldn't help myself. The Sazerac 6 or the Wild Turkey variation is a better traditional cocktail, though it is undeniable that the "Millionaire's Sazerac" made with Sazerac 18 and Hennessy VSOP is a pleasure to drink... . In Allen Katz's Rye Nation seminar, the distiller from Buffalo Trace said something to the effect that he cringed at the thought of the 18 being used in cocktails. But Chuck Taggart, in his definitive discussion of the Sazerac, claims that "Sazerac 18-Year-Old Straight Kentucky Rye Whiskey might just makethe best Sazerac in the world."

A few other references and variations:

Tonight we decided to continue with the cocktails of New Orleans, both in celebration of our recent trip there, and as a way to make up for some of the deficiencies we encountered with "classics" we were served in their own home town. For example, we ordered the Ramos Gin Fizz at the Carousel bar and received a vanilla-y milkshakey drink served on ice. Likewise we had a number of Sazeracs served on ice, though it seems like the classic recipes call for an up drink. The worst drink we saw we didn't even stick around long enough to be served--at the Old Absinthe House, we wanted an Absinthe Frappe We sat for some minutes as a bartender stocked shelves and ignored us. Finally she asked what we wanted, and when I ordered an Absinthe Frappe she explained "That's not really Absinthe, absinthe is the one with the ice water." We had spent several nights at the Absinthe House over the course of the conference, and had seen a bartender (Will) lovingly fill the cup with a dome of shaved ice, then drizzle Lucid Absinthe, Herbsaint, and simple syrup over the flaky ice. This girl grabbed Herbsaint and DeKuyper Anisette and poured it over a skimpy portion of shaved ice, then blasted it with soda and gave it a stir. As another bartender began arguing with her about something, we took our leave. Absinthe abuse continued at Tujagues the next day as the bartender lit a sugar cube on fire and stirred it into the Absinthe.

The Ramos Gin Fizz was created in New Orleans in the 1880's and was popular until Prohibition. Consisting of London Dry Gin, lime juice, lemon juice, simple syrup, egg white and a few drops of orange flower water, the signature of the drink is that it requires a very vigorous shake to achieve the appropriate "ropy" texture.

Charles H. Baker Jr. describes the drink in the Gentleman's Companion:
THE ORIGINAL GIN FIZZ which Was Long a Secret of the Brothers Ramos, and which Was Given out by Them, in a Fit of Generous Aberration during Our Alleged & Ridiculous Drought of the Prohibition Era...the Ramos Fizz has long been synonymous with the finest in all the New Orleans art. Thinking that the formula, like any history dealing with the dead arts, should be engraved on the tablets of history, it was given to the world after the now rejuvenated Ramos bar closed for the "dry" era. The main secret of excellence was the platoon of 8 or 1 doz blackamoors who passed the shaker over shoulders to the next, after each had literally shaken his heart out chilling the drink...

Continuing with a wrap-up of New Orleans drinks following our visit there, I have decided on the milk punch for tonight, though perhaps I should have saved it for tomorrow morning. I don't know if this is a New Orleans drink per se, but it is a popular Southern drink that is certainly a fixture of brunch dining in New Orleans. Some Milk Punch recipes call for Bourbon but I prefer the Brandy variety and I suspect that is the older one, though I'd have to consult drinkboy or Dr. Cocktail to know for sure... . In Early American Beverages I found an 1860 recipe for a brandy or rum milk punch in which the spirits are steeped in oranges and lemons; and an 1884 recipe that is sherry-based and calls for milk "warm from the cow." This latter recipe calls for nutmeg to taste; the modern recipes likewise often call for a garnish of grated nutmeg.

Milk punch is often served from a punch bowl, preferably sterling silver (not at my house). The Dale recipe calls for 2 parts brandy, 1 part simple syrup, and 4 parts milk. I used half & half which resulted in a very frothy head. Though the recipe does not specify, I believe this drink is usually served without ice. At a famous New Orleans brunch restaurant that shall remain unnamed, I was served a milk punch over ice which I found to be rather disappointing.

(Unfortunately we are still suffering from some technological difficulties so my pictures will be posted later, for what they're worth.)

I have been trying to both follow Dale's book and feature the cocktails of New Orleans, because I am still in a post-Tales recovery period. Unfortunately Dale does not feature all of the famous New Orleans cocktails in his book. He does, however, have a DDG (Dale DeGroff) original called the New Orleans Cocktail which I made tonight. Consisting of Bourbon, a few dashes of Peychaud's bitters and a couple dashes of orange curacao, the drink tastes...Bourbony. Sort of like a dry Old Fashioned, served up in a chilled cocktail glass, with a DDG signature, the flamed lemon peel.

We also made the Cocktail a la Louisiane which is not in Dale's book, but which I felt like making tonight in our New Orleans cocktail roundup. The Louisane is is like a Vieux Carre (also not in the Dale) without the Cognac and was, according to Chuck Taggart, the signature cocktail at the Restaurant de la Louisiane in New Orleans.

Wrapping up our tour of the drinks of New Orleans we finish with the Hurricane, one of those maligned tourist trap drinks from Pat O'Brien's that you have probably had but not in the same thought process as "cocktail". The problem with this drink when you get it at Pat's is that it comes out neon red and tastes about as natural as it looks. This is not to say that you can't put down a few of them in the right mood, as long as you don't mind the FDC Red #666. What really turned me off last year when we went to Pat's is that they already had the Hurricane glasses par-filled with Hurricane, so that when you order it all they have to do is add ice. Where is the love in that?! It's like going to the cafeteria where they have the half-filled iced tea glasses lined up and ready to go.

Although you won't be seeing this picture until we resolve our technology malfunction, we served up our Hurricane in a Patty O's Hurricane glass, available at any thrift store in town for approx $.99.

With Dale's recipe, we get to experience this cocktail in its natural state. A blend of light and dark rums, with fresh orange, pineapple, and lime juices. The recipe also calls for passion fruit juice or syrup; for lack of fresh passion fruit, I used the syrup but I chose to use Philibert Routin 1883 which is a higher quality syrup than most (ie no artificial colors or flavors). The drink, I have to say, was delicious. I remember that we tried to make the Hurricane a few Mardi Gras ago, following the DDG recipe, but I must have taken some unwise shortcut because the result definitely did not taste like this. I think the secret is in using all fresh-pressed juices, which is labor intensive when referring to pineapple, but totally worth it.

I am going to attempt three things with this post: First, I am trying to keep on schedule with the Dale/David project after yesterday's unfortunate lapse. Second, I found a couple more drinks (the French 75 and Cafe Brulot) that I think belong in this quick wrap-up of New Orleans cocktails that I have been working on in the context of Dale's book. Third, I discovered that this month's Mixology Monday theme is New Orleans cocktails--cocktails from New Orleans, cocktails inspired by New Orleans, or even cocktails that you quaffed in New Orleans. I will be touching on all of these facets in this post, which, for the record, and in typical form, is taking me so long that I hope I don't get denied participation privileges by the MxMo moderator. It is after midnight, I know, but it is also still Monday night in that I am still awake from Monday...does that count? Assuming for the moment that it does, here goes my first attempted participation in Mixology Monday, the world's foremost online monthly cocktail party!

The French 75: Conflict, Conundrum, Compromise
The French 75 does not necessarily originate in New Orleans but seems tied there because of the French 75 Bar at Arnaud's, which has a long association with this drink. Some legends tell that the drink was invented by Arnaud himself; regardless of who invented it, the drink was named after the French 75 cannon which was used extensively during WW I.

In The New Orleans Restaurant Cookbook (1967) Deirdre Stanforth specifies this recipe:
Arnaud's French 75
Dash lemon juice
1 oz gin
1/2 oz Cointreau
Champagne
Lemon peel
Shake lemon juice, gin, and cointreau with ice, strain into a champagne glass, and top with champagne and a twist of lemon peel

Anyone who has stopped by that bar in recent years may be surprised to see gin make an appearance. Just recently during Tales of the Cocktail my friend Paula was at the bar and ordered a French 75 "the traditional way", meaning with gin. She was admonished by the barman who told her something to the effect of "we cannot put English gin in our French Champagne." When we went there the next day, a different bartender told us that he didn't like to talk about drinks, he just liked to make them, and would make whatever the customer wanted. We had it the way they serve it, with Cognac and I believe some type of orange liqueur.

Gary Regan writes in Joy of Mixology that the French 75 invites controversy over not just the brandy/gin base but also whether to use lemon or lime juice. I have not found a recipe yet that suggests lime. His recipe calls for gin and lemon juice, over crushed ice, which begs another question--whether to serve the drink up or on ice.

Regan cites Harry Cradock's Savoy (1930) as the earliest printed reference to this drink. Cradock outlines a traditional version with gin and lemon juice, served over cracked ice, and notes that the drink, like its namesake, I suppose, "Hits with precision." Regan attributes the Cognac version to David Embry, whose Fine Art of Mixing Drinks is finally being reprinted by Mud Puddle Books.

According to Ted "Dr. Cocktail" Haigh, the French 75 is made with gin, served up in a Champagne flute. The Cognac version is called a French 125. I have read that a vodka version is the French 76, though I don't recall where. Chris McMillan, in his series on New Orleans cocktails, makes the French 75 with gin and strains it into a Champagne flute.

Since this is the Dale/David project, I should discuss DDG's version: Brandy, lemon juice, simple syrup, and Champagne; shaken and strained over ice. In the book Dale doesn't discuss this drink as he does others, so one can only speculate as to the reasoning behind his choosing brandy over gin. I made this version and then made several other of the more traditional variety (what else was I supposed to do with this open bottle of Champagne?) Dale's version is a tasty cocktail but he seems to be outnumbered by his colleagues who favor a gin-based drink.

Taking all of this into consideration, I decided that I would do my meager part to settle the score, and created this cocktail of compromise:
The French Détente
1 oz. Cognac
1 oz. Gin
1 oz. Lemon juice
3/4 oz. Simple syrup
Shake all with ice and strain into a chilled Champagne flute; top with Champagne.

Tonight is catch-up night. A week into the Dale/David Project and we are already scrambling to stay on schedule. This is amazingly similar to how college was for me, always trying to keep up with the reading. But playing catch-up with academic reading isn't nearly as fun as trying to catch up on one's drinking.

For our mixing pleasure this evening we made the Brandy Crusta, which is yet another drink from the Dale that belongs in the New Orleans cocktail wrap-up. We also shook up three more "French" drinks; and Tipsy randomly selected the "Stella's Rose", a DDG original.

The Brandy Crusta was, according to Dale, invented by Joseph Santina at a bar in New Orleans called the Jewel of the South. What makes this drink unique is the thick sugar "crust" on the rim of the glass, followed by a very wide lemon peel garnish. The rest of the cocktail is Sidecar-like--brandy, cointreau and lemon juice--with the addition of a small amount of maraschino.

In Vintage Cocktails Ted Haigh shows an early recipe (from Jerry Thomas's 1862 Guide) that calls for Cognac, lemon juice, orange Curacao, and a dash of Boker's bitters. Haigh explains that this drink is significant as an "ancestor" cocktail, having begat the Sidecar, which begat the Margarita, etc. Haigh's formulation led Gary Regan to codify the broader category of "New Orleans Sours" in his Joy of Mixology.

The French 95 is a riff on the French 75 but uses Bourbon instead of gin/brandy, and orange juice in addition to lemon juice. It is topped with Champagne and is quite tasty.

The French Kiss is a simple preparation of equal parts sweet and dry vermouths, with a lemon peel garnish. I used Vya dry vermouth and Martini sweet vermouth. This was a refreshing wine cocktail and the lemon made a big contribution.

The French Connection is a drink that surprised me when I saw it, because I had "invented" this drink last year without knowing it had already been invented. The difference between my Sun King and the French Kiss is that mine is served on the rocks with a flamed lemon peel, making it a deconstructed postmodern Sidecar, and the French Connection is served neat in a warm snifter.

We continue the Dale/David Project with another classic, the Singapore Sling. I chose this tonight because it uses pineapple juice and I happen to have a fresh pineapple in the fridge.

The Singapore Sling according to Dale DeGroff

The Singapore Sling is one of those drinks that I think has been maligned by history because of its tropical nature and the fact that it has been tasted in bastardized form at so many low budget holiday destinations or, godforbid, Red Lobster. It is the goal of the Dale/David project to dig beneath the pop culture misunderstandings of such classics--wait til we do the top shelf Long Island Iced Tea!

According to Dale the Singapore Sling was invented in 1915 at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore. His recipe calls for the following: Gin, Cointreau, Benedictine, Peter Heering Cherry Heering, Angostura bitters, lime juice, pineapple juice, grenadine and club soda (optional). We made two versions of this drink tonight. For the first we used pomegranate molasses instead of grenadine because I was trying to get at the original intent of grenadine, which was a pomegranate syrup. If you look at a bottle of Rose's Grenadine, which is what most people know as grenadine, it is all artificial flavor and high fructose corn syrup. The ingredients of Pomegranate molasses are simple: concentrated pomegranate juice.

The first drink tasted great but I was concerned by its slightly dirty brown appearance, and so I made a second drink, identical except for the substitution of Rose's grenadine for pomegranate molasses. The result was a slightly clearer drink that tasted much sweeter--still tasty, but less so by comparison. The first drink was more complex, whereas the second one was more cloying.

The drink on the left is less cloudy, and less flavorful. Thank you High Fructose Corn Syrup!

A 1968 recipe in Trader Vic's Pacific Island Cookbook calls for Old Tom Gin (an old style of sweetened gin that is not commercially available today), Cherry Heering, Benedictine, Angostura bitters, lime juice, and ginger ale. I absolutely love that there was a time when a cookbook could put Cherry Heering in a drink recipe and expect people to know what it was! Vic's drink was served over cracked ice, as were the two that I prepared tonight.

There is something about the electric green shock of green Creme de Menthe that is horrifying and at the same time alluring. It offers the cocktail mixologist an opportunity to mix a drink with a definitive color, as opposed to the ambiguousness of many of our creations (and meanwhile it is less startling than Blue Curacao or Creme de Noyeaux). For all of its aesthetic appeal, the flavor of green Creme de Menthe doesn't deliver on the promise of the color, and makes me wonder if there is such a thing as a top shelf green Creme de Menthe that tastes less...medicinal.

Absinthe Suissesse according to DDG

Dale's version of this drink consists of Absinthe, anisette, green creme de menthe, egg white and orange flower water. The tasting panel liked this drink somewhat more than I did. I think I was expecting a slightly sweeter drink. The version from Famous New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix 'Em (1937) has dry vermouth and a spoonful of sugar as well as charged water, but does not have orange flower water. As Stanley Clisby Arthur describes in his book, "Suissesse, a perfectly good French word meaning a Switzerland-born femail, lives up to the reputation earned by those hardy daughters dwelling among the rocks of their picturesque land."

During the recent Mixology Monday monthly online cocktail party, several bloggers chose to make the Absinthe Suissesse as their featured New Orleans cocktail. There seems to be a small debate over the propriety of Creme de Menthe in this cocktail, with Chuck Taggart leading the charge against it. Here is his recipe:

Absinthe Suissesse
1-1/2 to 2 ounces absinthe (to taste)
1/2 ounce orgeat
1 egg white
1 dash orange flower water (optional)
2 ounces heavy cream
1/2 cup crushed or cubed ice

Serve either shaken or blended; old traditional method is to shake vigorously for 15 seconds with crushed ice, or blend with cubed ice. Serve in an Old Fashioned glass.

The Coffee Cocktail does not include coffee, so I'm not sure where it gets its name--possibly from a coffee-like flavor? Perhaps a cappuccino-like appearance? According to Dale the drink comes from Jerry Thomas's The Bartender's Guide or How to Mix All Kinds of Plain and Fancy Drinks (1887). It consists of Cognac, ruby port, a little sugar and a small egg, shaken and strained, garnished with grated nutmeg.

The first Coffee Cocktail that we made did not seem to have the right color, so we made another one with a different port...

This one also didn't match the color of the Coffee Cocktail in Dale's book. Could it be that I used port labeled "aged" and "vintage" and not "ruby." The extent of what I know about port is that the latter type does not have a stated vintage, but that is about it. Would this make the difference?

This cocktail reminds me of the Coffee Cocktail. It is made with Cognac and Ruby Port, but instead of the egg it gets its frothiness from heavy cream. The "chocolate" comes from creme de cacao. The Chocolate Punch dates from approximately the same vintage as the Coffee Cocktail; DeGroff found the recipe in William Schmidt's The Flowing Bowl (1891).

The Chocolate Punch, a delicious dessert drink

The Allegheny is an attractive drink that Dale found in The Ultimate A-to-Z Bar Guide by Ron and Sharon Tyler Herbst. I looked through several of my own books old and new and did not find it so I am guessing that it is their own original creation, consisting of Bourbon, dry vermouth, blackberry brandy, and lemon juice.

The Allegheny is a mild-flavored drink that according to Dale can be enhanced by muddling in a piece of lemon

This drink was quite good and a hit with the tasting panel. Dry gin, dry vermouth, yellow Chartreuse, and orange bitters are stirred with ice and garnished with a flamed orange peel. Dale reports that this recipe is from Barkeeper's Golden Book (1935) by O. Bulnier. There is very little information online about this book or its author, but the cocktail is a tasty one!

While reading Doug Winship's Pegu Blog tonight I realized that I couldn't even remember the last time I had a Pegu, and couldn't remember ever trying one using Dale's recipe. The cocktail was the house specialty of the Pegu Club, a British officer's club in Burma during the time of British imperialism.

The Pegu Cocktail

Dale's recipe is different from others that I have in that DDG specifies that you begin by muddling lime wedges, orange curacao, and bitters in the bottom of the mixing glass. To that you add gin and ice and shake. Most of the recipes I have call for fresh squeezed lime juice instead of muddled lime pieces. The difference of course is that by muddling you get not just the expressed lime juice but also the essential oil from the zest, and some of the bitterness of the pith. The cocktail tasted fine, I am just curious about Dale's reasoning--is it just a matter of personal preference, or is he referencing a historically accurate technique in some way?

The first recipe in print that I have is from Barflies and Cocktails (1927--recently and deliciously reprinted by Mud Puddle Books) and it consists of gin, orange curacao, Rose's lime juice (at least they had the pre-high fructose corn syrup version), and a dash each of Angostura and orange bitters. The recipes for this cocktail are amazingly similar, in that recipes printed 80 years apart from each other don't differ all that much. Simon Difford prints a recipe with a small amount of sweetness to offset the "tartness of this gin based Margarita-like concoction." At the Pegu Blog, Doug posts a recipe for the One True Pegu, which I made tonight so that I would have something to drink as I finished this post.

Is this what the One True Pegu looks like at Pegu Manor? (Sorry, Doug, no Saphire--had to use Plymouth)

The One True Pegu
3 oz. Bombay Saphire Gin
1 oz. Cointreau
1 oz. Real Lime Juice
2-4 Dashes Angostura Bitters
1 tsp. Fresh Egg White

Prepare as before, only shake the Hell out of it, then get serious and shake the Hell out of it some more! Strain and serve with aforementioned lime piece.

I am with Doug here, this is a tasty formula. But I have to ask, what is the precedent for the egg white?

I have not had the pleasure of tasting a Pegu at the New York's Pegu Club, but I am curious to know what their take on it is.

We begin today's installment of the Dale/David Project with a confession: this dessert drink, which is the approximate color of the filling on an Andes mint, and tastes about like said mint taken whole... I like it. If this drink was served up at some douche hole downtown, with a name like ChocoMinTini, I would give it the proper scorn it deserves. But instead I'm just going to confess to enjoying this frothy green delight.

The Grasshopper--green creme de menthe, white creme de cacao, heavy cream, and memories of childhood. Read on...

During the Molecular Mixology seminar at Tales of the Cocktail, Eben Freeman described 'sense memory' . He explained that people hold on to memories of different tastes and aromas in ways unique to them; this is particularly important as the world globalizes. (According to Freeman, the "Locavore" phenomenon is a reaction this, as people seek reminders of things that are personal, and find ways to express themselves in flavors.) He uses the example of a cedar plank. He had once made a cedar plank bourbon, and when he sampled it to people he found out that cedar brings up a range of associations, from grandma’s underwear drawer that you knew you weren't supposed to be looking in, to the shavings in the bottom of a hamster cage, to a sauna.

I think this must be one of the great misunderstood classic cocktails. It was invented in 1944 by "Trader Vic" Bergeron. It is a relatively simple drink consisting of aged rum, orange curacao, lime juice and orgeat (pronounced or-ZHAT, it is an almond syrup that is commercially available from brands such as Torani or Monin, though you can also make it at home)

The Mai Tai is a delicious and simple drink that is often misinterpreted as a tropical travesty of grenadine, pineapple juice and orange juice.

According to the Trader Vic's Web site, Victor Bergeron "set the record straight" in his own words in 1970:
In 1944, after success with several exotic rum drinks, I felt a new drink was needed. I thought about all the really successful drinks; martinis, manhattans, daiquiris .... All basically simple drinks.

In fairness to myself and to a truly great drink, I hope you will agree when I say, "Let's get the record straight on the Mai Tai".
(Thanks to Gary Regan's Joy of Mixology for this lead)

A friend called while I was preparing the drink and said, "Ugh...that's such an 80's drink. I hate pineapple juice and grenadine." I explained that pineapple juice and grenadine didn't belong in the drink, that it was not too different from a rum margarita with a splash of orgeat. He was not moved.

Such misperceptions are common. This is from a cocktail menu at the Belmont in Austin:
Mai Tai
Tommy Bahama White Sands and Myer's Dark rums, mixed with a splash of amaretto, orange and pineapple juices. $9

That's nine dollars for a drink that they didn't even care enough about to look up the recipe before they put it on their menu. One can only guess how much care will go into the preparation...

The Clover Club is named after a turn-of-the-century social club that met at the Bellvue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia.

The Clover Club has a nice fizzy texture with a subtle taste of raspberry

The Dale Degroff recipe consists of Gin, lemon juice, raspberry syrup and egg white.
Some recipes (including that in the 1946 Old Mr. Boston) call for grenadine in place of raspberry syrup. According to Gary Regan in The Joy of Mixology, the early recipes specified raspberry syrup but over time grenadine became the norm; Regan says "use raspberry syrup if you have it at hand--without it this drink isn't much to talk about."

DDG offers another variation which involves shaking a sprig of mint with the other ingredients--we liked this version better.

This drink does not have pepper or salt (except on the rim) in it but is one of our early favorites from the Dale.

The Salt and Pepper Martini consists of grapefruit juice, gin, simple syrup and bitters. It is a bright, fresh, delicious and balanced drink. I haven't found any information yet on its origin, though it appears again in the Dale in the form of a long drink with the same ingredients but more grapefruit juice.

The earliest version of this cocktail that I have found is in the Savoy Cocktail Book (1930). The recipe in Dale's book seems faithful to this version: Gin, Dry Vermouth, with a couple dashes of Benedictine and Bitters, in a chilled glass rinsed with Absinthe.

The 1946 Old Mr. Boston has 3 cocktails bearing this name: one following the traditional recipe; the Merry Widow #2 which consists of equal parts Maraschino and Old Mr. Boston Wild Cherry Flavored Brandy; and the Merry Widow Fizz, which consists of orange and lemon juices shaken with egg white, powdered sugar, and sloe gin.

I have a curiosity about the use of "powdered sugar" in old cocktail recipes--are they referring to the same thing that we know today as powdered sugar, which I believe has corn starch in it, which seems like it would be gross? Or is it a reference to another fine granulated sugar like caster sugar?

Like Mr. DeGroff, I too cannot resist a cocktail named after a racetrack, though with my Kentucky roots I just might like the drink even more if it were named the Churchill Downs.

Since first encountering The Craft of the Cocktail I've had a fond memory in my head about this cocktail. It is balanced, depending upon the limes, and makes me want to answer yes when asked, "Would you care for another, sir?" and I find that to be one of the greatest complements one might give to a well crafted cocktail.

Posted by Tipsy

The Dale/David Project reaches an inspiring landmark tonight with drink number twenty five, which means that we are 1/20th of the way through the book. I hope that all mixologists around Austin and the world can take a look at this accomplishment and realize that they, too, can reach for the stars. Drink up, friends! The heavens await you!

The Jacana, a Dale DeGroff original that would fit in on any Texas bar's tequila drink menu.

When I first flipped by this entry in the Dale it caught my attention because it looked at a casual glance like one of those unfortunate Kitchen Sink Margaritas that you get at many bars in Austin that think they know more about cocktail mixology than they actually do. Last Friday night we met some of Tipsy's coworkers at 219 West, a bar known more for douchebaggery and never-ending happy hour than for cocktail quality. Usually at places like this I order a beer, but liquor lust and the generous happy hour pricing tempted me to order a margarita. The good news is that I now know that I don't ever have to try that again; the bad news is that the margarita tasted like Gatorade.

A little while later, seeking redemption, I walked across the street and described to the bartender the Margarita del Muerte that I'd just had at 219. He scrunched up his nose at all of the right times and judged the 219 rita with the proper "Ewwww!" that it deserved, and I asked him if he could make me a real one, with good tequila, fresh lime, and Paula's Texas Orange. He said of course, and set about building the drink. It looked good at first. Herradura silver went into the shaker, then the Paula's, then he squeezed some fresh limes. He had me and then he lost me. He didn't just lose me, he bitch slapped me and knocked me off of my stool!; by that I mean he went to the soda gun and put sour mix and soda gun oj in the tin, and topped it off with a dollop of olive juice from the garnish tray! Mmmmm... Nothing like high fructose corn syrup and finger juice of unwashed 4th St. bartender hand! I learned my lesson and stuck with beer the rest of the night.

Now for the Jacana, a DDG original that he reportedly created for Sharen Butrum on board the yacht Jacana, on the occasion of her birthday (the woman, not the yacht). This drink is margarita-like, involving Tequila, Grand Marnier, Cointreau, and fresh lime and grapefruit juices. Pretty good, pretty Texas-y.

The Big Apple Marrr...gotcha! The Big Apple Martini is dead. Don't you read? This is the Big Apple Margarita

The Dale/David Project will move forward with the theme of my previous post, the Margarita. I feel like I should get an automatic credit for this one since I made a whole video of it, just like how in High School we got P.E. credit for marching band. (Speaking of P.E. credits I am going to need some of those after this project...)

However, I didn't follow Dale's recipe exactly so I figured I better do it so as to maintain the integrity of the D/DP.

First, a question: Dale's recipe for the Margarita does not mention the salted rim as an optional feature. Nor do many other books and videos. Dale is from the northeast--does anybody know if the salted rim varies in frequency by region? Where I come from, only the stupidest server wouldn't ask whether or not you wanted salt (I don't, thank you). It's like a small town BBQ joint where they ask you if you want "Sweet or Un-sweet" Iced Tea--when there's a choice, it's rude to assume.

Moving along, I made the classic Margarita according to Dale DeGroff: 1 1/2 oz Tequila, 1 ounce Cointreau, 3/4 ounce fresh lime juice. He shakes it and strains it into a chilled cocktail glass (Seems like in Texas we serve it on the rocks...) rimmed, as I said, with salt. I don't do salty margaritas and so I didn't here.

Next up I decided to try the Big Apple Margarita. I was a bit scared of this because on quick glance it looked like a relative of the Big Apple Martini, known colloquially as the Appletini, which suffered an untimely and unfortunate death last month in New Orleans. Upon closer inspection I realized that this concoction involved neither of the two loathsome ingredients in the late Appletini: Vodka, Sour Apple Pucker. Instead it is a stout Margarita that substitutes Berentzen's Apple Liqueur for the Cointreau. And I like it. It tasted much drier than I thought it would, since the last "Big Apple" drink I tasted was, alas, the nefarious Appletini of the early 2000's.

This brings up two sticky subjects:

Okay, cats, Tex has been the predominant voice on the Dale/David Project, and what an awesome voice it is. His passion is evident in every post and every returned comment. I can’t let the day job hold me back, so I’ll try to find a voice, as well. The tiny Aqueduct post was my first late-night attempt – sad – so I’m starting off again with the Presidente.

Created for this guy . . .,

Carmen Menocal, the president of Cuba, from 1913 to 1921. There is often reference to the Vista Alegre in Havana when speaking of the cocktail’s origin. I’d have thought this was a bar, but after a little research it appears to be an area of Havana.

Most books I referenced for recipe comparison seem to all match closely with The Craft of the Cocktail. Harry Craddock’s The Savoy Cocktail Book lists a President cocktail that is quite similar, however it leaves out dry vermouth altogether and subs orange juice for curacao – so not incredibly similar. The President lacks the mystery that the Presidente provides.

At any rate, this is a sexy cocktail and a nuanced one at that. It’s one that I would order again. Cheers – Enjoy.

Margarita Week of the Dale/David Project continues with the Cadillac Margarita and the Frozen Margarita.

This Cadillac might not be luxurious enough for some Texans

Dale's Cadillac Margarita consists of 100% Blue Agave Tequila, Grand Marnier, and Fresh Lime Juice, shaken and strained into a chilled cocktail glass that has been rimmed with salt. I went ahead and gave this one a half-rim job for the picture, though I usually don't take salt with my Margaritas.

I think this concept of the "Cadillac" margarita is an interesting one. I can't speak for any place else, but in Austin you will often see some variation of this "super-premium" margarita. Whereas Dale's just calls for "100% Blue Agave Tequila", that is considered the standard for a lot of higher-end places these days. Therefore the "Cadillac" would include some extra-añejo high dollar tequila, and maybe even one of the Centenaire products from Grand Marnier, in the case of a "Millionaire's Margarita". For the prices they get for some of these "Millionaire's" margaritas, I'd come to the millionaire's house and shake drinks all night.

The Frozen Margarita, in its ubiquitous blue glass. Bowling trophy optional.

The Frozen Margarita is something that would generally not cross my lips except for during an academic endeavor such as this one. I followed Dale's recipe, which calls for 2 ounces of Tequila to 1 ounce of triple sec, and 2 ounces of simple syrup to one ounce of lime. Notice that the ingredients are much longer than in the shaken margarita; this is to accommodate for the melting water of the blended ice. The ingredients are also skewed towards the sweeter--are we to assume that this is because the Frozen Margarita drinker favors a sweeter beverage? Perhaps.

The important thing to remember is that you cannot achieve the proper frozen-ness if you put ice from your freezer into the blender. The ice from the waffle-bottom tray will be too big to properly break down; the ice from your ice maker most likely will have absorbed a bunch of funky freezer flavors. It is recommended that you pick up a bag of ice at the grocery store, the cubes are smaller and it will likely be fresher-tasting. I opted to smack some homemade ice cubes wrapped up in a towel; this worked pretty well though I still had some larger ice pieces left after blending the drink.

I chose to present this drink in the traditional blue glass that every middle age white Texan I know seems to have. I bought a bunch of these for a Tex-Mex feast that Tipsy and I prepared for my mother's 60th birthday this year. I don't know what the reasoning behind these glasses is. They're very cumbersome and I would like to know who the hell came up with such a thing.

If you want to waste 2 oz. 100% Agave Tequila, forget to put the blades on the blender cup before pouring in ingredients

This was a busy weekend at Tipsy Manor. On Saturday we had the Elvis Presley Yahrzeit Memorial Coffee Stand in the morning in honor of the King's death; in the evening we were serving cocktails at the Dai Due Supper Club's fundraiser dinner for the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance. But in between that we hosted a Bitters Practicum with local mixologists Moxy Castro and Bill Norris demonstrating the production of homemade bitters. And since we had so many great mixological minds gathered together, we thought it would be a good idea to knock out some drinks for the Dale/David Project, and so Bill became our first Guest Mixologist.

Bill's first choice was the Whiskey Peach Smash, a DDG original drink that involves muddled peach, lemon, and mint, shaken with whiskey and served on the rocks. This was a good refreshing summer whiskey drink.

The Wild Turkey Rye was Bill's choice; the recipe calls for Canadian whiskey, which we don't stock

Bill's second choice was the Honeymoon Cocktail, which was a real crowd pleaser. Consisting of Applejack, Benedictine, orange curacao, and lemon juice, this reminded me of a Sidecar. The Difford's Guide recipe calls for half of an egg white. The 1946 Old Mr. Boston does not.

The Honeymoon Cocktail originates from the Brown Derby in 1930's Hollywood

While Moxy and Tipsy were peeling citrus for the bitters project, Bill and I were shaking drinks. I happened to buy a bottle of Old Potrero the day before and was excited to find that DDG created a cocktail specifically for use with this whiskey. Old Potrero is distilled at Anchor Brewing in San Francisco, and they produce a small handful of boutique whiskeys and gins that are hard to get in Texas. Their whiskeys are unique in that they are made in a style that attempts to replicate the earliest American whiskeys, and so are not aged as long and are bottled at a considerably higher proof than most modern whiskeys.

According to Dale, drinks like this served over shaved ice are called "Mists."

The Rye Club consists of Old Potrero shaken with orange curacao (I used Grandma) and a dash of orange bitters, served over shaved ice. I didn't have the necessary hardware to create shaved ice, so I put it in a cloth sack and beat it with a heavy muddler, to good effect

I am not sure whether this drink is meant to heal a suffering bastard, or put him in that state, but I could see both possibilities. A big rummy drink that Dale describes as "A Mai Tai with orange juice." None of the books I have give any information as to the origin of this cocktail though it does appear (without other attribution) in the 1968 Trader Vic's Pacific Island Cookbook, without the orange juice specified in Dale's recipe. Anybody have an earlier citation for this cocktail?

Medium rum, Wray & Nephew overproof rum, orange curacao, orgeat, and fresh lime and orange juices.

Pousse Cafes are a category of drinks that consist of layering liqueurs of varying densities carefully on top of each other; the process is, in my opinion, tedious, though the results are visually appealing (if a bit odd flavorwise). The ABC consists of equal parts Amaretto, Bailey's Irish Cream, and Cointreau. These were relatively easy to layer--I guess this is a beginner's pousse cafe.

I attempted the much more complicated Pousse Cafe that Dale uses to introduce the category, and it has 7 layers. It started out as a beautiful drink but then one of the layers tricked another layer to switch places with it (the result, I guess, of the green Creme de Menthe I used being of a different density than the one Dale uses) Ultimately the drink began to look like a disaster and I scrapped the project for another day.

The ABC Pousse Cafe, with three layers, proved to be much easier than the7-layered Pousse Cafe that is found elsewhere in the book. If I had hit the top layer just right, it would be clear, but my hands proved not to be as steady as I thought they were!

Note: The reason why we decided to do Pousse Cafes last night is because we were out of ice. No ice = no cocktails, an important thing to remember if you plan on embarking on a journey such as this one.

Last night was a cram session at Tipsy Manor: cramming in a handful of drinks from the Dale so that we could stay on schedule for the Dale/David Project, and me cramming a bunch of buffalo wings into my mouth because I was so hungry that my stomach was digesting itself, since the meal took so long to prepare (next time--Pluckers).

Don't worry, there were more wings on the grill. I had to get the table set so that we could take a damn picture and start eating.

I decided for no apparent reason (no big game, no abundance of time) that I was going to cook Buffalo Wings from scratch--make the pepper sauce, then the Buffalo sauce; trim celery, make bleu cheese dressing; cut up chicken wings into drums, flappers, and freaky nub that nobody eats (I added these and some veggie scraps to make a quick stock), then smoke over charcoal and toss in wing sauce; cut and fry potatoes. And drink a bunch of cold Leinenkugel's, which Jenna and Tipsy thought tasted like "Grandpa beer."

While I grunted and bitched in the kitchen, Tipsy mixed cocktails with our esteemed guest Jenna Noel, associate publisher of Edible Austin magazine.

Jenna chose for her first drink the Mark Twain Cocktail. This cocktail follows a rather simple formula: Scotch + Lemon juice + sugar + bitters = yummy. It was supposedly described by Twain himself to his wife in a letter he wrote from London in 1874.

The Mark Twain was well balanced, simple, and delicious

Tipsy flipped through the Dale and found the Paris Cocktail. Consisting of gin, dry vermouth, and creme de cassis, shaken and strained, and garnished with a flamed lemon peel. It was reportedly created by Colin Field at the Hemingway Bar, Ritz Hotel, Paris.

Tipsy was getting artistic (and tipsy) with this photo. The Paris Cocktail is much sweeter than we expected.

For dessert we had a lemon cheesecake pie that a friend brought us from his aunty Marie (Calendar's). To wash it down I made two frothy creamy drinks. The first was the Parisian Blonde. According to Dale, "This is a vintage cocktail in the tradition of the classic Alexander... The name remains a mystery to me." She consists of rum, orange curacao, and heavy cream, with a few drops of vanilla as a garnish on top of the frothy head.

This cocktail was not super exciting.

Next up I made a Pink Squirrel. This is a drink that I have been meaning to make for a decade or more, ever since my first job in a restaurant/bar where they had the mysterious and aged bottle of Creme de Noyaux. If only the rest of the squirrels at Tipsy Manor were as well-meaning as this Pink one! I saw one of those bastards climbing up a tree with a couple feet of squash vine + blossoms hanging from his mouth; since all of the neighbors have dogs, the squirrels take refuge in our yard (and make refuse out of my Drinkable Estate).

The twisted little sister of the Grasshopper

The Greyhound is the fraternal twin of the Screwdriver, though it's the sibling you don't know exists until you meet him later in life and are dumbfounded at how the two of you had never met in the first place. Woah, I think that sentence needs a little more punctuation, but who give a &$#*&.

The Greyhound is a delicious tart alternative to the Screwdriver.

I was all excited by the Grapefruit Cocktail in The Savoy Cocktail Book which calls for lemon juice, grapefruit jelly and gin. An adaptation listed below the main recipe calls for gin, grapefruit juice, sugar and "plenty of ice." This appears to be a progenitor of the Greyhound, though I've only found this in one source. Cheers and let me know different.

The Japanese Cocktail is an obscure classic that appeared first in Jerry Thomas's How to Mix Drinks (1862). It does not appear to have anything to do with Japan, but it is tasty. The recipe in the Dale consists of Cognac, orgeat, lime juice, and Angostura bitters. The lime juice is a latter day addition. According to Dale's notes, the original drink involved a couple of pieces of lemon peel. Some of the versions I found still hew closely to this formula, such as the one in Simon Difford's Cocktails.

I thought it was a lovely cocktail; Tipsy thought it was too sweet. I told him to go suck a lime.

This is the highball version of the Salt and Pepper Martini I posted about below. If I had noticed this earlier I would have posted them together. Instead, I found it while scanning the book trying to figure out what to do with an "open" grapefruit.

According to Dale, he created this drink as a response to the Salty Dog, which he liked the idea of but the recipe for which he thought was boring. This is a wetter version of the S & P Martini, with 3 full ounces of grapefruit juice as opposed to 3/4 oz.

This is a sweet drink but a delicious starting off point for people who are getting into cocktails. I would recommend this to anyone drinking something salty dog-like as a "next step."

The Dale/David Project went on the road last week in an exciting trip to Houston, specifically to Beaver's and the current home bar of Bobby Heugel. (You can read about my previous Houston field trip here.) The original post was going to be Live Blogging at Beaver's! But then I had a few too many of Bobby's libations and now will be posting 4-5 days after the fact. So be it. If I had been live blogging people would have been too busy watching Olympians wrestle in skimpy singlets, which is what was on the TV at the Beave that night.

Beavers bar man Bobby Heugel honored us by mixing a few drinks from the Dale

First I want to share an image with you that I think is very intriguing. This photo was taken not at Beaver's but rather at a shitbox burger joint I can't remember the name of. The point is that there is something very appropriate about there being a Zima sign right above the urinal: Is it because it tastes like piss? Or because you might as well just pour it down the pisser?

Do they still make this stuff? It was all the rage during my high school years (before we graduated to the Mickey's hand grenades)

In addition to heading up the bar team at Beaver's, Bobby Heugel is the founder of the acclaimed DrinkDogma.com, a comprehensive online beverage resource. Whereas I just like to ramble on about drinking, post a bunch of shoddy photos, and talk the occasional smack, Bobby's site is focused on delivering usable information to readers--if I could just take a page out of his book. On this evening, Bobby very generously agreed to take a page out of Dale's book, so to speak, by participating in the Dale/David Project. But first, I tried a couple of Bobby Heugel originals.

The Lost in Madrid Cocktail

Lost in Madrid
2 oz. Plymouth Gin
1 oz. Vya Dry Vermouth
1/4 oz. Licor 43
2 Dashes Orange Bitters (Angostura)
Stir & strain, garnish with a lemon twist

The Brave is an intense experience

The Brave
2 oz. Averna Amaro
3/4 oz. Laphroaig 10 yr.
1/4 oz. Orange Curacao
1 Dash Angostura Bitters
Flamed Orange Zest
Swirl to warm thoroughly

I handed Bobby the book and he selected two cocktails. The first is the Man O' War.
The Man O' War consists of Wild Turkey 101, orange curacao, sweet vermouth, and lemon juice, garnished with an orange slice and a cherry.

Dale/David Project #43--The Man O' War

Next up Bobby made a Silver Fizz. Actually, two Silver Fizzes. The first followed Dale's recipe, which oddly has as much simple syrup as it does gin. I have made this drink several times before but never really noticed how sweet it was until Bobby made the drink following his own formula.

Dale/David Project #44--Silver Fizz

Silver Fizz (Bobby Heugel version. Double simple syrup for DDG version)
1 1/2 oz Gin
3/4 oz Lemon juice
1/2 oz Simple syrup
1 Egg white
Shake vigorously with ice so as to emulsify the egg, then strain into a highball glass--Dale calls to top with soda. The drink is served without ice.

The Dale/David Project continues and what a joy this drink is. It brings back memories of sitting in a small restaurant in the late summer in southern Germany and experiencing the beauty of the radler, a mix of lager and lemon-lime soda (the European version). Like that drink, this one is incredibly refreshing. It's a delightful blend of ale, ginger beer, lemon juice and orange curracao.

The recipe in The Craft of the Cocktail can yield two drinks depending on the size of the mug.

Known as the Shandy today, most recipes call for a mix of ale and . . .

Beer Night of the Dale/David Project continues with the Michelada. I have no idea where the Michelada comes from but it seems to be everywhere I look these days. (Including, quite tragically, in the beer case at your neighborhood grocery, in the form of Budweiser Chelada) Dale offers no historical background on the drink; there is no recipe or mention of it in the Joy of Mixology. Simon Difford refers to it simply as a "Mexican classic" in his book.

The Michelada starts in a beer glass with a squeeze of lime, a few dashes of Tabsco, soy sauce, and worcestershire sauce; with a twist of black pepper and an ounce of Maggi seasoning. Dale specifies that it is served over ice, though I see it often served without.

The Michelada is not one of my favorite beverages. But those bison sausage & potato enchiladas topped with bison chili and farmer's market cheese...

Thanks to the magic of the interweb, we have gotten our hands on a bottle of Plymouth Sloe Gin, which is not yet available in Texas.

I have to interject something here about an interesting, if uncreative, fellow that I met at Savers house of thrift last week. I was purchasing this vintage cocktail shaker with classic drink recipes on it and he says, "They don't have Sloe Gin--that's my favorite drink!" I was excited to meet a sloe gin afficionado, and explained my adventure with the bottle of Plymouth. I asked him what he liked to do with it. "I like to drink it!" he said enthusiastically. I meant that I wondered what he liked to to mix with it. "I don't mix it with nothin'! I just drink it." At that I wondered why he needed a recipe on the side of a cocktail shaker...

Today I decided to make a Sloe Gin Fizz from the Dale: equal parts gin and sloe gin, with lemon juice and simple syrup.

This one is a DDG original, folks. The inspiration would appear to be the Parisian Blond, which Tex posted about in mid-August. The frothy top makes for a beautiful presentation, and the fragrance of the Kahlua and orange curracao provides the taster with a preview of what is to come. Though I must say there is some mystery provided by the Kahlua, that same ingredient provides a cloying aftertaste that is pasted to your pallet by way of the texture of the cream.

The Mexican Blonde is sort of the dirty cousin of the Parisian Blond - more donkey show than Moulin Rouge

The Negrita is a Dale DeGroff original. Dale was thinking outside the box with this one though I'm not sure it was to good effect. This drink consists of Pisco, Coffee Liqueur, and cold espresso and is meant to be taken as a shooter.

It actually occurred to me that I may not have made this drink correctly. I chilled the ingredients and strained them into a shot glass. Upon closer reading I see that the recipe just says "Combine all the ingredients in a shot glass." This could be because of an omission on Dale's part--there are a small handful of recipes with incomplete or ambiguous instructions--or it could be because a neat drink is desired. I will make this again some time when I don't need to get to sleep.

I never really knew my godfather as he was one of my aunt's first husbands, and since she has been married a few times he was long gone before I was old enough to care about his memory. My godmother was much the same, but for different reasons. She was a good friend to my dad's family and the only reason we didn't see her often was because we moved around a bit - jumping state to state. Now where does this fit in with the cocktails at hand? No clue, but maybe they just provided for me an opportunity to reflect.

The Godmother (right) and the Godfather

These are interesting cocktails in that they each have only two ingredients. If your godparents are alcoholics, these just might be the drinks . . .

The Dale/David Project reaches a very significant milestone tonight--we've completed 10% of the Craft of the Cocktail. Of course, we should have reached that goal last week but between the excitement of watching the DNC on tv, and also the problem of Dexter, who has entered our lives via iTunes, we were unable to meet our goal. We were trying to make cocktails, but kept getting sucked into our stories. At any rate we continue exploring Dale DeGroff originals with the Rainbow Sour. This entry begins with the type of storytelling that attracted me to Dale's book in the first place.

Dale explains that Pineau de Charentes was, according to legend, discovered by accident as a Cognac producer mistakenly mixed Cognac with raw grape juice, thinking that he was blending two Cognacs. Upon realizing the mistake he left the mixture in a barrel, only to discover some time later that it was quite delicious; a new product was born to that other mother of invention, accident.

Dale's Rainbow Sour consists of equal parts Pineau des Charentes and Marie Brizard Apry (I am assuming that this means Apricot Brandy but someone please correct me if I'm wrong. This picture of "Apry" from their Web site looks like the bottle of apricot brandy I have), with lemon juice and simple syrup. I found this to be a tasty drink though it was a bit on the sweet side. I am wondering if it would be better off--and more sour-like--if it was made without the simple, given the sweetness of the other ingredients.

The Rainbow Sour, posing here aptly with my Gay Pride Muddler Holder

Dale sources The Cooperstown Cocktail from Old Waldorf Bar Days (1931), which reports that the drink was created at the hotel's Big Brass Rail bar for some money men from Cooperstown, NY. In The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930) the Cooperstown consists of equal parts dry vermouth, sweet vermouth and gin; the DDG version calls for a ratio of 1:1:4 of the same ingredients. Start by muddling a sprig of mint with the vermouths, then add gin and stir vigorously with ice. I like this drink because it is minty but not sweet (it is in fact rather dry) and feels like it is built on a classic structure.

". . . a kind of Mint Julep for the New England crowd." So sayeth DDG in his The Craft of the Cocktail in describing the Southside cocktail. Ahhh . . . The WASPy julep. Maybe that's harsh on our northern cousins, but having been born in Kentucky I can't very well give up the beloved julep to them; perhaps this is more of a Mojito for the croquette crowd than a Mint Julep for the New England crowd.

The Southside, a truly georgeous cocktail.

Either way, it's actually quite a delicious sipper, though for some reason the recipe overloaded every goblet size we have which is why I went with the glass shown, which is nice and deep. Right now Tex is . . .

The Dale/David Project stumbles into the second tenth of the project tonight with the Red Lion Cocktail (not to be confused with the Red LOIN Cocktail, which I promise to develop for all of you cocktailian love birds in the time leading up to St. Valentine's Day).

In The Gospel According to Dale, the Red Lion was created in the 1930's and was widely used as a promotional item for Booths Gin after winning a 1935 cocktail competition; more recently it has been used successfully as a marketing tool for Grand Marnier. It consists of Grandma, dry gin, fresh lemon juice and orange juice, in a ration of 2:2:1:1. Shaken and strained into a chilled cocktail glass, it is garnished with the proprietary Dale DeGroff flamed orange peel.

According to DDG, it was originally served in a glass rimmed with lemon and sugar, but I forewent this step, not wanting to, um, spoil my dinner (or my cocktail)

I did not find any other citations for the Red Lion in any of my manuals, though there is a different drink with the same name in the South American Gentleman's Companion, the lesser known book by mid 20th C beverage bloviator Charles H. Baker Jr. The version in the SAGC consists of rum, curacao, lemon juice, grenadine, angostura bitters and egg white. This version is garnished with a "pineapple stick."

I thought this would be a nice night cap but damn! It's a bit much for this late in the evening.
I don't know what the origin of the Rusty Nail is. It does not appear in any of the books I have from the 40's and 50's. It does make an appearance in the 1971 Playboy's Host & Bar Book, which I highly recommend that you pick up if for no other reason than the fabulous photography. (Sorry, no nudes, just great 70's food, drink, and fashion photography). In that book the drink is made of Scotch and Drambuie in equal measure, though DDG calls for a ratio of 2:1.
In Gary Regan's Joy of Mixology, he calls for a ratio 5:1, but explains that "this is a good recipe for experimentation, since by using different bottlings of scotch and altering the rations of base spirit to liqueur, the cocktailian bartender can learn much about ingredients."
This is a lesson I learned the hard way tonight, when I picked up the Highland Park which Tipsy opened by mistake last week. At 53.8%abv it is a bit more stout than some other Scotches I could have chosen. But I've made this bed and now must lay in it...

Tonight we made the shameful voyage to Pluckers, our neighborhood wing factory. We intended to get ice cream on the way back but forgot, and so instead decided to drink dessert. Since the Grasshopper and her cracked-out little sister the Pink Squirrel were already taken, I settled on the Colorado Bulldog.

The Colorado Bulldog--what the hell does this drink have to do with Colorado or Bulldogs?

Dale's describes this as "your basic adult egg cream," making reference to one of my favorite NY deli treats (Fox's U-Bet chocolate sauce with half & half and club soda.) However, his formula is not quite as adult as the one I recall from the early days of my drinking youth, when I actually drank concoctions such as this one. The DDG recipe consists of Kahlúa, cold milk, and Coca-Cola. The formula that I was familiar with included those ingredients plus vodka. In other words, a White Russian with Coke. This is the recipe that is found in Simon Difford's Cocktails. In the interest of fair and balanced coverage, I made the drink both ways. For both drinks I used low-temp pasteurized non-homogenized whole milk from the Remember When dairy. In place of Coca-Cola, I used Boylan Cane Cola, which is sweetened with pure cane sugar instead of HFCS. First I made Dale's recipe, and then I made Difford's, adding Tito's vodka.

Tonight we continue mixing Cointreau cocktails to honor the recent visit of Erin-Elizabeth Williams, national brand ambassador for Cointreau, whom we had the pleasure of spending time with on Monday.

The Coctel Algeria is a smoothly sweet pisco drink. For dinner Tipsy grilled grass-fed pork chops, served up with mashed sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and summer squash

According to Dale, the Coctel Algeria was on the menu of the Manhattan restaurant La Fonda Del Sol in the 1960's. It consists of pisco, Cointreau, apricot brandy and fresh orange juice. The drink is shaken and strained, garnished with a flamed orange peel.

Cointreau Week of the Dale/David project continues tonight with the Between The Sheets Cocktail.
Okay--who knew that this drink wasn't invented on Sixth Street, at a bar where bouncers stand outside and holler "Two dollar Long Islands! Three dollar Jager bombs! Ladies first drink free", where they also pour shots like Red Headed Sluts and Cum in a Hot Tub?
Not me.

The Between the Sheets is a kissing cousin of the Sidecar

This drink, as it happens, has its origins in the Prohibition Era, when, according to David Wondrich, "the nation's moral fiber wasn't what it out to have been. But then again, neither was the nation's liquor supply." Traditionally the drink is made with cognac or brandy, rum, Cointreau, and lemon juice. According to Simon Difford in Cocktails, this drink was "created in the 1930's by Harry MacElhone of Harry's New York Bar in Paris." It is a descendant of the Sidecar, though is oddly formulated with two base spirits.

Dale addresses this idiosyncrasy by substituting Bénédictine for rum. He writes, "There are other versions that omit Bénédictine and use rum instead, but two base spirits can confuse the palate; this version is more interesting." It seems like this version is the less common one, since the first five books I pulled from the shelf offer the Cognac/Rum version. Nonetheless, I agree with DDG that this an interesting, and delicious, refreshment.

Yesterday we were expecting to be pounded by the side-effects of Hurricane Ike, but instead had a hot and sunny day. Nonetheless, we continued with our Hurricane Party. We made up a couple batches of Hurricanes (not the Pat O'Briens red-dye-and-fake-fruit-in-a-glass variety), but then I got tired of squeezing pineapple juice so we moved on to the Dale/David Project, making a record eight drinks in one afternoon (until we ran out of ice--three bags).

D/DP #58: The Algonquin
The Algonquin Cocktail that appears in Dale's book consists of light rum, blackberry brandy, Bénédictine, lime juice, shaken and strained into a cocktail glass, with a cherry garnish. This version appears to come from Ted Saucier's Bottoms Up (1951); according to Gary Regan the current version consists of rye whiskey, dry vermouth, and pineapple juice.

I know this picture sucks. I didn't take it. In the photographer's defense, it was early in the day and he clearly hadn't hadn't drunk enough yet to calm his nerves.

D/DP #59 & 60: Planter's Punch
This drink counts as two entries because it appears in the book twice, once as a cocktail (p.165) and then as a punch recipe for 6 (p. 177). We made the first one to see if we liked the taste; we made the batch recipe because there were a bunch of thirsty drunks looking for something to sip on.
Planters Punch is a blend of dark rum, light rum, orange curacao, orange juice, pineapple juice, simple syrup, lime juice, a dash of grenadine, a dash of Angostura bitters; soda water is listed as optional and we opted out; garnished with an orange slice and a cherry.
According to Dale, this "an opportunity to make your own creative concoction...".

D/DP # 61: Honolulu Cocktail
Gin, pineapple juice, orange juice, lemon juice and simple syrup, dash Angostura bitters with a lemon peel for garnish.
(Um, I can't find the picture for this so you'll have to take my word for it.)

D/DP #62: Jack Rose Cocktail
Applejack brandy I used Laird's Bottled-in-Bond), simple syrup, lemon juice, grenadine; garnished with a cherry and an apple slice.
According to Albert Stevens Crocket in Old Astoria Bar Days (1931), this cocktail is named after a pink rose called the Jacquemot Rose, and not after an individual.

D/DP #63: Monkey Gland
According to Dale, Harry McElhone lays claim to this drink in ABC of Mixing Cocktails, and supposedly named after Serge Voronoff's experiments in rejuvenation. This drink is much more sexily hued than it is named.
Rinse a glass with Ricard, add Beefeater gin (except we used Gordon's), orange juice, grenadine, and garnish with a flamed orange peel.

D/DP #64: Poinsettia
I don't know why the hell we made this drink in September. Besides the fact that I don't like it, it seems like most people associate it with Christmas.
It consists of Champagne, cranberry juice and Cointreau.
Dale describes it as "A great idea for a holiday cocktail party as an alternative to champagne...". I describe it as a bunch of bullshit.

Okay I have to confess that my distaste for this drink does not stem from an actual dislike of the drink, but rather a decades-old nagging of people who mispronounce the word 'poinsettia' by saying "Poyn-se-ta". It clearly should be pronounced "Poyn-se-tee-uh." The ignorance of those countless uninformed poinsettia fans has made it impossible for me to enjoy a perfectly refreshing drink, for fear that i am going to be corrected on the pronunciation when I'm the one who's right. Ask Merriam-Webster.

D/DP #65: Tropical Cocktail
Like a daiquiri, but instead of simple syrup it has orange curacao. A dry orangey daiquiri. From the Ritz Hotel bar in Paris.

D/DP #66: Valencia II
Dale doesn't explain what the Valencia I is, but the Valencia II consists of apricot brandy, orange juice, orange bitters and Champagne, garnished with a flamed orange peel. It reportedly originates from Hollywood's Roosevelt Hotel in the 1930's.

Well, I managed to capture the flaming of the orange oil for Dale's signature flamed orange peel garnish, too bad I was eight inches away from the drink

The Island Rose cocktail consists of tequila, Kahlúa, Chambord and heavy cream. Lacking in Chambord, I used the Mathilde Framboise, which I think is delicious. Some of the folks from the Drambuie contest earlier this week should take lessons from this cocktail: a dessert drink that doesn't suck, that is interesting and not just cavity-causing.

I made this for a late-night guest who wanted something not too boozy. Dale calls for an organic rose petal garnish, which I declined, having no roses on hand, organic or otherwise.

Dale describes this drink as "kind of a Southern Stinger," referring to the "classic New York night cap" of creme de menthe and brandy. It was supposedly the house drink at the Hotel Bel-Air in LA, a former of place of employment for Dale if I am not mistaken, so he should know. I like this drink, my kind of night cap, whether or not it can claim relation to the Stinger.

Dale does not give attribution for this recipe. It consists of bourbon and Bénédictine shaken and strained into a glass filled with crushed ice.

If these posts seem short it's because I am up to my elbows with Jigger, the bundle of joy that Tipsy brought home from the office yesterday. Jigger has me up late thumbing desperately through Puppies for Dummies looking for the chapter on "How to Make Puppy Stop Eating Sofa Cushion" or "How to Make Puppy Stop Chewing on Vertical Blinds"*. I'll let you know if I find it. For those of you old enough to remember "Three Men and a Baby", that's like me and this damn (cute) dog.

*This chapter should conclude by saying that if you still have vertical blinds, this is a good time to just let the dog have them and get something less trashy.

The Banshee is another demented member of the Grasshopper family (along with the Pink Squirrel), identical except for the substitution of Creme de Banana for the Creme de Menthe. This is the type of drink that I would usually avoid, except in circumstances such as this one, in which I came up empty handed after a freezer raid looking for ice cream. In a pinch, a sweet creamy cocktail like this one satisfies.

The Banshee is nice enough but I prefer the Grasshopper

Today I had the good fortune of getting to do a guest post on the Daily Traveler blog at Conde Nast Traveler. Please check it out if you feel like hearing me spout off about Margaritas (again) and Mexican Martinis.

Homeboy pouring the Mexican Martini at Cedar Door (I personally do not like my margarita love juice running down the side of a glass that has been pawed by several people; but mainly I don't like my margarita love juice to come from a mix)

I discovered today that we had gotten some props from them a couple of weeks ago.

The Rob Roy is one of the immediate relatives of the Manhattan. It consists of Scotch, sweet vermouth and bitters. Dale specifies that the drink is garnished with a lemon twist. In Gary Regan's Joy of Mixology, he states that the drink is traditionally served with a cherry, but that he prefers the lemon twist. I like the lemon twist as well. As with the Manhattan, the Rob Roy is made with sweet vermouth but variations can be made with dry vermouth, or for a "Perfect" Rob Roy, both sweet and dry vermouth are used. Regan says that bitters are rarely used in the Rob Roy today, and that he doesn't like the taste of Angostura in this drink, suggesting Peychaud instead. I will have to try this combination another time, when I am not on my way to work.

The Rob Roy possibly gets its name from the 1890's Broadway production of the same name; in Austin, Rob Roy is a neighborhood for rich people.

Between the Austin City Limits music festival

For our mixing pleasure tonight we had guest mixologist Addie Broyles, food writer for the Austin American-Statesman. Addie claims to have never mixed a cocktail but that seems a bit far-fetched to us. Regardless she did a great job on this her maiden effort.

The White Lady is sort of like a gin Sidecar--gin, Cointreau, and lemon juice. It comes from Harry Craddock's Savoy Cocktail Book (1934)

Did you know that the popularization of the Dirty Martini is credited to Franklin Roosevelt? While I am glad that FDR was a lush, I was hoping that this travesty of a drink would belong to someone less admirable, and more dirty and briny, someone along the lines of, I don't know, perhaps a Sarah Palin. As Dale points out, anyone who has worked in a bar or restaurant would likely shy away from a drink that involves a splash of olive juice, from the jar that countless hands violate per shift.

Given that I on numerous occasions have expounded the virtues of the classic clean martini, why would I go and make a dirty one? It has to do with the bottle of Dirty Sue olive juice that came to my attention (and with the fact that the drink is in the book, and has to be made at some point). Dirty Sue is all brine, all the time, with no pesky olives to get in the way. Being no expert on the Dirty Martini, I cannot verify whether or not a martini made with this product tastes better than a martini made the traditional funky-jar-juice way. But from a sanitation perspective it is outstanding.

I personally don't prefer the Dirty Martini, but Dirty Sue may be a godsend for those of you who do. I have a bizarre vision of women toting little dropper bottles of Dirty Sue to bars so they can clandestinely doctor up their martinis, the way you see people busting out the Stevia at the coffee bar.

Remember When is a local dairy that sells its milk at our farmer's market. It is low-temperature pasteurized, and non-homogenized, so the cream rises to the top. I woke up this morning fantasizing about it. More precisely, I was fantasizing about it in a cocktail. I was thinking of cocktails that would function as an adequate eye-opener, and contain milk, and satisfy a Dale/David Project requirement. I decided that I would make a White Russian, but it wasn't in the book. The Black Russian is, however, and Dale describes it as "a classic." He uses a 1:1 ratio of vodka to Kahlúa. Gary Regan in his Joy of Mixology recommends a 2:1 ratio. Regan also suggests that this drink offers a great opportunity for creativity, substituting rum or tequila for the vodka.

What I really wanted this morning was a White Russian...

Dale describes the Stinger as "the classic New York nightcap" but doesn't explain why. According to Gary Regan, the combination of brandy and creme de menthe dates back at least as far as the Judge cocktail mentioned in William Schmidt's The Flowing Bowl (1892).

I made two versions of this drink, both of which I drank happily. The Dale version consists of two ounces of brandy/cognac and one ounce of creme de menthe, shaken and strained over crushed ice. Gary Regan's recipe calls for three ounces of Cognac to 1/4 oz-1/2oz creme de menthe. Obviously the Dale version is more menthey. The Regan version, with 3+ oz of booze, is a hell of a "nightcap," but I have to say I like it.

Stevi Deter, over at Two at the Most is our host for Mixology Monday this evening and has chosen the theme of the Guilty Pleasure. As always I am posting at the last minute, with my fingers crossed that I finish before the midnight deadline.

This theme is actually a real treat, because everyone needs to get something off of their chest. We all have a cocktailian skeleton in our closets, and I have a whole graveyard of them, each associated with a certain (usually unfortunate) period of my life, where they play symbolically like the equally shameful soundtrack of the period. There is the Red Bull/Vodka, first of all. A nasty secret shame of a drink that I haven't ordered in years but would drink if someone put one in front of me. There is of course the Piña Colada, which I actually think is a good drink that has been maligned by cocktail history because it has been made poorly so many times. Looking back further in my personal cocktail history, there is the Purple Fuzzy F*cker, a combination of Absolut Citron and Welch's grape juice, that we drank in those early years of exploring our tipsy selves(think high school); it has been a dozen years probably since I had this but I bet it would bring back so many sense memories if I tasted it right now. Then there is the entire Grasshopper family, which I am apparently obsessed with.

What I really want to come out about is my attraction to the Long Island Iced Tea. It was one of the first drinks that I became fond of when I first began to drink legally in Texas. Frank Giovinazzi was a brash New Yorker and the bartender at the restaurant where I worked, and he made them for me often. Over the years we drank them whenever we went out on Sixth St. and someone was barking them from the door of some shady establishment. "Two dollar Long Islands!" they would shout, and we would enter, against our best interests. The two dollars would buy a plastic cup of well booze with a splash of soda gun sweet & sour and Coke. It did the trick, but a culinary experience it was not.

Then came Dale DeGroff. When we bought his book that fateful night at the Half Price Books at our house, little did we know that we were about to discover not just an unknown world of classical craft mixology, but also a professional revision of some of our old favorites, namely the Long Island Iced Tea. As Dale says, "when made properly, the drink tastes great and doesn't have to be an evening ender. The key is to have all the spirits present but in small amounts." In his recipe, the total booze count is 2 1/2 oz., which is a reasonable amount and a far cry from the frat party favorite that you find in downtown Austin on any given night. I have been making these Top Shelf Long Islands for people for a couple of years now, and they are always surprised by how nice the drink can taste when it is not serving the function of Panty Dropper. As a twist, we use Boylan Cane Cola instead of Coke. It is made with pure cane sugar instead of HFCS, and has a subtle clovey flavor that I like. And since it is from New Jersey, it seems appropriate in this drink.

**I apologize for the crappy cell phone photo, I left my camera at a Flor de Caña cocktail contest tonight that we competed in.

Tonight I was thumbing through the Dale when I discovered the Blue Monday cocktail, which was quite a stroke of luck since I was listening to the Blue Monday radio program at the time. Blue Monday the show, as it happens, has been on the air since 1981 with the same host. I know this because they were doing a lot of talking since it is fund drive time again at my local NPR affiliate.

Blue Monday the show may be old, but the cocktail is even older. According to Dale, the cocktail appears in Harry Craddock's Savoy Cocktail Book (1934). The drink then consisted of vodka, Cointreau, and blue vegetable extract. In Dale's formulation, it is made with blue curacao in place of the vegetable extract, which is fine by me since I am fresh out of blue vegetable extract. Can you imagine a time when blue vegetable extract had a home behind the bar and blue curacao didn't? Such times...

Blue Monday is one of those weird blue drinks that are striking in color but so unnatural as to make them totally unappetizing. I used a flamed lemon peel where DDG called for an orange.

Dale says that the most interesting thing about this cocktail is that it is one of the earliest Vodka drinks to appear in a cocktail book. I agree--borrrring.

As I have said before, it is always with great pleasure that I discover another member of the Grasshopper family. Tonight we make the Golden Cadillac, a Grasshopper made with Galliano in place of the Creme de Menthe. According to Dale, the Golden Cadillac "was created at Poor Red's Saloon in Eldorado, California, where everything is golden." He doesn't indicate its date of creation.

The Golden Caddy is nice, and as a member of the Grasshopper family it is predisposed to be pleasing to me.

As much as I like the Golden Caddy, I decided that I thought it could be made even more golden by the substitution of Egg Nog for the cream. The results are pleasing.

I proudly present The Golden Sleigh, my first cocktail created for a holiday I don't celebrate. But in the spirit of all holidays, I invite all of my gentile brethren to come partake of this delicious cocktail that I have created in their honor.

Why is the Egg Nog already at my local grocer? It's not even Halloween yet. And why can't the Egg Nog be a little more interfaith in its packaging? As it is it looks way too Christmasy, but I like it nonetheless. My mother has some not-fully-thought-out theory about how it is actually the Jews who are really in charge of Christmas. I don't know what made me think of this. But if any of you are either a) trying to say that you came up with this drink first or b) you don't want some Yid telling you about Christmas, get over it.

This valiant fruit is one of four Meyer lemons from our maiden crop.

Tonight we had the opportunity to mix the first beverage from our Drinkable Estate. We had a bounteous fall citrus crop of exactly four Meyer lemons, and from that decided to make a Tom Collins (or two). Consisting of lemon juice, simple syrup, gin and club soda, this is a perfect drink to show off fresh lemon from the garden.

I also decided to make a version with Rosé sparkling wine in place of the club soda. I think I prefer the club soda version better, though the Rosé version makes for a sexy looking presentation.

The Pink Lady is one of those sweet creamy drinks that I have outed myself as being shamefully fond of. However, it is no Pink Squirrel, one of my clandestine cocktail lovers. The Pink Lady consists of gin, grenadine, simple syrup and heavy cream. It is therefore boozier than the members of the Grasshopper family that it bears a casual resemblance to.

Instead of using Rose's Grenadine, I used a product from Mexico called Valleti Jarabe Sabor Grendadina, basically Mexican grenadine with cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup.

Tonight the Dale/David Project tackles the Tom & Jerry, a labor-intensive but seasonally appropriate cocktail that dates back to the early part of the 19th century. This weekend is the second installment of the Oyster Club, and the location is the renowned Charles Moore House. I am doing two cocktails for the event: a Moore House Punch, which is yet to be developed; and a Zhi Tea Tom & Jerry, a variation on the classic cold-weather warmer, made with Zhi tea instead of hot water, and combined with rum & brandy and a 'batter' of eggs, sugar and spices. Zhi is a local tea company and one of the sponsors of Saturday's festivities.

The first step in the Tom & Jerry process is to beat the egg yolks until they are "watery", meanwhile stirring in a substantial amount of sugar

The Tom & Jerry is widely (and falsely) attributed to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, author of one of the very first cocktail manuals. Although Thomas did not create the drink, "he certainly did more than any other man to promote it," according to David Wondrich in Imbibe!, his award-winning biography of Thomas. Wondrich explains that Thomas told and re-told the story of his "creation" of the drink ca 1847 so many times that he likely believed it by the end of his life. In reality, there are written records of a drink called "Tom and Jerry", consisting of baking soda, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, and rum, dating as far back as the 1820's & 30's.

My arm was tired enough from the yolks that when it came time to beat the whites, I exercised my right to use the mixer.

The cocktail was prominent enough by the 1880's that every bar "worth wrecking with a hatchet would get down the china Tom & Jerry bowl and the little 'shaving mugs' that went with it." (A quick Ebay search will come up with dozens of hits for these sets) Unfortunately the drink waned in popularity by the turn of the century and is rarely seen these days. Indeed everyone whom I mentioned this to thought I was somehow referring to the cartoon.

When the whites are stiff, fold them into the yolks/spices/rum mixture until they achieve the consistency of a smooth batter

For the oyster club we decided to do a Tom & Jerry but instead of heating it with water, we would use Zhi Tea. They have a catalog of what must be a hundred or more teas, so I asked owner Jeffery "Doctor Oolong" Lorien to make some suggestions. After tasting the drink with several of his suggestions, my tasting panel arrived at Sweet Desert Delight, a rooibos-based tea flavored with cinnamon, anise pods, cacao nibs, coconut, stevia leaf, and safflowers.

(l-r) Tipsy, Mary Louise Butters, Jenna . The tasting panel decided on the Sweet Desert Delight.

To make each cup, you portion a couple of tablespoons of batter into the cup, add rum and brandy, and top with hot water (or in this case, hot tea)

Now we just hope that the weather cools off in time for the event on Saturday, though in reality we know it will be in the 80's and nobody will want our laboriously prepared hot drink.

Tonight we hosted a random chili feast. First off, my spank-ass pot of I-Want-To-Be-Jesse-Griffiths-When_I-Grow-Up Chili that I made on Sunday (from 3lbs of Thunder Heart bison stew meat, 1 lb bison shanks, 1 lb ground bison, and a pound of lamb necks from my friend Loncito; half a pound of smoked bacon, and a shload of garlic, jalapeños, onions and tomatoes. After about 5 hours the meat was all disintegrated and the marrow was about to fall out of the shank and neck bones. Yum).

I invited a few friends over for a bowl of red and a glass of white--namely all of the cheap/free white wine that I end up with each year after all of the Fall food & beverage events have passed. Addie Broyles from the Statesman and Jenna Lane from Edible Austin were here--it was like a media event, except there was no event. Little did I know that my friend Joe was going to show up with a dish of enchiladas and his f*ing super bad-ass rice. It went from a bowl of chili and a glass of free wine to full on super Tex Mex feasticle.

As much as I was trying to avoid making cocktails, I could not get out of it. This is, after all, Tipsy Manor. And people don't come to Tipsy Manor for wine (free or otherwise). So we turned to the Dale. And since I found a Thrift Store Treasure today in the form of a brand new Bodum punch bowl with the stickers still on it (for $5!), we decided on a punch.

Dale offers the Pilgrim Cocktail without much explanation of the drink's origins. Instead, he offers an endearing story about a bitter winter day in NYC when he left his bar with a tray of warm Pilgrim Cocktails to schlep them across Rockefeller Plaza to a crew of over-worked A.P. workers in the building across the street. We served the drink cold, since we are short on bitter chill here in Texas.

Dale/David Project #81--Pilgrim Cocktail
The Pilgrim punch, according to Dale, consists of dark & light rums, orange juice and lime juice, orange curacao, and bitters. AND pimento dram, which we just happen to have a bottle of on hand...

The Dale/David Project continues tonight with a couple of Galliano cocktails. I apparently have something of a crush on Galliano. It's one of those ingredients that I once thought of as being in that same category as Creme de Noyaux. Those bottles that sit at the back of your parents' liquor cabinet for years collecting dust; or the bottles that you inventory for years at the bar without ever actually noticing a change (except, perhaps, due to evaporation). For those of you who are unfamiliar with this mixological treasure, it is a brandy-based (I think) liqueur flavored with spices and a vanilla nose. Infrequently used in today's bars, it was a staple of bars a few decades ago, and many of those bottles are still sitting in home bars and liquor cabinets out there. (I would love to go on a home bar raid across America's suburbs and see what kind of treasures I could unearth...)

We bought a bottle for something a while back and then I started to wonder: is there something more, some greater destiny for the Galliano beyond the Harvey Wallbanger? By all accounts the Wallbanger (and its Mexican cousin the Freddy Fudpucker) put Galliano on the American map in the 1960's, and then took it off the map when those drinks fell out of popularity.

This Wallbanger was made with local vodka and fresh oranges from south Texas. Served in a banger-era glass that separates from the bottom piece, a cork-lined metal koozie of sorts.

First we made the Harvey Wallbanger. I do not know the origin of this beverage. It is a screwdriver with a floater of Galliano; being a vodka drink I am suspecting that it comes from the 1960's or 70's, when vodka drinks started infecting American cocktail menus. It appears in the 1977 Jones' Complete Bar Guide, but not in the Trader Vic's Bartender's Guide (1972) or the Playboy's Host & Bar Book (1971). The Screwdriver does appear in these volumes; however, neither the Screwdriver nor the Harvey Wallbanger appear in Ted Saucier's 1951 tome Bottom's Up, which mercifully has only 16 vodka cocktails. Such times were those! Only 16 vodka cocktails!!

Next up we made the Freddy Fudpucker. It is a Tequila version of the Harvey Wallbanger.

Finally, we made a Yellow Bird. I don't know where this comes from and Dale doesn't offer any hints. It consists of Rum, Galliano, Triple Sec and lime juice.

Now for a riddle:
I have two bottles of Galliano: one, the most recent purchase, says "Product of Holland."
The previous bottle, now empty and therefore not available for taste comparison, says, "Product of France." Both boast the claim "recipe created in Italy." But where is it made? Why is this "Italian" spirit being made in France/Holland?

Tonight we pick up the Dale/David Project with the Waldorf, a cocktail consisting of Bourbon or Rye and Sweet Vermouth, stirred with Angostura bitters and strained into a cocktail glass rinsed with Ricard. The astute observer will note that this is basically a licoricey Manhattan. Dale points out that the version in Albert Stevens Crockett's Old Waldorf Bar Days (1931) is made with equal parts absinthe, sweet vermouth, and whiskey. Dale's adaptation calls for Ricard, since the book was published before the contemporary re-birth of true absinthe.

The Waldorf will slap you around a bit, whether you make it with Absinthe (l) or Ricard (r)

We decided to make two versions, one following Dale's recipe and the other following that found in Patrick Gavin Duffy's Official Mixer's Manual (pub. 1934, reprinted 1956), which looks like it may have been lifted from Mr. Crockett's volume: 1/3 Bourbon Whiskey, 1/3 Pernod, 1/3 Sweet Vermouth, 3 dashes Angostura Bitters, stirred well and strained into a glass. In this latter recipe we substituted Lucid absinthe for the Pernod. We used Wild Turkey Rye for the whiskey in both cocktails; Martini & Rossi for the sweet vermouth. I think I favor the Ricard version, in that the glass was only rinsed with the spirit before the rest of the ingredients were added. Either of these cocktails will put hair on your chest if it's not already there.

He looked carefully at the barman.
"A dry martini," he said. "One. In a deep champagne goblet."
"Oui, monsieur."
"Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?"
"Certainly, monsieur." The barman seemed pleased with the idea.
-Ian Flemming, Casino Royale (1953)

With those fateful (one could argue fatal) words, the future of the gin martini was spelled out. In another decade, the mastermind behind the marketing of Smirnoff will have found the James Bond movies to be the perfect vehicle for the placement of his comparatively new product, vodka, in a popular culture setting that would forever change the landscape of spirits consumption in America. The king of all cocktails, the noble gin martini, with the introduction of a measure of vodka in Bond's Vesper, would eventually be diluted and reduced to the "martini" that is so tragically consumed today, in and out of Bond movies: Vodka--shaken, not stirred.

This story is well known in cocktail circles, but is concisely described in Dale's beautiful new book, The Essential Cocktail. Dale points out that he erred in pandering to vodka drinkers in his first book, wherein he reversed the ratios of vodka and gin. Thankfully for him he had the opportunity to correct himself in this volume; thankfully for the rest of us, Dale wrote this gorgeous book for us to drool over, as we read it in bed, falling asleep with visions of sugar rims dancing in our heads.

The reason why we decided to make the Vesper is because Tipsy's Dad had recently attended a Bond-watching party where the cocktail had been made.

As far as I can tell, the Orange Blossom is what would be known in modern parlance as a Gin n' Juice. According to Dale, David A. Embury refers to this cocktail as "the spawn of the Prohibition toad." Embury's recipe consists of gin, orange juice and simple syrup in a ratio of 2:1:1/2. I don't have Embury's volume so I do not know what else he had to say about this drink.

There's really not much going on in this drink except... orange.

Dale's version of the Orange Blossom subs Cointreau for the simple syrup and tones down the gin from Embury's version.

The 1946 Old Mr. Boston recipe consists of equal parts orange juice and gin with a pinch of powdered sugar; the recipe in Barflies & Cocktails (1927) is a straight up Gin & Juice. My personal favorite can be found in Esquire Drinks (1949), in the section titled, "Something for the Girls." It is the classic gin and juice with the addition of sweet vermouth--the conception of what the girls like has changed somewhat from those times to the present.

The Lust for Life cocktail features Galliano and therefore has an express pass to my heart. I received a voicemail after my last Galliano cocktail post from a friend of mine who used to direct the bartender training program at Columbia university. She told me, "I'm glad you're taking a stand for Galliano. I remember telling my classes, 'This is the grossest of gross, if you want your customer to hate you, make a drink with this in it.' " Well, sister, I am going there--and my customers don't hate me. They say, "Thanks, TipsyTexan, that was fabulous, may I have another?" Galliano worshippers, all of them.

This desserty dream consists of Galliano, peach liqueur, orange juice, and heavy cream, garnished with freshly grated nutmeg. The recipe is credited to Jeff Becker, with whom Dale worked at New York's Rainbow Room

The Leo Special consists of gin, Cointreau, and lime juice with a dash each of Pernod and green creme de menthe. I don't know about the origin of this cocktail; at first I thought it might be named after Dale's son, who is named Leo. But that theory was shattered when I found the drink in Patrick Gavin Duffy's Official Mixer's Manual (1956). The Duffy version does not include the creme de menthe. I had made this drink once before and find it to be quite tasty. Tastier than the name, I would say, which reminds me of something you would see on the menu of a strip mall Chinese restaurant.

We made this drink at our friend Joe's house, Tipsy Manor-in-Exile. Joe had this to say of the cocktail: "It tastes electrical! Just like it looks." (I read today in William Safire's column that F. Scott Fitzgerald believed that using an exclamation point was akin to laughing at your own joke. Thoughts?)

On Sunday we picked up the Dale/David Project with several rounds of Irish Coffee. It felt like it was at last the final day of the holiday season, and it felt like a good day to start drinking whiskey in the morning. Irish Coffee is one of those great classic drinks that is greatly abused by uninformed mixologists, professionals and amateurs alike. On the more benign end of the abuse scale is the person who makes Irish Coffee by simply spiking their coffee with whiskey, Irish or otherwise. More offensively you will find barkeeps who confusingly think that Irish Cream belongs in Irish Coffee, or who cannot resist the temptation to put green Creme de Menthe in the drink, as if to say that since it's Irish, it must be green. Right?

Wrong. The properly made drink consists of Irish Whiskey (I used the Tullamore Dew 10yr here to good effect), a simple syrup, 3-4 oz of coffee, and lightly whipped heavy cream.

In addition to a good Irish whiskey, you need the right kind of glass. The classic glass is a smallish tulip-shaped stemmed glass, often with a little "medallion" on the stem. The Irish Coffee glass is widely available at thrift stores and on sites like Ebay. There is more to it than just kitsch; the shape and size of the glass helps the mixologist ensure the right ratio of whiskey:coffee:cream. The lines on the glass indicate roughly the proportion of these ingredients. An ounce and a half of Irish Whiskey, an ounce of brown sugar syrup (some places will use a sugar cube and melt it with the coffee), 3-4 ounces of coffee, topped with freshly made whipped cream.

The cream is one of the most important ingredients and is rarely done right at public drinkeries. Under no circumstances should the aerosol variety be used. Cool Whip, no way. On Sunday, I wasn't in the mood to bust out the Kitchen Aid before enjoying my first cup of coffee of the day and so I employed some of the methodology of the "dry shake", by putting the spring of the Hawthorne strainer into the shaker with the heavy cream. The spring acts like a whisk and the cream whips up densely and nicely. You are looking for a velvety smooth consistency that is still pourable and not meringuey. The cream should float on top of the drink and look like the head on a Guinness; it is not sweetened.

The resulting beverage will leaving you thinking about it for days. You will wake up on cold mornings and not want to get out of bed, because you know you can't have this coffee. I work in the coffee business, and rarely do I advocate the adulteration of good coffee, but I'm making an exception here. And I'm making it for breakfast tomorrow. Mmm...

According to Dale, Ti Punch (short for Petite Punch) is the house drink across the French West Indies. This recipe is deceptively simple and tastes way more interesting than I thought it would on first glance. The basic recipe calls for local rum, sugar syrup, and lime juice. The Dale recipe adds Falernum, specifically nonalcoholic, though all we had was the Taylor's, which is mildly alcoholic at 11%.

The recipe calls for "local rum" so I used our Treaty Oak, produced right here in Austin

Dale says that the Ti Punch is "simple and fun, and ou can play with the recipe." So we decided to make a slightly less sweet variation, by substituting Aperol for the Falernum.

I am a confessed fan of both Stingers and anything with Galliano. However, this drink fails to satisfy either of those affinities. First of all I'm not sure where this cocktail comes from. It's not identified as a Dale DeGroff original but likewise does not feature any biographical info. Secondly, I'm not sure what the guidelines are for a drink to qualify as a Stinger, but it seems like the other nontraditional variations that I've encountered at least feature white Creme de Menthe, such as the Black Widow, made with white rum and creme de menthe. The International Stinger has Metaxa, which is by my understanding a Greek brandy liqueur, and so is somehow related to cognac, but still it seems confusing. More to the point, I didn't enjoy the taste of this cocktail. It struck me as tasting somehow like cheap scotch.

I think the only thing charming about this drink is that it uses the two most obnoxiously tall bottles behind the bar.

Following the advice of my mother ("If you don't have anything nice to say...") I'm going to shut up now about this cocktail.

The Maragato, according to Dale, "was an early recipe from the famous El Floridita Bar in Havana, Cuba." DeGroff has filed this cocktail in the chapter on the Manhattan. It consists of silver rum, sweet & dry vermouths, fresh lime and orange juices, with a dash of Maraschino liqueur (we used Luxardo). We made this cocktail at our friend Joe's house (Tipsy Manor-in-Exile) and it was met with approval by all tasters--sort of citrusy rum Perfect Manhattan.

If you're looking for something to do with that bottle Apricot Brandy that you've been sitting on for years, here is an incredible opportunity to put it to good use. The Apricot Cocktail, while perhaps lacking in name originality, is a Dale DeGroff original cocktail. The author apparently came up with this drink after experimenting with the Bermuda Rose (gin, apricot, lime, grenadine.) What he came up with is this refresher which consists of gin, apricot brandy, fresh orange and lemon juice. Garnished with a cherry and a flamed orange peel. I feel like you could use peach brandy if the kids (or grandma) already finished off your apricot.

I think it's safe to say that Bobby Heugel's new Houston bar is generating the most exciting buzz of anything going on in the local cocktail community. Anvil Bar & Refuge is slated to open next month at 1424 Westheimer, in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston. In a restoration the likes of which rarely garners the attention it deserves from the preservation board, Bobby and his crew have taken a former daiquiri den with dozens of frozen drink machines and converted it in to a respectable drinking establishment. I am of course understating the case when I say 'respectable.' Anvil is going to be one of the best bars in the south-central United States. I was in Houston a couple of weeks ago participating in a photo shoot for Rebecca Rather's forthcoming book Pasty Queen Parties (we're doing some of the cocktails), and I stopped by Anvil to talk with Bobby.

The mural on the east face of the building. The awning on the left hangs over the sidewalk along Westheimer. I think the blue neon is about the only decor element that remains from Sliders, the building's former occupant.

The anvil atop this shelf is back-lit; check out the assortment of bitters on the bottom shelf. (The liquor bottles here are dummies, in place so that photographers have some back drop against which to shoot Bobby for their stories. I don't think he likes his picture taken so I didn't make him go through that.)

The entrance is on the far left; the bar is over twenty seats long. The brick walls along the back will be lined with glass shelves holding liquor bottles and vintage glassware. The space behind the bar to the right will be a walk-in beer cooler fronted by the taps themselves. Anvil intends to have a rotating menu of obscure and exotic beers on tap. If you look closely at the foot rail, you will notice that it is a section of antique train rail from a Houston area railroad salvage yard. There is no detail these boys have overlooked.

(I lifted this photo from their Web site--Thanks Morgan!) The boys will be serving many of their cocktails in vintage glasses. This is not just for nostalgic purposes. In the pre-postmodern era, cocktails were not served in giant v-shaped glasses the size of a funnel. The classical cocktail glass has a deeper bowl. More importantly it is significantly smaller than the typical cocktail glass we see today which means that cocktails stay colder for the duration of the drink; and that patrons aren't drinking grotesquely proportioned beverages. The wells they are designing will accommodate several different kinds of ice; they are using Kold-draft ice makers.

Where the old dj booth used to be in the cheeseball daiquiri bar, Anvil is installing its wine loft.

I spoke with Bobby yesterday and he said that they have received the long-awaited approval for their plumbing diagrams and should be wrapping up construction in the next 4-6 weeks. We know these guys are just itching to get shaking but we're going to give them a few weeks after opening to let the dust settle; then we're going to take a big ole Tipsy Texan Field Trip to check this destination bar. Stay tuned for details!

We pick up the Dale/David Project tonight with the Negroni, an offshoot of the Americano Highball that replaces the club soda with gin. Little biographical information is given in Dale's first book, but he elaborates in The Essential Cocktail. According to Dale, the Negroni comes from the Casoni Bar in Florence, Italy, and was developed in the 1920's. A certain Count Camilo Negroni found the Americano too tame, as it is told, and asked that the drink be spiked with a splash of gin. The original recipe called for equal parts of Campari, Gin, and Sweet Vermouth. The cocktail degenerated over the years to a glass of gin (or sometimes, godforbid, vodka) with a splash of the two aperitifs.

Dale's recipe calls for an ounce each of Campari, Sweet Vermouth (we used Vya, which is not traditional but is still delicious), and Gin (Brokers used here. We also made a version with Beefeater and M&R). Served in a rocks glass and garnished with a flamed orange peel. (Gary Regan's Joy of Mixology recipe calls for 1.5 oz of each of these)

According to Dale, this was the official cocktail of the Vendome Club in Hollywood "ca 1930" (though that was during Prohibition.) It's one of those all-booze cocktails that requires a gentlemanly stir and is not shaken. Equal parts gin, red Dubonnet, and sweet vermouth, garnished with a lemon twist. I like it, it's like a mellow Manhattan.

The Dale/David Project continues this evening ***we interrupt this programming for an important message--damn it's cold outside! It's ice-storm-in-central-Texas cold out there so make you something nice to drink!*** with a little oddity called the Pineau Martini. The Pineau Martini is not attributed to anyone else nor does it bear the symbol that indicates it is a DDG original, so I do not know where it comes from. I first learned of Pineau de Charentes from Bill Norris of FINO restaurant; I tasted it and picked up a bottle at the Austin Wine Merchant (did you know that they will deliver to your door?). I believe that Bill was using it in a cocktail at the time but for the life of me I can't recall what, and I don't know how he learned of it.

Pineau de Charentes and Gin... mmm, two of my favorites in one convenient cocktail

I was looking through a book that I have on aperitifs and according to that source, Pineau des Charentes came into being by accident. Supposedly, a French wine maker accidentally put fresh grape must into a barrel of aging Cognac, and then forgot about it. When he revisited the barrel he discovered a beautiful golden elixir that tasted neither of wine nor of Cognac, and so a fabulous new spirit was born. If wine history is as full of bullsh!t as cocktail history, then Pineau was conceived of at a meeting of winery executives and the cutesy story was devised by their PR firm. Regardless, the stuff is great. Full bodied, fruity, and mellifluous. I love this drink. I don't, however, love it by the recipe included in Dale's book.

The recipe calls for a 2:1 ratio of P des C to Gin. I made that drink, and I drank it. Then I made one with equal parts, which I liked better. Then I made one with a ratio of 2 parts Gin to 1 part P des C, more in the mode of a traditional Gin Martini with Pineau des Charentes as the Vermouth. Needless to say these latter two versions proved more pleasant than the first, which was too Pineau-y. Robert Hess said in a seminar on the Martini that the drinker should evaluate his or her palate along the spectrum of a vermouth:gin ratio to determine what ratio is preferred; I invoke that same concept here with the Pineau Martini.

Note: I often conceive of cocktails while I'm watching movies... Sometimes, I don't even have to watch a movie before a cocktail comes to mind. Tonight,

Every once in a while I see a classic in the Dale that I can't believe we haven't done a D/DP post for yet. The Daiquiri is such an example. We are at a friend's house tonight (@edibleaustin for those of you who are tweeting tonight) and she has very rudimentary cocktail preparations so it was a real challenge to find something we could make and blog about. At least she had the ingredients for a classic Daiquiri. And since she is a publisher of Edible Austin magazine, we decided to go all-local: Treaty Oak rum, and juice from a few stragglers from the winter crop of Mexican limes.

Photo credit: Jenna Noel

The Dale/David Project continues a tour of the basics tonight with the Screwdriver. It seems like we've overlooked some of these simple drinks on our quest to make the more interesting ones. This evening the Tipsy Texans are on tour in South Austin at the residence of Jenna Noel, associate publisher of Edible Austin magazine. What Mlle Noel lacks in cocktail provisions she adequately makes up for in camera technique. So we've been shooting fabulous photos of primitive cocktails.

Photo by Jenna Noel

The Screwdriver is one of those high school level cocktails that I feel like most adults should avoid making, unless you are stirring around in the early morning looking for a simple breakfast tipple. Though Dale's book does not say as much, I believe that the Screwdriver came about in the 1960's as part of the Smirnoff Vodka Invasion of America's cocktail menus. This event represents one of the darkest periods in world history so I won't linger on it. The Screwdriver we make tonight is from local Tito's Vodka and a few stray oranges from the winter Farmer's Market. With the exception of the grapefruits, most of the citrus has disappeared from the market.

We celebrate the 100th Dale/David Project post with a tutorial on one of the great classic cocktails, the Champagne Cocktail. One of the oldest cocktails that is still regularly made, the Champagne Cocktail is attributed to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, as written in his 1862 volume How to Mix Drinks or The Bon Vivant's Companion. They don't name books like they used to, and they don't make bartenders like the Professor, who has been referred to as the "P.T. Barnum of the Bar."

We have been mixing cocktails tonight at the home of our friend Jenna Noel, of Edible Austin magazine. Jenna's grandparents reside on a sugar plantation in Louisiana. The sugar we used tonight comes from a family friend who works at the Supreme Sugar Refinery in Labadieville, Louisianna. The gentleman who provided the sugar also serves as the "nuisance alligator hunter" in the area, which is how they became acquainted. Every time Jenna's family goes back to Louisiana, they pick up a load of fresh sugar from the mill. It is raw and we put it to good use tonight.

Usually, the first step in making a Champagne Cocktail is to locate a sugar cube. If you do not have a sugar cube, but instead your grandparents own a sugar plantation, use lumps of raw sugar fresh from the mill.

Soak the sugar cubes with Angostura bitters

Fill the glass with Champagne--the coupe glass is not ideal because it doesn't show off the sexy Champagne (or, in this case, cheap sparkling) bubbles, and goes flatter faster, but it is what we have on hand tonight

Cut a nice lemon twist and garnish your Champagne Cocktail

The Champagne Cocktail

For a variation on the Champagne Cocktail, Dale DeGroff suggests that you "add a float of Cognac or Grand Marnier." I decided to add a float of locally made Paula's Texas Orange--yummy!

The Caricature Cocktail was created by Gary Regan in honor of Dale's wife Jill, who is a caricature artist. Regan admits that it is a variation of Dale's own Old Flame cocktail. The caricature consists of Gin, Campari, Sweet Vermouth and Grapefruit Juice. (The Old Flame is the same drink with orange juice instead of grapefruit, and with the addition of Cointreau.)

The Pisco Sour is apparently like the national drink of Peru and Chile where the spirit is made. As Dale puts it, "like the Bloody Mary in this country, everybody thinks his or her recipe is the best...". Traditionally the Pisco Sour is made with Pisco, lemon juice, sugar, and egg white, then garnished with a few drops of Angostura bitters.

This is how the traditional Pisco Sour should look. Bobby Heugel in Houston uses a Misto mister to put the bitters on top, which makes for a more even flavor distribution.

If you will please indulge me a little time travel, I would like to share with you another Pisco Sour that we tasted in New Orleans last summer when we were there for the Tales of the Cocktail conference. We went to Tujague's, the classic New Orleans bar with no stools that has been there for over a hundred years. So had the bar matron, as far as we could tell, and so we assumed that we could order a classic cocktail and get the real deal, given that the bar maid pre-dated Prohibition. Oy were we wrong. We sipped through a couple of Sazeracs and Manhattans (more or less passable) and then Tipsy spotted a bottle of BarSol Pisco on the bar. He asked if she could make a Pisco Sour, and she got to work. And we watched in horror as she poured ice, Pisco, a pre-made Sweet & Sour mix from a re-purposed Arizona Iced Tea jug, bitters and a squeeze of lime. She served it up with a smile and we sort of poked at it for a moment with the straw, being not entirely sure what to do.

"Did I make it wrong?" She asked. We didn't have the heart to tell her. So I ordered a Grasshopper to-go and we were on our way.

That's me with my Grasshopper in a plastic cup. And my hippo lounge singer t-shirt. I want to be like that hippo lounge singer some day, just playing my piano. And hopefully sipping on a Grasshopper.