The Contents of Greg Ingersoll's Brain

I’ve been reading the book Imbibe! by David Wondrich who I first saw several months back on The Colbert Report. The idea behind the book is that it is a historical and very detailed guide to classic American mixology. The book includes anecdotes and recipes dating back to the mid-1800s or so, through the early 20th century, and presumably beyond (I haven’t finished reading it yet). It invokes images of what must have been a much better time for the social cocktail drinker than now. (That’s cocktail in the lowercase, generic sense; Cocktail refers to a particular drink popular after the Civil War consisting simply of spirits, gum syrup, bitters, and curaçao. [1])

Don’t get me wrong. There are still a lot of good bartenders out there, but many of them, through no fault of their own, must serve drinks made with various pre-mixed potions for the sake of speed and cost and, frankly, because the average customer doesn’t know what he’s missing anymore.

On the other hand, there are some lousy bartenders out there too. Like the one who gave me a Manhattan with soda water in it once. And the one who gave me a Rum Collins which was iridescent green and had sprite or something in it (instead of just rum, lime juice, sugar, and soda water). This is probably why I normally drink beer or straight spirits when I go out; you pretty much always know what you’re going to get.

This post isn’t meant to bash the current state of the Public House though, but rather to tip my hat to my often missed homeland to the east. I’ll do this in the form of a quote from Mr. Wondrich’s book [2].

First, Wondrich quotes Victorian novelist Charles Reade from 1863: “America is fertile in mixtures: what do we not owe her? Sherry Cobbler, Gin Sling, Cocktail, Mint Julep, Brandy Smash, Sudden Death, Eye Openers.” Then he goes on to discuss the state of things today:

What survives? The Julep (once a year anyway), and the Cocktail in the form of the Old-Fashioned (although outside of Wisconsin, not one bar in twenty can make a proper one anymore).

They do make a good Old-Fashioned.

1. Wondrich, David. Imbibe!. Penguin Group (USA), Inc. 2007. pp. 187–188.
2. Ibid. p. 123.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 25th, 2009 at 14:32 and is filed under Cocktails and Drinks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.