Did They Monkey With the Recipe?
[The Wall Street Journal]
Eric Felten: 'A century ago, in the days before antibiotics, the gathering dangers of growing licentiousness were very much on the minds of the doctors treating social diseases. At a January 1907 meeting of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Dr. Howard Kelly of Baltimore presented a paper arguing that “if we can effectively protect the innocent, there will be no more transmission of venereal disease.” As reported in the American Journal of Obstetrics, Dr. John B. Deaver rose to give his learned colleague a hearty hear, hear, and also to place the blame for the situation where it was due: “I have often been astonished to find that cocktails were served at dinner where ladies were present,” the good doctor harrumphed, “and more greatly surprised to find that the ladies drink them more heartily than the men.” Dr. Deaver proclaimed himself to be “strongly opposed to such customs, believing that they are the root of the evil,” and he singled out for disapprobation the Caruso cocktail, calling it “the latest innovation.”'

Sampling Absinthe's Dubious Charms
[The Wall Street Journal]
Eric Felten: 'Absinthe -- flavored with, among other things, wormwood -- gained a reputation as a toxic hallucinogen. In 1915 it was banned in France, the country that had embraced it all too enthusiastically, and soon absinthe was illegal in most Western countries. In the past decade, those prohibitions finally started to fall away, first in Europe and then, two years ago, in the U.S. The new rules allow real wormwood-flavored absinthes to be sold as long as they contain only small amounts of thujone, the wormwoody compound long thought to be responsible for any psychoactive qualities the old absinthes may have had. There's been a proliferation of absinthe brands hoping to snatch up drinkers curious about the liquor's transgressive mystique.'

Spirits Rising
[The Wall Street Journal]
Joseph Tartakovsky: 'In 1831, Pyotr Smirnov was born to illiterate Russian serfs in a village so remote that walking at night required clanking metal sticks together to scare off the wolves lurking at forest's edge. But he had ambition and intelligence. As a teenage apprentice to an innkeeper- uncle in a nearby town, he observed the mechanics of pricing and supply. In his 30s he set up shop himself as a small-time liquor peddler. By 1886, he was selling two-thirds of Moscow's vodka. Soon he was purveyor to the czar, presiding over a company whose product saturated the vast Russian empire. In "The King of Vodka," Linda Himelstein shows how Smirnov pulled off his commercial coup and founded a company that, in one form or another, exists to this day.'

Women Behind Bars
[The Wall Street Journal]
Eric Felten: 'For its culinary gala this year the James Beard Foundation is celebrating "Women in Food," and they are not neglecting the contributions of women in what has become a vibrant sector in the world of cuisine -- cocktails. More than a dozen prominent female bartenders will be mixing original drinks at the May 4 dinner in New York. This may not seem remarkable in our current state of enlightenment, but for the better part of the nation's history women bartenders were more likely to get notoriety than fame. Typical was the 1892 crackdown in St. Louis on "saloon keepers who employ women as attendants." The New York Times reported that prosecutors had secured indictments against half a dozen proprietors for "employing females in dramshops." How odd that women would be barred from behind the bar. After all, one of the great legends of how the cocktail came to be credits a colonial barmaid, one Elizabeth "Betty" Flanagan.'

A Welcome Sign of Vodka's Decline
[The Wall Street Journal]
Eric Felten: 'It's now official (and not a moment too soon): Vodka is passé. The documentation comes in the new edition of Food & Wine magazine's annual drinks book, "Cocktails '09," which hits shelves in a couple of weeks. Each year since the series began in 2005, Food & Wine has collected signature concoctions of prominent (or at least well-publicized) bartenders nationwide. The books have given us a running guide to recent fashion in drinks and are every bit as valuable to the curious and thirsty looking for up-to-the-moment quaffs as they will someday be to cocktail historians. And the early 21st-century trend that stands out more than any other is the steep decline in drinks using vodka.'

He Was a Cocktail Artist
[The Wall Street Journal]
Eric Felten: 'After years and years of scribbling, revising and reconceiving, F. Scott Fitzgerald, in 1934, published his novel of dissolute Americans in France, "Tender Is the Night." Ernest Hemingway didn't like the book, and told Fitzgerald so. "Goddamn it you took liberties with peoples pasts and futures that produced not people but damned marvellously faked case histories," Hemingway wrote in a blistering letter to his old friend. "You cheated too damn much in this one." For all the indignation, one would think that Hemingway was responding to an unflattering portrait of himself. But his anger was in defense of Gerald Murphy and his wife, Sara, the socialites who served as the thinly veiled source material for the novel's central characters, Dick and Nicole Diver. The Murphys' seaside salon at Antibes hosted a circle of friends who defined art and literature in the 1920s -- regular guests included not only Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, but Hemingway, Picasso, Cole Porter, Dorothy Parker, Archibald MacLeish and Robert Benchley. This pantheon sunned the days away at the beach and enjoyed impeccable dinners under the grand silver linden tree that framed the garden at the Murphys' Villa America. But before dinner, they were treated to cocktails -- and usually cocktails of Gerald's own invention.'

Bacon sandwich really does cure a hangover
[The London Daily Telegraph]
'Researchers claim food also speeds up the metabolism helping the body get rid of the booze more quickly. Elin Roberts, of Newcastle University's Centre for Life said: "Food doesn't soak up the alcohol but it does increase your metabolism helping you deal with the after-effects of over indulgence. So food will often help you feel better. "Bread is high in carbohydrates and bacon is full of protein, which breaks down into amino acids. Your body needs these amino acids, so eating them will make you feel good." Ms Roberts told The Mirror: "Bingeing on alcohol depletes neurotransmitters too, but bacon contains a high level of aminos which tops these up, giving you a clearer head."'
[tip of the fedora to Andrew Stuttaford]

Tax Rebellion in a Jar
[The Wall Street Journal]
Stuart Ferguson reviewing King Of The Moonshiners: '"The time has come when an honest man can't take an honest drink without having a gang of revenue officers after him," complained Zebulon Vance, a former governor of North Carolina, in 1876. That same year Lewis R. Redmond, a fellow North Carolinian, killed a revenue agent near Brevard, N.C., when the agent tried to arrest him for making and transporting illegal whiskey. The murder elevated Redmond (1854-1906) from obscure moonshiner to notorious outlaw and folk hero. Soon enough he had crossed the state line into South Carolina and, with the aid of friends, evaded attempts to bring him to justice. In fact, Redmond turned the tables and pursued his pursuers -- the government agents -- through the Blue Ridge mountains, invading their homes and rescuing his gang members from jail.'

Helen And Marie
[Arts & Ammo]
Fitzroy: 'There is truth in lore, even when the historical details are in disarray. I refer, of course, to the shape of the champagne coupe. The saucer-shaped glass has fallen out of favor in preference for the flute, which preserves the chill and bubbles for slow drinkers. But the coupe has a sensuous shape, and stories have sprung up about how it was modeled on (or actually molded from) the breast of some famed beauty: Marie Antoinette, Madame de Pompadour, Helen of Troy. Discovering which individual, if any, served as the true model is a fools errand. Truth lies elsewhere.'

Some Cocktails Are Supposed to Taste Funny
[The Wall Street Journal]
Eric Felten: 'Having grown up in a dry household, my first introduction to the concept of the cocktail came, as so much essential cultural knowledge does, by way of Looney Tunes. Saturday mornings in front of the tube, I learned the basic cartoon conventions -- such as the understanding that gravity kicks in not when Wile E. Coyote goes off the edge of a cliff, but only when he looks down and realizes it. Also among the animated verities: Mixed drinks are outrageously potent, and their debilitating effects kick in (like gravity) only after a comic pause.'

Draft Dodgers
[ReasonOnline]
Greg Beato: 'For DIY brewers, Prohibition lasted until 1978. But once unleashed, they revolutionized the industry. “I’d say over 90 percent of small brewers I talk to today have roots in home brewing,” says Papazian, who now serves as president of the Brewers Association, a trade group. “The creativity and innovation they’ve brought to the business has been amazing. The American wheat beers. The fruit beers, the honey beers, the chocolate beers. They were all homebrews first.” Anyone whose thirst for finely crafted beer exceeds their thirst for finely crafted beer commercials should be grateful.'

Decline of the Dry Martini
[National Review Online]
Son of Judge Bork, Charles, from 2007: 'I recently had the opportunity to reprise the decline of the West using the history of the dry martini as a proxy for Western civilization. This was accomplished with the aid of a barmaid who poured five simultaneous-but-historically-diverse martinis — each with a gin-to-vermouth ratio considered daringly dry in its day. Liquid representatives of The Gilded Age, The Jazz Age, The Greatest Generation, The Worst Generation and The Postmodern Age were arranged on the bar in chronological order for this tour of the decline of the Western martini.
To standardize test conditions, each cocktail was ordered “up with twist” and “stirred not shaken.” As a group these cocktails represent the death march of a great culture: first to achievement, then to excess.'

Judge Bork And Martinis
[National Review]
Judge Bork from 1996: '...No, there is only one drink that conveys conservative correctness, spreads warmth and courage throughout one's soul, and has the additional merit of being the most delicious cocktail ever invented. I refer, of course, to the dry martini, a distinctively American invention, which Bernard DeVoto called the "supreme American gift to world culture." (Not that the world accepted the gift very eagerly: until recently the only sure way to get a decent martini in England was to go behind the bar and make it yourself. Most of the rest of the world is hopeless.) The awful truth, however, is that the martini was on the verge of extinction. Just a few years back, no one under the age of forty drank it. Though I can hardly take full credit for the drink's resurgence, I made a contribution. When I was a judge, I used to tell my clerks, who had never tasted one, that martinis are essential to cultural conservatism. Furthermore, I described the ideal recipe. Several of them accepted my argument, with only one unfortunate result: they took to entering bars in Washington and ordering "Judge Bork martinis." This gave a somewhat false picture of life in my chambers.'

The Story of Booze
[The American]
Kevin Kosar: 'Most books on alcoholic beverages are not very good. The authors seldom conduct original research, rarely footnote their claims, and repeat the tall tales and hooey peddled by booze companies and their public relations firms. Equally problematic is the matter of passion: booze writers tend to be booze lovers, which makes them all too susceptible to romanticism and outright sentimentality. Though a fan of alcohol, Iain Gately avoids this tendency, for the most part. Drink (Gotham, $30), his new “cultural history” of booze, abjures the warm and fuzzy in favor of stories that are at times bawdy and fantastically stupid. The result is a humorous and sometimes intriguing book that one can dip into at any point.'

Licorice Whipped
[The Smart Set]
Jason Wilson: 'So the cognescenti have swiftly given the official Thumb’s Down on poor old absinthe. Just over a year ago, the mythic, louche liquor of 19th-century Parisian decadence was classified as a dangerous, potentially hallucinogenic, and banned substance by the U.S. government. By the end of 2008, absinthe was now very legal and very in demand, dovetailing with the recent craze for classic, speakeasy-era cocktails. At least a half-dozen premium brands had come on the market, most selling for over $60 a bottle.... You knew the inevitable backlash was only a matter of time.'

Bad News for Martini Drinkers
[The Wall Street Journal]
Eric Felten: 'Martini drinkers are conservatives. Not necessarily politically, but in temperament: They abjure fad and fashion in drink, hewing to the Platonic form of the cocktail. They would stand athwart history yelling Stop -- if yelling weren't inconsistent with the proper comportment of a Martini drinker. They dislike change. It is with some trepidation, then, that I bring what is almost certain to be received as appalling news: Noilly Prat, the dry vermouth considered by many devotees to be the only choice for a well-made Martini, is changing its U.S. formula. Noilly Prat promises that these changes provide access to "the elegant and relaxed French lifestyle" and "an old-world European sensibility." [!!!]'

Hair of the Dog and Other 'Cures'
[The Wall Street Journal]
Eric Felten: 'Everything old is new again: Medicinal bitters from the bark of exotic trees were the defining ingredient in the original "cocktails, drinks that got going in earnest as a remedy for the after-effects of too much punch or julep or cobbler. The cocktail was thought of as a morning drink -- to be tossed back in hopes of reviving one's damaged constitution. The cocktail canon is lousy with bracers, gloom-lifters, eye-openers and corpse-revivers.'

Regular Drinking Women See Male Faces As More Symmetric
[FuturePundit]
'Even when sober women who drink more are less able to detect male facial asymmetry. So crooked-faced guys should look for female regular drinkers.'
[tip of the fedora to Instapundit]

Reviving the Martini's Lost Ancestor
[The Wall Street Journal]
Eric Felten: 'Where did the Martini come from? It is a question the exact answer to which is lost to the boozy mists of barroom history. But the rough lineage of the drink is known: the Manhattan -- whiskey and sweet vermouth -- begat the Martinez, a mix of sweetened gin and sweet vermouth, a drink that soon came to be known by the more popular name Martini. But the Martinez-style Martini, made of Old Tom gin, Italian vermouth, bitters, and usually a taste of maraschino liqueur, long ago receded into legend, a missing link between the Manhattan and its evolutionary descendant, the Dry Martini. But now, the missing link can finally be tasted.'

The Secret Language of Cocktails
[Modern Drunkard]
Mike Richardson-Bryan: 'Your cocktail says something about you. For instance, ordering a martini says you appreciate the finer things in life, ordering a gin and tonic says you appreciate the simple things in life, and ordering a boilermaker says you appreciate knowing where your pants are. But mixed drinks go deeper than that, much deeper. When you sidle up to the bar and place your order, you open a window onto your very soul, revealing not only who you are, but also who you long to be. So know your cocktails and order with care, or you might send the wrong message.'

Grand Old Hotels Take the Bar Exam
[The Wall Street Journal]
Eric Felten: 'Once upon a time, hotel bars set the standard for sophisticated drinking, with barmen who were the best in the business. Jack Williams, who was the head bartender at Chicago's Palmer House before Prohibition and then at Washington's Mayflower Hotel after repeal, claimed a repertoire of over 3,000 drinks. Nowadays you're lucky to find a hotel bartender whose vocabulary extends very far beyond Vodka-Tonic. Over the past year and a half, as I traveled around the country, I stopped in at dozens of grand old hotels, incognito, to see if their bars lived up to the tradition. I found a few gems in a sea of expensive mediocrity (punctuated with the occasional fiasco).'

Celebrating Cinco de Drinko
[The Wall Street Journal]
Eric Felten: 'The demise of Prohibition, 75 years ago this coming Friday, is something of a cause for celebration, and it will be treated as such with Repeal Day parties in Washington, Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco, New York and elsewhere. The trend got started a couple of years ago, when Oregon bartender and blogger Jeffrey Morgenthaler promoted the anniversary as an informal holiday suitable for quaffing. You could say the goal of the cocktail crowd has been to make Repeal Day a sort of Cinco de Drinko.'

Paul Johnson On Drinking In Literature
[The London Spectator]
'Not long before he died, Simon Gray and I discussed the extraordinary paradox: why was it that New Labour does everything in its power to discourage smoking and everything in its power (notably longer licensing hours) to encourage drinking? After all, we agreed, drink caused infinitely more human misery, both to drinkers themselves and to their families, than cigarettes. Smoking does not produce suicides, whereas drinking does, every day. Any doctor or hospital consultant will tell you that booze kills many more people than lung cancer, and that’s not even counting road deaths caused by drunken drivers. Above all, smoking does not lead to crime, whereas over 50 per cent of violent crimes are caused by alcohol. Certainly drink needs no encouragement from government to flourish — society, in Western countries, does that pretty comprehensively. For instance, literature is drink-sodden.'

Tiki Doesn't Have to be Tacky
[The Wall Street Journal]
Eric Felten: 'With the much-repeated words "worst financial crisis since the Great Depression" marking the moment, it seems appropriate to visit that peculiarly American escape -- the tiki bar -- itself born in the depths of the Depression. It was in 1934 that Donn Beach (né Ernest Raymond Beaumont-Gantt) opened Don the Beachcomber in Los Angeles, starting a craze that took roughly 50 years to fizzle. The time seems ripe for a Polynesian Pop revival -- and, in fact, it's already under way.'

A Hood, a Posy, and a Swell
[The Wall Street Journal]
Eric Felten: 'New York Police Lt. Charles Becker was the stuff of a James Ellroy novel. Head of the "Strong Arm Squad," Becker was tasked with busting up the city's manifold illegal gambling dens. And he was very good at smashing up illicit casinos -- at least, that is, the ones that failed to pay him handsome tribute. His head bagman (the "best little poker player in New York," according to the New York Times) was a lanky fellow distinguished by his total lack of hair, having lost all his follicles to a childhood bout of typhoid. In 1911 and 1912, Jacob Rosenzweig -- affectionately known as Bald Jack Rose -- was collecting $10,000 a month for Becker, or better than $2 million a year in today's dollars. It was a racket valuable enough to protect with murder -- and resulted in a sensational killing that would bring infamy to one of the great drinks in the cocktail canon.'

Why Loud Music in Bars Increases Alcohol Consumption
[PsyBlog]
'But turning the music up so loud that people are forced to shout at each other doesn't have quite the same beneficial effect on social interactions. Because everyone is shouting, the bar becomes even noisier and soon people start to give up trying to communicate and focus on their drinking, meaning more trips to the bar, and more regrets in the morning. Of course this is exactly what bar owners are hoping for. People sitting around quietly nursing their drinks for hours are no good for profits. Talkers aren't the best drinkers. At least that is the received wisdom in the industry. And this received wisdom turns out to be accurate according to field studies conducted in French bars by Professor Nicolas Guegen and colleagues.'

Prefab Mixes: Buyer, Beware
[The Wall Street Journal]
Eric Felten: 'The infantilization of drinkers remains the top marketing point for the prefabbers. The flacks for that supermarket standby, Rose's Cocktail Mixers, sent out a press release for their Mojito mix this summer touting it as "a solution to complicated drink-making." Complicated? Crush some mint in sugar syrup and fresh lime juice; add white rum, club soda and ice; stir. Is it supercilious to suggest that those for whom this is a task of surpassing complexity are better off not dulling their wits further with alcohol?'

Alcohol helps us remember the good times - and forget the bad, experts say
[The London Daily Mail]
'Scientists have shown alcohol helps us remember the good things and forget the bad. Alcohol affects memory formation meaning that memories of the start of the night, when we are merely tipsy and are having fun socialising with our friends, are strong and happy ones. But any embarrassing antics that occur as we become more and more inebriated are quickly forgotten.'

Bacardi And The Long Fight For Cuba
[The Washington Post]
Linda Robinson reviewing Tom Gjelten's new book: 'Drinkers the world round know the name Bacardi means rum, but few non-Cubans know that this global enterprise was founded -- and is still owned -- by a Cuban family that played an important role in the island's social, political and economic history.'

What the Fuss Was About
[The Wall Street Journal]
Eric Felten looks at the once-popular cocktail the Planter's Punch.

Classicists vs. Bar Chefs
[The Wall Street Journal]
Eric Felten: 'Two schools are vying for pre-eminence in the world of high-end drinks: The classicists, who strive to perfect the canonical cocktails; and the culinary "bar chefs," who wish to elevate drinks-mixing from quotidian craft to an art on par with haute cuisine.  It's easy to distinguish the two groups, even in a hotel full of cocktail conventioneers: The classicists are the ones arguing over whether the correct recipe for a Clover Club is found in Albert Stevens Crockett's 1931 "Old Waldorf Bar Days" or Harry MacElhone's 1921 "ABC of Mixing Cocktails"; the culinary cocktailians are the ones debating which Sonoma farmer's market is the best source for organic tarragon and consulting on the chemical attributes of emulsions.'

Drink: A Cultural History Of Alcohol
[Washington Post]
Jonathan Adler reviewing Iain Gately's book: "Like it or not, alcohol has been and always will be with us, an important part of human history, culture and society. It can't be wished away, as should be understood by Americans above all, having suffered through Prohibition and its appalling consequences.  Better, instead, to face up to the inescapable reality of it and try to understand the many ways in which, over the ages, we have used and abused it, profited and suffered from it, refined it and been changed by it."

The Bacchanal: A History
[The Smart Set]
Tony Perrottet: Rich or poor, young or old, Romans loved raising a glass to the god of wine. Today, the term “bacchanal” is bandied about at almost any gathering where the guests get a bit tipsy and mildly frisky, but it originally referred to a specific ancient Roman celebration — the frenzied rites of Bacchus, god of wine and intoxication. Unlike the formal banquets so beloved by Roman aristocrats, these were essentially outdoor rave parties — anarchic romps held after dark in remote forest settings, where the quest for mania (a total festive abandon) could proceed unfettered beneath the stars.

First Amendment Lite: How the feds police liquor-related thought crime
[Reason]
'When Lance Winters, master distiller for St. George Spirits, submitted a label for his version of the spirit in 2007, it took him seven tries before he gained [Alcohol Tax and Trade Bureau] approval. First, he says, the TTB told him the word absinthe appeared in too large a font. Then it told him his label looked too much like a British pound note. Then it said the label’s depiction of a monkey beating a human skull with a pair of femurs implied that the product had hallucinogenic properties—impermissible, since the Code of Federal Regulations does not allow labels that “create a misleading impression.”  This, alas, is government by Rorschach test.'

Dispatch From a New Orleans Drinks Convention
[New York Post]
Carla Spartos: 'Indeed, there was a pervasive sense that the modern cocktail movement - which stresses fresh ingredients and a chef-like approach to drink-making - has gotten a bit too full of itself. A few took issue with the term "mixologist" and said they preferred a return to the good old days when they were known simply as bartenders. "We're not curing cancer," said Todd Thrasher of Virginia's Restaurant Eve.'

A History of Hooch
[New York Magazine]
Sam Anderson reviews Iain Gately's Drink: A Cultural History Of Alcohol.

Drink Makers Create A Stir
[The Wall Street Journal]
"Premium-liquor drinkers now have premium mixing options as drink makers are targeting upscale imbibers who don't care for standard mixers from the local supermarket.  Instead of high-fructose corn syrup and artificial flavoring, drink makers are using cane sugar and natural flavors as they roll out the next generation of tonics, cocktail sodas and mixers."

"I have already made mention of the happiness I have derived throughout my life from literature, and I should here, perhaps, acknowledge the consolation I have never failed to find in the fermented juice of the grape. Writing in sixty-fourth year, I can truthfully say that since I reached the age of discretion I have consistently drunk more than most people would say was good for me. Nor do I regret it. Wine has been to me a firm friend and a wise counsellor. Often, as on the occasion just related, wine has shown me matters in their true perspective, and has, as though by the touch of a magic wand, reduced great disasters to small inconveniences. Wine has lit up for me the pages of literature, and revealed in life romance lurking in the commonplace. Wine has made me bold but not foolish; has induced me to say silly things but not do them. Under its influence words have often come too easily which ought not to have been spoken, and letters have been written which had better not have been sent. But if such small indiscretions standing in the debit column of wine’s account were added up, they would amount to nothing in comparison with the vast accumulation on the credit side.”
DUFF COOPER

"When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading."
HENNY YOUNGMAN

"Alcohol may be man's worst enemy,
but the bible says love your enemy."
FRANK SINATRA

"I drink to make other people interesting."
GEORGE JEAN NATHAN