CAM 34-43.2:Cambria
5/27/10
10:19 AM
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HOME FRONT/MEN’S CLUB
A Spirited Revival Spearheaded by a new generation of mixologists and a tasty array of boutique spirits, the classic cocktail is back with a passion. Raise a glass and enjoy: Cheers! B Y M A X B E R RY
YOU WOULDN’T KNOW IT BY LOOKING AT A
drink menu today, but prior to these halcyon days of boutique spirits and organic infusions was a dark age for the cocktail: an age when drinks named for lewd public acts usurped the menu space once reserved for the martini and the Manhattan; an age when we weren’t taking our drinking cues from sophisticated gadabouts like Jay Gatsby—not to mention those slickly sinister ad men on Mad Men—but rather from the oafish fraternity brothers in Animal House. Even James Bond didn’t have the good sense to ask for his martini to be stirred. But then something changed. Some time around the end of the last century, we remembered how to enjoy a well-made drink. And we realized what we’d been missing. Here we present an ode to the cocktail. Raise a glass. “A G L A S S O F CO C K TA I L”
The history of the cocktail is, perhaps appropriately, somewhat difficult to piece together. As a result, today’s cocktail aficionadoes tend to use Occam’s Razor when trying to divine the origins of the drink. “We disprove and eliminate everything we can to see what options are still on the board,” says Charles Joly, chief mixologist at the Chicago lounge The Drawing Room. We do know a couple things for certain. The first use of the word ‘cocktail’ occurred on April 28, 1803, when a New Hampshire paper
called The Farmer’s Cabinet used it in a humor piece: A bon vivant’s faux diary entry makes reference to “a glass of cocktail— excellent for the head.” It was never clear, however, what exactly went into said cocktail. Greater specificity came three years later, in the May 6, 1806 issue of the Hudson, New York, magazine The Balance and Columbian Repository. An editor, responding to a letter from a reader, wrote: “A cocktail is a stimulating liquor composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters—it is vulgarly called a bittered sling and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion, inasmuch as it renders the heart stout and bold, at the same time it fuddles the head.” But why call it a cocktail? There are enough theories about that to fuddle one’s head as well. One has it that an American tavern owner kept alcohol in a ceramic rooster. When patrons wanted a round they simply patted its tail. Another claims that cock-tail, a term used for mixed-breed horses, migrated over to the realm of mixed drinks. Like most tales told by a suspiciously sincere and charismatic tippler, half the fun lies in wondering how much of what you’re hearing is true. A TIME OF TRANSITION
The art of the cocktail took a decided step backward after World War II, as Americans, desperate to escape the trauma of that conflict, found nothing quite as desirable as the status quo.
The martini, preferably stirred, not shaken, now can be found in creative incarnations in fine bars everywhere.
CAMBRIA STYLE
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