THE MIXOLOGIST
By Solomon Siegel
The Bitter and the Sweet Cocktail bitters are back, and they’re better.
Gary Hynes
Bitterness is bad. That is, at least, most people’s gut reaction to bitterness, the most sensitive of our five basic tastes (bitter, sour, sweet, salt and umami, or savoury). Our pallets evolved this way to stop us from eating toxic leaves, which taste bitter. However, bitters are the spice of the cocktail world. Bitters started off life as medicine. As far back as Hippocrates, medicine men and women have been steeping bitter herbs in alcohol to cure what ails you; herbs such as gentian root, wormwood, citrus peal, cinchona bark (quinine), juniper, cacao and coffee, as well as some A well-stocked bar ready to make an really toxic stuff. In the early 1800s, Old Fashion Cocktail peddlers were selling bitters as curealls. Around 100 proof, they were indeed a great antidote to the morning after. Put a couple dashes of bitters in your morning brandy with some sugar and water to take the edge off, and the cocktail is born. The first definition of the cocktail appeared in 1806 in a Hudson, New York, newspaper called The Balance and Columbian Repository. The editor’s reply to a reader’s query about the unfamiliar term “cock tail” defined it as “a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water and bitters.” Bitters were the key ingredient. On their own, spirit, sugar and water was at that time called a “sling. In 1806, then, a cocktail was a very specific drink. And the cocktail was a hit! Bartenders started making their own bitters to add to cocktails or to drink unaccompanied. Nowadays we speak of aromatic bitters such as angostura, used by the dash in certain drinks. Or fruit bitters like orange bitters, cherry and even celery. Potable bitters can be drunk on their own or mixed, like Fernet Branca, Campari and Jägermister. During prohibition, many old commercial brands of bitters disappeared and bar tending became an outlawed profession. Quality became much less of an issue than the existence of liquor at all. So, for much of the 20th century, cocktails were just about covering up the taste of alcohol, and bitters were not needed. Now things have come full circle, and mixologists have back bars teaming with little dropper bottles of bitters. Many have even started making their own, like Shawn Soole (theliquidrevolution.com), who says, “I like to make my own bitters to specifically go into certain drinks. Weird flavours that you can work with certain drinks but can’t source yourself through normal channels.” So where is the original cocktail today? In a drink we call the Old Fashion. Though there are many theories on where the name comes from, I believe people in that latter half of the 19th century were ordering “a whiskey cocktail, the old fashion way.” Out of the simple cocktail, or “old fashion,” we see the birth of many great drinks, some labelled fancy or improved by straining out the ice and adding drops of absinthe, lemon juice or liqueurs. Vermouth was added to the cocktail and the Manhattan and martini were born. Mixologists in Canada can have a hard time tracking down their bitters. Some are easy like angostura, which are on the shelves of many corner stores. Others need to be ordered online on sites such as cocktailkingdom.com and kegworks.com.
Old Fashion Cocktail
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EAT MAGAZINE MARCH | APRIL 2010
60 mL bourbon (or other spirit) 15 mL-25 mL simple syrup 2-4 dashes of angostura bitters Garnish: thin lemon or orange twist Glass: old fashion To make simple syrup: Add sugar in equal parts to hot but not boiling water. Stir until sugar totally dissolves. Allow to
cool. May be stored for about a month. Add simple syrup and bitter to the bottom of an old fashion glass. Fill with ice and add bourbon, stir until ice melts below the bourbon. Add more ice and stir for another 30 seconds. Pour a little more bourbon on top of the ice for aroma. Twist your lemon twist over top of the glass and drop in. Smile.
For a new take on a whisky cocktail, the Choke & Rye, created by Solomon go to www.EatMagazine.ca