By Lesley Jacobs Solmonson

2 oz Genever
1.5 oz Mango Puree
0.5 oz Fresh Lime Juice
2 tsp Agave Nectar
Tajin Seasoning

Rim a cocktail glass with lime and coat with Tajin
Add remaining ingredients to a mixing glass
Shake with ice and strain into the cocktail glass

* * *

Nothing quite captures Cinco de Mayo like Mickey Mouse. Now, before you start to worry, this story ends in the Arizona badlands circa 1860, but it begins just outside the home of everyone’s favorite rodent — on the streets of Toontown, to be exact.

One of the questions that we get a lot around 12BB is “Why no tequila?”, and our reply is typically a short “Name a classic tequila drink outside of the Margarita. Tequila Sunrise? Ever ordered one?” And that usually ends the conversation. Given that we live in Los Angeles, shrugging off the tequila becomes a bit more difficult as May approaches. Don’t get us wrong, we love Margaritas (we’re Angelenos, after all), and we felt compelled to come up with an interesting variation on the tequila-based sour – embracing the 12BB roll call while still capturing a serious dose of Mexican-American tradition. As luck would have it, the toddler loves mango, and it was mango that we bought for him from a Toontown cart during his first visit to the Happiest Place on Earth this past January.

Mango in and of itself is no revelation when it comes to cocktails. What is – and what was – is Tajin, a Mexican seasoning that, packetized, came wedged inside the plastic mango container. Simply, Tajin Classic Seasoning is a mixture of dried chili peppers, salt, and dehydrated lime juice. Even more simply put, it is God’s gift to seasonings – everything tastes better sprinkled with the stuff (or, at least, David thinks so). And, it was while we dug into Junior’s fruit that we discovered the wonderful medley of mango, lime, salt and chili, which in turn made us realize that we had the beginnings of a great Margarita variation. The only problem was the tequila – which really wasn’t a problem at all.

You might think rum would be the way to go with mango and lime, and, while you wouldn’t be wrong, you’d be overlooking the perfect tequila substitute: genever. Okay, that statement may be a bit bold, but if you enjoy tequila — especially the funkiness of mezcal — odds are you’ll be quite happy with the funkiness of genever. Like mezcal, genever can be a tricky mixer, and it takes just the right ingredients in the right proportions to make it shine. Borrowing a cue from the Holland Razor Blade, we know that a genever sour with a pinch of chili powder is an absolute delight, so adding a few additional flavors that compliment the malty warm notes and tart bright notes of the whole – namely mango and agave nectar – wasn’t a stretch. And, while there’s a lot that goes into the drink, everything revolves around a central woody tartness that makes the drink not only a great – and more interesting – Margarita substitute but also a lovely testament to the flexibility and depth of “Dutch Courage” – which brings us to the namesake of today’s tipple.

Our tale begins deep in the rural wilderness just outside of Phoenix, Arizona.  Then, as now, it’s a brooding landscape, where swirling mists often give way to sudden rain storms.  Rising out of this rugged wilderness are the imposing Superstition Mountains, home to one of America’s greatest legends – that of the Lost Dutchman Mine and a golden mother lode waiting to be discovered.

Prior to achieving statehood, the lands of Arizona once belonged to Mexico, and it was during that time that the Mexican Peralta family established a series of rich gold mines in the Superstitions.  After the formation of the Arizona Territory (1861), the Peraltas wanted to make one last trip to their mines, but an 1840 expedition had left most of their family massacred by Apaches.  Enter the proverbial “Dutchman” of our story, a fellow named Jacob Waltz (Waltz was, in point of fact, German; back in the 1800s, “Dutchman” was a slang term for a German, evolving from the German word for German: “Deutsch”) .

As one version of the story goes, Waltz and his partner Jacob Weiser were hired by the Peraltas as “Indian hunters” and, in return for protecting the family from marauding Apaches, our two “Dutchmen” struck a deal to purchase one of the Superstition mines and work it themselves. One day while working the mine, Waltz headed out for supplies, leaving Weiser to continue working the gold.  When Waltz returned, his partner was gone, the camp raided by the Apache.  Laden with what gold he could carry, Waltz turned his back on the mother lode and made his way back to Phoenix where he lived for many years, never telling a soul about the mine. Curious neighbors often wondered why he paid for expenses with small pieces of gold ore and where he went each winter, leading a pack animal and heading toward the Superstition Mountains.  It wasn’t until he was on his deathbed that Waltz confessed the entire story to his kindly nursemaid Julia Thomas, who in turn sought out the mine herself without success.

Depending on which version of the story you read, Thomas unwittingly fueled the legend by selling fake maps showing the mine’s “location”.   And, some years later, it’s said that she even gave an interview to one Pierpont C. Bicknell, writer/ lost mine seeker, who is the first to have linked the Peralta mines with the story of Waltz in an 1895 article.  The Peraltas and our “Dutchmen” have become the stuff of legend and, over the years, the Lost Dutchman Mine became something of an Atlantis for Southwestern treasure hunters.

In 1931, the bullet-riddled skull of amateur adventurer Adolph Ruth was found six months after he set out to find the Lost Dutchman mine; his death made national news, further kindling the treasure-hunting flame.  Then, sometime between 1949 and 1956, four large rocks – three tablets and a heart-shaped stone carved with symbols and Spanish writing – were found near the mine’s reputed locale by a vacationing Oregon police officer and were believed to provide an encoded map to the mine’s location.

In 1964, Life magazine published a story about the stones and their link to Waltz’s mine, again fueling the lust for gold.  Despite being dated at more than 100 years old by one expert, the pedigree of the “Peralta Stones”, as they have come to be known, is continually shrugged off by numerous historians.  Still, if you want to try your luck at solving the mystery, just take a gander at one of the many treasure-hunting forums on the web.  You are sure to find like-minded enthusiasts who continue to attempt to solve the riddle of the pictograms.

Whether the story of the Lost Dutchman’s gold is true or not, we certainly enjoyed mining its riches, so to speak.  One can easily imagine the Peraltas and the “Dutchmen” huddled over their cache of gold, clinking celebratory bottles of tequila or mezcal in the Arizona desert.  That alone (plus the exquisitely convenient Dutch/Mexican connection) is enough for us to lay claim to the story and seize the opportunity to reach for our beloved, funky genever.   This Cinco de Mayo, try turning  the traditional Margarita on its ear, and what you may uncover, my friends, is quite simply liquid gold.

As luck would have it, empirical selection method employed and all, the answer to our question “Which of the following is not a name once or currently associated with gin?” was “Old Gregg” and the winner just happens to be called Greg — or Old Gregg Greg, as he shall henceforth be known on the site.  So, a big congratulations to Greg Mays of New Mexico, and an even bigger thank you to him — and all of you — for reading and contributing your guesses.

Now, a few of you even knew a bit about Old Gregg, a Rick James-inspired hermaphroditic fish who is Keeper of The Funk and exclusively drinks Baileys.    If you’re unfamiliar, here’s your chance to catch up:

Stay tuned for more chances to win a copy of “Gin: A Global History”.

A few years back, musician David Byrne mused on the state of his industry, the decline of CD sales, and the pending demise of the retail record store. Byrne posited that CDs and music itself should not be confused with one another – that calling a CD “music” was akin to calling a shopping cart “groceries”. One was merely the packaging and delivery of the other. Music had existed long before recording and would continue to exist long after vinyl, cassette, 8-track, DAT, CD, and MP3. It’s a theory which I whole-heartedly endorse – with one exception. Ask any band about the moment they first laid eyes and hands on their debut album, all pressed and packaged and ready for public consumption. It’s one thing to send your child off to their first day of school and quite another to pick them up, knowing that in the between hours, they’ve changed and returned to you evolved somehow. Absolutely familiar yet different in ways you can’t quite put a pin on; the baby bird having finally soloed.

This may all sound a bit introspective, but it’s exactly how Lesley felt last week when we held the first copy of her just-released book, Gin: A Global History. Despite having proofed draft after draft, spent months procuring recipes and images, and searched through ancient texts and distillers’ archives – despite having lived and breathed the book for the last few years – Lesley stared at the book incredulously. It was one thing to have written it and something else entirely for her to hold it in her hands, feeling the weight, touching the slickness of the jacket, and smelling the freshly printed pages. I couldn’t wait to brag about her accomplishment – and, as luck would have it, I just happened to have the perfect place to tell the world how proud I am of my wonderful wife and her wonderful book.

In case you haven’t guessed, “Gin: A Global History” tells the story of that most important of cocktail ingredients, beginning with Pliny the Elder and ending with gin’s current artisanal renaissance. Along the way, gin and the juniper that defines it fight the Black Plague, come to the aid of the Dutch, bring London to its knees, take to the Seven Seas, invade America, battle the Feds, and lose the Cold War. In many ways, as Lesley tells us, the story of gin is the story of Western Europe and America. From its humble medicinal origins and the genever of the Low Countries, gin traveled to England, only to cripple London during the Gin Craze of the early 18^th century before giving rise to the classic London Dry style. Today, there’s a gin for everyone – malty genevers, sweet Old Toms, martini-friendly dry gins, and individual expressions containing literal bouquets of flavors.

In addition to the charming history lesson, the book includes profiles of dozens of gins on the market today, as well as recipe contributions from Gaz Regan, Dale DeGroff, Ted Haigh, Philip Duff, Charlotte Voisey, David Wondrich, and Hugh Williams – not to mention Jerry Thomas and Charles H. Baker Jr. “Gin: A Global History” is more than just a history of the spirit, it’s a perfect compendium of gin knowledge for the aficionado and the enthusiast alike.

But, don’t just take my word for it; I’m more than a bit biased, of course. I suggest that you read the book for yourself, and to make that an even easier proposition for you, we’re going to be giving away copies now and again throughout the rest of the year – starting today. For the first drawing, all that you need to do is successfully answer the gin trivia question below. Include your answer in a comment to this article, and next Monday (April 30, 2012), a toddler wearing a Native American headdress will randomly draw from a fire helmet (we don’t pretend to understand his ways) the name of someone who has provided the correct answer. Now, the question –

THE CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED, BUT THERE WILL BE MORE BOOK GIVEAWAYS TO COME.

Which of the following is not a name once or currently associated with gin?

a) Old Raj

b) Old Mr. Boston

c) Old Gregg

d) Old Tom

Please join me in congratulating Lesley on all of her hard work, and we hope that if you pick up the book, you thoroughly enjoy it. Gin: A Global History is available through online merchants and booksellers across the globe.

A few years back, Lesley and I were hanging out in London with a couple of days to spare when friends suggested that we head North to the Lake District. In preparation for our trip, we made a pit stop at our friends’ house to freshen up and gather a few necessities. Among the items deemed indispensable for the journey was a flat of mini Jägermeister bottles. It’s not a party without Jäger, right?

When we posted our 1912 – Ready-to-Drink Cocktails back in February, those mini bottles of Jäger came back to mind. Outside of carrying a self-filled flask, there’s not much on the market in the way of proper portable cocktails. While Bartles & Jaymes may help you get your buzz on — provided you don’t first get diabetes — no one is going to argue for its place in the Mixological Hall of Fame. Straight liquor minis don’t do much to solve the problem unless you’re open to a straight shot of booze (an option that’s never off the table), and while liqueur like Jäger has its charms — easy to drink and potent enough to do the job — it’s not the kind of bottle that James Bond might keep rattling around in the glove box of his DB5 (product placements be damned).

Fortunately, far more capable folk than us share our sentiment. Just days after posting our Ready-to-Drink article, we received a quite tempting inquiry from Scotland of all places, asking if we’d be interested in sampling a modern bottled cocktail. We didn’t need to be asked twice. The query came to us from Jason Scott of the Bramble Bar in Edinburgh, an establishment regularly ranked as one of the top bars in the world. Like Heublein had done a hundred years ago with its Club Cocktails (and others had done before Heublein) the good gentlemen of the Bramble have produced a bottled cocktail — one aged in wood prior to bottling. The affect of time in a barrel on a mixed drink is much the same as it is on wine or spirits — evaporation, oxidation, and an exchange of flavors/properties with the wood itself. With any product, wood can improve things or have quite the opposite affect. The natural characteristics of the type of wood used, the char level of the barrel, and the time spent in barrel will all greatly affect the final product.

“To ensure quality and consistency we approached Glenmorangie and their Master Distiller Dr. Bill Lumsden to help with wood management and barrel production,” Scott told us. By engaging such a skilled partner, the Bramble team eliminated much of the guess work that many barrel-aging trials go through. Unlike wine or spirit production, where manufacturers create or buy the raw liquid, the proposition of barrel-aging a few gallons of even wholesale priced spirits isn’t the most economical of prospects. When a 5 gallon trial run can cost (rough math) $500 to $1,000 for the booze alone, eliminating as many variables as possible is the order of the day.

Given the involvement of Glenmorangie, choosing something other than a Scotch cocktail would have been downright rude, so Team Bramble opted for the Scotch-based and wood-friendly Affinity. I say wood-friendly because everything that goes into an Affinity — Scotch, Vermouth, and Bitters — has either already seen time in wood or wouldn’t be hurt by the prospect.

The Savoy recipe for the drink is:

1/3 Dry Vermouth
1/3 Sweet Vermouth
1/3 Scotch Whisky
2 Dashes Angostura Bitters

If you like a Manhattan, the Affinity certainly should be on your cocktail bucket list. For their own particular blend, the gentlemen at the Bramble used equal parts Glenmorangie 10 Year, Byrrh (a red aperitif wine with quinine) and Noilly Dry Vermouth. Once batched, the cocktails were placed in wood. “The decision was made to produce four 5L casks of different toast levels and wood,” said Scott. “We ended up with one American oak light toast, one American medium toast, one American heavy toast and one French oak medium toast. All of which offered up varying character, nuances and flavours.”

Our friend and Scotsman Adam Elmegirab has an excellent detailed account of his attending the launch event for what the label proclaims “The World Famous Bramble Bar Presents Barrel Aged & Bottle Aged Affinity Cocktail – Genuine Potable Zeitgeist”. According to Scott, the bottles I was sent were “left in a bespoke made American Oak cask which had been lightly toasted and rested/aged for approximately six months”. Cocktails with lower ABVs need longer in wood to reap the desired benefits, so the team went into the process as forearmed as possible. In order to ensure the consistency of the final product, new oak is used, and the higher the alcohol-by-volume level, the better the odds are of the barrel remaining sterile.

When you crack the bottle — more on the bottle itself in a moment — the wood-aging is readily apparent in the nose. There’s no need to dilute the drink with shaking or stirring — just chill it well before serving (if you put it in the freezer, it will freeze solid, so be careful). I regret that I shared my drink with a large group at a dinner party, which means that I didn’t get to enjoy it as much as I would have liked. The flavor certainly lived up to the nose — hints of leather, tobacco, and vanilla but predominantly wine and citrus. Above all else, it certainly is a serious drink, even more so that a Manhattan in that respect.

I’ve read that when the drink is presented at the Bramble Bar, the patron receives a glass (empty save the garnish), the chilled Affinity, and a mister of Orange Bitters to deploy as one sees fit. Regardless of how the cocktail tastes, I’ll contend that a great portion of its success is owed to its irresistible packaging. The bottle is just cool — there’s no two ways about it. From the size and shape to the design of the label, the skull and crossbones on the cap, the hand-labeling, and the witty copy, it’s downright perfection. Simultaneously classic and wink-wink wry, the bottle immediately informs you that a tremendous amount of care has gone into the whole endeavor. It’s so nice in fact that I can’t bring myself to throw the empty away.

When it comes to serving the drink, Jason offers this advice: “I suggest the bottle is presented well chilled to the guest, preferably alongside a frosted champagne saucer with a real maraschino cherry in the glass and a lemon twist rested on the base of the glass. The idea is the guest is given ownership of their drink, allowed to crack the bottle themselves and pour the liquid undiluted into the glass and over the cherry, and finally twisting the lemon over the top of The Affinity.”

The only glaring downside to the Affinity is its availability. Outside of heading to the Bramble Bar or being lucky enough to have one sent to you in the mail, you can’t currently get the drink. Of the two bottles I received, I passed one along to a friend in the spirits import/distribution business. I hated to part with it, but I did so with the hope that the next time I head out on an impromptu road trip, I may have a more civilized choice in mini bottles.

Esoterica: On the bottom of each mini bottle of Jägermeister is series of numbers. They vary from bottle to bottle and can be used to play a poker variation. How many rounds you make it through is up to you.

This is a re-post.

1.5 oz Dry Gin
0.75 oz Dry Vermouth
0.75 oz Sweet Vermouth
0.50 oz Freshly Squeezed Orange Juice
2 Dashes Angostura Bitters

Add all ingredients to a mixing glass.
Stir with ice and strain into a coupe.
Garnish with an orange twist.

* * *

This drink is from the Savoy Cocktail Book, and it is a Bronx with bitters, which is fair enough – new drinks have been created on shakier foundations.  Ted Haigh says that “the bitters add another dimension to the construction, and with correct measurements… and the fresh-squeezed juice, it is memorable and delicious.”  Which, in a nutshell, is pretty much everything there is to say about the Income Tax, except that, on tax day, one or two of these may be just the thing.

In the meanwhile, here are some weird tax deductions we purloined from the interwebs.  We won’t vouch for their accuracy, but they’ll provide some much needed tax day relief, nonetheless.

• A man with a failing furniture business tried to deduct the $10,000 he paid an arsonist to burn down his store.
• Stripper Chesty Lover successfully deducted the cost of her 56FF implants.  They were considered integral to her stage act.
• Forget medical marijuana.  If you can get a doctor to write you a prescription for a swimming pool, it may be tax deductible.
• Bodybuilders can deduct the body oil they use to make themselves glisten in competitions.  (If only I had known this years ago).
• A man tried to deduct the cost of his wife’s mink coat.  Because she wore it to dinner with clients, he deemed it a conversation starter and part of the evening’s entertainment.
• A lawyer claimed $100,000 spent on prostitutes and porn as medical expenses in an effort to improve his osteoarthritis.
• Fearing a tax evasion charge in addition to a drug bust, a dealer decided to report his illegal earnings and pay taxes on them.  The expenses he claimed in the operation of his illegal business, however, were denied.
• A successful business man tried to deduct $50,000 in entertainment expenses – namely, the cost of his daughter’s wedding.
• Owners of a dairy successfully deducted an African safari, claiming that the study of wild animals was germane to their business.
• A man hired someone to sit with his dog on a daily basis, then tried to claim a day-care tax credit.  He was denied.
• A Spanish language teacher tried to deduct the cost of his television and his monthly cable bill, insisting that he only watched Spanish programming in order to be a better teacher.
• A man in Louisiana called a tax hot line asking how to depreciate an ostrich.  Turns out, it was a fair question, as livestock used for breeding can be depreciated.
• A CPA once kept a fishbowl of random receipts in his office.  If clients were short of deductions, they could just reach into the bowl.
• An old man lost his dentures when they fell in the toilet and tried to claim them as an act-of-God casualty loss”.
• Clarinet lessons were deemed a permissible deduction because they had been recommended by a doctor to lessen the pain of an overbite.
• If your child is kidnapped, you can still claim them as a dependent until they are eighteen.
• Just because you have a home office, doesn’t mean you can deduct your toilet paper.  Many have tried.
• When her husband cheated on her, a woman gave away everything he held dear and tried to claim it all as charitable donations.  Her accountant took it as far as he could – to the legal maximum – and swore the return would be audited.  It never was.
• A woman wanted to get rid of trees on her property.  She had them appraised, donated them, and successfully deducted them.
• An elderly woman claimed a tenant as her nephew and a dependent for three years.  Of course, she also failed to report the rent he paid her over this time.
• Another elderly woman, who had been prescribed to take dancing lessons by her doctor, tried to deduct over $50,000 in lessons, gowns, and cruise trips for her and her twenty-year-old “instructor”.
• A man (I’m assuming) asked his accountant to deduct a donation he made at a sperm bank.  He filed for a “depletion allowance”.
• A woman (I’m assuming) tried to claim $2,000 in gynecologist bills as “business repairs and maintenance”.
• Any business convention held in Bermuda can be written off without even showing there was a special reason to hold your business meeting there.  The same goes for Barbados, Costa Rica, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Canada, Mexico and all U.S. possessions.

And, yes, we wrote off all of our readers as dependents.

To say that being nominated for Saveur Magazine’s 2012 Best Cocktail Blog came as a shock would be selling short the absolutely flummoxed look on my face as I returned to the office from lunch last Thursday and checked my email. I didn’t know the nominations had even kicked off – let alone the finalists chosen. There it was, however, a message from the magazine’s senior editor congratulating us. Well, dog my cats.

It goes without saying that we’re honored beyond belief not only to have been chosen from among 40,000 nominees but also to be keeping company with such heavy hitters as Camper English and Jeffrey Morgenthaler as well as This Girl Walks into a Bar, There Will Be Bourbon, and The Five O’Clock Cocktail Blog. If you’re a cocktail fan, you’ll do yourself a favor to check them out, one and all.

The above heavy hitter sentiment was galvanized for me yesterday when a Facebook comment compared Camper and Morgenthaler to the Ali and Liston of the category – a point I’ll well concede. But where does that leave us? Without the industry backgrounds, contacts, and myriad followers, I guess, well, we’re something more like the Karate Kid – or at least, we hope to be. Scrawny Ralph Macchio stuck in the ring between two World Heavyweight Champions. And we’ll be sunk without our Mr. Miyagi.

As luck would have it, you, dear reader, are our Miyagi. Without the built-in following of the big guys, we need a bit of a grass roots effort not just to vote for us but to spread the good word to vote for us. Tell two people and ask them to tell two people, and – you get the idea. What’s in it for you? A better 12 Bottle Bar. The recognition we receive is the only currency we have when we cold call someone like Daniel Handler or Lloyd Kaufman and ask them to play along with our shenanigans. A little badge of honor helps more than we can say.

So, here’s what we’re shamelessly asking you to do:

1. Register at Saveur.com.
2. Log into the site.
3. Vote for 12 Bottle Bar in the Best Cocktail Blog category. (Make sure you click on the BIG RED VOTE BUTTON. If you don’t see it, you’re not logged in).
4. Spread the word to vote via Facebook, Twitter, on your site, in elevators, or just shout it out in crowded movie theaters.
5. Pat yourself on the back for a job well done. Or, have a cookie. You deserve it. Really, you do.

Voting ends April 26^th, so get cracking. We can’t hold this crane position for very long.

The following things are true:

1. I live in a suburban morass (a new favorite word of the toddler) in which the biggest culinary events of recent memory are the arrivals of Big Wangs and the Tilted Kilt.
2. When asked, my neighbors regularly elect places like Big Wangs and Tilted Kilt – not to mention Starbucks and Jack-in-the-Box – as the best of breed in their respective categories.
3. Several quality mom-and-pop shops around me ceased operations over the past few years, unable to compete against the ever-encroaching chains.
4. I’ve been catching up on Breaking Bad lately, which means that when Daniel Berman over at FUSSYlittleBLOG asked me to spread the good word about a campaign he has going on, I couldn’t say no. Daniel’s a friend, and if Breaking Bad has taught me anything, it’s that loyalty trumps all.

I’ll keep things simple by cutting to the chase. The Times Union of Albany, New York is conducting its annual “Best of the Capital Region Poll” through April 20^th. Daniel, whose site covers the food and drink of the region, is determined to convince his neighbors that there is indeed a better local sandwich to be had than the one found at Subway. A noble effort, I’m sure you’ll agree. To do this, he has assembled his own choices for the winners in each category – not to promote one place over another, mind you, but to call attention to the sad reality that quality too often comes out significantly under-represented when the results of such endeavors are announced.

Now, if you don’t happen to live in the Albany region, that’s okay; you too can participate. Daniel has assembled a voting guide on his site – just follow his choices for the given categories, and when you get to the Local Media page, don’t forget to vote for FUSSYlittleBLOG as the best area blog (I also included the site as the best thing about the region – my own electronic BabaBooey, if you will).

Like most of you, I’ve never met Daniel – at least, not in the flesh or even on the phone – but over the years, I’ve certainly come to respect his taste in what’s good. Moreover, I admire the man fighting the good fight. So, please join me in offering up some support for Daniel’s campaign by voting in the Times Union’s poll before the April 20^th deadline. Here’s what you need to do:

Go to: FUSSYlittleBLOG to get your FUSSYlittleBALLOT voting guide. Be sure to “like” the page as well.

Then, vote: in the Times Union’s Best of the Capital Region Poll.

And, finally, spread the word.

Now, if only someone would come fix my neighborhood.

1 oz Irish Whiskey
5 oz Hot Black Tea
1 dash Angostura Bitters
0.5 tsp Sugar (or to taste)

Add sugar to a heat-proof mug
Add hot tea, then whiskey and bitters
Stir gently

Featured Glassware:  Urban Nature Basics Goblet by Villeroy & Boch

* * *

I start my day with a fundamental question:  coffee or tea?   And, while it may seem like a simple problem, I often find myself weighing the qualities of each beverage – the thick, roasted satisfaction of my au lait versus the bracing astringency of Assam and a splash of milk.  These days, tea wins out more often than not, and as tea is also a fundamental component of many a classic punch and cocktail, I’m always happy to find an excuse to feature a drink containing some measure of my morning pick-me-up.  Should that drink also highlight Irish Whiskey, well, then we’ve got the makings for a great St. Patrick’s Day libation.

At this time last year, we turned our attention toward the heart of the Emerald Isle and a proper Irish Coffee made the way they do in Cashel.  This year, we thought we’d celebrate the Irish emigrant – the one who by choice or as a guest of Her/His Majesty, found himself resettled on distant shores.  It’s estimated that approximately 12% of Americans claim some level of Irish heritage, giving the United States nearly eight times as many “Irish” citizens as Ireland itself.    I think that one of the key reasons I am so fond of the Irish is because they are so fond of and welcoming towards Americans – a quality not always easily found abroad.

I can’t speak to the provenance of the Colonial Boy outside of saying that I was first introduced to it about two years ago over at the Irish Whiskey Society forums.   The drink appears here and there across the internet with the only variation being one site which forgot the bitters.  That’s a shame because the bitters are really key here.  To provide a proper baseline against our Irish Coffee of last year, we again reached for our bottle of Powers.  While the whiskey blends nicely with the tea – in our case, Irish Breakfast, naturally – it’s really the bitters that pull the drink together.  Angostura brings in wonderful allspice notes but feel free to experiment with whatever bitters strike your fancy.  The sugar is also up to personal preference – add what tastes good or leave it out completely.

As I’m traveling this week, I’ll confess that my research surrounding the Colonial Boy wasn’t the deepest.   Most interesting among the discoveries I did turn up was the traditional Irish ballad “Wild Colonial Boy,’ which tells the tale of ‘Bold Jack’ Donahue (also John Donohue), an Irish convict taken to Australia only to escape and become one of the country’s more celebrated bushrangers.   Variations of Donahue’s exploits vary as much as the spelling of his name, but perhaps the most interesting version has Donahue as a member of the United Irishmen, a group dedicated to ousting the British from Irish shores.

As the story goes, Jack Donahue was arrested for his rebellious intent and deported to Australia in 1825 aboard the ship “Ann & Amelia”.  Not long after reaching Oz, Jack escaped along with a couple of other inmates and “went bush”.   Bushrangers were Australia’s equivalent of highwaymen – Ned Kelly being the most famous of them all – and Donahue earned himself something of a reputation as a Down Under Robin Hood.  Some called him “The Stripper”, but it’s not known whether he made his victims strip or if he stripped them of their belongings.   His brief run – which ended in 1830 with a bullet to the head (or heart) – captured the public’s imagination enough to have inspired the song “Bold Jack Donahue”.   Australian authorities reportedly banned the song, only to have “Bold Jack Donahue” quickly replaced by the strikingly similar ballad “The Wild Colonial Boy” and its hero Jack Duggan.  Ned Kelly himself was said to have been fond of the latter and sang it at Jones’ Inn in Glenrowan on the night before his capture.

If there’s anything better than a good drink, it’s a good drink with a song to go along with it.  On St. Patrick’s Day, it’s only appropriate that that song be a drinking song.   Unfortunately, despite our rich Irish heritage, we Americans are sorely lacking in the drinking song department.  Here then, we give you “The Wild Colonial Boy” as performed by The Clancy Brothers – just the thing for a St. Patrick’s Day visit to the pub.  And, be sure not to forget the Aran sweater.

Of all our bottles, Irish whiskey is the one people most often tell us to replace. It is also our most popular bottle, and the fastest growing spirit category in the United States. So, as far as we’re concerned, it’s here to stay. As with Scotch, barley is the key grain behind Irish whiskey and, also like Scotch, malted grain is key to the Irish whiskey making process. Along with the Irish traditionally favoring an extra distillation over their Scottish cousins, the chief difference – and we’re simplifying here – is that when the Scottish embraced the more economical and pure (and often less flavorful) column still, the Irish held on for dear life to their pot stills, which produce a funkier, more complicated and less economical spirit – and it was almost the death of them. Fortunately, times have changed, and Irish whiskey is making a comeback.

Today, pure pot still whiskeys such as Green Spot and Redbreast remain the truest expressions of Ireland’s distillation heritage while the more familiar brands such as Bushmills, Jameson, and Powers cut the pot still distillate with grain neutral spirit (vodka) to offer more “easy drinking” and lower cost blends. When it comes to making cocktails, we think Irish spirit soars, especially in a classic Whiskey Sour.

Add all ingredients to a mixing glass.
Shake with ice and strain into a coupe.
Finish with a lemon twist.

* * *

This is a re-post done for obvious reasons.

The choices were:  we wait until February 29^th, 2012 to run this drink, or we run it today and repost it again next year.  Guess which option won?  As you might expect, this one was created to celebrate a leap year – 1928 in particular – and it is one of the few drinks in the mighty Savoy Cocktail Book which is actually attributed to the author, Harry Craddock.  Why celebrate Leap Year 1928?  Well, given that Craddock took over the Savoy bar in 1925 and published his book in 1930, it was the only leap year he had to celebrate – so why not?  In his shoes, we certainly would have done the same.  In the Savoy book, the note below the recipe for the drink states that “it is said to have been responsible for more proposals than any other cocktail that has ever been mixed,” an understandable claim, as although our version packs lots of booze, it’s so light and goes down so easily — and deliciously — that two will have you agreeing to anything.  Which got us thinking…

Placing leap year on hold for a moment, let’s instead begin with New Year’s Eve, 1879, a night when both February 29th and marriage play a significant role in the goings-on at New York’s Fifth Avenue Theatre.  A strapping young man by the name of Frederic is celebrating his twenty-first birthday and the end of his apprenticeship to a band of pirates.   His apprenticeship has been a tragic mistake, as his hard-of-hearing nursemaid believed that she was turning him over to the care of a “pilot,” but now, that is all behind him.  All that remains is for Frederic to slay his comrades – after all, it’s his civic duty to thwart piracy – even though they are his closest friends in the world.  Fortunately for the pirates, before the bloodshed can begin, a group of beautiful young ladies – all sisters – appear from over the rocks, and the men, especially Frederic who has never seen a woman outside of his old nursemaid, turn their thoughts from weapons to woo.

Among the flock of fine fillies, doe-eyed Frederic discovers his paramour in Mabel – only after asking all of Mabel’s sisters to marry him, of course, and suffering rejection.  You’ve got to admire the boy’s persistence.   Feeling it is the honorable thing to do, Frederic warns the girls of the pirates lurking nearby, but his notice comes too late – the pirates are upon them.  As the pirates take the girls captive, the sisters caution that their father is an army Major-General, and he will have none of this.  Soon, the Major-General makes his grand entrance and convinces the pirates to release his daughters while Frederic calls in the local police and vows to put an end to his ex-brethren once and for all.

There’s just one problem, Frederic’s nurse and the Pirate King turn up to inform him that it isn’t his twenty-first birthday – it’s his fifth, well, fifth-and-a-quarter.  As it turns out, Frederic was born on February 29^th – leap year day – making him just over five years old, if you go by actual birthdays, and thus still indentured to the pirates for another 63 years.  Things escalate until the sergeant of the police declares that the pirates yield in the Queen’s name, which, being loyal British men, they naturally do.  In fact, as luck would have it, they’re not really pirates at all but noblemen gone wrong.  Of course, the Major-General is only too happy to surrender his daughters to noblemen, and everyone, including Frederic and Mabel, lives happily ever after.

Many of you caught up with the plot from the first sentence, but if the above sounds  strange and quite bizarre to you, welcome to the world of Gilbert and Sullivan, emperors of the musical comedy.  Definitely two of the most successful men to ever compose for the stage, W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan put together a body of work – fourteen works in twenty-five years – that define the very notion of comic opera.  The plot above, of course, is from The Pirates of Penzance.  Aside from the leap year bit and the enormous amount of proposing, what does any of this have to do with the Savoy Cocktail Book?  Good question – we’re coming to it.

Key to the whole riddle is why G&S would debut Pirates in America, not their native London.  No sooner had the curtains opened on their previous effort, H.M.S. Pinafore, than unauthorized copies were mounted all across America.  In an effort to protect their copyright, the pair, along with their manager-producer, Richard D’Oyly Carte, decided to premier the first run of Pirates on Broadway – with a single makeshift staging occurring in London the day before the American debut, all in the name of copyright protection.  Many musical theatre scholars have noted that the titular “pirates” refer to both those in the play and those against whom Gilbert-Sullivan-Carte were taking a stand.

Sullivan was particularly excited about the production, as indicated in a letter home to his mother: “I think it will be a great success… The music is infinitely superior in every way to Pinafore — ‘tunier’ and more developed, of a higher class altogether. I think in time it will be more popular.”  And, he wasn’t wrong.  Like H.M.S. Pinafore before it, Pirates was a hit.  The New York Tribune claimed it “a most brilliant and complete success”.  The New York Times wrote: “The performance was received with the utmost enthusiasm, and it was evident that the new piece was a success.”  And, when the piece premiered in London, The Times offered: “On the first night the satisfaction of the crowded audience was boundless.”

With the double-whammy of Pinafore and Pirates, Gilbert and Sullivan were sitting at the top of the musical comedy world, but the battling of the copyright pirates was achieving very little.  Carte decided on a new tactic – he would build his own theatre to house their next production, Patience, although the theatre wasn’t finished until part way through Patience’s run, mostly due to lengthy government delays (Carte had started his plans for the space several years before).  Upon its opening, The Times claimed of the new opera house – the first in London to be entirely lit by electric light – “a perfect view of the stage can be had from every seat in the house.”  Apparently it made a difference, as Patience became Gilbert and Sullivan’s biggest hit to date.

While a great deal of the musical duo’s success was no doubt due to their infinite talent, Carte’s efforts as a promoter were second to none.  The sale of sheet music was a big source of revenue in the day.  If you bought one Gilbert and Sullivan libretto, you also bought an advertisement for another.  Billboards proclaiming the success of the works in America – Pinafore was being produced simultaneously at over 100 venues – were plastered about London.  And when it came time to promote his new theatre, the Savoy, Carte shamelessly plugged it as the one true home of Gilbert and Sullivan, built upon a site (the long-gone Savoy Palace) dedicated to the history of England.  Carte had designed the Savoy to “be appreciated by all persons of taste” and claimed it a respite from other houses, which were decorated “in a more or less garish manner”.  More than anything, however, the Savoy Theatre was the house that Gilbert and Sullivan built.

If you’ve read our post on the Savoy Cocktail Book, you’ll know that it was just a handful of years later that Carte would decide to extend his empire of luxury by erecting a hotel, also the Savoy, adjacent the theatre.  Without Gilbert and Sullivan, we think it safe to say that there would be no Savoy Theatre nor, in turn, a Savoy Hotel.  No Savoy Hotel, of course, means no job for Harry Craddock, and no cocktail book.  Indeed, this is truly a case of one unfortunate leap year – that from Pirates – begetting another delicious one.

Today’s Lagniappe (a little something extra):

So skilled were Gilbert and Sullivan that they can make the latter day work of George Lucas almost watchable:

Here’s the visual part of that same piece with some new music: