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Listen ! listen! for one hour's attentive hearing is better than two hours'
thoughtless talking.
Old Humphrey's Addresses, 1839.
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Ada "Coley" Coleman was a celebrated early
twentieth-century bartender at London's Savoy Hotel, and she was a woman who got
her fair share of the limelight.
When she announced that she was about to retire, in 1925,
The Daily Express quoted her as saying, "I made cocktails for Mark Twain when he
came in the Savoy, Diamond Jim Brady, Prince Wilhelm of Sweden, James Corbett,
'Mr A.', the Egyptian Princess - yes, and the Prince of Wales," and noted that
she was "known to thousands of men all over the world."
In "Coley's Corner," then, we bring you links to stories
about bartenders all over the place.
We think it might make Coley smile.
In this issue we're featuring:
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Copy and paste these babies to get yerself a very complete cocktail book.
Last of Our Sea
Sorrow
Adapted from a
recipe by Jon Bonné, San Francisco.
(With thanks
and/or apologies to William Shakespeare)
The Cellarist by
Jon Bonné, San Francisco Chronicle, July 4, 2009.
For those
outside the fog belt, we're now into the throes of summer. That means, among
other things, we can indulge in proper summer drinks.
Key among them
is the Dark 'n' Stormy, that mix of dark rum and ginger beer that so perfectly
sums up the lovely dichotomy of Bermudan life -- one dose of tropical ease, one
splash of British colonial snap.
Of course, as
Jonny Miles revealed yesterday in an excellent New York Times column, the Dark
'n' Stormy must be made with a very specific rum -- Gosling's Black Seal. Or
else. The Gosling family, which has been doing business in Bermuda since about
the time the American navy was fighting the First Barbary War at the turn of the
19th century, has trademarked said drink. Should you want a Dark 'n' Stormy,
legally, there had better be Gosling's in your glass.
But as Miles
puts it, locking up the intellectual property of a drink "seems anathema to the
current bartending practice of putting creative individual spins on time-tested
drinks." Apparently open-sourcing (I rather like his description of it as "a
wiki process") has not escaped the beverage world, either.
So now seems
like the time to share a recipe I've been enjoying since last summer, one that
incidentally happens to harness three of my favorite tastes of last year.
There is the
notion of the Dark 'n' Stormy in this drink, though I view that more as
departure point than anything else. For one, the D'n'S is really more of a
highball than a cocktail -- lovely in its two-ingredient (plus garnish)
simplicity, but really more a refresher than a concoction. This brings in more
overt ginger flavor, with the Domaine de Canton providing a baseline for the
ginger ale. And lime, rather than a garnish, plays a crucial role in tying
together the richer notes of the rum and liqueur and the sharp ginger kick. As
to the rum, it really is a matter of taste. Gosling's will work here, though I
find its charred molasses notes outshout the other flavors.
One holdup: the
Blenheim No. 3 hot ginger ale. Despite my repeated kvetching, its brief
appearance at BevMo has not been repeated for a while now, and whether you
believe the theories about the scarcity of one of South Carolina's greatest
resources, it has not been around on this coast lately. (I'm down to my last two
bottles.) As a backup, I'd suggest one of the spicier ginger beers around --
Bundaberg works fine -- with a drop or two of Tabasco if you want to edge closer
to Blenheim's fire. Myself, I find the heat in the drink notably takes the edge
off a hot day.
Finally, there's
the name, especially since use of the original is so highly regulated. This one
took a while, but ultimately when thinking of the original name, my thoughts
turned to "The Tempest" -- island, storm, the pieces all fit. (Note that Miles'
thoughts also turned to Shakespeare.) The curious phrase "last of our
sea-sorrow" is how Prospero describes the endgame of his and daughter Miranda's
arrival on the island. It seemed a proper choice.
60 ml (2 oz) Ron
Pampero Aniversario or other dark, aged rum
15 ml (.5 oz)
Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur
7.5 ml (.25 oz)
ounce lime juice
120 ml (4 oz)
Blenheim ginger ale (hot, preferably)
1 slice lime, as
garnish (optional)
Mix rum, Canton
and lime juice in a cocktail shaker. Add ice and shake vigorously for 10-15
seconds. Either strain over fresh ice cubes into a highball glass and top with
ginger ale, or strain into small goblet and add chilled ginger ale. Garnish with
lime.
Last Word
This drink has
been credited to Frank Fogarty, a man who, in 1912, was considered to be the
most popular entertainer in vaudeville according to The New York Morning
Telegraph. “The single thing I work
to attain in any gag is brevity,” said Fogarty when asked the secret of his
success. “You can kill the whole
point of a gag by merely [using one] unnecessary word.”
22.5 ml (.75 oz)
dry gin
22.5 ml (.75 oz)
maraschino liqueur
22.5 ml (.75 oz)
Green Chartreuse
22.5 ml (.75 oz)
fresh lime juice
Shake over ice
and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
Latin Quarter
Adapted from a
recipe by Joaquin Simo, Death and Company, New York.
Featured at the
2008 Flor de Caña Papa Doble Bartenders’ Beard Competition, New York.
60 ml (2 oz)
Flor de Caña 18-year-old rum
1 tsp sugar cane
syrup
3 dashes
Peychaud’s bitters
1 dash
Bittermen’s Xocolatl Mole bitters
1 dash Deragon
bitters (substitute Angostura if need be)
15 ml (.5 oz)
absinthe, too rinse the glass
1 lemon twist,
as garnish
Stir over ice
and strain into a chilled old-fashioned glass that has been rinsed with
absinthe. Release the oils from the
lemon twist onto the drink, and discard.
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