Leave it to me to stir up a tempest in a teapot — er, cocktail shaker. While I think about it, I must make some points on cocktail shakers. Those Chrome jobs from the ’30s (not the ’20s! Drinking was illegal in the ’20s and so it consequently never, ever happened!!!) are the most amazingly beautiful barware ever created. Sadly, they don’t make the most user-friendly (note my adept usage of modern terminology) drink-enhancers. Sure, the shakers are beautiful. You can’t go wrong with those elegant chrome lines, those gorgeous bakelite handles. You can, however, go distinctly wrong with the “glasses” made of chrome, which feel just plain weird when hefted to the lips.
Many of the cocktail glasses in this new age are ridiculously oversized. This is what happens when McDonald’s dominates a culture for a couple of decades. Super-sizing your fries makes you fat, but super-sizing your Martini just makes you drunk before you have a chance to say hello to half the people at the party, and you’ll go home marked as a drunken fool. Icky-feeling chrome or genteel Fostoria crystal, the cocktail sets of the ’30s are the way to go. The glasses are smaller, and invite you to taste the drink — to sip and glow with Bacchus’ bounty — rather than forcing a Saturnalian excess decorated with Maraschino cherries and tinned Spanish olives.
Digression aside, yesterday’s blather has raised the ire of my esteemed Big Brother, who (not surprisingly, given his ethnic background) champions that fine drink of Scotch.
I still say it tastes like dirt.
My father, who was raised in Baltimore and believes that God lives either on Charles Street or in Union Square, always told me that “nice” men drink rye, “dandies” drink bourbon, and “no one” drinks Scotch. I’ve never claimed to be nice, but I live on rye; I am also a dandy and therefore drink bourbon, and I fully ascribe to the idea that “no one” drinks Scotch. (This, despite the clear fact that at least five of my closest friends think it’s something doing.) Let’s keep in mind too that my father believes that “no honest man is a gin drinker.” Well — he may have something there; when I’m not drinking one of the two palatable, non-Scotch forms of whiskey, I tend towards the essence of juniper, so that will tell you something about the character of gin-drinkers. Note to bystanders: Nothing, but nothing, takes the edge off of a 98-degree July evening along the Chesapeake shore like a stiff gin rickey. Two slices of lime, extra ice, if you please.
There are several forms of Scotch. They do not all taste like dirt. Some of them — Laphroaig, to be specific — taste like dirt into which a full ashtray has been emptied.
I know this because one time at the Green Leafe Café in Williamsburg I managed to extinguish my cigarette in my own drink. (I was engaged, I am certain, in a vigorous discussion on Pagan symbolism in Ben Jonson’s work, or something equally stimulating.) In any case, I failed to notice the dampened Chesterfield until I took a good draught. When a few months later I had my first taste of Laphroaig, I was able to immediately recognize the taste of cheap bourbon with an infusion of half-smoked Chesterfield.
I mean no ill will towards the good folk of Scotland. I do not agree with them on religious grounds, but they are a devout and thrifty race. (Thrift scores very highly on my personal scale.) They are among the wittiest, cleverest and most literary of all the civilized world. Scotland’s gifts to literature equal those of England, France and greater Germany, and almost eclipse Austria and Spain.
Unfortunately, their contributions to the gourmand are not even negligible. The dish for which the nation is most famous — haggis — involves organ meats ground and “cured” to be as pungently indigestible as possible. The vaunted scones are pleasant, to be sure, but their presence is more of an affectation of Americans desperately trying to assume Old Country fashion.
Sadly, their potent native beverage still tastes like dirt. I am aware that dirt is a valuable entity, but it’s not a tasty one. I’ve heard exhortations of the qualities of various marques of Scotch, and I salute those who are willing to drink and appreciate the stuff. Hell, the cheapest gin in the cheapest bar in the Bronx can give you a pretty good mood, if you’re looking for it.
I stand on the logic of Charles Dickens, who referred to Baltimore as the “gastronomic metropolis of the world.” While visiting the Monumental City, he referred to an “enchanted julep” shared with Washington Irving. That was at Barnum’s City Hotel, a gorgeously hideous Victorian pile torn down for the current City Courthouse.
I can guarantee that the julep which so entranced Mr. Dickens was not made with Scotch whiskey.
Many of the cocktail glasses in this new age are ridiculously oversized. This is what happens when McDonald’s dominates a culture for a couple of decades. Super-sizing your fries makes you fat, but super-sizing your Martini just makes you drunk before you have a chance to say hello to half the people at the party, and you’ll go home marked as a drunken fool. Icky-feeling chrome or genteel Fostoria crystal, the cocktail sets of the ’30s are the way to go. The glasses are smaller, and invite you to taste the drink — to sip and glow with Bacchus’ bounty — rather than forcing a Saturnalian excess decorated with Maraschino cherries and tinned Spanish olives.
Digression aside, yesterday’s blather has raised the ire of my esteemed Big Brother, who (not surprisingly, given his ethnic background) champions that fine drink of Scotch.
I still say it tastes like dirt.
My father, who was raised in Baltimore and believes that God lives either on Charles Street or in Union Square, always told me that “nice” men drink rye, “dandies” drink bourbon, and “no one” drinks Scotch. I’ve never claimed to be nice, but I live on rye; I am also a dandy and therefore drink bourbon, and I fully ascribe to the idea that “no one” drinks Scotch. (This, despite the clear fact that at least five of my closest friends think it’s something doing.) Let’s keep in mind too that my father believes that “no honest man is a gin drinker.” Well — he may have something there; when I’m not drinking one of the two palatable, non-Scotch forms of whiskey, I tend towards the essence of juniper, so that will tell you something about the character of gin-drinkers. Note to bystanders: Nothing, but nothing, takes the edge off of a 98-degree July evening along the Chesapeake shore like a stiff gin rickey. Two slices of lime, extra ice, if you please.
There are several forms of Scotch. They do not all taste like dirt. Some of them — Laphroaig, to be specific — taste like dirt into which a full ashtray has been emptied.
I know this because one time at the Green Leafe Café in Williamsburg I managed to extinguish my cigarette in my own drink. (I was engaged, I am certain, in a vigorous discussion on Pagan symbolism in Ben Jonson’s work, or something equally stimulating.) In any case, I failed to notice the dampened Chesterfield until I took a good draught. When a few months later I had my first taste of Laphroaig, I was able to immediately recognize the taste of cheap bourbon with an infusion of half-smoked Chesterfield.
I mean no ill will towards the good folk of Scotland. I do not agree with them on religious grounds, but they are a devout and thrifty race. (Thrift scores very highly on my personal scale.) They are among the wittiest, cleverest and most literary of all the civilized world. Scotland’s gifts to literature equal those of England, France and greater Germany, and almost eclipse Austria and Spain.
Unfortunately, their contributions to the gourmand are not even negligible. The dish for which the nation is most famous — haggis — involves organ meats ground and “cured” to be as pungently indigestible as possible. The vaunted scones are pleasant, to be sure, but their presence is more of an affectation of Americans desperately trying to assume Old Country fashion.
Sadly, their potent native beverage still tastes like dirt. I am aware that dirt is a valuable entity, but it’s not a tasty one. I’ve heard exhortations of the qualities of various marques of Scotch, and I salute those who are willing to drink and appreciate the stuff. Hell, the cheapest gin in the cheapest bar in the Bronx can give you a pretty good mood, if you’re looking for it.
I stand on the logic of Charles Dickens, who referred to Baltimore as the “gastronomic metropolis of the world.” While visiting the Monumental City, he referred to an “enchanted julep” shared with Washington Irving. That was at Barnum’s City Hotel, a gorgeously hideous Victorian pile torn down for the current City Courthouse.
I can guarantee that the julep which so entranced Mr. Dickens was not made with Scotch whiskey.
posted by Daniel | 2:39 AM
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