From the instructions he sends out to you just in case he decides to attend your party: Gin, chilled glass, small pour size. Check, check, check. That last item is especially well put (read the New York Post’s article).
So far so good. He sounds like a reasonable man here. Why am I getting so hot under the collar?

Shake for 45 seconds…!
Muddled cucumber…?
“No vermouth necessary.”?!?!

Tangential. At. Best.

Yes, I’m talkin’ to you, Bob. It might be a fine drink, whatever it is, but show some respect in the future. I don’t want to hear you taking the name of the Gospel of Gin in vain again.
(Thanks to @Teekeemon for his alertly twigging me to this cultural travesty.)

UPDATE: Welcome, New York Times readers! I hope you look around while you are here.

Source: The Irrawaddy

That picture, my friends, is a sight to make me weep. That is the courtyard of the mighty Pegu Club itself in Rangoon, Burma. Nativity-place of the World’s Greatest Cocktail™. Once once of the great gentlemen’s clubs (the kind where the brass poles run horizontally along the foot of the bar) of the British Empire at its height, the club was last put to use as a military audit office and flop house for bureaucrats in the 1990s. Now, it rots as an abode for stray dogs. And the Burmese website that has this story (and many other beautiful, tragic pictures you should look at) describes its signature cocktail as “Gin and Rose’s lime juice”….

If you happened upon this post without knowing about the Pegu cocktail, it is not gin and Rose’s. That would be a Gimlet.

Look at that magnificent exterior, which is likely already past preservation. The building has been designated as a “heritage building” by the government, so I guess that’s something. As opposed to such actions here in the US, the protection of the Pegu Club consists entirely of a hand-written piece of paper held down by a brick that has fallen out of the wall which asks visitors to please not wreck the place.

The pictures I’ve shown you so far are from, I think, an anti-government outlet, and are designed to show the Pegu Club’s decay. Since first posting this, I got a tip from Ginger Bar Magazine about another set of photographs by Jacques Maudy and Jimi Casaccia on commission for the Yangon Heritage Trust. (They are apparently a preservation NGO who are endeavoring to preserve glorious architecture like thins in the area. Sadly, their website is currently the dreaded “under construction”) These photos are designed to help evoke how beautiful building like this could be, and evoke their past glory. Below is a quite different view of the Pegu Club. You can find many more, higher resolution photos on their website, or even buy their soon-to-be released book, Yangon a City to Rescue.

This sad story brings to mind something else I’ve been meaning to post about for a long time now. How the heck do you really pronounce “Pegu”?

Back when I discovered the Pegu in Paul Harrington’s Cocktail, a discovery that ignited my obsession with cocktails in general, I surmised that it was pronounced PEE-Goo. Then in 2000, we visited the American Bar at the Savoy in London, where my wife and I had a marvelous long conversation at our table with the legendary Peter Dorelli about the drink, which he thought was pronounced Pee-Zhou. I’ve always pronounced it thus since. But since Audrey Saunders opened her Pegu Club in Manhattan, most of the cocktail world has pronounced it PEG-oo, under the completely sound expectation that if Audrey says it, it very likely is so.

But I wondered.

So I picked up the phone and called the embassy of the Republic of Myanmar (what the communist junta renamed Burma to legitimize itself) in Washington, DC. I spoke to a marvelously helpful, if somewhat perplexed, young lady who had never heard the word Pegu or seen it written, at least not in English lettering. She agreed, however, to seek out someone at the embassy who was familiar with it, and call me back with the correct pronunciation. She did call back, (pro tip: say you are a “writer” working on a “story”, not a “blogger” writing a “post” if you want a call back) to tell me that a man in the embassy who lived nearby explained to her that the actual pronunciation is Puh-GOO.

So there you go. With that earth-shattering piece of investigative journalism out of the way, you can go back to calling the drink a PEG-oo, and I’ll keep right on calling it a Pee-Zhou, because I’m a creature of habit.

“Oh, I think we’ll be the judge of that!
Source: Meme-O-Rama

Twitter is, no doubt, a terrible time-suck. I can think of any number of great cocktail blogs whose death can be attributed to being cut up into 140 character chunks and fed to the big blue bird. And if you follow and are followed by the wrong sort of tweeter, Twitter can be a hive of scum and villainy so awful it makes Mos Eisley spaceport look like a convent.

But if you have the right followers, Twitter can also be a great place to start conversations and develop new ideas.

One such idea we’ve been kicking around this month, that I believe first arose from the mind of Joe Garcia, an otherwise excellent blogger, tweeter, and commenter who apparently constantly teeters on the edge of washing his clothes with dried coconut flakes, is the cocktail class we’ll call Tiki Compliant.

A Tiki Compliant drink is one that is not, due to its origin, history, name, etc., a Tiki drink, but which sure as hell works as a Tiki drink. If you were to find one of these cocktails on a real Tiki bar menu, the ignorant drinker would not be able to tell the difference, and the average cocktailian would say, “you know, that really makes sense if you think about it.” Even the serious Tiki types, the ones who will argue vehemently until 3 in the morning that the Q.B. Cooler is really the prototype of the Mai Tai, will look at a Tiki Compliant drink and go, “Eh. I’ll allow it.”

To be clear, people who argue that the Q. B. Cooler is the progenitor of Trader Vic’s Mai Tai are known, clinically in the Latin as, “wrong“. They are hapless Donn Beach fanboys deluding themselves about this subject, and who, if outnumbered by drinkers who test positive for “correct”, are always nine seconds away from making this YouTube video:

And yes, I am aware that this Q.B. Cooler thing is espoused by no less a light than Jeff Beachbum Berry himself. But Jeff is forgiven for it because he has to sell tickets to seminars, and Rule 4 says there is no success like controversy.

I want everyone to know that Guy’s opinions are his own, and if you don’t like them, address your flames to his Twitter feed, @TheGuyPegu, that way your mascara won’t run all over me.

And now, if I may have my post back before you completely derail it?

By all means. My work here is done.

So what are some Tiki Compliant drinks, and why?

I’ll start with the one that started this whole process, the Dark ‘n Stormy. Intellectual property issues aside, the Dark ‘n Stormy is no Tiki drink. It has only two ingredients. And while it is from an island, it is one on the wrong side of the world and which is known chiefly as the home of funny shorts and where Bloomberg runs off to hide when there is to much unremoved snow or storm water lying around for his limousine to navigate the streets of New York City. But with its particularly dark rum, and the spicy sweetness of ginger beer creating such a mysterious and unaccountably deep blend of flavors, the DnS just works.

Another obviously compliant non-Tiki drink is the Hemingway Daiquiri. The ingredient list reads a lot more like a Tiki drink this time, with two citruses, rum, and an oddball liqueur in the mix. But it clearly isn’t Tiki again because it’s Caribbean and it’s godfather is one of the least Tiki old SOB’s I can think of who nonetheless slept that much on a boat.

There are lots more, lesser known drinks that are Tiki Compliant to one degree or another, like this new Martinique Cocktail from Chow.

And how about drinks considered Tiki drinks that should really be considered Tiki Compliant? The Carioca Hawaiian that I blogged earlier this Tiki Month is maybe one of these. It is called a Tiki drink because of the recipe, and because it was invented as a Tiki drink to begin with.
But it isn’t really that Tiki in its actual flavor. Do we perhaps call it more Tiki Compliant than straight up Tiki?

It’s a fun game to play. What is your favorite Tiki Compliant cocktail?

And hey! This post is part of Tiki Month 2013 here at the Pegu Blog! Be sure to look around for LOTS more Tiki stuff all February!

It took about a week.

Maker’s Mark has now completed the legendary and incredibly difficult New Coke Maneuver.

After backlash from customers, the producer of Maker’s Mark bourbon is reversing a decision to cut the amount of alcohol in bottles of its famous whiskey.

Rob Samuels, Maker’s Mark’s chief operating officer, said Sunday that it is restoring the alcohol volume of its product to its historic level of 45 percent, or 90 proof. Last week, it said it was lowering the amount to 42 percent, or 84 proof, because of a supply shortage.

“We’ve been tremendously humbled over the last week or so,” Samuels, grandson of the brand’s founder, said of customers’ reactions.
—NBC News (H/T: @TeeKeeMon)

I didn’t quite have the guts to predict this when I posted about it last week. You can see from the post title that I cut out a lot of my speculation, in part because it would have been so risky, and in part because I wanted to focus on the bind Maker’s was in economically and marketing-wise.

But I kinda think they pulled it off. Most giant corporate entities who try similar maneuvers, planned or not, (I’m looking at you Netflix and The Artist Formerly Known as Prince and Now Is Once Again Known as Prince™) fail like Hitler’s push on Stalingrad. But I’m betting Maker’s has pulled it off. And they pulled it off because of the fact that they were honest about why they made the move in the first place.

They had to do something, as I outlined before.

If they had just jacked up the price, with a few dry stories about supply constraints in business publications, customers would have just noticed the price increase and said, “Aw, sheeoot! Maker’s is so damned expensive alluva sudden. They’re a awfully proud of their product these days. I’ll be proud of my Jim Beam for less.”

If they had constrained supply, bars and restaurants would have stopped making it a staple brand. And cutomers not finding it on shelves would have said, “Hmmm. No Maker’s these days. I’ve always wanted to see what the fuss was with this Four Roses….”

If they’d just tried to quietly lower the proof with the bullcrud explanation that customers wanted less booze in their booze, as Jack Daniels (barely) got away with in an era before Twitter and FaceBook lynch mobs roamed the Earth, in this age, where Twitter and FaceBook lynch mobs roam the Earth, they would have been crucified with comments like this:

Alert drunkard Chris Sharp brought this unfathomable blasphemy to my attention and I feel it my sworn duty to bring it to yours.

“I was outraged,” says Sharp, a once avid Jack drinker. “They continue to claim in their ads that they stick to tradition. Tradition, my ass. If they think that people will take this sitting down they are sadly mistaken.”
—Modern Drunkard Magazine, on the Jack Daniels watering

But Maker’s pushed their decision big. They went out of their way to tell all their biggest customers what they were doing, and more importantly, why. And they were explicit with the press about the problem as the inevitable wave hit. And customers told them, in no uncertain terms, and in a way that everyone knew what everyone else was telling them, that, “Thank you, but we’d really prefer that you keep our whiskey the same, and try one of those other options.” (Please note the peculiar consumer deceit that it is “our” bourbon.) I disagree with the old adage that any publicity is good publicity, but Maker’s didn’t hunker down and stonewall through it, but made sure every reputable story about the situation made clear the problem was real.

Now Maker’s can go back to the old formula. The customers have essentially all told them “raise the price instead,” and they know they all told Maker’s that. If they see an intermittent shortage, they will know why. Maker’s has the consumer buy-in to take the long-term path out of a supply crunch.

Source: Bourbon Blog.
Follow the link for more on initial reaction to the 84 proof decision.

And now they have cases and cases of the best collector’s item bourbon out there. Bottles that will be bought, but not drunk. Most bottles sold at 84 proof will be sold right alongside a bottle of 90 proof that is meant to be drunk.

Did they mean to do this all along? Just as I’m not a Coca-Cola Classic Truther, I doubt (despite my suspicions this would end this way) they intended for this to happen. But they were smart. And they did lay the groundwork to retreat and get away with it. I think that they will.

Pictured:
Me, apparently

Disclaimer: I hugely respect every luminary mentioned in this post. It does not moot the necessity or fun of some swift Internet justice over this.
Angus Winchester seems to feel that I’m about to unleash some sort of fatwa against the panel, and they will have to live out their days in Salmon Rushdie-esque hiding, moving from one undisclosed speakeasy to another, always in fear of being recognized and immediately served violently shaken Manhattans. Since we both have beards, I can understand his fear that you may mistake me for the Ayatollah Khomeini, but please, dear reader, keep stirring Angus’s Manhattans, and muddle no bright, chemically red cherries in Phil Duff’s Old Fashioneds. (OK, you can use bottled lemon juice in their Corpse Revivers if they aren’t looking….)

Ok, smack time.

Renaissances have distinct, necessary phases. Just as the early phase of The Renaissance was marked by a significant rediscovery of classical Greek sources, the early stage of our modern Cocktail Renaissance has been in no small part an archaeological one. For all the creativity exhibited so far, the most important events have been largely the rediscovery of legacy ingredients and forgotten recipes. Some of the work in this field, and much of the dissemination thereof, has been the work of cocktail blogs. While this work will continue, I think it is no longer the driving force in the Craft Cocktail movement. This evolution is, I suppose, a main driver behind the existential angst I see in my neighborhood of the Internet.

The problem with archaeology, as any student of Hollywood knows, is that you will from time to time unearth something powerful, something terrible, something that would best have been left… earthed?

Beachbum Berry (pictured) discovers he that has released the Best Year from its tomb….

In the spirit of this truth, there was a session at this year’s Manhattan Cocktail Classic entitled “Do Not Resuscitate“, which discussed both a number of legacy cocktails and some classical sources that they felt were less Rembrandt and more Thomas Kinkade. The panelists were Dale DeGroff, Audrey Saunders, David Wondrich, St. John Frizell, Steve Olson, Robert Hess, Philip Duff and Angus Winchester. An All-Star panel, to be sure.

And they certainly had some valid points among them. Frizell’s comment, “Drinking a Brooklyn makes you think, ‘Why am I not drinking a Manhattan?’…” is particularly on point, whether or not you have some mythical stash of Amer Picon.
And Olson’s dismissal of the El Diablo is a sort of Emperor’s New Robes moment for me. I’ve always thought it is a mediocre at best drink, even when well made, and I thank him for giving me the social cover to publicly say, “yuck.”

Discussions like this are great fun. But what makes them fun is the buzz created by Rule 4: Controversy leads to conversation. Had they named only self-evident, universally acclaimed losers, the seminar would have been forgotten instantly at best, or viewed as a crashing waste of money for those attending at worst. And this group of very talented, knowledgeable folks appear to have gone the extra mile to ensure it was not boring. They employed Rule 4 to effect, with some reasonable entries setting up some less so, right on to some silly contentions, and at least one outright turd in the punch bowl idiocy that, had it been uttered by any lesser of a light, would have left me growing out my beard and hollering, “Jihad!”

I’ll save said turd for the end. Paul Schrodt at Esquire was kind about it. I intend to have more fun.

Oh no, Doug!
One of them didn’t dare to diss the Pegu, did they?

Of course not. Had he made such a pronouncement, no amount of power, accomplishment, or reputation would stop me from declaring him unfit for employment by so much as a Fat Tuesday’s.

Also, Audrey was sitting right there! The blood spatter would have been visible from space….

Anyway, I’ll start with the relatively harmless contention by my man, Angus Winchester, that the Vesper be on this list.
Yes, you cannot get the original Kina Lillet anymore. Who cares?
I contend that with Lillet Blanc you still have a quite decent drink. Further, I have always contended that a decent drink with a really kicking story beats a really kicking drink possesing no raconteuring opportunity all hollow as an experience.

No story beats the Vesper’s

Finally, from an industry standpoint, Angus’s idea is just counterproductive. The Cocktail Renaissance may be moving out of the archaeological phase, but it is by no means particularly mainstream yet. The Vesper can be a great, perhaps the great, drink for busting the vodka “Martini” drinking male out of that rut and on into the world of better drinks. (By this I mean gin drinks. You’ll get your turn, brown liquorati.)

Eminent Mixologist

Next, I take issue with needless over-bashing of Baker, and equally unfounded worship of the Savoy. In bashing the eminently bashable Holland Razor Blade, Phillip Duff utters an hilarious line which I will make you follow the link to Diner’s Journal to read. But it is really a disservice to talk about Baker this way. To bash the very questionable quality of most of the recipes therein has the same value as bashing Embury for the same reason.
You aren’t going to dismiss Embury are you, Phil? I didn’t think so. The overwhelming majority of recipes in both volumes are stinkers. We know. It’s not why you have to read them.

Likewise, in regard to the lamentable Snowball cocktail, Robert Hess is alleged to have uttered the simply laughable line, “This may be the only bad cocktail in the Savoy Cocktail Book.” My early edition of the Savoy is one of my most prize possessions, and my visit to said bar is among the formative nights for me as a cocktailian, but please! That said, this line will come back to haunt the panel as a whole, since he was not set upon for it by the rest….

Ooooh! Foreshadowing!
Is there no rhetorical bag of trick you won’t hesitate to use, oh mighty pundit boy?

Well, I are an English Major….

But the mighty matinee idol Dale DeGroff is the real target of this post, alas. As a minor point, I first take issue with his dissing of the Papa Doble. No one as much the physical doppelgänger of my father are was Hemingway can be truly wrong in my book. More to the point, even hard-core alcoholics deserve their own craft cocktails.

“Shake my Manhattan, and you get to play Russian Roulette with a full pistol….”

But I shan’t go too hard on Dale over this one because the PeguWife also despises the Papa Doble, and I know what is good for me.

But, Dude! “King Cocktail” had to go and crap on the Aviation? That just makes me sad.

Hapless Victim of Royal Persecution

Actually, no. It makes me mad. Angus assured me via Twitter, whilst I was threatening him with the paragraph a bit above this, that Dale’s comments were restricted to the Savoy’s recipe, but that is not what I seem to get from the Diner’s Journal article.

Wait! Are you telling me that you are taking the New York Times as an iron clad source?
Who are you and what have you done with Doug?

Good point. And I’ve certainly already had my share of chastisement over my experience with trusting reporting by The Atlantic over a session at Tales. So I suppose some critical element might have been left out of the piece….

I’ll finish with my thoughts on the Savoy recipe, but regardless of the exact recipe DeGroff was dumping on, I think he’s wrong on many levels.

First off, the Aviation is a helluva cocktail. It is attractive, balanced, and delicious. If you don’t like maraschino liqueur, fine. I can’t abide Campari, but I don’t claim the friggin’ Negroni is some kind of over-hyped nothing.

But more importantly, I contend that Dale should look at his freaking bank balance and realize that a good chunk of the cash therein is owed to this cocktail. And yes, I’m serious. The Aviation may be a bit passé these days, to the point that the kind of people who use phrases like, “I’m so over____” and “____is so yesterday” on occasion today use those phrases in regards to the Aviation. (For the record, I’m so over both those constructions; they are so yesterday.) But both phrases support my point, since they are only used for things that once were in fact the cat’s pajamas. And the Aviation was said PJs. And said PJs at a critical moment in the craft cocktail renaissance. Back when hordes of people like me were just getting started into this movement, when quality, craft cocktails were just seeing a glimmer of commercial acceptance, the Aviation was the Secret Handshake™ of the movement.
(I also take a bit of personal exception to Dale’s dismissive comment, “It was a darling of the Internet.” Sorry Dale, but you can’t just note the fact that for a good long time this drink was a huge favorite of the largest community driver of the Cocktail Renaissance, then dismiss that same community of your best customers as connoisseurs of “hand soap” without expecting some stormy waters….)

The well-made Aviation simply embodies some of the most critical elements in our art, elements that apparently even some of our best have come to take for granted; things like fresh juice, especially citrus; legacy ingredients like Maraschino or even resurrected ones like Creme de Violette; drier and/or more delicate flavors; freaking gin. This drink is important, damn it… In addition to being delicious.

I still love you, Dale, but don’t let this happen again.

Now, since Angus has already been engaging in damage control over this with me via Twitter, I suppose I should address the word from the Spin Room.

“It’s important to get your stories straight and keep them consistent!”
Pictured: White House Spokesman Jay Carney

“Dale was only talking about the Savoy Cocktail Book version on the Aviation!”
Pictured: Angus Ferguson

I may have fudged with those attributions just a bit….

Anyway, I find it odd that Dale would really have been only singling out the Savoy version of the Aviation because I for one have never seen nor heard anyone actually advocate making an Aviation as printed in the Savoy. If you are going to single out a drink no one makes as one people should stop making….
And again, neither Esquire nor the Times seemed to pick up on this fairly major qualification.

That said, the Savoy recipe is indeed pretty lame. It simply is too sour and doesn’t include the Creme de Violette in the first place. But even though this version is mostly lemon and evergreens, it still doesn’t taste like hand soap, unless Dale uses some nasty kind of lemon in his drinks, which I’m pretty sure he does not.

And besides, the session had also been told that the Snowball was the only bad recipe in the Savoy….

You can even get Creme de Violette in places like Ohio these days, so if you don’t understand what this drink is I’m making a such a fuss over, you owe it to yourself to give it a whirl. Here’s the recipe I most often use:

And lo, in recent days, the king of cocktail blog traffic, Darcy at Art of Drink made an accidental foray into Rule 4 territory. Rule 4 states that you can pump up your own traffic by making controversial statements that rile up other online personalities. They denounce you publicly. And both of you reap the traffic reward as onlookers flock to both your blogs, tumblrs, feeds, or whatever. Happily Fortunately for Darcy, his Rule 4 trigger also employed Rule 5… Rule 5 is at its core: Everybody is interested in boobs.

In this particular case, Darcy tweeted a comment about how he is looking for a bartending job, and wonders if his search would be more fruitful if he got a boob job. He got some blowback… His tale and defense of his musing is summed up at Art of Drink in the post, Bartending and Your Boobs. You should follow the link and read the whole sordid, fascinating tale. (See what I did there? that’s Rule 2 of blogging success. And I went Rule 2 because Darcy went Rules 4 & 5)

Enough blogging about blogging. Darcy’s little contretemps illustrates an interesting question/controversy/fact of life in the bartending world. Like it or not, good looks are remarkably valuable as a professional asset in the bartending world.

To be clear, I am less worried about being pilloried than Darcy is on this subject because

1. I’m older and married, thus giving less of a damn about what other women think
2. I have already written on this subject (humorously) and have established my cred as a believer in the value of skill over looks
3. No one takes me all that seriously. (This is invaluable if you wish to say what you believe in this PC world)

That said, I do wish to make several beliefs perfectly clear at the outset, so any fights I get into will be on the merits, instead of misunderstanding.

This does not just apply to women. Hot is hot, female or male. Everybody objectifies hot people, and everybody avoids ugly people, in circumstances where we don’t know each other. Darcy focused (hey, he’s a guy) on bartenders who went out and purchased their “charismas” from Dr. Feelgood, but the issue remains just as germane when discussing naturally attractive folks as well.

If you are a bartender, the better looking you are, the more drinks you will sell, and the bigger tips you will get, all other things being equal.

But…

Looks will not help you if you suck. The customer will quickly lose interest in gazing into your dreamy eyes or magnificent cleavage if you take forever, get their order wrong, or your Margarita tastes like ass. Or if you shake their goddamn Manhattan….

Being a great bartender, or at least a competent one, is a skill. Most anyone has what it takes, should they care to work at it, to become a decent bartender who will care for customers adequately and be a value to their employer. Smokin’ hot looks are not a skill. If you have them, bully for you. If you don’t, you are not going to get them. (Dr. Feelgood disputes this, and for $10,000 he will endeavor to prove it to you)

As the internet meme goes, this post is useless without pictures, so I shall indulge my juvenile side with a few pictures so that you may have some illustrations of what hot bartenders might look like, you know, in case you are having a hard time with the concept….

If you want to be a successful bartender as a career, your looks will never be the deciding factor. They may make you successful more quickly, and they might raise your ceiling of success, but you can be Bo Derek and you will never be a successful bartender if you go around serving single malt scotch shaken with ice in a cocktail glass.

Kids, Bo Derek was this amazing looking actress back in the Pleistocene… never mind.

Now that I’ve established a set of opinions upon which I doubt I will be contradicted, let’s get controversial. Darcy, shortly after making the most convincing argument yet in our on-going back and forth about whether Canada is better than the US or (obviously) not, writes this key paragraph:

The choice is always up to women as to how they live their life. For example, this is a job ad for bartenders I saw a few months ago: “wanted: female bartenders, send picture and phone #”. That was literally the complete ad. I thought about dressing up in drag and sending my picture in, but I opted out. The thing is that an ad like this probably did result in a number of responses, and if a person responds to this type of ad they realize that the talent portion of the contest is secondary.

This is exactly right… here in the US, Canada, and a few other, lucky places on Earth. This is not the natural order of things now, or ever in the past. And if we want to preserve this historically anomalous state of affairs, we need to recognize our achievements on this front, and quit acting as if there is some moral equivalence between Western puerility, and the subjugation, open human trafficking, and even gendercide of women in most of the world. I have two young daughters, so this really matters to me.

But I have Sitemeter, and I thus know most of you who read this are fortunate enough to live with me in one of the good neighborhoods on Earth, so lets focus on how to live in our world. Darcy is over-reductive, I think, when he focuses on the ad I reproduced atop this post. Here is another such, longer and more detailed ad that makes the same point. Yes, in the Hooters-esque sub-sector of the hospitality biz, women do need to sort of “tramp themselves out”, but I feel the women who work in these places deserve more respect than they get. To succeed, they still have to have skills, and they have to work hard. A box of hammers with the best boob job on Earth will still fail in short order. (Or, alas, moved to the hostess stand)

But tramping oneself out differs in the professional context. It’s easy to see in the gay bar, where John Goodbody wears tight jeans and a shirt that shows off his chiseled, tanned biceps and pecs, or even at TGI Houligan Tuesday’s, where Jane Juice never sees the need for a bra and apparently has some disability that prevents her from working the buttons on her blouse more than one above her navel. Like these fine professionals:

But having great looks, and using them, will be just as effective, and just as calculated, for a seasoned pro working at a class outfit like a Violet Hour or a Pegu Club. I chose those two because during my last visit to each, neither had any really outstanding lookers, male or female. Other top of the line cocktail bars I’ve visited have had such, and don’t think it doesn’t matter. It is a simple matter of dressing conservatively, but tailoring, um, less so.

This last picture isn’t quite what I mean, but it was hard to find the right picture on the web without resorting to one or two that I took myself, of lady bartenders who might actually read this….

OK, enough with the eye-candy, let’s wrap up.

Um,
That means many of you can stop “reading” here….

The point that Darcy makes, which I agree with, is that in our civilization, no one makes you use your looks. Nor can they dictate how you choose to do it, should you choose to. Only in our ludicrously PC society would anyone equate a natural, automatic increase in your revenue and your earnings with being oppressed….

Similarly, if you got it, you’re an idiot not to use it. How you use it, or how much, is up to you. When choosing between otherwise identical bars, I’m going to the one where Cindy With the Rack works, at least most of the time. I’m not being crass, I’m being honest. In fact, straight as I am, I’m probably going to prefer the bar with they guy who looks like Robert Downey, Jr, over the one with the bartender who looks like Marty Feldman. (Kids, Marty Feldman was a famous… never mind.) You see, attractiveness isn’t just about sex. It’s about being pleasant to simply be facing for a while.

This is the world we live in. It is not going to change much. None of what is at issue here is about right and wrong. It is about practicality. If you are good-looking, use it, it’ll work out well for you and your customers. But don’t forget you still have to work, care, and educate yourself well, or you will not cut it as a bartender. If you look ordinary, fine. Grump about the “unfair” advantage of others, then out-work and -create the pretty people, and you will do better than they. It might be harder at first. As someone who, um, has never gotten a lot of professional advantage from his looks, I sympathize. Any way you cut it, it is the truth, so we might as well laugh about it from time to time. Humor is the natural human mechanism for dealing with truths, especially the slightly uncomfortable ones.

Andrew Stuttaford at National Review noted this weekend the passing of one of the classic bars in Manhattan, the former speakeasy Bill’s Gay Nineties Restaurant and Piano Bar. (That’s Speakeasy as in, Large Men Will Break Your Legs If You Work For The Cops, not Speakeasy as in, Dude, You Get To Go All Maxwell Smart On The Phonebooth In Back Of The Hotdog Shop!) In so doing, he makes mention of a great essay by George Orwell in which he describes what is, for Orwell, the perfect English Pub. George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, kiddies. They are two books you used to have to read, but usually don’t any more because, well, they don’t want you to read them anymore.

The Moon Under Water, the pub Orwell describes, is a fantasy, simply Orwell’s description of what a Pub should be, or ought to have been in wartime England. It is a lovely piece of writing, and while it would likely not be (as Andrew suggests) the perfect American bar, there is much here to chew on. I’m going to highlight a few of the elements that Orwell imagined in his perfect pub that I think ought to be universal, and a few that perhaps don’t work across time or ocean.
Also, it’s a chance to quote Orwell and generally class up the writing around here a bit.

My favourite public-house, the Moon Under Water, is only two minutes from a bus stop, but it is on a side-street, and drunks and rowdies never seem to find their way there, even on Saturday nights.

He opens by noting that the Moon is easy to get to, but is neither hip nor happening. Assholes need not apply. I think you can certainly agree that a great bar should be generally free of rowdy assholes. Unless you are a rowdy asshole, of course. In such case we can take comfort in the likelihood that you don’t read this blog, and the near certainty you don’t read Orwell….

In the Moon Under Water it is always quiet enough to talk. The house possesses neither a radio nor a piano, and even on Christmas Eve and such occasions the singing that happens is of a decorous kind.

Mega-Dittos, Rush, er, George. Nightclubs should have loud music. Pickup joints in general should have deafening music. There is no reason in places like that to risk your personality taking away from whatever attractiveness alcohol has bequeathed you. There will be time enough in the morning to discover what a crashing bore you’ve hooked up with, right? But a good bar should make socialization easy. Either with friends, or with complete strangers. If you cannot solve the Problems of the World with a drinking companion known five years or five minutes in a bar, it is simply not a great bar.
In America today, by the way, this means no TV… anywhere in the bar. Nothing sucks the life out of conversation faster than the flickering idiot box. Sports bars need TVs, but beyond that, keep one in the back and wheel it out for people to listen to in the event we declare war, or Elvis returns.

They are particular about their drinking vessels at the Moon Under Water, and never, for example, make the mistake of serving a pint of beer in a handleless glass. Apart from glass and pewter mugs, they have some of those pleasant strawberry-pink china ones which are now seldom seen in London. China mugs went out about 30 years ago, because most people like their drink to be transparent, but in my opinion beer tastes better out of china.

First, I did not know this about china and beer. I intend to try it and see. Anyone else in America use china? Any bars?
This and other comments in the piece show that an English pub, at least of Orwell’s day, was about beer. Here, cocktails are much more the focus, whether you mean the extravagant concoctions of the discerning booze nerd, or the sea of Jack and Cokes and Kangaroo Cocktails in more mainstream joints. And even for customers who don’t actively notice it, drinking vessels matter. The size, heft, and quality of glasses lend more to the quality of the drinking experience than most customers, or bar owners for that matter, realize.
And care of those vessels matters too, though Orwell neglects to mention it. A dirty, water-spotted glass puts me off almost instantly. And you best have built up a veritable sea of good times with me in the past if you want me to ever darken your door again should my glass, or those of any of my party, sports even a trace of lipstick.

Orwell speaks of the Moon’s garden, a family friendly environment.

Many as are the virtues of the Moon Under Water, I think that the garden is its best feature, because it allows whole families to go there instead of Mum having to stay at home and mind the baby while Dad goes out alone.

He is more open to the presence of children, at least on the periphery, than I am, or think Americans in general are with our bars. But his main thrust here is that wives drink with their husbands in his mythical perfect pub. I also think this is a huge deal. A bar whose customer base is too much one sex or the other is dreary for every day drinking. Yes, a boys’ or girls’ club is refreshing from time to time, and frankly, we need more of them in these politically correct times. But a really good general purpose bar ought to mirror one’s community and civilization. Further, a great bar should have a solid leavening of couples in its crowd at all times. And not just dates and hookups in progress, but husbands and wives out meeting other husbands and wives. Such atmosphere is healthy and robust, and offers all involved a richer, fuller evening out.

Not all of his suggestions, though are that great, at least to me.

The barmaids know most of their customers by name, and take a personal interest in everyone. They are all middle-aged women—two of them have their hair dyed in quite surprising shades—and they call everyone ‘dear,’ irrespective of age or sex. (‘Dear,’ not ‘Ducky’: pubs where the barmaid calls you ‘ducky’ always have a disagreeable raffish atmosphere.)

Some of this is awesome. Regulars expect and deserve to be known and recognized as such, and newcomers likewise deserve to be taken interest in. But I am not a fan of the motherly or fatherly aura in my bartenders or servers. Likewise, I’m not advocating the whole “breastaurant” concept for this either. But if given my druthers, I’d rather the bartenders and servers be attractive, and perhaps just a bit younger than the clientele… so long as they don’t act like it.

The grained woodwork, the ornamental mirrors behind the bar, the cast-iron fireplaces, the florid ceiling stained dark yellow by tobacco-smoke, the stuffed bull’s head over the mantelpiece — everything has the solid, comfortable ugliness of the nineteenth century.

Yes, I really like a good bar that has a well-maintained but lived-in feel. And true, nothing makes a space feel more “lived-in” than yellow nicotine stains. But I do not personally like the smell of cigarettes; not when they are being smoked, and especially not when they were smoked 18 years earlier. That said, the perfect bar can allow cigarette smoking. It just won’t be my hangout. Bars should absolutely be allowed to allow smoking. As a business decision, most of them should not. But that should be their choice. A perfect bar for the smoker is one that allows smoking, and non-smokers should just go elsewhere. And vice-versa.
A great bar is filled with happy people, and smokers who can’t are not, and non-smokers who essentially must are not either.

There is more, and the piece is well-worth reading just for the atmosphere it evokes. It is nice to see that Orwell could paint a luxurious fantasy idyll just as well as he could a hideous, plausible nightmare. What else do you think a perfect bar should boast?

In the waning hours of Tiki Month, I made a few comments about how nice it was to have so many comments over so many posts, and noted that there aren’t enough comments in general on cocktail blogs. Mine especially, alas.

I’ve been thinking about it since, and come to the conclusion that this is not completely bad. Let’s discuss what would happen if the comment sections of the Cocktailosphere looked like YouTube or your average political blog….

The first thing to understand about our comment sections is that they are sparse mostly because of our existing traffic levels. Fewer readers by extension leads to fewer comments. To understand the difference in scale, this is the first year my traffic is high enough that a single link from political/cool stuff aggregator Instapundit would not be 25% of my annual hits.
The first problem with lots of comments is this guy:

followed swiftly by this guy:

Of course, I would never have this particular visitor, but some of my fellow bloggers would quickly become close, personal friends with this guy:

The real fun would begin as a larger commenter base would inevitably lead to controversy…

1. 7

   Bob Says:
   August 15th, 2012 at 7:27 pm
   I dunno. I think that you’re using too much lemon juice there.

2. 8

   Steve Says:
   August 15th, 2012 at 8:08 pm
   Forget the lemon juice issue. This just seems like a bit of a waste of good Glenfiddich.

3. 9

   Caps Lock Guy Says:
   August 15th, 2012 at 8:09 pm
   IT IS AN ABOMINATION TO MIX SINGLE MALT WITH ANYTHING!! INCLUDING ICE!!!

4. 10

   Caps Lock Guy Says:
   August 15th, 2012 at 8:10 pm
   EVEN MELTED ICE!

Bloggers with controversy in their comments love it because, as Rule 4 says, controversy drives traffic. But what kind of controversy would really take hold on cocktail blogs?

1. 3

   CosmoGirl8675309 Says:
   August 25th, 2012 at 9:27 pm
   Thanks for this review on the new Aputure Vodka. I’ve been wanting to try it.

2. 4

   Trudy Says:
   August 25th, 2012 at 10:08 pm
   My state’s Liquor control bored doesn’t let them sell it here! Some friends and me are organizing a protest outside their headquarters. Who’s with us? #OccupyLiquorStores

3. 5

   The Vodkatologist Says:
   August 25th, 2012 at 10:11 pm
   Honestly, how you can recommend this pisswater with a straight face is beyond me. It says very little for your abilities as a reviewer. I see you didn’t even mention that they make this… fluid with potatoes and wheat. How anyone thinks they can get away with selling anything other pure RYE vodka to today’s sophisticated drinker is completely beyond my ken. Did they PAY you to not mention the wheat? Did they?

4. 6

   Clint Says:
   August 25th, 2012 at 10:20 pm
   Another rant from your twisted mind about rye, Vodkatologist. Give it up, potato is the only proper base for liquor.

5. 7

   Matt Robold Says:
   August 25th, 2012 at 10:21 pm
   There is simply no hope for any of you people.

One of the good things about real cocktail blog comments is that most commentators are civil and knowledgeable. With 300 commenters on a single post, this will end… because there aren’t 300 civil and knowledgeable people on the internet.

1. 45

   Skipper Says:
   August 5th, 2012 at 11:27 pm
   I fail to see why you want us to use so many damn ingredients in this drink. I seems like you could replace everything but the orgeat with blackberry brandy and you’re done.

2. 4

   JerseyGuy Says:
   August 5th, 2012 at 11:28 pm
   Fag.

And of course, with this sort of discussion, The Rule would make an appearance.

1. 23

   CosmoGirl8675309 Says:
   September 7th, 2012 at 8:27 pm
   I wish you hadn’t posted this recipe. I had only seven of them last week at a bar and I threw up!

2. 24

   Trudy Says:
   September 7th, 2012 at 8:33 pm
   I know girl! And what kind of bar throws you out fur just a little spew in the corner?
   Violet Hour suxxx.

3. 25

   Skippy77 Says:
   September 7th, 2012 at 8:39 pm
   You blew chunks in the middle of Violet Hour?!?
   They should have thrown you out long before you spewed, you lush!

4. 26

   Clint Says:
   September 7th, 2012 at 8:41 pm
   Hey! THEIR DRINK WERE WHAT MADE ME THROW UP! PEOPLE PUKE IN BARS! WHAT KIND OF HITLER OPERATION THROWS PEEPS FOR DOING WHAT COMES NATURAL?

5. 27

   Godwin Says:
   September 7th, 2012 at 8:42 pm
   Invoked….

This is only a sample. Help me out in the comments with some of your dreams nightmares of what Cocktailosphere comments would look like with ten times the traffic.

This Summer, at Tales of the Cocktail, I encountered the 151 Swizzle as the featured player at the most epically entertaining train-wreck of a seminar I have ever had the pleasure to attend. The session was titled “Swizzling Around the World” and led by Stanislav Vadrna. I had signed up for this session on a lark. I don’t swizzle a lot of drinks, but I had a gap in my schedule and this looked entertaining. The culmination of this event was to have all 151 people in the room make this thing called a 151 Swizzle at the same time, a “world record”.

Once I got to New Orleans, my expectations started to rise. Apparently, at the 2010 Tales, Stanislav’s session was viewed as the mixological equivalent of Woodstock. It was awesome. Women wanted to have his children. Husbands wanted their wives to have his children. That sort of thing. I kept my expectations reasonable, however. I wasn’t expecting the Sermon on the Mount, but I was now expecting this to be interesting and memorable.

Oh, it was memorable alright….

Stanislav started with a bit that he apparently has done successfully in the past, many times. He passes around a roll of toilet paper to the audience, asking each to take a single sheet and pass it on. During the time it takes to do this, he goes for a little shock value to get the group’s attention by demanding that we subsume our bartending skills in general, and our swizzling in particular, so deep into our subconscious that performing them becomes as natural as taking your normal, healthy dump first thing in the morning.

Yeah.

His point, of course, is more than a little valid. If you are spending your attention on making a drink, you cannot be spending it on your guest. And the secret to being a great bartender is being a great host. I can see how this little shock bit has worked for him in the past. But it did not work for him that day. and unlike when he mixes drinks, Stanilav must have to concentrate so hard on his speaking, that he was not grasping what was happening in the audience.

Obviously, he’s never done this with a crowd this large, spread out in a huge ballroom with bad sight lines, and no rational way to pass around that roll. And he only had one roll! It took forever, people kept calling for the roll to come back since it had missed them, etc. And he would not finish with the whole morning crap metaphor until we all had our (metaphorically, thank God) shitty little piece of TP. He just kept recycling his bit as he, and we, waited, getting all the more scatological with each iteration….

It was a perfect storm for the poor guy. Once a crowd is heckling you, though mostly quietly enough he could not hear (mostly), everything you do will be seen in the worst light. His interesting illustration that while the word swizzle, and the authentic swizzle sticks we were provided, may come from the Caribbean, the concept, and the tool, are fairly universal throughout the world should have been fascinating. Instead, when he started showing pictures he had taken to illustrate his ideas, I guarantee that every one of us in the room (except Tiare, bless her generous heart) were thinking, “Christ, he’s showing us a slide show of his vacation!” I know this to be true because I heard us all saying it.

It kept getting worse, but I don’t want to pile on the poor guy. If you make some or all of your living speaking to people, you will die from time to time. God knows, I sure have. It was just his day. Should I have another opportunity to attend something Stanislav does, I will. He’s charming, charismatic, attractive, and I especially like his philosophy on life and bartending.

Oh, and he taught me this fine drink. It is fun to make, especially if you have an authentic swizzle stick like the one I received, tastes good, and is an excellent use for Lemon Hart 151.

Bartenders, for the love of all that is holy, please listen to what I have to say:
Quit shaking your goddamn Manhattans!
The Gospel of Whiskey is a simple drink, guys. Really, it is. It has only three ingredients. You can even speed-pour and get the ratios right. The garnish is cheap, easy, and beautiful. All you have to do is chill and dilute these ingredients, and put them in whatever glass your establishment has for cocktails. Voila! When you are done, you have created a monster classic cocktail which will have likely been requested by the more discerning and sophisticated of your customers….

…

So quit f*cking them up by shaking the damn things until they are a frothy goddamn mess!

I am sick and goddamn tired of having to spend more time describing to you how I want my Manhattan made than it then takes for you to assemble said drink, if I want it to look right in the glass and feel right in my mouth.
You. Stir. A. Manhattan.
It’s a clear drink. It should look like a glass of liquid topaz with a ruby nestled in the bottom when you hand it to me. It should not look like stupid, polluted beach water with a brown, foamy crust.
I have asked you for a cocktail that takes very little time to assemble. I think I’m f*cking entitled to you spending an extra few seconds with a spoon in your hand to ensure it is sufficiently and properly chilled. Yes, it takes longer to stir a drink into the twenties than it does to shake it that cold. But I’ve done the damn experiments, electronic thermometers and all, and it really is just a few extra seconds. 10-15 at the absolute outside, depending on the quality and type of your ice.

Stir. The. Drink.

See this guy?

He’s pissing me off. I want to jump over the bar and beat him down with the spoon he’s supposed to be using here. (Actually the bartender here is shaking a Grey Goose “Martini”, which is fine. But admitting this is mellowing my rant, so forget I mentioned it.)

My wife is always after me to make up cards with recipes she likes so she can give them to bartenders when I’m not around and she can get the drink she wants, made the way she wants it. Well, I’ve also decided to make up my own damn card to give to bartenders when I’m in the mood for a Manahattan. Here it is:

Actually, I haven’t made these physically because I am lazy, and because I have no room in my wallet. My wallet has no room because it is full of money for tips. Tips I give generously of when my Manhattan is not f*cking ruined by being shaken. The money stays in my wallet, leaving no room for said cards, because I keep getting shaken Manhattans.

So I wrote this post instead, so it will be read by all the world’s bartenders.
All bartenders read this blog, right? No? Well, if you know of such a non-Pegu Blog-reading bartender, give him this link at the very least.
Your next Manhattan will thank you.

Whew! That feels better. That’s really all it takes, guys and gals.

Stir. The. Drink.

Thanks.

…

…

Oh, and don’t forget the goddamn bitters either!

…

And enough vermouth, too!

…

And another thing….