Over at Underhill Lounge, Eric notes/fans the flames of a simmering debate in the cocktail world surrounding the liquorati’s Secret Handshake™, a.k.a. the Aviation. The question revolves around which of the two main recipes for the Aviation is right, proper, meet, hunky-dory, legitimate, etc.
The original formulation, dubbed by Erik the Ensslin version is thus:

The more common formulation in use today is generally credited to Gary Regan, and goes like so:

At least that is the common formulation if by common formulation you mean what you will get after trekking three days through the Himalayan Mountains to find some bartender named Yogi who will respond to your request for an Aviation with something other than a blank stare. It is the Secret Handshake™, after all….
The debate was triggered by one of my favorite commenters, here and elsewhere in the Cocktailosphere, The Concierge. Erik calls it a Nomenclature Debate as the question as he sees it is whether Gaz’s modern formulation should be called an Aviation, Infra-Aviation, etc. or whether we ought to refer to Ensslin’s original version as a Violet Aviation, Ultra-Aviation, etc.
I don’t really think what’s important here is nomenclature, however. Drink recipes change and evolve. The Old Masters in particular do this. As ingredients change in character, or go in and out of production (e.g. creme de violette), recipes for drinks need to change.
Of course, this can sometimes be disastrous. The less said about common modern formulations of the Mai Tai, Daiquiri, or Hurricane, the better. But when living in a creme de violette-free world (most of you did until very recently) Gary Regan’s formulation is a damn fine drink and good way to keep a classic’s spirit alive. They both are Aviations.
That said, there is a good debate to be had here, just not over the name. Which is better, dammit?
Sorry Gary, but while your version may be a damn fine drink, Ensslin makes a better product in almost every way.
First, as Gwen says, Violets are blue, Aviations are too. Without the color brought to the party by the c d v, the Aviation is kinda blah looking. With it, the drink has that incredibly unique look of a deep sky in the gloaming that evokes images of Howard Hughes, or Charles Lindbergh, or Amelia Earhart, flying off into history.
Second, the whole point of a Secret Handshake™ is to show off your chops. Maraschino is hard enough to find, but bust out the purple bottle and any other cocktailian present will know you are a force to be reckoned with. Or something. Unique ingredients make for unique flavor combinations, and those are what make special cocktails special.
Lastly, sorry Gaz, the original Aviation formulation just flat tastes better. I love maraschino, but like absinthe, I have to keep a very tight reign on it. When doled out with a spoon or even a dropper, it adds an indefinable something to drinks. But by the time you get up to a pony’s worth, this little wimp punts. and the creme de violette adds more than just color, it definitely adds to the drink’s pleasant complexity that I mentioned above.
Having committed the ultimate sin of publicly preferring another recipe over one of Gary Regan’s, I’ll get out while the getting is good, leaving you with two very good points that came out in the debate at Underhill Lounge.
Erik makes the point in his own comments that the Ensslin ratios are subject to modification as you go. Gary makes the same point about his version in another thread. As I said, ingredients change with time and brand, varying in sweetness and strength. Tastes of course vary too. Make an Aviation, and you show off your knowledge. Make a good Aviation, and you show off your skill and artistry.
The last point is also one of Erik’s that bears repeating. And repeating. And repeating. And also applying to many other cocktails out there. Make the Aviation small. It’s very bracing, and you won’t drink it very fast. It is awesome when well-chilled, and flat out bad when it warms up.

My longer term readers know I am a fan of Gary Regan, one of America’s, and thus one of the world’s, preeminent bartenders. He, um, sends me to the Moon at times. Lots of folks claim American has no cuisine, but that is false. We have the Cocktail. If you want the best sauces, you go to France. If you want the best, most innovative drinks, you come to America’s shores. You can find great sauces and cocktails elsewhere of course, but I feel I’m on solid rather than jingoistic ground when I make that generalization.
Anyway, Gaz has just written a column for SFGate entitled, How to be a Superstar Bartender. The wisdom he imparts is wonderful and specific. You should read it, whichever side of the mahogany you frequent. I’ll leave his specific recommendations for you to read there, and steal only this introductory piece of wisdom:

Before we begin, know this: If you believe that you know what you’re doing, and if you can pull it off without apology, you’re 90 percent there.

All that said, Gaz’s is not the only school of thought out there. Whilst I would never publicly disagree with him, the owners of the Patriot Saloon in Tribeca apparently do…

Found on Eater, via Asylum. It’s a little early in the week for Rule 5 blogging, but I’m just giving you ample time to imagine the applicants for yourself. (Alternatively, you could head over to the Patriot Saloon and take a few pics of the successful applicants, then send the to me for publication here….)

A little earlier this year, the Liquor Fairy dropped off a bottle of Bols Genever. A lot of you may ask, what the heck is genever? At least, that is what I asked myself when I opened the box, while I admired the gorgeous bottle. I’ve had this bottle for a while now, and I’ve gone from excitement, to disillusionment, to satisfaction with the spirit.
I’m not going to go into great detail of how genever is made, or its history. Others have already done a better job of that than I could. But I will go over a few things that bear on how to use it.
First off, you pronounce genever, jin-EE-ver.
While genever is often referred to as Dutch Gin, that is as misleading as calling pisco, Peruvian Brandy or Cachaça, Brazillian Rum. It you really were striving for accuracy with this sort of linguistic construction, you should probably call gin, London Genever anyway. The important thing here is that if you pick up a bottle of Bols’ tasty spirit and think its going to be a gin, there are going to be problems.
To illustrate, the first thing I did when confronted with this bottle of Dutch Gin was to go mix up a Pegu.
Do. Not. Do. This. You are welcome.
So I got a good lesson in the fact that Bols’ most famous premium liquor is not a gin. After another try or two with recipes I can’t remember, I gave up on the stuff. But I left the bottle out on my display shelf because it looks so good. And it nagged at me.
The flavor of genever is much deeper and more pungent than gin. And it is interesting. Even the drinks I made that didn’t work, were interesting. Finally, I pulled the bottle off the shelf and went back to work.
Until recently, I avoided tall drinks, preferring my cocktails up. But I decided to give the John Collins a try.
The John Collins is simply a Tom Collins, made with genever instead of Old Tom.

And there we go! I never was much of a fan of the Tom Collins. To me, it’s just a bit bland and uninteresting. But funky Uncle John has a lot of character. Those pungent, deep flavors that overwhelm other classic gin cocktails really work here. This drink (it’s not a cocktail!) is not only delicious, refreshing, and interesting, but it softens the flavors and complexity of the genever that I found initially so confusing. It is a great drink to enjoy while you get used to what genever can offer.
But once I had a few of these, and started to enjoy these different flavors, I did want to find a good cocktail-style drink to employ once Fall arrives and the weather gets colder.
I recently picked up a copy of Gary Regan’s new book, the bartender’s Gin compendium, and found the recipe below. I asked Gaz for permission to reprint it here, and he graciously said yes. He also said something to comfort me, and anyone else who has trouble wrapping themselves around genever:

I had a hard time with genever, but eventually I “got it,” and haven’t looked back since.

In the book, Gary describes this as a kind, gentle cocktail. Gaz obviously like strong drinks. Kind, yes. Delicious, yes. A good showcase for genever, yes. Gentle, not so much.
If you want to dive into the mysteries of Bols’ challenging bottle, try Uncle John first, unless you are very bold, bright, and fearless.

The Liquor Fairy Was Here!
The following product, Bols Genever, was recently provided to me as promotional consideration to encourage me to discuss its use.
For a complete disclosure of my policies regarding promotional items and all other financial interests, please click this link, or follow the Liquor Fairy link in the header of this page.

The Aviation is a great drink to serve to people who are fond of telling you “I don’t like gin.” It tends to go down far better than a slap upside their head as you yell, “Well, it’s about time you learned to like it, you . . .”
—Gary Regan

This is from Gary’s latest article, Ten Essential Cocktails You Can Make at Home, in SFGate. Good wisdom, but it goes even better when applied to the Pegu!

I wrote this post before reading the comments. As usual with cocktail articles on SFGate, there are some stunningly, entertainingly stupid things said in the comments that need, um, reasoned correction. Fly my winged monkeys! Fly!

Since this is a quote post, I’ll include my favorite two here:

Yikes, where’d you dig up these trashy oldies?

and this gem, from someone who clearly hasn’t the slightest f’n idea who the hell he is dealing with:

The author obviously does not know how to make a martini. If you included this much dry vermouth in a martini to anyone who “knows” the drink, it would be rejected.

Well it’s iPhone-a-palooza week hereabouts, I guess. First, I reviewed Jimmy Patrick’s 101 Cocktails, then I began my contest to discover the next Killer Feature for iPhone cocktail apps. Now I’m going to go over Gary and Mardee Regan’s Flip ‘N Drink. (Web page on Ardent Spirits here)
Flip ‘N Drink is the latest in the starting-to-be-crowded field of general cocktail reference apps for the iPhone. And at $3.99 US (not metric Euros), it’s the second most expensive one I’ve found, after the mighty and venerable Cocktails+. Is it worth it? That of course depends on you, but there a couple of reasons to think it is.
The first question to always ask concerning any reference app, especially as relates to cocktails, is about the database. There are zillions of drinks out there, most of them bad. Lots of bad drinks clutter up the reference and make it hard to use. Flip ‘N Drink’s database is large, but edited with care to cull out the crap. I doubt there is a recipe for the Pink Panty Pulldown in there! (OK, I just checked. Nope. Alas, they did cave and include an Appletini. Don’t they know it’s dead?) There will be plenty of recipes in there that you won’t like. Yeah you, the guy in the suit. And you won’t like a bunch either, lady. But the one’s you guys hate won’t likely be the same. The point is that the stupid drinks are absent, the good drinks have very good recipes for them. It’s a good database.

Pretty assertive there, Reviewer Boy.
Have you read all those recipes, or something?

Or something. Here’s the other thing about the database: Its pedigree. Did I mention it comes from Gary and Mardee Regan? They’ve ensured you get all the classic oeuvre. And they collect tons of originals from some of the world’s best master bartenders, plus Junior Merino!
So the database is both large and good. If you are looking for a full reference app, you’ll likely have a hard time finding a better one.
Like many apps, Flip ‘N Drink has a photograph of each cocktail, and the photography is also top notch. I am continuously amazed at the quality of photography to be found in some iPhone apps that sell for just a couple of bucks. I particularly like these photos though. They are gorgeous, and if you remember this blog’s old look, or you’ve seen my business’s website, you know I’m a sucker for black backgrounds.

The last major consideration for an app like this is the interface. Flip ‘N Drink’s is pretty well thought out and executed. It does have some hiccups that need to be dealt with in the first update, however. The first view, labeled Flip ‘N is just a photo of each drink. You can flick left and right to page through them all in alphabetical order, or tap to flip the picture, revealing the ingredients and instructions, as well as two buttons that I’ll get to below. Flicking through the pics is a gorgeous experience, but in a database this size, it’s not very functional.
The second tab is search, which lets you search by name or ingredients. The search is a live search, which I love. This means that the list of results updates with each key you type, giving a continuously narrowing result. But you have to actively dismiss the text entry box to do anything with the results in some instances. When you do choose a drink, it goes to the flipped page for that drink, with info and feature buttons. This is great, but you can’t then flip the picture back to the plain picture. Nor can you start flicking through the alphabetical database from there! Please fix this, guys! This bug/design flaw does nothing to diminish the usefulness of the app, just the fun of using it and the value from those lovely pictures. It should be an easy fix, so I doubt it will be long off. The next tab is My Bar, which is nothing more than a page listing the cocktails you have marked as favorites. The last tab is Info, which is a simple, concise instructions page that is a very nice feature in and of itself.
The last thing to look at in iPhone apps is the special features it may have. As I mentioned at the top, I’m running a contest this month to see who can suggest the next cool thing to add to a cocktail app in the future. Pay attention, developers!
Flip ‘N Drink has two, cool, special features that are accessed from the flip page of each drink, as I alluded to before. One button sends you to another drink that you might like if you like the drink that’s featured here. This is neat, though I can think of one possible enhancement I won’t mention here yet, to keep someone from using it as a contest entry. The second feature is the really cool one though, and it must have taken forever to compile. It’s found through this button:

Cocktailian Conversations are unique little bits of trivia or history that relate back to the drink, and there is something for each and every drink in the database. Now, that’s fun there, I don’t care who you are. And if you use truthful nuggets that way I do in a bar conversation, you might as well relabel it the “Blarney Button”, or “Cliff Clavin Speaks”.
So that’s Flip ‘N Drink. To come full circle, the $3.99 price tag is just above the line where I suspect most people start to hesitate before buying an iPhone app. There are apps that do the same thing for free. Is Flip ‘N Drink worth it? I think so. The database looks to be, and has reason to be, as good as it gets. The app looks lovely. The interface will be super with just a few, easy updates. (Like how I’m announcing what you’ll be doing for you, guys?) It has cool extra features, one of which is original and awesome. If any app is going to be worth four bucks to you, I suspect this one is it.

Here’s a list of the other posts here about Apple iPhone software:

• iPhone App From CocktailDB: Cocktails
• iPhone Cocktail Directories
• iPhone App: Pocket Cocktails
• Pocket Cocktails Update
• iPhone Software Review: Are You Smarter Than a Bartender?
• iPhone App From Cocktail Dreams: Cocktails App
• iPhone App: 101 Cocktails
• iPhone Cocktail Apps Contest!
• iPhone App: Flip 'N Drink
• iPhone App: Cocktails Made Easy
• iPhone Cocktail App: Cocktails+ is Free!
• The Corporate World Starts Getting In On iPhone Drink Apps
• iPhone App Review: Tiki+

It is the best of liqueurs, it is the… well, also among the best of liqueurs, it is the crispest of spices, it is the smoothest of flowers, it is the apex of ginger, it is valley of the elderflower, it is the root of the orient, it is the bloom of the alps, we drink a bold, bright elixir, we drink a smooth, twilight potion – in short, we are examining poles totally unlike, yet bound in form, function, and quality in such a way that some of the noisiest authorities insist we must receive them, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
—With a nod to Chucky Dickens

My last post seemed like a good lead-in to some thoughts I’ve been developing about two of the more interesting, ultra-premium liqueurs in my inventory, St-Germain Elderflower Liqueur and Canton Ginger Liqueur.

Hey, where are the scare quotes around ultra-premium? You hate that phrase.

I hate it, it’s true, especially when applied to vodka. But every once in a while, you run into a product in this, as with any, industry that kinda deserves the label. Each of these liqueurs is fairly unique in the market. Each is several levels higher in complexity and refinement than the overwhelming majority of what we call liqueurs. Each can be used in a wide variety of applications. Each comes is a magnificent, display quality bottle. And each is tres cher….

Despite my photoshop, this isn’t really a showdown post. As I said, they are both top-notch products, and they really don’t taste anything like each other. The only things they ostensibly have in common is their color, and their status among the current aristocracy of booze. So why am I binding them together in this post?
What I wanted to share is the amazing fact that these two can be exchanged for each other with impressive results in an incredibly wide range of drinks.
I am in no way saying that one is a substitute for the other. What I am saying is that a drink that works with one of these very different liqueurs will likely also work with the other. The result will be a very different drink, but one of similar drinkability. And if you find a recipe using one of these two seems a bit too much… whatever, I think a great first step in trying to fix it is to switch one of these for the other. I liken this procedure to adjusting the color-balance in a photograph: Whether you will prefer the results will depend on your personal tastes.
I cite again my experiment in my last post with substituting Canton for the St. Germain in Gary Regan’s Botanical Breeze. I hardly claim to have made the cocktail better, I just claim to have made a drink that more fits my tastes.
I had made this switch a couple of times as experiments in the past when trying to come up with something on my own, but never thought about it much, as I never had a really successful result with any of the overall drinks. But I never really noticed what I was doing, and how often it worked until the Thursday Drink Night over at the Mixosoleum that was sponsored by Sandeman Port. (As an aside, I was amazed at how good a mixing ingredient port is in cocktails. I would never have thought it.) If you have never tried visiting TDN, and have the ability to follow seven simultaneous yet different, drunken conversations about the same subject in an internet chatroom, I recommend you check it out. At any rate, the excellent Dr. Bamboo suggested the following cocktail:

I tried it and liked it. And then about 15 minutes later, I realized that I had made it with Canton instead of St. Germain! In my defense, TDN had been going on for a while at this point…. That night I was just embarrassed, but the next day, in looking over my notes, I was struck by how this worked. The Trans-Europe is also quite good with the St. Germain, but I personally prefer my accidental substitution:

As to why these two dissimilar liqueurs can sub in for each other so often, I suspect it’s because each is about the same sweetness (not very), and the same strength of flavor (though very different). Similar coloring also keeps the switch from making an ugly mess of the result. Beyond that, I can only say, Just does, Mommy.
Aside from allowing for drunken substitutions that don’t end up wasting expensive liquor, this phenomenon is pretty cool in other ways.
Both of these liqueurs have their fans, but also their detractors. And they are both rather difficult to track down in some markets. So, you may have dismissed an otherwise interesting recipe because you don’t like or can’t get (for instance) St. Germain, but have a beautiful bottle of Canton in your inventory. Go ahead and try the Canton. Or, you may be the kind of drinker who usually just follows recipes; try this substitution as a first step in learning to tweak and invent your own creations. There’s a lot of fun and flexibility to be had here. Try it.
I’ll end with the admission that this is hardly a scientifically proven theory. I haven’t done exhaustive testing (though I’ve done more than I’ve written here), and I have done much more substituting Canton for St. Germain than I have the other way around. If you tinker with this, I’d love to hear your results, especially where it didn’t work.

UPDATE (3/3/09): Camper English writes of another fascinating convergence between these two liquors that I had not known. Apparently, the makers are brothers who “enjoy” a highly competitive and not wholly cordial relationship. I guess my graphic up top was even more cogent than I thought. You can read about the story in depth at The Wall Street Journal. (Wow, my first link to the WSJ….)