Greetings everyone from Orlando, a land that peddles itself to have pretty much everything. Which I thought would lend itself well in discussion with my uncle Doug Winship on all forms of tiki drinks. After being humbled at the hands of the master, I had to rethink my standing in life. So I come to you as a Grasshopper, a student on the TAO, to share what the way as taught me so far.
So my first lesson was in mixology, is a recipe from one the grandmasters. Trader Vic’s Navy Grog!!! First lets run down what is in this Recipe.

1 part fresh lemon juice (Great Citrus is easy to get in Florida)
1 part unsweetened pineapple juice (Unsweetened is important)
1 part Passion Fruit Syrup (I will describe this maneuver in more detail in a sec)
2 parts dark Jamaican Rum
1 dash of Angostura Bitters per ounce in a part

So, armed with my new-found knowledge, I head to my small corner of my home bar. It is a small amount of real estate that my wife would allow me to own.
It is kinda sad compared to the mammoth sized basement size bars that some heavy weights I know have, but the little corner is mine so I love it. Anyhow, I start running down the list. Jamaican Rum, Check, Angostura Bitters, Check, Lemons, Check, unsweetened pineapple juice, Check even!! Passion Fruit Syrup??? This one stopped me in my tracks. SO reaching back out to my teacher, I wondered how I would acquire said syrup. Like the voice in field of dreams, he spoke to me. He said to make it yourself. I had my doubts, I would say that cooking would not be my strongest skill. Amazing enough, it is a simple task. First, you need to get your hands on Passion fruit puree.
I found this little gem in the ethic frozen food section of my local Publix. I mixed equal parts by volume of sugar, water, and half the passion fruit. Bring this to a boil!! When it hits a boil add the second half of the fruit. When everything is nice and dissolved. There will be some pulp left. You will have to strain it. When it is all said and done you should have something that looks like this!!! Mix according to proportions listed above and enjoy!!. I made a large batch for my super bowl party. I had to make two large batches for everyone to get their fill. This is the second one I made. It was a hit to say the least. So to all the little grasshoppers out there, welcome to the big wild world of cocktails. To the Grandmasters, WATCH YOUR PEBBLES!!! Everyone else enjoy TIKI month!!!! Good thing it is a leap year, we all get to enjoy an extra day of tropical delights. So from Orlando, I am signing off.

Phinneas and Dr. Funk
This is how my children view Tiki Month.

Since I’m on a run of Tiki Drinks with awesome names this Tiki Month, I thought it appropriate that I get down and boogie with one of the better names in music Tiki drinks, Dr. Funk. I love the name, and find it most appropriate for Tiki. Funk is a word I use a lot to describe Tiki drinks, good ones at least. It denotes a kind of entertainingly pleasant wrongness.

The good Doctor was to be had all over the place in the golden days of Tiki. Both Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic claimed him, though he set up practice at Vic’s joints much later than Don’s, so which way the thieving went is pretty clear this time.
Except it isn’t.

Unlike most “Polynesian” Tiki drinks, which were really Caribbean in inspiration, the Dr. Funk was actually a genuine South Pacific invention, one which predated the Tiki era by some 30-40 years. Not only that, but it was named after and created by a real Dr. Funk as well. Bernhard Funk was a German ex-patriot living in Samoa. He was a popular physician, as well as a renowned mental health practitioner. And by “mental health practitioner”, I mean mixologist. Among his other claims to fame, Dr. Funk was the deathbed physician for Robert Louis Stevenson (of International Talk Like a Pirate Day Fame). The good Dr. Funk had passed away nearly twenty years before Don ever thought of Tiki.

There are a lot of Dr. Funk recipes. Names this cool seemed to have often been appropriated during the Tiki era by one bar after another, without great regard to the (often secret) recipe of the source. When there are so many choices to be had, it is usually best to turn first to the Apostle Paul of the Tiki gods, Beachbum Berry.

In Remixed, the Bum presents this version of Dr. Funk, gleaned from the Palm Springs location of Don the Beachcomber, circa 1953:

This is a pleasant little cooler, really. The flavors are light and the color an iced pink. The funk of the absinthe is kind of a background beat that underlies the main citrusy melody. This version is actually pretty delicious, with just a hint of a “what the Hell is that?” undertone to make it Tiki.

Now in general, I prefer Vic’s drinks to Don’s, the Mai Tai being a notable example. So I also wanted to see what kind of medicine the good Doctor practiced when he hung his single in a Trader Vic’s. Here is his recipe which I believe to be from Vic’s 1948 Bartender’s Guide:

I have no geraniums right now, so I used mint.

In this case, Don beats Vic like a rented mule. Vic’s version is overwhelmingly tart. I went back and added a ton more simple syrup, which made it drinkable and let some of the underlying flavors come out. You could then taste that there was rum in the drink. But the funk is practically dead here as you essentially cannot detect the absinthe at all. Indeed, Vic appeared to know this one wasn’t his best, as he seems to have monkeyed with this recipe a lot. Later recipes show it without absinthe or Pernod at all.

So as to the question of Don versus Vic, the Bum makes the right call, and silly me for doubting him!

But neither of these cocktails, it’s pretty clear, holds much resemblance to the real Dr. Funk’s prescription. In this excellent thread at Tiki Central, much anthropology has been done on the Dr. Funk, and on its namesake. And while there is no written exact receipt for it even there, the various accounts of the original drink are at least primary sources. Consolidating all their hardwork, here is what I’m going with as the original recipe:

I was hesitant to actually mix up this guess at the authentic Dr. Funk because:

1. I’m not a huge absinthe fan.
2. I already have a more than healthy share of self-respect.
3. My current surroundings are Ohio in the Winter. Why should I want to take an interest in them?

But, birds gotta sing. Fish gotta swim. Bloggers gotta blog….

First off, that is a helluva lot of water up there. I’m not sure if ice was a precious commodity on Samoa and the surrounding isles in the late 19th Century. Perhaps it was, and this drink was meant to be made without it. In any case, I used lots of crushed ice myself, left the lime shells in, and used only a bit more than 2 ounces of actual soda.

And damn if this isn’t a much better drink than either Don or Vic’s effort! Much better. It is perhaps not so approachable as theirs, because at 1.5 ounces there is no mistaking the fact that this is an absinthe cocktail. The character of that spirit is right up front. In most cocktails I make using the stuff, it is doled out in drops, so that much absinthe is a helluva lot for me.

But the grenadine and lime and water do a beautiful job of changing the punch in the snoot of absinthe, transmuting it into a refreshing splash in the face. My immediate thought was to compare it to one of my favorite drinks, the Gin Rickey.
Dr. Funk’s concoction seems likely to be just as thirst-quenching as Colonel Rickey’s. And while it may not be quite so easy drinking as the Rickey, for a man with a sour mouth or stomach from over-indulgence, post-indulgence, or just general tropical crud, this drink would likely be much more cleansing to the palate.

Lastly, should you be wanting to initiate a hesitant guest into trying absinthe for the first time, this might be your drink. The cool name, and pleasant pink color, should get them to accept the drink in the first place, and the muted nature should get them to take the time to appreciate the depth of the absinthe without being assaulted by its usual brash nature.

Dr. Funk’s Funky Trio of Funk
Don, Doctor, and Vic (L to R)

I’ll leave you with two entertaining tidbits found in my Stanley-esque search for Dr. Funk. This first is the comforting news that there were snotty booze snobs long before there were hipster bars and cocktail blogs for them to spout off in. Apparently Robert Louis Stevenson himself was somewhat of one, and another occasional patient of Dr. Funk, Paul Gauguin (the guilt-free sex guy) was even more of a pissant about drinks. He (and Stevenson) are described fabulously so in this quote from Wanderings; A Book of Travel and Reminiscence.

Blow me! cried Pincher, the skipper of the Morning Star. ‘E was a bleedin’ ijit. I fetched ‘im absinthe many a time in Atuona. ‘E said Dr. Funk was a bloomin’ ass for inventin’ a drink that spoiled good Pernod with water. ‘E was a rare un. ‘E was like Stevenson ‘at wrote ‘Treasure Island.’ Comes into my pub in Taiohae in the Marquesas Islands did Stevenson off’n his little Casco, and says he, Ave ye any whisky. ‘e says, at ‘asn’t been watered? These South Seas appear to ‘ave flooded every bloomin’ gallon. ‘e says. This painter Gauguin wan’t such good company as Stevenson, because ‘e parleyvoud, but ‘e was a bloody worker with ‘is brushes at Atouna. ‘E was cuttin’ wood or paintin’ all the time.

I think this passage lends two valuable pieces of advice. First, if you are too much of a booze-snob, then old bartenders, especially crusty old sailor bartenders (Ed Hamilton, anyone?) will think you are a “bloomin’ ass”. Second, regardless of how you act, for God’s sake don’t be French.

And hey! This post is part of Tiki Month 2012 here at the Pegu Blog! Be sure to look around for LOTS more Tiki stuff all February!

Found at last, my protegé within my family.
I was dictating Vic’s Navy Grog to him for a Superbowl punch. “How do I chill it?” he replies, “I have both liquid nitrogen and dry ice!”

I’ve written about Grog before, outlining Don the Beachcomber’s contribution to the genre during the last International Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19th. Mark your calendars!). What I alluded to back then, I’ll say flat out now: Grogs and Bumbos were the first Tiki drinks. Maybe that is why so many of us refer to the Tiki Elders, especially Don and Vic, as pirates.
At any rate, here is Trader Vic’s version of Grog. I used a single rum here, rather than following Tiki tradition and blending several, because it was late, I was tired after chopping fresh sugar cane swizzle sticks, and I wanted to give this new bottle of Appleton Estate 12 I bought a workout.

Recipe found in Trader Vic’s Tiki Party!

The popular perception of Tiki drinks is that they are all rum all the time. While rum is certainly the central spirit to the movement, the Ancient Tiki Masters did not hew to it exclusively. Today’s Tiki drink is a gin-based concoction originated by Trader Vic.

More sour than your average Tiki drink, the Pogo Stick is nonetheless delicious. And it is the first gin drink of any genre I’ve encountered that uses a blender.
The name comes from the alternate garnish option that the Trader came up with. As I said, this drink is brighter in flavor than most Tiki concoctions, but rather than just hit it with some simple syrup, he would set a rock candy swizzle stick next to it when serving. It you want it sweeter, just stir the drink with the stick. The longer you stir, the sweeter it gets. It’s a cool idea, and I hope to find time to experiment more with it later this month. For my taste, this drink is delicious as is, without the stick, but for many, I can definitely see the appeal.

Welcome to Not Martha readers! It is Tiki Month here at the Pegu Blog, so please look around while you’re here!

From: Trader Vic’s Tiki Party!

As part of rounding up Tiki Month, I’d like to discuss some ingredients I’ve discovered that are integral to Tiki.
The first is Falernum.
I had honestly never heard of this stuff until the last year, and had absolutely no idea what the heck it was. I will say the name evoked some unpleasant imagery in my mind. I somehow transmuted it to a mish-mash of Faust and Infernal, or some such mental breakdown. The result was that I instinctively rejected any recipe with falernum in it for quite a while. There seems to be no definitive position on the etymology of this word, but Darcy has a good story, while NationMaster has a drier idea.
But as I started ramping up for Tiki month, it became clear that if I wanted to do a complete job on the subject, I was going to have to deal with falernum. In fact, Wikipedia has the following thing to say about it:

Famous drinks including Falernum include:

• almost any Tiki drink

While this is yet another good example of why you should never trust Wikipedia, it does hold some grain of truth. Falernum is a very important ingredient in Tiki. It’s common, but by no means omnipresent.
I looked around and found a small bottle of falernum made by Fee’s. I bought it, but was confused. What little I had read about the stuff before shying away from the weird name led me to believe it was a liqueur, not a syrup. What is this stuff anyway?
The long and short of it is, falernum is a… a… an ingredient. It combines a number of flavors, including clove, lime, ginger, and almond into a pungent, exotic, viscous fluid. It was originally a liqueur, and many falernums are still manufactured that way. But in most modern applications, it is an accent ingredient, so the alcoholic content is less important.
It does not take much falernum in a drink to make its presence known. In most recipes with it, (that I have tried at any rate) falernum fills the same kind of function as bitters, when bitters wouldn’t be appropriate. It adds a sharp, bracing undertone to other flavors, adding interest and complexity to a drink. In several Tiki recipes, including a lot of Zombies, the falernum is what turns the drink from a nasty sweet punch, into a cocktail. I speculate that falernum’s increasing rarity may have been a contributing factor to Tiki drinks’ latter day reputation as goopy, lifeless messes.
Assuming you want your tiki drinks to not be sweet, bland messes, you’ll occasionally need falernum. It is not easy, but you can buy it. As I said already, Fee’s has a non-alcoholic version, which works quite nicely, at least to my uneducated tastes. The drinks I tried sure benefitted from its presence. Or you can get liqueur versions such as this one, at places like BevMo. It is not available in Ohio in alcoholic form, FYI.
But, as a Certified Cocktailian of the New School™, I of course wanted to know if I could make it myself. The answer, equally of course, is yes. And it is simple to do—not easy, but simple. In fact, though there seems to be no mention of falernum as a cocktail ingredient in bar books before the 1930s (birth of Tiki, anyone?), it seems to have existed long before that as one of those things, like ketchup, where everyone made their own, from their own recipe.
I kicked around the web a bit, looking for advice, before going back to where I knew I’d end up all along: Paul Clarke’s Falernum #8. This recipe seems to have become the de facto standard within the Cocktailosphere, so I went with it. I made one alteration, upon the advice of BOTI member, Rick at Kaiser Penguin, whose falernum post I am ninja-ing here. Here’s the link, where you can see a photo of his entirely unrealistically attractive falernum in progress, as well as a drink garnish that is a bit over the top, even for him. Oh, and he has a contest, too.

Rick and others have found that Paul’s original #8 does not keep well. The juice rots, regardless of the preservative powers of 151 and 2-1 simple syrup combined. Add it back in, if needed, at mixing time.
I said this was simple, not easy. Zesting the limes so as to keep the pith to a minimum is a huge pain, in more ways than one. I recommend the microplane, with plenty of Neosporin standing by for when you are done.
The resulting alcoholic syrup is a muddy color, much greener than the Fee’s. It is very fragrant too, in a pleasant-but-not-delicious-on-its-own kind of way.
I tried it in a Jet Pilot, my favorite falernum-based tiki drink, and I felt it made for a subtle but noticeable improvement. Generally, the home-made was cleaner. The flavors were the same, perhaps a little floral, but there just were fewer uninvited hangers-on.
I’ll leave you with an early Trader Vic cocktail that really puts this stuff front and center (tip o’ the hat to Slashfood):

If you want an example of how robust falernum is, and how easily it takes over a cocktail, try this one. It isn’t really to my taste, as it is far too pungent for me. If you like strongly flavored drinks, and are making falernum, it is definitely worth a try.

OK, to paraphrase Bill Cosby, I told you the last two stories to tell you this one.
If there is one subject guaranteed to excite the juices and light the flaming garnishes of Tiki-philes round the world, it is this:
Who invented the Mai Tai, Trader Vic or Don the Beachcomber?
In my previous posts, outlining the lives of Don and Vic, I deliberately avoided much in the way of comparisons, saving that for here. Let’s first look at a few things about the two, aside from the Mai Tai. Don was first, period, in the tropical-polynesian feel restaurant with caribbean inspired cocktails. Vic undoubtedly knew of Don’s LA operation before he took off for New Orleans and points south to absorb the rum knowledge he wanted to built his own Tiki empire. I think that it’s telling that Vic did not try to imitate Don, and especially his drinks, directly. The Trader set out to assemble the same tool kit that Don had, then built his own design from the same starting point.
Without both of their work and inspiration, Tiki would never have been the force it was, or perhaps a force at all. And I suspect that both men knew it damn well. Both were rivals, perhaps intense rivals, but they knew they needed each other. They were fierce, even nasty and litigious on occasion, toward lesser Tiki creatures, but left each other strictly alone, as far as I can see. But I doubt they much liked each other either. Here are the definitive quotes from each man about the other (Both, not remotely coincidentally, relate to the paternity of the Mai Tai:

There continues to be controversy over who originally came up with the Mai Tai. It has never bothered me that Vic Bergeron took credit, and I have never held a grudge. The plain fact is, there can be no truer form of flattery than when other people claim credit for your concepts and ideas and use them for their own benefit.
-Don the Beachcomber

That is one stunning load of horse manure, Don!

Anybody who says I didn’t create the Mai Tai is a dirty rotten stinker.
-Trader Vic

Gee Vic, who ya talking about?

Don claims to have first served his Mai Tai in 1933, an assertion that is repeated as fact by his partisans, and spoken with skepticism by Vic’s gang. No one seems to have any historical evidence of this. Not a menu, a celebrity diary entry, nothing. I suspect that if there was, it would always be front and center in the debate. Vic states he invented it in 1944. That’s a pretty big discrepancy.
We should remember that a well made Mai Tai is the best Tiki drink that ever was poured. Period. Of that, partisans on both sides emphatically agree. Or at least I think so, so that makes it fact.
In the late thirties, these men were the hippest things going in California’s two great cities, and shared a huge percentage of their clienteles. If Don had this killer libation in his bag of tricks and Vic didn’t, why is this not common knowledge, rather than uncommon controversy? Of course, we who live today in the age of the Internet and mass media are a little out of touch with how slowly and imperfectly information used to travel.
Also, while Don was brilliant and creative, perhaps beyond Vic’s powers, he lacked the Trader’s ability to institutionalize his work, and spread it sustainably beyond his own personal reach. I’ll repeat my assertion from last post that Don was Francis Drake, but Vic was Henry Ford. Don may well have served the magnificent Mai Tai for years before Vic, but failed to set it in people’s minds beyond his reach. Give Vic a superweapon like the Mai Tai, and he would cement it in the minds of folks around the world.
Also, there is the famous conversation. Syndicated columnist Jim Bishop wrote a letter to Honolulu columnist Don Chapman in 1989, in which he claims that he was part of a conversation at Trader Vic’s in San Francisco in which the Trader appears to have admitted that Don invented the Mai Tai. I am skeptical. In the 1970s, this would have been a huge story, and Bishop didn’t write about it then? Or, if we go with the idea that he waited until both men had died, it would still have been a story of some magnitude in 1989 at the very nadir of Tiki. Why would one journalist give it to another? Also, these were old frenemies, in their cups. If the conversation did take place as remembered, it is hardly conclusive. Still, it’s a powerful piece of evidence, if you trust it.
So, based on talent, personality, and historical evidence (or lack thereof), we don’t have a convincing argument either way. Let’s examine another feature of the competition between Vic and Don, and their lesser rivals: Secrecy.
If Don Beach and Vic Bergeron had been entrusted with national security, the Russians would have had to come up with The Bomb on their own. These guys (especially Don) guarded their recipes like virgin daughters. We do not have absolute certainty over what was in the original Mai Tai, whomever made it, or when the Mai Tai recipe we think of as definitive actually started being offered under the name Mai Tai. This should muddy the waters, but in fact this is the key to answering who is the father of the Mai Tai.
Here is what Don’s wife calls his original Mai Tai recipe, in Hawaii Tropical Rum Drinks & Cuisine by Don the Beachcomber:

And here is Trader Vic’s recipe for the very first Mai Tai ever made, as found in Trader Vic’s Tiki Party! and first read by me on Rumdood’s site:

Note several differences: First, the recipes are very different; not the same cocktail at all, really. Don’s is general, Vic’s is specific, about brands and the story of its creation. Don probably didn’t even write it down when he first made it, which is why it’s so general. In short, it has the feel of just another cocktail Don invented.
Vic’s recipe comes with story of it’s creation, it’s naming, and the bottles he used. It looks like the result of a great discovery.
Combine these impressions with a central observation that most of today’s cocktailscienti will make: The Trader Vic recipe is The Recipe. Don’s Mai Tai is an OK drink. Vic’s is… Oh Wow.
Don may well have invented a Tiki drink he called a Mai Tai before Vic. I would suggest the evidence leans that way; though that evidence, like most things Don, is deliciously shady.
But I submit that it doesn’t matter. Trader Vic threw together five simple ingredients in perfect proportion, and created a drink that is the apex of the movement. In whatever order these men came up with their Mai Tais, the drinks are dramatically different beasts; homonyms, not synonyms. And the one that matters is Vic’s.

{NOTE: This is part of a three part series of posts. The other Elder of Tiki, Don the Beachcomber, is profiled here. And my examination of which of these two really invented the Mai Tai can be read here.}
As we round into the home stretch of Tiki Month, I want to do some historical examination of the Elders of Tiki—the men who made the legend.
This post will concentrate on the man I personally always identified with starting Tiki, Trader Vic. His main co-conspirator/rival, Don the Beachcomber is up next, so hold your horses, Donnites. I grew up knowing of the Trader, because my parents were San Franciscans during the appropriate point in history. While the Tiki in their souls was buried deep, it did erupt from time to time, and when it did, the name Trader Vic usually triggered the eruption.
Victor Jules Bergeron was the wooden-legged restaurant entrepreneur who built a reputation and an empire of his eponymous restaurants up from a crappy little bar in the wrong neighborhood of Oakland that he opened in 1934.
Vic contracted tuberculosis before he was four, when the San Francisco Quake of 1906 drove his family to Oakland. Within two years, the tuberculosis cost him his leg. Throughout his life, the disease would slowly take other bits and pieces of him. But the kid with one leg was a walking lesson in the American Dream; his hardships, and his mother’s treatment of them, made him the force he was.

I guess she could have made me a cripple instead of a successful man. Suppose she had pampered and petted me. I wouldn’t be worth a damn.
-Trader Vic

He made money catching wild birds to buy his first wooden leg at age eighteen, and at age thirty two, he bought a run-down property in Oakland and built a one-room bar with the unfortunate name of Hinky Dinks. Victor was a one man show behind the bar and swiftly built a clientele. He soon took inspiration from Don’s Beachcomber in Los Angeles, as well as his own Caribbean cocktail pilgrimage, and transformed Hinky Dinks into a tropical-themed paradise named for it’s owner, who was sometimes (and forever after) called Trader Vic. The restaurant rapidly transformed from successful neighborhood joint into wildly popular destination eatery, fueled by the bizarre decor, Vic’s personality, and especially the fantastic rum concoctions he served up.
Vic was a huge believer in cluttering his place with wild paraphernalia. It was all there to stimulate conversation, as he felt conversation sold drinks. And he sold a lot of drinks. And he fed a lot of people some terrific food, too. In fact, in 1941, the great Herb Caen wrote the unthinkable words, The best restaurant in San Francisco is in Oakland.
Vic went from successful restauranteur to genuine celebrity. Eventually, Vic expanded across the Bay to San Francisco, then across the land and ocean, assembling an empire of Trader Vic’s that survived the implosion of the Tiki age, has regenerated once again to around twenty restaurants, and sells vast amounts of supplies, equipment, and even liquors around the world.
Vic was an empire builder. He took his great success and built on it, keeping his eye on the business that got him where he was, nurturing it, and preserving it. He died at 82, leaving his family a business that was fading largely due to the whims of world fashion, but that was robust enough to survive and thrive again to this day.
The Trader was no saint. Divorce is a sad thing, but sometimes it happens and I understand that. But people (usually men) who become famous and decide they need a new wife as part of that package take a serious ding in my book. I hope Vic’s first wife took a big chunk out of him.
But his credentials as a husband aside, he was one of the two great fathers of an entire culture: Tiki.
He was not only a great entrepreneur, he was a hugely gifted bartender and drink crafter. He invented some of the greatest of Tiki drinks, and set the standard model to which many of the other mixologists of that era hewed. A large number of drinks I’ve already written about this month in my examination of Tiki were his direct inventions. And his model has been mine in most of my experimentations.
A lot of what I’ve learned about Vic comes from a combination biography, bar guide, and cookbook that was written at the behest of his descendants and the business: Trader Vic’s Tiki Party!: Cocktails & Food to Share with Friends It’s a beautiful book, with lots of gorgeous pictures, entertaining prose, and a gigantic helping of kissing the old man’s dead ass. It’s fun, and I recommend it.
Next up, I take on the Trader’s contemporary rival, the great Don the Beachcomber.

Among the requests I made of the Board of Tiki Idols was for Tiki drinks to try that were good and interesting. Tiare was most prolific is sending me links with drinks I could rip off, er, riff on. Among the posts she sent was this one: Tiki Drinks With a Twist. It offers a number of classic Tiki recipes that she modified in one way or another to take into account her own inventory situation. I picked out two drinks that interested me, and set to work.
I chose these two because they are bourbon-based. When I saw this, I was a bit puzzled. Tiki drinks based on liquor from back in the the Hollah? About the only spirit I could think of that made me think less of Tiki was liquor from the highlands of Scotland.

Hey!
You know Kentucky was settled….

Yes, I know Kentucky was settled in large part by Scots, and yes, I know the geography, economy, culture, etc. of both the Highlands and Appalachia are remarkably similar. And no, I don’t intend to go into it further right now. That’s another post, for another day, in (most to the point) another month. For right now, let’s just say whisk(e)y in general is not what I think of when I think of Tiki.

Of course not.
Tiki is about Rum, Rhum, and Rum!

You know, I can lock you in again….
The point is, I was intrigued. And since Tiara is among my muses, I followed.
Let us start with the Halekulani Cocktail, pronounced (I think) hall-AY-koo-lon-ee, from a bar with thr awesome name of the House Without a Key Lounge.

First off, I made a further change to Tiara’s changes. I had no passionfruit liqueur, so I substituted maraschino cherry juice. Also, she calls for a half a teaspoon. Doug can’t measure that small….
The resulting cocktail is pretty good. The overall character is a bit sour, but pleasantly so. The Angustora is detectable but more in the form of a slight edge, rather than bitterness. The Maker’s is a good bourbon here. I don’t see a cheaper bourbon as being very friendly, and a much fancier product would confuse the issue, rather than enhance it. And bourbon this whiskey must be. The unique caramel sweetness you seem to only get from Kentucky is needed to give this drink its nice balance.
I will say that overall it is a bit two-dimensional, particularly for a Tiki drink. The luxurious, meandering garden of flavors is more focused here. Still, it is gorgeous and tasty. Serve it on the rocks in a highball with a single cherry and no one need know you are offering them up to the Tiki gods!
Tiare’s other bourbon offering is the Eastern Whiskey Sour. It was invented by Trader Vic to honor the opening of his restaurant location in that natural Tiki Mecca, Toronto.

Here Tiara made four major changes to the Trader’s recipe, one of ingredient, several of degree. I found hers to be an improvement, but I’ll put Vic’s here. Go read her post for the improved version.

Tiare uses lime juice, and a lower concentration of bourbon.
This drink is actually tastier to me than the Halekulani, but is even less Tiki-like.

Duh!
It’s a Whiskey Sour….

True. The point to examine here is that the flavors meld so well together that they lose much individuality, especially in Tiare’s version. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just not too Tiki to me. The Eastern Sour has wonderful first flavor, and a wonderful last. They just happen to be the same, so it hardly a challenging drink. Sling one together for your more novice guests, who won’t feel gypped by being denied the chance to spend five minutes describing their cocktail.
Oh, and the Eastern Sour could probably benefit a bit more than the Halekulani from a higher-end bourbon than Maker’s, if you like. I haven’t tried one, but if you do, let me know if it’s an improvement.

Let’s try another recipe from Trader Vic’s Tiki Party, shall we?
Here we go:

This is a decent little low-ball cocktail. Given all the Mai Tai mania that has gripped the cocktailosphere lately, it should be apparent to many of you that this is essentially the Trader’s take on a Mai Tai with tequila. The Pinky Gonzales is certainly sweet, but it’s not sticky or cloying. There are a lot of flavors here and they open up in your mouth as you sip, with that tequila bite showing up on the back end. It is very clean on the mouth afterwards, which is an odd feature of a lot of tequila drinks. Tequila has that funk that announces itself in no uncertain terms, but that funk also seems to clear the decks behind it. Of course, tequila will clear the decks cognitively too, if you let it.

I’ll throw in a word or two here about the tequila I used, Inocente. This triple-distilled white tequila is one of the gentlest tequila’s I’ve ever encountered. If you like the funky background in Margaritas, but stay away from other tequila cocktails because of the severely in your face character of the spirit, Inocente is a damn good tequila to broaden your horizons with. If you intend to do some shots, and want to make sure your crowd will go for a second round, Inocente is a very smooth choice that should scare off the minimum number of drinkers. If the softness of the liquor is not sufficient incentive, you can tell them that the company claims that the triple distillation process reduces the hangover-inducing contaminants.
If you are a serious connoisseur of tequila, you may find Inocente a bit bland, or over-processed. That’s OK, no liquor should be all things to all people, or we’d have no need for all this wonderful variety we have.
As a final note, the bottle they use is gorgeous, and deserves a spot on your display shelf. When I finish this bottle, I’ll be reusing it in-house, either on the bar for infusions, or in the bath for homemade bath unguents. Reduce—Reuse—Recyle!

So how does the Pinky Gonzales compare to its progenitor? Is it better than a classic Mai Tai? Hush your mouth! It lacks the melded depth of the Mai Tai, probably because tequila lacks the depth of old or mixed rums. I considered that this might be put down to the Inocente’s purity, but I imagine that if you used a more full-flavored (more impurity-laden?) tequila, you would get less meld more than more depth. Overall, the drink is still a nice little diversion. I’ll probably make it again for myself at some point, and I’ll certainly keep its recipe on hand in the event a guest wants something with tequila and it’s a Tiki night.
And there are some other more general things to discuss about Tiki that the Pinky Gonzales illustrates.
I had never thought of the spent lime halves I produce so many of these days (shut up, Gabe!) as having any use beyond clogging the disposal. Yet, this was only the first of many drinks I’ve run across which employs the lime shell as a proposed garnish. It works surprisingly well. A lot of Tiki garnishes seem a bit of a waste of good ingredients, but this one is essentially free. Reduce—Reuse—Recycle! See? Wouldn’t Al Gore be proud? I’ll bet that Pinky Gonzaleses are all they serve at his house….
Finally, I gotta talk about the name: Pinky Gonzales. It’s… well, it’s a bit stupid really. And I’m sure it’s politically incorrect. (Maybe the staff doesn’t serve these at Chez Gore.) BOTI member Dr. Bamboo examined the whiff of blasphemous that appealed to stuffed-shirt WASPs of the old days. Perhaps the tinge of politically incorrect that pervades most of Tiki (not just the Pinky Gonzales) is part of the resurgent appeal of Tiki today. Political religions aside, the name is silly. And lots of Tiki Drinks have silly names, e.g. Doctor Funk of Tahiti, The Colonel’s Big Opu, and The Zombie. Before the month is out, I’m going to come up with one decent Tiki drink of my own and give it a completely ridiculous name….