The Mix’06 Cocktail

As mentioned in my previous entry, I’m down in Las Vegas on a business trip… for the "Mix’06" conference in specific.

 

Knowing my predilection towards cocktails, and being at an event in Las Vegas, and called "Mix" on top of it, I was asked to come up with a special cocktail that could be served at the opening nights gala affair.

 

So I spent a little time experimenting, and with an eye towads a drink that would be approachable, casual, not too strong, and made with ingredients that wouldn’t be out of line for most decent bars to have on hand, i created the following:

The Mix’06 Cocktail

In an ice filled Old Fashioned glass, or Collins glass, combine:

• 1 oz gin
• 1/2 oz Benedictine
• 1/4 oz Campari
• 1 dash Angostura bitters

Top with ginger ale. Garnish with a cherry.

A relatively simple cocktail, but at the same time one that would introduce folks to some spirits that they might not otherwise be familiar with.

 

We contacted the hotel in advance with the recipe, and they said that it would be no problem at all for this to be the specialty drink of the night.

 

I unfortunately had to work the night of the event, and so only had a few moments to pop in and see how they were doing the drink… I stopped up to the bar and ordered a "Mix’06" cocktail… the bartender seemed a little confused and then replied "oh, we don’t have Benedictine at this bar, they are only serving it at the main bar." They at least knew what the cocktail was, so that was a good sign at least.

 

I finally worked my way through the very packed room, and over to the main bar, and tried my order once again. The "hooter’s wanna-be" who was bartending looked at me with a blank stare, and then it dawned her what I was asking for. "Oh, we can’t make that, we don’t have Benedictine."

 

"Yes you do, the other bartender said you were making it here."

 

"Well, we’ll have to go get some, it will be a while."

 

"That’s ok, I’ll wait."

 

and wait, and wait, and wait. About 10 minutes later, I see a couple of bottles of benedictine show up on the counter behind her.

 

"Are you sure you don’t want a different drink. We still don’t have the Benedictine."

 

"Yes you do, it’s right there behind you."

 

She looks around for a while, then notices the bottles… takes a couple other drink orders, then starts making mine. She has to search around now for the Campari, which is clear down on the other end of the bar, adds that to the Benedictine with a splash of gin. Then serves it up.

 

"That’s not right… where’s the ginger ale?" (not to mention the Angostura bitters… but at this time I’m not going to push my luck.)

 

She grudgingly topped the drink off with ginger ale, and I quickly made my exit.

 

I had watched her make it, and it looked like she had the recipe totally upside down… and it tasted like it as well. It was most likely 1 ounce Campari, 1/2 ounce Benedictine, and 1/4 ounce gin… thank goodness I like Campari, but it was nothing like the drink should have been. I expect I was probably going to be the only person that night who ordered this drink, which based upon the actual drink served, is probably a good thing.

 

I’m not quite sure why it is I am always surprised at the ability for bartenders to underwhelm me so much… I guess it’s because I know that there are bartenders who really take pride in their craft and like to make good drinks… I just wish that there were more.

 

-Robert

 

Viva Las Vegas?

I find myself down in Las Vegas for a business trip.

 

Naturally I plan on spending most of my limited free time down here trying to check out a number of different cocktail bars to see if Las Vegas has the potential to embrace the "culinary cocktail" with the same energy that has recently turned Las Vegas into a "who’s who" of famous restauranteurs.

 

I was wanting to make sure that I wasn’t just playing Russian Roulette with my choices, so I made it a point to check with several of my friends who not only know the lay of the land down here better then I do, but also who’s opinions I have total trust in these matters.

 

When each of them recommended the same bar as a good one to check out, I obviously made it a point to try that one first.

 

They were not only a beautiful bar with a wonderfully sophisticated and elegant atmosphere, not unlike "Le Bar Hemingway" in Paris (one of my favorites), but they also had what appeared to be a very good stock to use in their drinks. They even had both Peychaud’s bitters and (Fee’s) Orange Bitters. So things looked like they might have some good potential.

 

Unfortunately I would be in for a dissapointment.

 

My first drink was naturally the Old Fashioned, and it was pretty sad in the normal ways. There was easily more soda in this drink then there was whiskey, which always renders this drink almost, but not quite, totally undrinkable. I realize that this has become the more common way to make this drink… but the issue is that few people are ordering it these days, the reason I expect is often because people don’t like what they are served. A bartender that really takes the time to check this cocktail out, and discover what a "real" Old Fashioned can taste like, will never go back to making one of these "bourbon spritizers".

 

My second drink was for the bartender’s "Personal Specialty"… he chose the Mojito. A nice, albiet far too common these days, choice. The results were relatively common as well, specifically in that it was overly sweet, such that the first couple sips were fine, but I continued through the drink it’s sweetness became almost overpowering.

 

For my last drink, having seen the orange bitters, I chose the Pegu, which he unfortunately messed up by forgetting the lime juice. To his credit, he did notice his mistake a little after serving it, and quickly mixed me up another one, this time getting it perfectly.

 

I suppose this experience shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise after noticing the location of this bar. It was situated almost directly at one of the main entrances of the Casino, and therefore would be subject to needing to serve drinks to the rank and file customers, and not those that were specifically searching out a quality drink.

 

Heading back to my own hotel, I made a quick tour of the bars and restaurants that it contained, and noticed that there was one that appeared to be just a little bit off the beaten path, and well away from the normal Casino… er… festivities. They too looked like they had a pretty good stock, but again they fell flat in much the same way. I only had time for a single drink before they started shutting things down, so I ordered an Old Fashioned. I was surprised to discover that while they had Peychaud’s bitters, they didn’t have Angostura. The two make a radical difference in the drinks they are used in, so it was a bit of a shock to discover that they didn’t have the proper ingredients for this very simple drink. He also put way too much soda in the drink, even before I had a chance to stop him.

 

What struck me most about both of these places, is that they had all of the "trappings" of what it would take to make a great drink. A wonderful atmosphere, a great stock, a certain "noteriety" for an attention to quality, but in the end it came down to an execution that was flawed. Was it the bartenders fault, or the establishments? In truth, I expect that it was both. But even if they did have bartenders who could execute their cocktails properly, without the support and encouragement of the establishment itself, finding such bartenders at one of these bars would be an even greater gamble then you would find out on the floors.

 

Last night, at the recommendation of a friend of mine who is on this trip with me, I made it a point to check out another bar, the one in the Eiffel Tower Restaurant at the Paris Resort.

Eiffel Tower Restaurant

Paris Resort

3655 Las Vegas Blvd.

Las Vegas, NV 89109

(702) 948-6937

To get to the restaurant you need to take a special elevator, and "get through" a guy waiting there at the elevator entrance. He was basically there to help set up resevations, and keep lookie loos from just going up to take a look at the view. I asked if it was necessary to get reservations for the bar, and he said no… but (jokingly) that I’d need to give him a good reason why he should let me up… so I gave him one of my business cards, and told him that a friend had recommended their bar as someplace that I might just be able to find a good drink. Smiling, he called the elevator for me.

 

The Eiffel Tower restaurant provides a beautiful view of downtown Las Vegas, and a stunning view of the wonderful and famous fountain at the Bellagio across the street.

 

Taking a seat at the bar, I ordered an Old Fashioned, which was made almost to perfection by Raoul, my bartender. When I was ready for my second drink Raoul was away from the bar taking care of something, and his partener asked me if I wanted another… saying I never had the same drink twice in a row, he quickly recommended a Manhattan, so I accepted. It was done quite well, although shaken instead of stirred, but I can accept that in all but the most accomplished bars.

 

About this time, a gentleman approached me, and asked for me by name… he was the General Manager, and had seen my card downstairs at the elevator. We chatted for a bit, and I explained to him who I was, and not only what I was looking for, but how hopeless it often seemed. I also mentioned that my Old Fashioned was the best I’d had in LV, and so far strongly approved of the cocktails I had recieved. Then the manager came over, who was took specific pride in the bar program she was trying to implement, and we all had a wonderful chat about cocktails in general and Las Vegas in particular.

 

While I still have several other bars to check out from my previously recieved recommendations, I want to make sure that I circle back to the Eiffel Tower before my visit here is over.

 

-Robert

 

 

Write-up in the Seattle Weekly

You know… I’m not sure I could have said it any better myself…

 

http://www.seattleweekly.com/food/0609/cocktail-seminar.php

 

 

-Robert

Just how exactly do you make a good cocktail?

The overall concept is fairly simple… cocktails can (but don’t have to be) treated as a "fine cuisine" just as a classically trained French chef might approach making a sauce.

At its core, this basically means three things:

 

1. Use quality ingredients.

Don’t use store bought "Sour Mix". Don’t use cheap ingredients just to save a buck. Don’t use "Mixes" of any sort. Use freshly squeezed lemon and lime juice. etc. If you are out at a restaurant having some cocktails, try to grasp the quality concept that they are using on the food they cook back in the kitchen. Might they be using canned spaghetti sauce? instant rice? Velveeta cheese? No? Then why should they be using sour mix, Rose’s lime juice, and commercial bloody mary mix?

 

2. A cocktail should be a "combination" of flavors.

A glass of cold vodka is not a cocktail. It’s just a glass of cold vodka. A cocktail (as opposed to just a mixed drink) should consist of several different ingredients which are intended to combine together in order to create what might be considered a "new" (or at least "different") taste then the products have on their own… which leads us to:

 

3. The flavors should "balance".

There should not be a single flavor that stands out predominately. The classic "Appletini" does not fit my expectations of a "culinary cocktail" since it traditionally made with Vodka and Apple Pucker. Vodka has no flavor, so all you are essentially getting is "watered down" Apple Pucker. Likewise the modern (gin) Martini also does not meet my expectations. A "spritz" (if even that much) of dry vermouth is not nearly enough to "balance out" the flavor of the gin. A real Martini (ie, the way they were made back before Prohibition, and even for many years after) had a significant amount of vermouth in it AND orange bitters. Such a drink represented a balancing act between the two main ingredients, to the point where you almost couldn’t tell where the gin stopped and the vermouth began. Also, drinks such as a Margarita, Sidecar, Daiquiri, Lemon Drop, etc. should also be a balance of sweet and sour. Far too often I find folks making "sour face" drinks where all you get is a face puckering hit of lemon (usually artificial).

 

And I should probably add a "zeroeth" item to this list:

 

0. Don’t drink just to get drunk

Hopefully this is self explanatory. But if getting drunk is all you are after, then just stick with drinking screwdrivers all night long. Go the quality cocktail route if you are really into drinking for the flavor experience.

 

This of course is not to say that all cocktails have to be "culinary" cocktails. There is plenty of room for all types, just as there is plenty of room for all types of food. We all know that the best quality coffee is that which we have purchased freshly roasted (if not roasted ourselves!) and we grind right when we need it. But that doesn’t invalidate the lesser brands of whole bean coffee, or even the canned coffees that still outsell the gourmet roasters. Some folks prefer canned coffee, and there is nothing wrong with that. Some people prefer Budweiser over Microbrews, and some prefer White Zinfandel over a Cabernet Sauvignon. So I’m not talking absolutes here, but just awareness.

 

-Robert

Trailer Happiness

London Tiki

 

One of our "duties" while visiting London, was to check out some of the better bars around town. Many of them I’d heard of before, and had been anxious to try. The first one we stopped into was "Trailer Happiness". This is one that had popped up as a name from time to time, but not one that was specifically on my radar as a "must try". To put it bluntly I as absolutely stunned at how great the cocktails were here.

 

Trailer Happiness

177 Portobello Rd.

London W11

020 7727 2700

http://www.TrailerHappiness.com

 

To set the scene, imagine that you had a friend who had a basement, with that cheap wood paneling that everybody seemed to have in the 60’s and 70’s. And let’s say he wanted to do a "Tiki" bar, but really couldn’t afford to buy much in the way of the polynesian decorations (or just didn’t know where to go). So instead he bought a bunch of "painting on black velvet" artwork of varous polynesian scenes (mostly nubile native women), and then got some random tiki mugs at garage sales… well, that’s sort of the atmosphere here. Relatively simple, very comfortable and unpretensious, along with a silly bit of retro whimsy.

 

On the night we were there it was PACKED. As well as so loud that it was hard to carry on any sort of conversation at all. But the drinks were absolutely amazing. I can’t recall everything I tried, but I do remember ordering a Mai Tai and being absolutely stunned at how good it was. I wouldn’t call it a true Mai Tai, because it was missing that "slightly over the top" tropical twang that all Tiki drinks sort of have. Instead, it was an extremely well balanced and subtle re-invisioning of the Mai Tai.

 

Another thing that was amazing, was how many bartenders that they had behind the bar. I think that there were about five bartenders mixing drinks for everybody, which for an American, is an amazingly large number for a place this big. I was to discover that this is sort of the norm, or at least was in most of the places we went to. Having so many bartenders meant that they could take a little longer on each drink, carefully measureing out the ingredients, or in one case hollowing out a fresh pineapple to use as the glass for one of the drinks. One of the reason we don’t see this in America, is because bartenders and other service industry workers have to rely so much on "tips" for their normal wage. Adding an extra bartender means that much less in tips, which really cuts down how much you can make. And so a bartender will prefer to simply work harder and faster (which sometimes can equate to sloppier, and with less exactitude) instead of wanting to add another bartender. Frankly, I’d love to see tips abolished as a "wage" item, and used as a true "bonus" to the individual. But -only- if the take-home wages that the bartenders would get would essentially stay the same. I think that it would not only make things a lot fairer, but it would also hopefully increase the quality of the product since now staff wouldn’t be motivated to take on more then they should… but I guess I’m starting to get a bit off topic here :->

 

-Robert

 

Catching Up with London

Dukes Hotel, London

 

Yes. It has been a long time since I posted anything here. And yes, when last we met I promised that I would expand further on my recent trip to London, and so I will.

 

Upon arriving in London, we were whisked away to our hotel (the first of several that we were to stay at during this trip). In this case it was "Dukes".

 

Dukes Hotel

St. James Place

London, SW1A 1NY

44 (0) 20 7491 4840

http://www.dukeshotel.co.uk

 

One of the things that I love about the hotels of Europe, is that it is far more common to find quaint/odd little hotels there, then it is here in the US. While they have many of the same large chain hotels that we can now find all over the world, there is also this wonderful little cache of independent hotels which maintain a certain aged grandure about them. It is sort of like comparing the big cain bookstores with a quaint and curious "used" bookstore. Ok, perhaps not quite the same thing, but you get the idea.

 

London Taxi drivers are very well known for being very good at being able to go directly to any address you give them. An amazing feat to anybody that has experienced the maze of twisty passages that makes up old towns like London, Paris, et. al. Dukes however can prove a little bit of a challenge, for it is located down a single car wide, dead end offshoot, of a little dead end street. Our driver had to take a few stabs at it to finally locate it.

 

Dukes has two interesting things going for it cocktail-wise. It is said, that it was one of the bartender’s at Dukes who helped Ian Flemming come up with the "Vesper" cocktail that was introduced in "Casino Royale". A quick web-search for this information didn’t come up with anything, and the bartender there during our stay not only wasn’t aware of this, but also didn’t know how to make a Vesper. Oh well.

 

The other intersting thing, is that Dukes is also apparently widely known for their Martini’s. So naturally, we all had to give this a try.

 

Our order started out with the bartender wheeling out a little trolly cart to where we were all seated. "Table Side" service Martini’s, now this was interesting. He then produced a nicely chilled cocktail glass, and a little dasher bottle which he dashed ever so gently into the glass (unfortunately this was vermouth, and not orange bitters). He then picked up a bottle of Plymouth Gin, with a thin crust of ice surrounding it, and poured this into the glass, and then added a twist of lemon.

 

Yes, that’s right. At no where during this process did ice and gin ever meet. The bottle of gin was straight from the freezer and into the glass.

 

I’m sorry, but this does not make a great martini. Ice plays an important roll in making cocktails. It helps to soften the bite of the alcohol, as well as round out the flavors. An "ice-less" martini is about the same as taking a bite of pizza fresh out of the oven, and so hot that it burns the roof of your mouth.

 

I do realize that there are a lot of folks out there that think cocktails are just about cold alcohol, but there is so much more to it then that. And I was dissapointed to see a fine London Hotel be so clueless as to what a real Martni should be all about.

 

…now, let’s hope I don’t take as long to add the next installment of our adventures.

Visiting Plymouth Gin

I recently had an opportunity to take a trip to London, and then to Plymouth England to tour the Plymouth distillery. I figure that the trip presented a wealth of data to "blog" about, so I don’t have any excuse not to get off my duff and actually record various aspects of this visit.

 

Instead of just blasting away and doing a brain-dump of the entire trip in one entry, I’ll take a more leisurely approach and provide various details and stories about the trip in a collection of posts. If nothing else it will make my blog seem a little more active then it has for a while.

 

So here I’ll just provide a very quick overview.

 

As many of you hopefully know, Plymouth gin is having a bit of a researgence these days. They’ve come back from being almost extinct, to now outselling Bombay Sapphire and Beefeater in the UK. They got there start back in 1793, and grew in reputation, and by the time Prohibition hit us here in the states, they were one of the most famous gins in the world.

 

But between Prohibition here in the sates, followed almost immediately by the war in Europe (during which the distillery was bombed), times turned very hard. Switching hands several times, and being bought out by companies who weren’t at all interested in the the brand or the product, resulted in driving sales down even further, as well as taking massive shortcuts which resulted in an inferior product.

 

Then in 1996 the brand was bought out by a group of private investors, led by John Murphy, who had faith in the product as well as the brand, and worked at turning the company around. When it was bought out, sales were at an all-time low of 5000 cases annually.

 

First the product was restored to it’s original level of quality, and by 1999 UK sales tripled, and exports increased eight fold.

 

They have continued to boost production, as well as carefully market their product to maintain its perception as a permium gin.

 

Part of this marketing is to make sure that the right people get to know as much about the product as possible, which is where I come in. I, along with a dozen or so bartenders, food writers, and mixologists across the country were invited for a visit to get some first hand knowledge about Plymouth Gin.

 

The trip was absolutely wonderful. I’ve always been a big fan of Plymouth Gin, and it was really enjoyable to get a first hand look at their process and talk with the people actually making the product.

 

In the posts that will follow, I’ll touch upon as many of the little details about this trip as I think are worth your time to read about. Some of them may not have any direct connection with Plymouth Gin at all, but they were part of the overall experience.

 

-Robert

Wither the Old Fashioned

Is the Old Fashioned an Endangered Species?

Twice in a row now, at two different bars, I’ve been served an Old Fashioned in a "Pint" glass. Ok, so the second time it wasn’t in an actual pint glass, but pretty close.

St. Clouds Food & Spirits
1131 34th Ave
Seattle, WA 98122
(206) 726-1522

Ten Mercer
10 Mercer St
Seattle, WA 98109
(206) 691-3723

The Old Fashioned is a drink I absolutely love, when properly made. It has become one of the touchstones that I use to evaluate a bartender when I first encounter them. Unfortunately I rarely get a "good", or even "decent", Old Fashioned except at home.

I can accept that part of the problem is that the Old Fashioned isn’t ordered very often, and so most bartenders today don’t have much experience making it, and thus often simply read the recipe from whatever bartenders manual they might have on hand, and quickly slap it together. So I’m actually fairly forgiving when I’m served a sub-par drink. A "good" Old Fashioned tells me that this bartender perhaps has some good training in the classics, a "bad" Old Fashioned simply tells me that this bartender hasn’t been able to devote the necessary time to it. All of which made my last two Old Fashioneds that much sadder.

I visited "St. Clouds" specifically because I had run into the bar manager at another event. We got to talking about cocktails and spirits, and in the little time we had to chat, he voiced his dedication to the classics and bemoaned the lack of real culinary training by most bartenders. So imagine my surprise when not only did he serve me my Old Fashioned in a Pint glass, but that he used sour mix to make it! I had several drinks through the night from him, and every single one of them was heavily weighted on the sour side.

I dropped into "Ten Mercer" because I hadn’t been there for a long time, and I’m trying to update my "little black book" of Seattle bars in an attempt to rank/rate them in a somewhat standardized fashion. Ten Mercer had also recently been quoted in the "Seattle Weekly" as having some level of dedication to the overall history and culinary value of the cocktail. Some of the historical details were incorrect, but not frighteningly so.

While at "St. Clouds" the bartender recognized me immediately, at "Ten Mercer" he didn’t. So when I ordered my Old Fashioned he had no clue that he might want to take a couple extra pains with it. But as I mentioned, it was served in a tall glass, basically a tall water glass. And there was enough water in it for this to perhaps make a little sense.

Later on at "Ten Mercer" I ordered a drink that needed orange bitters, which he didn’t have. I naturally pulled out my own travel-vial for him to use. He commented later that he loved seeing somebody who took enough interest in classic cocktails to carry their own bitters with them. This of course led to my sharing with him who I was and my involvment with both DrinkBoy.com as well as The Museum of the American Cocktail. When he explained to me that he was always struggling to find good bartenders that knew and appreciated the proper way to mak the classics, I should have clued him in as to how bad his Old Fashioned was, but I usually try not to get into too critical of a conversation with a bartender on my first visit. But perhaps I should have.

So why is it now that not only have I had back-to-back "Pint Glass" Old Fashioned, but both by bartenders who at least gave lip service to their interest, if not dedication, to the classic cocktails?

Mixologist: Journal of the American Coc-ktail

Mixologist: Journal of the American Cocktail

I belong to a small group of people who have, in very short order, pulled together a cocktail museum down in New Orleans. It has all be quite exciting, and there are several different projects that are related to this musuem that are currently at various phases of completion. One of them is an annual "Journal" that we will publish that will contain a collection of essays and papers that provide detailed information that we think bartenders across the nation would be interested it, or at least "should’ be interested in. Our first edition has just rolled off the presses, and we’re pretty excited about how it all looks.

Here is a list of articles from this first edition:

A Brief History of Punch
David Wondrich

The Rise and Fall of the Martini
Robert Hess

History and Character of the Gimlet
Paul Clarke

The Genealogy and Mythology of the Singapore Sling
Ted "Dr. Cocktail" Haigh

The Bellini
Lowell Edmunds

If You Like Piña Coladas
Jared Brown

Antoine Amedee Peychaud
Phil Greene

Down to the Sea in Ships
Anistatia Miller

The Definitive Guide to Simple Syrup
Darcy O’Neil

Twenty-First Century Cocktails
Audrey Saunders

The Long and Winding Road
Gary Regan

To order your own copy, you can find it up on Amazon.com, or you can order it directly from the special publishing arm of the Museum here: http://www.Mixellany.com

It’s hard to believe that it was just about 8 months ago that I was discussing with Anistatia Miller the "idea" of doing something like this. And here we are with an actual book, fully published, and taking orders from all over the world.

We are already in the planning stages for the next edition, and so far it looks like we’ll have to double the size just to get all of the great article ideas in that are already coming in. If -you- think you’d like to send in a submission for our next issue, you can get the details here: http://www.mixellany.com/guidelines.html

IACP : The Coc-ktail: An American Original

The Cocktail: An American Original

Last week, the IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals) held their annual conference in Dallas Texas. I’ve known about the IACP for quite a while, but never joined, or participated in any of their events. This year however was different. Janet Zimmerman, the forum leader of the "Fine Spirits and Cocktails" forum on eGullet (http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showforum=88), had organized a cocktail session at the conference, and invited myself and David Wondrich to participate.

WS-11
The Cocktail: An American Original
Tasting

For more than 200 years, cocktails and bars have played a crucial role in American gastronomy and social life. This session will outline the history of the cocktail from the "Golden Years" through the ironically creative Prohibition era to the present, when, it seems, many of the top bars and best drinks are now found in London. The panel will examine the cocktail as cuisine, focusing on the importance of high quality ingredients; explore the role of the cocktail in American culinary life; and discuss the various components of a successful cocktail lounge, including the menu, ambiance and bartenders. The session will end with a tasting of classic and new cocktail creations.

Janet A. Zimmerman, moderator, writer
Robert Hess, bar consultant
David Wondrich, drink historian

I of course always enjoy talking to people about cocktails, and to talk with folks well versed in culinary topics just makes it that much more fun.

The session went wonderfully. David started out by talking about the history of the cocktail, starting at 1806, even pausing briefly to go further back in time to describe some of the proto-cocktails that were around in th 1600’s and 1700’s. During his session he served up a "Whiskey Cocktail", made from whiskey, sugar, water, and some home-made "Stoughton" bitters. This is a form of bitters that was available in the 1800’s, but is long gone. Various "possible" recipes are floating about, one of which David chose to mix up and use for this session. It worked quite well, producing an excellent cocktail that was amazingly similar to an Old Fashioned (gee… wonder why? :-). David left off around 1860 or so, and passed the baton on to me.

During the switch-over, some folks got a chance to ask a few questions… which was probably a mistake, since from then on it seemed like the floodgates were open. It would have been fine if they asked questions that were relevant to the topic currently being discussed, but most of the questions were the random questions that the audience brought in with them, and so I had to work hard to keep the discussion on-topic so I could get the points across I wanted to focus on.

During my portion I served up a "dry Martini", made the classic way, 3 parts Plymouth gin, 1 part dry vermouth, and a dash of orange bitters. While the bar-staff was making up the Martini’s for the audience, I demo’d the process on-stage. I chose to "shake" my Martini instead of stirring it, because this way I could clearly illustrate to the audience how a shaken Martini will "cloud up" in the glass, while the drinks being served to the audience were crystal clear.

I had hoped to use some of Gary Regan’s recently released "Regans Orange Bitters #6", but unfortuantely my shipment didn’t arrive in time, so I used Fee Bothers instead. After the session, many people came up to tell me that this was the best Martini they had ever had… and many of them said that they normally didn’t like gin.

I explained to the audience about the culinary awakening of the cocktail which happened in the later half of the 1800’s, and was really picking up steam as we crossed into the 1900’s. I covered the Temperance movement, and how this brought about Prohibition, and some of the good and bad ramifications cocktail wise that we were to be saddled with during these 13 "dry" years.

I then explained how coming out of prohibition we behaved as if we were just turning 21, and could finally "legally" drink (after already having been drinking illegally for years), and how this shattered the soul of the Martini in ways that we are still dealing with.

I then passed things over to Janet, who mixed up a Sidecar for the audience, and briefly described the history of the drink, the process by which it was made, and the importance of using quality ingredients.

Throughout all of this, the audience was trying to pepper us with questions, and now that we had basically finished our presentation we could let the questions fly. So for almost half an hour the audience was able to ask all of the random cocktail questions that had probably been bothering them for some time.

• What is the shelf-life of liquor?
• Where do you find sour mix?
• Should martini fixings be stored in the freezer?
• Why are they called marashino cherries?
• Are glass shakers better than metal?
• Why does absinthe taste so bad?
• What bartender schools do we recommend?

And many others that I now forget.

Overall it was a great session, and based on the resposes that we recived from folks we would run into the rest of the day, it appears that the audience really enjoyed it.

Next year, the IACP conference will be in Seattle, so assuming I get a chance to do this session again, it will be a lot easier (and cheaper!) for me to attend. I can’t wait.