The Delicious Sour. I like a cocktail that tells you all you need to know right in the name. Sours are a family of cocktail going back a long way, with notable features of putting a lime or lemon peel in the glass and an egg white. We also dive into […]
If someone handed you a drink and told you it was called a Rattleskull, it would probably make you pause for a second, right? How could you not assume that you are about to drink something with the sole function of delivering blackouts and hangovers. Rum, brandy, and porter is surely no light concoction, but […]
If you asked the average person to name a cocktail, The Cosmopolitan would probably be on the short list. If you asked the average person what was in it, you might not get past vodka in a martini glass with some other stuff. It is a heavily-recognized cocktail for sure, but it is it anything […]
The Singapore Sling has a bit of a tricky history to piece out. Most recipes nowadays have pineapple juice, and attribute the Singapore Sling recipe to the Raffles Hotel in 1915. While some evidence points in that general direction, it is hard to confirm. What muddies the waters is changing ingredients from reference to reference, […]
Grog sounds like the name of a caveman, but if you have any knowledge of the drink it might drum up images of being on a pirate ship. With good reason too. In the early incarnation you drank your watered-down 18th century rum from Admiral Vernon and you got back to work. Maybe a little […]
The Moscow Mule shows up in very few cocktail books for something that seems to be one of the most popular cocktails ever. This one was exciting because got some new ingredients to talk about with Vodka and Ginger Beer. Vodka as an ingredient has not shown up in many episodes, mostly due to how […]
Don’t bother with churches, government buildings or city squares. If you want to know about a culture, spend a night in its bars. — Ernest Hemingway When we did this episode originally we focused on the Hemingway Daiquiri. In our book “Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails” there is a La Floridita Daiquiri, which apparently […]
I learned a lot this episode. With this mixed drink I learned more about Cuba, Coca-Cola, the Spanish American War and the Cuban Revolution and I learned that the standard rum and Coke originally had a different name. The Cuba Libre is essentially a rum and Coke with lime juice added. I had no idea […]
This is an amazing episode. Since we recorded it, I’ve flipped it back and forth in my mind considering the content. My position on the Gimlet story has changed since I first heard it, but I’m still astounded by how it all comes together. Jason started be describing how he located the recipe first in Patrick […]
The first thing I learned about this cocktail is that when you tell the story of the Margarita you have to tell the story of tequila. Because tequila was virtually unheard of prior to the 1930s, there are no mixed drinks using it in the time period when most cocktails would earn their classification as […]
