Cocktails

The perfect Martini

About the martini I have already spoken. A whole series of posts targeting the 7 drinks that a bar tender has to master to consider himself an mixologist. Knowing how to make it and mastering is two different things. It is what makes a Martini, a good Martini, or a great Martini. I am not going to talk about the history of the Martini. I have all you need here. Today I am going to show you, how to master (hahahaa, like it is easy) more like how to make a good martini.

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Mixology 101: Jack Rose

This the last cocktail of the six famous cocktails. It is probably the least famous cocktail of the david A. Embury ‘s coctails. Jack Rose is the name of a classic cocktail, popular in the 1920s and 1930s, containing applejack, grenadine, and lemon or lime juice. It notably appeared in a scene in Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 classic, The Sun Also Rises, in which Jake Barnes, the narrator, drinks a Jack Rose in a Paris hotel bar while awaiting the arrival of Lady Brett Ashley.

Last ...

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Mixology 101: The Oldfashioned

The first known definition of the word “cocktail” was in response to a reader’s letter asking to define the word in the May 6, 1806 issue of The Balance and Columbia Repository in Hudson, New York. In the May 13, 1806 issue, the paper’s editor wrote that it was a potent concoction of spirits, bitters, water, and sugar. The first use of the specific name “Old Fashioned” was for a Bourbon whiskey cocktail in the 1880s, at the Pendennis Club, a gentlemen’s club in Louisville, Kentucky. The recipe is said to have been invented by a bartender at that club, and popularized by a club member and bourbon distiller, Colonel James E. Pepper, who brought it to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel bar in New York City. The Pepper family distillery is now known as Labrot & Graham.

There is great contention on the proper ...

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Mixology 101: Sidecar

The Sidecar is a classic cocktail traditionally made with Cognac, Cointreau, and lemon juice. It is one of six basic drinks listed in David A. Embury’s classic (The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks). The exact origin of the Sidecar is unclear, but it was created around the end of World War I in either London or Paris. It is a variation on the older Brandy Daisy (brandy, yellow Chartreuse, and lemon juice). The first recipes for the Sidecar appear in 1922, in both Harry MacElhone’s Harry’s ABC of Mixing Cocktails and Robert Vermeire’s Cocktails and How to Mix Them. In early editions of MacElhone’s book, he cites the inventor as Pat MacGarry, “the Popular bar-tender at Buck’s Club, London”, but in later editions he cites himself. Vermiere states, “This cocktail is very popular in France. It was first introduced in London by MacGarry, the celebrated bar-tender of Buck’s Club.” David A. Embury (The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, 1948) credits the invention of the drink to an American Army captain in Paris during World War I “and named after the motorcycle sidecar in which the good captain was driven to and from the little bistro where the drink was born and christened”.

Both MacElhone and Vermiere state the recipe as equal parts Cognac, Cointreau...

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Mixology 101: Daiquiri

The name Daiquirí is also the name of a beach near Santiago, Cuba, and an iron mine in that area. The cocktail was invented about 1905 in a bar named Venus in Santiago, about 23 miles east of the mine, by a group of American mining engineers. Among the engineers present were Jennings Cox, General Manager of the Spanish American Iron Co., J. Francis Linthicum, C. Manning Combs, George W. Pfeiffer, De Berneire Whitaker, C. Merritt Holmes and Proctor O. Persing. Although stories persist that that Cox invented the drink when he ran out of gin while entertaining American guests, the drink evolved naturally due to the prevalence of lime and sugar.

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Mixology 101: The Manhattan

Manhattan is the second basic cocktail that is mentioned in the great book of bartendering “The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks” by David A. Embury. A popular history suggests that the drink originated at the Manhattan Club in New York City in the early 1870s, where it was invented for a banquet hosted by Jennie Jerome (Lady Randolph Churchill, Winston’s mother) in honor of presidential candidate Samuel J. Tilden. The success of the banquet made the drink fashionable, later prompting several people to request the drink by referring the name of the club where it originated – “the Manhattan cocktail.”

However, experts in mix...

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Mixology 101: The Martini

One of the most famous cocktails is the Martini. Especially if you are a James bond fan then Martini is your drink. The martini is a cocktail made with gin and dry white vermouth, although substituting vodka for gin is now common. It is often described as being “crisp” or “astringent.” Over the years, the martini has become perhaps the most well-known mixed alcoholic beverage. H. L. Mencken once called the martini “the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet”,and E. B. White called it “the elixir of quietude”. It is also the proverbial drink of the one-time “three-martini lunch” of business executives, now largely abandoned as part of companies’ “fitness for duty” programs.

While variations are many, a standard modern martini is a five to one ratio, m...

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