October 23-November 10, 2015

One of the beautiful things about writing a blog more or less focused on being a man of leisure, as opposed to one of constant sorrow, is the ability to share the kind of things you will see below, which is to say the result of going on a decade's worth of research into classic cocktails. However, as much as I would love to share How It All Began as well as every twist and turn along the road to Where We Are Now, what will follow will be recipes only (no photo illustrations, minimal — Ha! — digressions).

Also, because I am a firm believer that quality cocktails cannot be made using crap ingredients, I have listed specific brands for each recipe. And because technique matters in mixing drinks as in anything, I've provided guidance on how each drink should best be prepared. Of course, you are free to toss together your preferred swill any which way you choose, but don't blame me if your "martini" made from jug gin, shaken not stirred, comes up tasting and looking awful as a result of the convergence of inferior materials with suspect technique.

Finally, while the urge is strong to paint this as an Up From Cosmos scenario, if I can't bring myself to include a recipe for that vodka cocktail, neither can I bring myself to include in such a list something so bald as whiskey neat, though that maybe my evening tonic more often than not these days. So for better or worse what will follow are ten classic cocktails as served and imbibed by That Retired Guy.

10. 10.A Walk in the Forest, aka Boswandeling. We found this recipe described as the house cocktail
    

of an establishment known as De Drie Fleschjes in an article about New Amsterdam in the January 2009 issue of Imbibe magazine. Though the actual recipe calls for Jonge Genever, we use Oude out of affection for a bottle of residual stock of same I found during the early days of our exploration of mixed drinks.

In fact, while I pledged to spare you, gentle reader, all the twists and turns along the road, I have included this drink, which strays as far away from being designated a "classic" as any on this list, for the sense of adventure that comes of finding such a bottle of residual stock, in this case a dusty brown crock of Bols Oude Genever, sitting on the shelf at my local liquor store just waiting for someoneto spy it and say, "Hey, I think I could make a cocktail out of that."

2 oz Bols Oude Genever
1 oz Cointreau
2-3 dashes Angostura bitters

Method: build in cocktail glass.

Pour Genever that has been stored in a freezer into chilled cocktail glass. Add room temperature Cointreau. Then toss those dashes of Angostura bitters on top, maybe giving it a swirl with a stainless steel skewer.

9. Sidecar. This drink is one of the BW's favorites and is easily one of the easiest sippers found on this list. Like many of the recipes herein, this is a variation on one found in Gaz Regan's classic cocktail tome, The Joy of Mixology. This is not to say that Gaz is the creator of the drink in question, but simply that his recipes are consistently the best I have encountered in a fair amount of reading on the subject.

1 1/2 oz Cognac (Pierre Ferrand Ambre is my go-to cognac)
1 oz Cointreau
1/2 oz lemon juice
lemon twist (apply as garnish before serving)

Shake with ice.

Strain into a chilled and sugar-rimmed cocktail glass.

8. 8.Between The Sheets. This is a more high octane version of the Sidecar, though it has a charm
   

all its own that goes well beyond its amusingly suggestive name. Just as a note here, the logic behind shaking or stirring a drink is very simple: if the recipe call for fruit juice, the drink is shaken in the interest of fully incorporating the ingredients and as no amount or variety of stirring is going to result in a clear drink anyway; however, if the recipe calls for spirits only (as in a Martini, for instance) the proper technique is stirring as the resulting drink will be nice and smooth and most of all, clear (i.e., without the air bubbles that come from shaking). I have no idea why James Bond calls for his Vesper "shaken not stirred," I only know that just as adding vodka to a drink that already contains gin as the main ingredient (as in the Vesper), will result in a drink that is unpalatable, so shaking it adds insult to injury by rendering it unattractive as well.

Another variation on a Gaz Regan recipe.

1 oz Rum (I use Ten Cane)
1 oz Cognac
1 oz Cointreau
3/4 oz lemon juice

Shake with ice.

Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

7. 7.Boulevardier. Credited to Erskinne Gwynne and dated to 1927 in Barflies and Cocktails by
   

Harry McElhone, founder and proprietor, Harry's New York, Paris, this is a very early variation on the Negroni.

2 oz rye whiskey (I think this is just about the ideal place for Rittenhouse)
1 oz Campari
1 oz sweet vermouth (Carpano Antica Formula is the only thing for this and the Negroni, below)
lemon twist (apply as garnish before serving)

Combine ingredients over ice in a mixing glass. Stir, then strain either into a chilled cocktail glass or rocks glass with ice, to preference.

6. 6.Negroni. From Wikipedia: "While the drink's origins are unknown, the most widely reported
   

account is that it was invented in Florence, Italy in 1919, at Caffè Casoni ... by Count Camillo Negroni [who asked] ... bartender, Fosco Scarselli, to strengthen his favorite cocktail, the Americano, by adding gin rather than the normal soda water."

1 1/2 oz gin (Almost any kind will do as the Campari will drown out a mediocre gin and sing with one that is sublime. To my mind this is a perfect spot for Tanqueray, an exceptionally well-balanced jumiper-forward London dry gin that is an example of the latter.)
1 1/2 oz Campari
1 1/2 oz Carpano Antica Formula sweet vermouth
orange twist (apply as garnish before serving)

Method: build over ice in a rocks glass

5. 5.Sazerac. This is another Gaz Regan recipe. He seems to be really good at taking standard
   

recipes such as these and not fucking them up. The cocktail itself dates to the mid-1800's or about as far back as mixed drinks go in America.

Rinse serving glass with 1/4 oz absinthe, Herbsaint, or other pastis.
3 oz rye whiskey (Any quality rye will do, though I would probably use Sazerac for this)
3/4 oz simple syrup (recipes are all over Internet)
Peychaud's bitters, to taste
Lemon twist (apply as garnish before serving)

Combine whiskey through bitters above in a mixing glass. Add ice, stir, then strain into prepared glass.

4. 4.Martinez. While the recipe for this drink appeared in print for the first time in Jerry Thomas's
   

Bartenders Guide or How To Mix Drinks in 1887, it is clear that thedrink itself had been knocking around bartenders' repertoire for at least a decade before this. In fact, there are those who cite this as a direct ancestor of the Martini, which makes sense if you return the drink to its original 2/3 gin 1/3 vermouth proportions and consider that substituting dry for sweet vermouth would be a natural switch once these started being made with London dry rather than Old Tom gin.

My variation below, while based on Gaz Regan's transcription in The Joy of Mixology, departs from it significantly in upping the amount of gin and lowering the amount of vermouth in a nod to the dry martini and substituting cherries for the lemon twist as garnish, a nod toward another cousin, the Manhattan. The result may bear only a passing resemblance to Jerry Thomas's version but nonetheless suits me just fine.

3 oz Old Tom gin (Ransom is my brand)
1 1/4 oz Carpano Antica Formula sweet vermouth
1/4 oz Luxardo maraschino liqueur
Angostura bitters, to taste
Luxardo maraschino cherries

Combine gin through bitters above in a mixing glass. Add ice, stir, then strain into
chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with two cherries on a stainless steel skewer.

3. 3.Manhattan. We are now entering that rarified territory of the perennials, that is, those drinks
   

that I might be mixing up on any given night of the year, regardless of season (unlike gin & tonics = summer, Hot Toddies = winter, to name just two) or reason (while there's nothing like a Martini after a hard day of work, I could just as soon have one during cocktail hour as I would an Old Fashioned, and for the same reason — which is to say, no particular one).

In fact, until I discovered the glorious simplicity of the Old Fashioned, the Manhattan was my drink of choice during cocktail hour, and not just because it made a perfectly alliterative companion to Julie's Martinis, though I won't deny that the effect had its attraction. No, I will freely admit that I loves me a well-madeManhattan out of a sort of reverse snob appeal: there's nothing to remind you that you live farther out than the farthest of boroughs than the presence in your hand on a Friday night of the drink named for the center of it all — Manhattan.

My recipe is a somewhat drier, more high octane version of Gaz Regan's transcription of the classic formula, the origin of which has been hopelessly lost to the sands of time.

3 oz bourbon or rye whiskey (I would recommend either Four Roses Single Barrel or Russell's Reserve 6 year here, though I have been known to go half-and-half of each)
1 1/4 oz Carpano Antica Formula sweet vermouth
Angostura bitters, to taste
Luxardo maraschino cherries

Combine whiskey through bitters above in a mixing glass. Add ice, stir, then strain
into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with two cherries on a stainless steel skewer.

2. 2.Martini.  Ah, what can be said about the Martini that has not been already uttered at the
   

Algonquin Roundtable by Dorothy Parker or some such other formidable wit? I will say just this: it's a very simple drink, and you really have to be trying to screw it up. As for its origins, I will simply point out that Wikipedia describes them as "unclear" before going on to give a half dozen possibilities, each equally plausible, thus proving that if indeed brevity is the soul of wit,  it most
certainly should have stopped with its original characterization.

And speaking of brevity, wit, and bla bla bla, without further ado here is the "Classic 50's Martini" found in Ted Haigh's masterpiece of cocktail archeology, Forgotten Cocktails: From the Alamagoozlum Cocktail to the Zombie.

3 oz gin (my dear bride, Julie, has convinced me of the superiority of Plymouth over traditional London dry gins in this drink, though not before extensive trial and error on my part)
1/2 oz dry vermouth (Vya, from California, is an excellent choice, though Noilly Prat is fine as well at about 1/2 the price)
Orange bitters, to taste (Regan's Orange Bitters No. 6 are impeccable)
lemon twist (apply as garnish before serving)

Combine gin through bitters in a mixing glass. Add ice, stir, then strain into chilled cocktail glass.

1. 1.Old Fashioned Cocktail. I started mixing Old Fashioneds in earnest when I had a broken hand
   

back in 2010. The shaker was a bit too much to handle, so this drink built in a rocks glass made for a good fit for my limited abilities. I mixed my first attempt at a Mad Men party, channeling Don Draper as I tossed a bit of sugar into a rocks glass, doused it with Angostura bitters, muddled it with a bit of citrus, added a couple of ice cubes, then topped it all off with a couple ounces of 18-year-old Elijah Craig, which, frankly, would make anything worth drinking.

What you see below is a decidedly personal take on an extremely standard drink that, I think, most would agree starts with a little sugar and some bitters, citrus in the form of oranges and/or lemon twists, ice, whiskey (rye or bourbon), and finally a maraschino cherry garnish.

So, forthwith, my Old Fashioned Cocktail:

3 oz good bourbon or rye whiskey (for the former, I would recommend Four Roses Small Batch and for the latter, Michter's Single Barrel)
Two or three Demerara rough sugar cubes
Fee Brothers Whiskey Barrel Aged Bitters
Twist of lemon
Small chunk of orange (optional)
Luxardo maraschino cherries
Club soda (optional)

 
Begin by soaking sugar cubes well in bitters, then add a splash of club soda (optional) and lemon twist and a small chunk of orange (optional), muddle well without totally crushing the citrus, rather just pushing it around in the bitters and sugar. Add a large ice cube, then the whiskey. Finally, garnish with a couple of cherries on a stainless steel skewer and voila ... Cheers!