Part of the fun of drinking cocktails is tapping into a history and a culture of a particular time. This is a discussion of drinks, spirits, bartending, and history for beginners and professionals alike.
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Daniel Shoemaker at the Teardrop Lounge in Portland is kindly sharing two more winter cocktails with us. "Boogie Street" is a rare combination of bourbon and cachaça with the added flavours of fruit and chocolate. Daniel is also sharing Teardrop's house-made crèmede cacao recipe should you feel adventurous enough to make your own. After that is "Moon on the Rain," a cider-like cocktail using a house-made gastrique, for which there are again instructions for the adventurous.
Thank you again to Daniel and the Teardrop team for running such a great establishment and for contributing their holiday recipes. Cheers! Boogie Street
1 ½ oz. Maker’s 46 bourbon
¾ oz. Novo Fogo silver cachaça
¾ oz. blood orange juice
½ oz. crème de cacao*
Barspoon pear butter
Shake, double-strain over fresh ice in a rocks glass. Garnish with a fan of Bosc pear slices.
*Crème de Cacao:
3 ½ cups Theo Cacao nibs
1 cup Cane Sugar
1 cup Distilled Water
4-750 ml Lemonhart 151 rum
Dissolve sugar in water at
slow simmer. Add cacao nibs &
stir constantly. Sugar will
re-granulate, smoking, until it begins to slowly caramelize & coat the
cacao nibs. The entire process
should take no more than 20 minutes. Remove from heat, lay out cacao nibs on
parchment sheet. Let cool, then break up with spoon into container, topping off
with rum. Let steep for 1 week,
strain through cheesecloth. Cut to
proof with equal parts distilled water.
Moon on the Rain
2 oz. Daron Calvados
¾ oz. Quince-Pecan Gastrique*
¾ oz. Dubonnet Rouge
2 dashes Fee’s Whiskey-Barrel bitters
Stir, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, garnish with an orange zest.
*Quince-Pecan Gastrique:
6 cups cane sugar
3 cups balsamic vinegar
1 cups brandy
3 cups Quince, coarsely chopped
1 cups pecans
Caramelize sugar on medium, then
slowly add vinegar, stirring to incorporate. Add quince & brandy, simmer for 10 minutes. Add pecans, simmer for another 10
minutes. Steep for 2 hours, strain & bottle.
(NOTE: this is good with American Dubonnet, but AWESOME with Canadian)
Classic cocktails have really been getting explored
and revived over the last few years. Manhattans and Martinis and
Sazeracs never really left, but Fourth Regiments and proper Aviations
have slowly become commonplace in good bars all over the world. With
innovators like David Wondrich, Dr. Cocktail, Gary Regan, Robert Hess,
and their ilk writing books and collecting really old recipes, and even
more current releases like the PDT Cocktail Book collecting
tons as well, it's easy to suddenly feel a little saturated with drink
ideas - lot of which are fairly similar, particularly if you want to
rifle through pages upon pages of gin and vermouth variations in just
about any 1930's cocktail book. Let's be clear here: this is not to put
down in any way what these men and women have done, that is essentially
the birth of an entirely new cocktail culture that for the previous
thirty-plus years was arguably dead. It is also a little mind-boggling
to think that they have themselves narrowed down the sea of cocktail
ideas to what they deemed best, and yet I still feel a little daunted
when trying to decide what to make next at home.
The key is really to narrow down the handful of truly important
drinks that stand the test of time, or find those that stand out in
their ingredients or purpose. A Last Word in a collection of
pre-Prohibition cocktails, for example. So this brings me to my
momentary obsession in a cocktail sense: The Twentieth Century. When
thinking of chocolate in drinks, chocolate syrup and flavoured vodka at
chain restaurants comes to mind, and not anything "classic," yet here is
one hailing from the 1930's that can be balanced and refreshing, and
thankfully has a gin base. Creme de Cacao is not a typical ingredient
the cocktail nerds see nor many craft bartenders use, perhaps because of
its modern associations or perhaps because it tends to be a fairly
flat-tasting product. Yet, again, here is a simple, classic drink in
which it works.
The Drink
The challenge of making a very old cocktail is finding the "proper"
ratios with which to mix the ingredients, so the answer is always to
just make it how you like it but to be mindful of how it was intended.
Using too much chocolate liqueur would bring us back to that
overly-sweet grossness that in part gave mixed drinks such a bad name,
so be mindful that this is a gin drink and should be mixed as such. The
PDT book lists 2:1 for gin to everything else, whereas Ted Haigh adapted
his to 1.5 gin to 3/4 Lillet and
lemon, to 1/2 creme de cacao, and I've seen ratios of lemon drop even
to 1/4. I prefer my drinks drier in general so I lean towards the
Haigh's recipe, but we also get into tricky territory without specifying
the exact chocolate liqueur. Here's where my suggestion comes in -
don't use creme de cacao. Vancouver's Pourhouse bar, one focusing almost strictly on classic cocktails or at least the
mentality of such, makes their 20th Century quite differently to
delicious results by using Giffard White Chocolate syrup and
changing the proportions a fair bit. This makes for a surprisingly
balanced drink that is not too sweet at all, albeit much less dry than
some palates may be accustomed. This is an excellent drink to introduce
or coax misinformed or close-minded souls to gin, and one that anyone -
even those who sat at your bar looking for Appletini's - can enjoy. To
play with the idea even further and treat this as a dessert cocktail,
which in my opinion it is, an egg white can be added, with the
suggestion to back off the syrup a little further as egg will increase
the perceived sweetness.
A final note is the Lillet - the original would have used the
original Kina Lillet, so substituting Cocchi Americano here would be
more true to form.
20th Century (C.A. Tuck, 1937)
2 parts gin
1 part Lillet
1 part lemon juice
1 part creme de cacao
Combine all ingredients with ice, shake, and strain into a cocktail glass.
Combine all ingredients and dry shake if using egg, then add
ice and shake again and double-strain into a cocktail glass. If not
using egg, garnish with a lemon cheek.
The History
The drink is credited to C.A. Tuck in the first publication of the "Cafe Royal Cocktail Book," written in 1937 by William J. Tarling, who was at the time the president of the United Kingdom Bartender's Guild and
main barman at the Cafe Royal. This restaurant and bar, which had one
of the finest wine cellars in the world, ran from 1865 until 2008,
hosting many a good time for the likes of Oscar Wilde, Aleister Crowley,
Virginia Wolf, Winston Churchill, up to Brigitte Bardot. Details on
Tuck's station and career are elusive to say the least. The cocktail was
named in honour of the Twentieth Centry Limited train that ran between
New York and Chicago from 1902 until 1967. It was often called the "most
famous train in the world," making the trip in twenty hours (which in
the 30's was cut to sixteen) - four hours faster than any previous
attempt. The train was also famous for its Art-Deco design and on-board
luxuries, even including a barbershop, and boarding and exiting was a
sophisticated affair with crimson carpets adorning the loading area,
creating the phrase "red carpet treatment."
The 1930's in London marked a continued shift towards electricity and
the use of motor vehicles from the old gas and carriage. While many
industries felt depression all over Europe, London actually managed to
avoid much of the damage, even seeing small booms in new industries like
electrical equipment and food production. By the mid 30's, there was an
influx of fearful Jewish immigrants to the city, and by the end of the
decade many of them were of course escaping to the countryside. The
beginning of a new decade was marked by the Blitz, the German bombing of
the U.K. - most notably London - from 1940-1941, killing about 40,000
people.
Among the many lives lost was influential and iconic singer, Al
Bowlly, who sang in Fred Elizalde's Savoy Hotel Band in the 1920's at
the famous Savoy Hotel where
Harry Craddock was mixing drinks and writing his seminal cocktail
tome. The jazz age brought artists to Europe, spreading a sound of
music never heard before, and there were some British artists of note
who became superstars during the swing era even across the Atlantic,
namely Bowlly along with bandleaders Elizalde and Ray Noble. Bowlly made
over 1000 recordings in his career, and was the first singer to
headline live and radio performances instead of the bandleader,
essentially being modern music's first "pop-star." He was also one of
the first singers to perform with a microphone, allowing a softer and
more versatile singing style that coined the term "crooner." While the
30's marked his solo career, including some trips to New York, he could
still be seen performing at big venues in London. It’s possible you
would sip a Twentieth Century cocktail, perhaps even made by C.A. Tuck,
wherever he was, while listening to one of the great singers in modern
music. Here is a very rare filmed performance in 1934 of a classic, "The
Very Thought Of You," composed by Ray Noble and performed by
heart-throb crooner, Al Bowlly.
Originally published on www.shakestir.com by Rhett Williams
Photography: Twentieth Century Limited train circa 1930's (public domain) Twentieth Century Cocktail 2012 from Pourhouse Restaurant, Vancouver (Rhett Williams) Cafe Royal 1901 (public domain)
Moon on the Rain
