Archive
FEBRUARY 2025
’Tinis!
Well, we finally got here. We made it to ’tini-town! I think a lot of cocktail-lovers are curious about the ’tini (aka -tini) genre and for good reason! From their ‘80s/’90s heyday to their popularity in the twenty-first century, the ’tini genre doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
So, what is a ’tini? Basically, anything that’s called a martini that’s not a classical martini. The vast majority of ’tinis are vodka-based and employ various liqueurs, juices, and other flavorings to create bold, palatable flavors. ’Tinis tend to lean on the sweet side, though they don’t necessarily have to be that way!
Overview: It’s ’tini time!→
Week 1: The Chocolate Martini→
Week 2 →
Week 3 →
Week 4 →
The Drinks
JANUARY 2025
Parisian Cocktails Royale
France has a great many drinking traditions and Paris in the 1920s exhibited a beautiful confluence of various American-style cocktails and French ingredients. But nothing says French drinking like Champagne. This is perhaps why the cocktail royale, wherein spirit-forward bases are topped with bubbles, flourished in Paris in the ‘20s and ‘30s.
The Drinks
DECEMBER 2024
Eggnog Month
Eggnog is a ubiquitous holiday drink that is best known as something you can buy at the grocery store or from your local dairy and can be spiked if the mood strikes. Some, who are of the old-fashioned persuasion, may make their own, but it has become a lost art compared with how things were two centuries ago. Two centuries ago, homemade eggnog was incredibly common–and beloved–up and down the eastern seaboard, both in taverns and in the home. This month, we’ll be covering large-format and single-serving recipes with three variations: “classic” (brandy, rum, rye), fortified-wine (Madeira and sherries), and Texian (añejo tequila, mezcal, and crème de cacao).
The Drinks
NOVEMBER 2024
Gilded Age Brandy Cocktails
Almost as predictable as our annual October-in-New England themes is our big-city Novembers, where we often head back to what some call the "golden age of cocktails," 1880ish to Prohibition (and a little later outside of the U.S.) This month, I wanted to bring us to Gilded-Age New York City. A supply list of pre-Civil War stalwarts brandy and port, plus Gilded-Age flavors of chocolate and vanilla, and anachronistic-but-delicious Alpine amaro combine for a collection of drinks that taste as good as they look.
The Drinks
OCTOBER 2024
Pumpkin Hollow
This month, we continue the Al’s Cocktail Club tradition of studying tavern drinks from olde New England. I look forward to it every year! This month’s theme is called Pumpkin Hollow, named after the original town center of Conway, Mass., where I live. In the deep recesses of rural New England and New York state, the life of some of the oldest American drinks was extended far after they’d fallen out of fashion in other parts of the country. Our recipes this month use what I like to call selective anachronism and informed imagination to illustrate the particular cultural space these drinks occupy.
The Drinks
SEPTEMBER 2024
Fancy Gin Sours 1910-1940
There are several things that bind this month’s featured cocktails together. First, our time period. A very exciting time, indeed. We’re looking at roughly 1910-1940 and we’ve got one foot in the U.S. and another across the Atlantic in England. Another tie that binds our four cocktails together is that they are all gin-based sours that employ liqueurs as the sole sweetener and exhibit a wonderfully careful balance between various strongly-flavored elements. We’ll be going into the history of four iconic drinks: the Last Word, Aviation, Corpse Reviver No. 2, and the Twentieth Century.
The Drinks
JULY & AUGUST 2024
Al’s Little Guide to Aperitivo
Last winter’s amaro guide was extremely popular and it made me realize that we needed the same kind of thing for aperitivo liqueurs! Now, because aperitivo liqueurs tend to be more similar to one another, i.e. the digestivo / amaro category tends to be a much wider range of flavors and ingredients, this two-month guide to aperitivo will be broken into two parts: familiarizing ourselves with four iconic aperitivo liqueurs in July, and then learning about their most common applications, i.e. traditional drink recipes, in August.
The Drinks
JUNE 2024
Sloppy Joe’s Havana
Prohibition (1919-1933) was a major factor in the popularity of Havana, and more specifically Sloppy Joe’s, as a tourist destination for Americans. And, happily, the bar published cocktail manual through the 1930s, which give us an amazing snapshot of its history during this period. This month, we’ll cover a variety of subjects–from the various subgenres of cocktails represented in the Sloppy Joe’s manuals to the bar’s cultural import (like in the movie Our Man in Havana) to the look and feel of the manuals including the attractive advertisements as well as its amazing sandwich list which may very well have a connection to the seemingly American sloppy joe!
The Drinks
MAY 2024
Agave Cocktails
This month’s collection of recipes employs mezcal and reposado tequila in combination with aperitivo liqueur and an americano rosa, yielding a kind of Italianate take on agave cocktails. With each week, we’ll have a special topic that I’ll delve into alongside the recipe. We’ll learn about mezcal, discuss agave-based Negronis, delve into the Paloma, Michelada, and the aperitivo-and-cheap beer phenomenon, and do a little round-up of tequila drinks from Gigantic, Fort Defiance, and my personal archives!
The Drinks
APRIL 2024
The Mint Julep
The Mint Julep is hand-down one of the most iconic drinks in American cocktail history. It’s older than the Martini and Manhattan by about a century. It was one of the very first drinks to demand the use of ice. It’s lived on into the modern era through its strong (but relatively modern) correlation with a certain horse race. And it still represents a kind of elegance and ease that reminds us of why it was such a big hit in the first place.
The Drinks
FEBRUARY & MARCH 2024
Al’s Little Guide to Amaro
We will be covering eight subcategories of amaro over the course of eight weeks. This is by no means an exhaustive survey of the whole category, but it will give you a good idea of the various styles, what differentiates them, and which bottles to look out for; naturally, I am only writing about those that can be found in the U.S. (to avoid deep frustration!).
February’s subcategories with feature serving suggestions for very simple, classical drink templates; March will feature food pairing suggestions.
The Drinks
JANUARY 2024
Absinthe Cocktails
This month we’re delving into the fascinating world of absinthe-based cocktails. It took a while for absinthe to move into the starring role in cocktails—and, even then, there aren’t that many—but there are some notable examples. From the sparkling Hemingway original, Death in the Afternoon, to the Brunelle from the Savoy Cocktail Book, and New Orleans favorites like the Absinthe Frappé and Suissesse, our recipes this month demonstrate the potential for using the potent Franco-Swiss spirit as a base rather than an accent.
The Drinks
DECEMBER 2023
Tudor Christmas
Hark! ‘Tis time for us to celebrate the holiday season like it’s 1542! Though the Tudor period (1485-1603) predates many traditions we associate with Christmas in the modern day (Santa Claus and Christmas trees for a start), there are plenty of recognizable customs that have carried on, or at least the roots thereof. The Twelve Days of Christmas were celebrated (but importantly beginning on Christmas Day) during this period. They had Christmas carols, recreation, games, entertainment, drinking and feasting–all things we recognize as holiday celebrations to this day. We’ll be digging into several aspects of sixteenth-century Christmas traditions this month from wassailing to mumming, games and sport, performance, food and, naturally, drink!
The Drinks
NOVEMBER 2023
Cozy Scotch & Irish Whiskey Cocktails
We have passed these last three Novembers in the warm embrace of what is commonly referred to as the “Golden Age of Cocktails” (c. 1880-1920; extending into the 1930s overseas). This year, we are channeling a similar aesthetic, albeit one that isn’t so strictly based in a specific time and place. I had developed a really wonderful Scotch-and-genever sour for the Gigantic fall menu (the Isle of Skye, which we’ll get to in a moment), and was moved to use it as a jumping off point for this month’s drinks.
The Drinks
OCTOBER 2023
Top’s Tavern
For the past couple of months, I’ve been thinking a lot about taverns. That is to say that I’ve been thinking about them more than usual. This, because I’ve been planning a big fundraiser in advance of my top surgery–a one-night-only tavern that will appear and disappear just as quickly as it came. There’s something thrilling about the idea of something coming alive, something that isn’t built into a permanent space but that still wears the age of the spirit at the heart of it. This month, we’ll talk about the influences behind Top’s, from drinks to aesthetics—and vibes!
The Drinks
SEPTEMBER 2023
Whiskey Sour Month
The Whiskey Sour is a fixture in American drinking culture. Somehow it survived from its early years in the first half of the nineteenth century, into the post-Civil War era, and on through Prohibition, the Depression, and World War II. It emerged as an icon of what remained of cocktail culture after those three major blows to what was once a far more diverse canon of American drinks. When so much in cocktail culture had fallen away by the mid-twentieth century, the Whiskey Sour remained. This month, we’ll trace the history of this ubiquitous cocktail through its 125 years or so to see how it’s changed—and how it’s stayed the same.
The Drinks
AUGUST 2023
Pre-Civil War Black Tavern-keepers
This month I’m so excited to be traveling back in time to the world of African-American tavern-keepers who were active before the Civil War. As you know, I’m obsessed with both the tavern drinks of the eighteenth-century and very-early-nineteenth centuries, as well as the period when ice became more widely available and changed the shape of the American Cocktail forever, i.e. the 1830s through ‘50s. This month, we’re dealing with quite a long period of time, from around 1800 through the 1870s, which will allow us to see the evolution of cocktail culture as well as the role of Black Americans in it.
The Drinks
JULY 2023
Catskills Resort
This month we’re going to the Catskills! This is one of those themes that is less focused on my oft-academic approach to cocktail history–rather, it’s meant to transport us to a specific time and place and, as ever, I’ve developed a collection of recipes inspired by the aesthetic, location, and time period. We’ll be delving into the world of the Borscht Belt, which is the name given to the thriving collection of resorts that were founded to serve Jewish families in the early twentieth century and reached its peak in the 1950s.
The Drinks
JUNE 2023
Hawaiian Hotel
The United States developed into a modern imperial power during the nineteenth century and its occupation of Hawaii, beginning in the late 1890s (annexation ceremony pictured above), was part of a larger military campaign to have strong footholds in the Pacific. The Hawaiian tourism boom began in the 1930s and exploded after World War II, offering an immersive experience instead of the distorted simulacrum proffered by the California Tropical movement. Hawaiian culture was predictably reduced to something that white Americans could understand and enjoy as they channeled their colonizer privilege on the archipelago. We’ll be looking at all of these factors in this complex history as well as talking about the hallmarks of non-tiki tropical drinks and their construction.
The Drinks
MAY 2023
Margarita Month
This month we are doing a deep-dive into the illustrious history of the Margarita—America’s favorite drink. We’ll tell the story in four parts, beginning with the 1930s and ‘40s (and a few 19th century throwbacks…), moving into the postwar period, into the later 20th century and, finally, into our own era. Naturally, we’ll be mixing up four different recipes, each of which correlates with these major periods in the history of the Margarita.
The Drinks
APRIL 2023
Spring Drinks for Every Occasion
This month, we’re putting cocktail history aside for once (I know—shocking!) and diving into about our theme, which I’ve renamed “Spring Drinks for Every Occasion.” Each of this month’s recipes makes between 7 and 10 servings each. And the best part is that if you buy everything on the supply list and make all the recipes, you’ll have about 32 servings in the end… sounds like there’s a party in your future! So excited to share my tips for how to pull off a party with you all.
The Drinks
MARCH 2023
California Gold Rush
In the late 1840s and into the following decade, the gold rush in northern California made San Francisco a new, bustling hub of culture and wealth. It also brought cocktails to California. This month, we explore what the miners and other residents of the city were drinking, how prices for just about everything skyrocketed during this period, and the legacy of the gold rush vis-à-vis San Francisco as an important city in cocktail history.
The Drinks
FEBRUARY 2023
Expat Paris
This month, we’ll be traveling to 1920s Paris to observe the cocktail scene and to learn about the conversation between drinks culture stateside and French bars. At a time when American bartending experienced a “brain drain” of a kind–a loss of seasoned professionals, institutional knowledge, and quality spirits–Parisian bars and bartenders (many of whom were expats) were thriving. We’ll visit places like the Café de La Paix, the Ritz, and, of course, Harry’s New-York Bar at “sank roo doe noo.” We’ll cover three big names in early twentieth-century cocktail culture: the Jack Rose, French 75, and Sidecar, and we’ll also take a good looks at “cocktails royale.”
The Drinks
JANUARY 2023
Old-Fashioned Month
This month we’ll be hitting four major points in the history of the Cocktail (aka the Old-Fashioned): the turn of the nineteenth century, the Gilded Age, the post-World War II era, and the cocktail renaissance of the early twenty-first century. As I did with Manhattan and Martini Months, I have developed recipes that seek to summarize the various periods within the life of the cocktail in question: The Cock-Tail, or Bittered Sling; Fancy & Improved Cocktails; The Old-Fashioned; and A Twenty-First-Century Cocktail.
The Drinks
DECEMBER 2022
Midcentury Magazine Christmas
I adore the old illustrated covers of Gourmet magazine and, though I did research on other vintage titles (Better Homes and Gardens, Good Housekeeping, etc.) and their holiday issues, I ultimately ended up exclusively using Gourmet covers as recipe development prompts. Some of this month’s drinks are directly inspired by specific covers, where others are composites. It’s been fun to have a more loosely defined, dreamy theme after coming off November’s very historically-specific theme.
The Drinks
NOVEMBER 2022
Bartending Manuals 1890-1910
This month, we’ll be diving into four of the most important bartending manuals from the period between 1890 and 1910. I’ve worked with all of these books quite a bit and picking them up gives me the same feeling as walking through the European painting galleries at the Met–they’re old friends in which I always find something new. I’ll be focusing on one of these manuals each week paired, of course, with our recipe.
The Drinks
OCTOBER 2022
“Peak Fall” New England
Over these past two years of Club programming, we've developed certain traditions, and one that's particularly dear to me is our annual autumnal ode to my beloved home region each October. We’ll be working in a daydreamy, memory of a memory of New England. For visual inspiration, I love looking at maps, posters, guidebooks, etc., from the 1930s through ‘50s–a time when regional tourism was thriving. I'm also really interested in the repackaging of New English history during the twentieth century and the phenomenon I call “paper tricorn hat colonial history.” And through it all, we’ll make drinks that taste like October in a glass.
The Drinks
SEPTEMBER 2022
New Orleans Cocktails
New Orleans has played a crucial role in the history of the American Cocktail. Unlike New York, it didn’t act as the main stage for the latest in national cocktail culture. Rather, it created its own distinctive canon of drinks, many of which went on to become wildly popular all over the U.S. and beyond. This month we’ll view the historical impact the Crescent City has had on the American Cocktail through four iconic drinks: the Sazerac, Vieux Carré, Milk Punch, and the Roffignac. Allons-y!
The Drinks
AUGUST 2022
Italian Road Trip
This month, we’ll be exploring Italian drinking traditions through drinks we haven’t directly covered yet. And, even though all our drinks happen to come from the north, we’re going to be channeling the whole peninsula in the style of The Talented Mr. Ripley and the glamorous American tourism of the postwar years–think 1955ish through the late ‘60s. From the twentieth-century’s iconic Bellini to the ur-Campari cocktail the Milano-Torino, to Lambrusco-based Sgroppinos and the simple-but-sublime Garibaldi, we’ll get to know these aperitivo cocktails and their fascinating history.
The Drinks
JULY 2022
1970s Singles Bars
Though the 1970s is often thought of as a seminal period in the “Dark Ages of the American Cocktail,” the significance of the decade is often overlooked. Due to the advent of oral contraception, changes in if and when women married, and the numbers of women in the workforce living on their own in cities, the social mores around dating were shifting fast in the ‘60s. A new genre of bar–later labeled as the “singles bar”–started popping up in the middle of the decade. Establishments like the original T.G.I. Friday’s in Manhattan and Henry Africa’s in San Francisco were creating a space for cishet men and women to meet other singles. This month we’re looking into several cocktail subgenres that thrived in these bars.
The Drinks
JUNE 2022
Daiquiri Month
The Daiquiri is one of the most iconic Sours of all time. This tropical cocktail consisting of just three ingredients—rum, lime, and sugar—was created in Cuba in the 1890s. Descended from punches and grogs, it became popular, first with expats visiting the island, then in the U.S., and remained so into the postwar period. The later twentieth century saw the form expand in its ingredients, a shift that ran parallel to the proliferation of low-quality versions. This month, we’re going way back to the pre-Daiquiri days with a punch that foreshadows the drink’s eventual creation, and we’ll head right on through the nineteenth and twentieth century, peeking in on the Daiquiri’s evolution as we go.
The Drinks
MAY 2022
Tropitivo!
Maybe you’ve heard of aperitiki, but have you heard of tropitivo? Probably not, since I recently coined the term... The idea behind this month’s theme is working aperitivo liqueurs and amari into some of the most classic templates of the nineteenth century. There’s always been a tropical strain running through the American Cocktail, be it through the use of certain fruits, spices, liqueurs, or spirits like rum and arrack. Our guiding templates for the month are the Smash, Improved Cocktail, Ramos Gin Fizz, and Sour; the resulting collection of drinks feels transportive, whether you’d like to be on the piazza or on a palm-shaded beach.
The Drinks
APRIL 2022
Pimm’s Month
Pimm’s is technically defined as a fruit cup or summer cup. This is a genre of homemade or bottled drink that’s made from a mixture of spirit, liqueurs, aromatized wines, sometimes fruit, and spices. Over the years, I have often thought of Pimm’s No.1 as a gin-based liqueur, but I have more recently come around to viewing it, above all, as it was once advertised– “the original gin sling.” There’s also something of punch in Pimm’s, especially once it’s combined with fizzy lemonade or ginger beer and decorated with fruit, cucumber, and mint. This month we’re exploring the history of Pimm’s as well as making our own homemade version!
The Drinks
MARCH 2022
Irish Whiskey Cocktail History
This month we’re focusing on Irish whiskey in cocktail history, dating back to the age of punch and going all the way through the mid-twentieth century. In supporting roles this month are a gin-based liqueur that originated in England—sloe gin—and crème de banane (along with a few leftover bottles from previous months. Our Kildare Punch recipe will give us a glimpse into pre-Civil War Irish whiskey punches, while our County Clare Coffee provides a fresh, semi-tropical take on Irish Coffee. These are joined by two cocktails inspired by the early twentieth-century: our Blackthorn VII, which drinks like a Manhattan, and the Tropical Brainstorm, which resembles and Improved Cocktail. These drinks will help us better understand the role of Irish whiskey in the cocktail world.
The Drinks
FEBRUARY 2022
Martini Month
In many ways, the history of the Martini is the history of cocktails from the Gilded Age right on through the twentieth century. This month, we’ll be focusing specifically on the history of the Martini from the 1880s to World War II, in roughly twenty-year chunks. And we’ll do that through three recipes and the history that surrounds them. We’ll also discuss the cultural journey of this iconic drink and how it’s come to symbolize both the American Cocktail and American culture around the world.
The Drinks
JANUARY 2022
Winter in the Tyrol
We’re off to the the Alps for the second year in a row, letting our minds and palates wander through the snowy landscape with a fun group of drinks perfect for après-ski. Amaro (Braulio or Cynar) and blanc vermouth star, supported by rye, aged gin, and dry cider. We’re making a chalet-friendly hot toddy inspired by amaro caldo, a sbagliato-spritz hybrid, an alpine Negroni riff, and a whiskey sour with an amaro chaser. Grab your skis and taste through this great group of drinks with us!
The Drinks
DECEMBER 2021
Christmas in the Club Rooms
The Club Rooms is an imagined, mythologized place where we envision the hundreds of years of history of our little Cocktail Club. These rooms are housed in a Gilded-Age mansion that somehow remains hidden from view, or appears abandoned, in modern-day New York City. Inside, it looks a lot like old private clubs and the like, but our space is far more inclusive, naturally! There are many rooms, each with a fireplace and the whole place is decorated with real evergreen garlands, candles, and an impressively large Christmas tree. In it we will celebrate the season by exchanging little bottles of our favorite drinks, partaking in punch, and having Tom & Jerries by the fireside.
The Drinks
NOVEMBER 2021
Savoy Cocktail Book
During Prohibition, the American Cocktail became quite popular overseas. Though cities like London and Paris were outposts for the Cocktail beginning in the late nineteenth century, the 1920s had Europe going gaga for cocktails. This was in part fueled by the American bartenders, tourists, and expats that fled the United States because of Prohibition. This month, we’re using a very well-known book from this period as our guide: The Savoy Cocktail Book.
The Drinks
OCTOBER 2021
18th Century Tavern Drinks
This month we're focused mainly on New England, but much of what we cover has overlap with the surrounding regions. The significance of taverns went far beyond New English borders. Anywhere the British colonizers went, they ordered the building of taverns. The British found taverns to be an important tool in the organization and control of the new colonies. To our modern sensibilities, this seems more than a little misguided; “so you’re saying that they came here and immediately built bars?” Sort of, but that perception comes from the fact that when we do use the term “tavern” in the modern world, it refers only to a site of drinking and eating. To the eighteenth-century dweller of New England, the tavern would have been much more.
The Drinks
SEPTEMBER 2021
Manhattan Month
Naturally, I always notice anything having to do with classic cocktails when I'm out at a restaurant or anywhere else where they might pop up. But ever since I set the theme for this month, I feel like Manhattans are following me around. And when I've seen them, I've ordered them! The Manhattan is one of the cocktail canon's most enduring templates and it's expansive, with all kinds of possible swaps and tweaks. And, it being one of the major roots of my cocktail fascination and one of my favorites to riff on, I'd argue this status is well-deserved.
The Drinks
AUGUST 2021
1960s French Road Trip
Bonjour! And welcome to our little road trip through France. We’re emulating the French tradition of setting aside our work ─ mainly making relatively complicated cocktails, usually pre-Prohibition-style ─ and giving ourselves a little break from the usual. We’ll be moving around the country discovering traditional drinks and, for the first time, there are food pairing suggestions for each drink.
The Drinks
JULY 2021
Summer Drinks on the Erie Canal
This month we’re taking a trip down the Erie Canal. Completed in 1825, the 363-mile waterway opened up new east-west trade routes and solidified New York City as the commercial center of the United States. I think of this period in cocktail history as the rise of the American Cocktail or, perhaps more accurately, the dissemination of the Cocktail across the country. This was made possible by a slew of new innovations between the 1820s and the start of the Civil War. In addition to the Erie Canal, the railroads, newspapers, and ice industry all began to take off. It is during this pre-Civil War era, with all its many innovations, that the Cocktail takes the world by storm.
The Drinks
JUNE 2021
Tiki
One of the central themes of tiki is the collection and commodification of an Other that, yes, does have some basis in reality (actual Pacific Islanders and their cultures), but is caricatured and distorted through the lens of white American imagination. It’s a mélange of Others that forms tiki -- rums from the Caribbean, Polynesian aesthetics, Chinese food, Filipinx-American influence, and more. It isn’t a pure expression of one distant land, and it certainly wasn’t born of reverence for said cultures. This will naturally lead us to a discussion of the cultural appropriation that has plagued tiki all along, and how modern bartenders are looking at the genre differently.
The Drinks
MAY 2021
Classics Reimagined with Tequila
This month’s theme sprung up around a recipe I started developing last year. I knew that I wanted to create a Clover Club variation with specific substitutions: blanco tequila in for gin, fino sherry in the dry vermouth slot, lime in place of lemon, and ditching the classic’s raspberries for strawberry. I tried making it more complicated than it had to be, throwing in small measures of Campari or rhubarb shrub, and infusing the strawberry flavor by various means. In the end I settled on a satisfying, straightforward version that achieves the end result I wanted all along.
Thus, my Clover Club was the impetus for our theme, and I built the rest of the drinks around it. I started to zero in on the first two decades of the twentieth century and, happily, found a perfect assortment of inspirational templates to fuel a month’s worth of cocktails. As we saw last month through the lens of Tom Bullock, this period has its own identity while very much building upon and perpetuating the whole of nineteenth-century mixology.
The Drinks
APRIL 2021
Tom Bullock
Every week will give us a chance to examine Tom Bullock’s oeuvre by category: capital-C Cocktails, oddball drinks and egg white sours, stirred drinks with fortified wine, fizzy drinks and punches. We will be going to a time and place, namely St. Louis in 1917. But more accurately to the world that Tom Bullock created through his book.
The Drinks
MARCH 2021
Postwar American Steakhouse
This month we’ll be traveling back to observe the postwar American steakhouse, with a focus on the period between World War II and the early 1960s. Over the next four weeks, I’m going to break down the parts of American food history that coalesced to create the temples of steak and potatoes that are still such a towering institution today.
…and we’ll be doing a club crossover with my dear friend Natasha Pickowicz and her Never Ending Salon. For our last week of March, Natasha will share her baking prompt with all of you (through our Week 4 email), and I’ll share this month’s Club drinks with her members.
The Drinks
FEBRUARY 2021
Broadway & the American Cocktail
This month we're going to the theater for a play in four acts... or weeks, as the case may be. I don't know if you're a fan of musicals, nouveau or classic, whether you're really into Shakespeare, or perhaps a fan of modern-day burlesque. But I think we all have a connection with the theatrical, even if it's just through an affection for movies, which would never have come to be without the ancient tradition of the theater. This theme grew out of observations I've long made regarding the parallels between the history of the American Cocktail and the rise of theater in the U.S. which was, and still is, centered on Broadway.
The Drinks
JANUARY 2021
Alpine Ski Lodge
This month is really fun and exciting, because we're working within the "canon" of Italian drinks. We'll discuss aperitivo, après-ski, Negronis and espresso drinks. Though my primary interest these days is nineteenth-century American cocktails, my first love is Europe and Britain (as evidenced by last month). And, actually, amaro and Campari and all that stuff were some of the first things I really dove into, especially after I moved to New York, where it was all the rage. It's an enduring interest for me.
The Drinks
DECEMBER 2020
Victorian Christmas
When I lived in Brooklyn, my spouse and I would take a walk in Prospect Park on Christmas Day. I loved seeing all the people out and about. There's just something different in the air on big holidays. And I really like hosting! (That's a big part of why I got into cocktails in the first place. One of the first cocktail parties I ever threw was a Christmas party with eggnog and everything.) A few years ago, I did this whole project of desalinating a country ham from Kentucky and then cooking it (?) because my dad told me his mom, who was from Maryland, used to do it. It didn't turn out great (I'm sticking with city hams from now on), but I love a holiday project, so I was happy. I hope that our drinks this month can give you the feeling of celebration so many of us will be missing because we can't gather with our loved ones this year.
The Drinks
NOVEMBER 2020
Autumn in New York
This month's focus on the hotels of Manhattan as centers of cocktail innovation has illustrated the new level of refinement in the craft of bartending. New York provided the stage on which the new style of stirred, vermouth-forward cocktails grew into cultural touchstones that live on to this day.
The Drinks
OCTOBER 2020
1860s New English Cocktails
I'm beyond pleased to have you join me for this, our inaugural month of the Club. I knew fall would be a great time to launch a big venture; we all seem to have a little "back to school" urge to dig deep into projects. This month I bring you very autumnal drinks inspired by the New England countryside. We're focusing on the first half (give or take) of the nineteenth century, and using America's first bartending manual as our guide.
The Drinks
