CHAPTER 9

VACATION LIBATIONS AND MOCKTAILS

WE SEEM to be in the midst of a craft cocktail craze. Bartenders are now “mixologists,” and every drink is a work of art. I’m all for this creative movement, as I always serve a specialty cocktail at my dinner parties. Being festive is second nature to us Coastal Southerners, and we’ve been celebrating our cocktail culture for as long as I can remember. “It’s martini time,” was the five o’clock daily anthem echoed along the shore of Mobile Bay during our summer vacations. We’re glad the rest of the world has caught on!

Coming from a family of sailors, the ritual of the welcome-home celebration or the mournful sendoff is etched in our DNA, and always infused with the appropriate libation at our favorite portside establishments. When it was time for my sea captain grandfather to catch his ship docked at the Governor Nicholls Wharf in New Orleans, he would meet my grandmother at Tujague’s in the French Quarter for a drink and then say good-bye. While he was away, sometimes for as long as a year, my grandmother would make bathtub beer for his arrival and then serve him a Café Royale, coffee with a shot of rum, every morning while he was home.

Growing up, ice-cold beer; bottles of gin, rum, and scotch; and mixed drinks on the pier were how our parents celebrated and dealt with life. My mother was the queen of the frozen concoction. She had a first-generation Vitamix, and every weekend the daiquiris and piña coladas flowed for hours for the adults as we floated for hours in our beloved brackish bay.

Things have always been a little looser along the coast, and I think that attitude attracts our tourists almost as much as our beautiful coastline and beaches. Our open outlook combined with our hospitality makes for an experience where people feel free to indulge, to let loose, to daydream, laugh, play, tell stories, and even float for hours without a care in the world. Sometimes a festive drink helps speed this process along, especially when you’re trying to make that transition from the real-world doldrums to a sail full of vacation breezes and sunshine. So even if it’s thirty degrees outside and the beach is a world away, try making one of these festive drinks and indulge in a little liquid vacation. You’ll feel like you’ve taken a little piece of our coastal paradise home with you.

 

BAMA BREEZE

MAKES 1 COCKTAIL

THIS DRINK FEATURES all my favorite ingredients. We came up with it after my brother’s song by the same name. My one and only acting gig, in fact, came when I got to play the bar owner singing onstage for the “Bama Breeze” music video. It was a whole lot of fun, but the experience made me thankful for my day job!

1 lime, cut into wedges

½ ounce simple syrup (recipe follows)

¾ ounce ruby red grapefruit–flavored vodka

¾ ounce coconut rum

Cranberry juice

1. Put 2 lime wedges in the bottom of a metal cocktail shaker. Add the simple syrup, vodka, and rum.

2. Muddle gently, avoiding the lime rinds, which can add a bitter taste.

3. Fill the shaker with ice and cranberry juice. Pour the mixture back and forth between the shaker and a large mixing glass a few times.

4. Pour the drink into a glass, add a straw, garnish with a lime wedge, and enjoy the Breeze!

SIMPLE SYRUP

MAKES ABOUT 8 OUNCES

½ cup sugar

½ cup water

Combine the sugar and water in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil. Remove from the heat and let cool to room temperature. Once cool, pour the syrup into a storage container. It will keep, refrigerated, for a long time.

NOTE: You can make larger quantities—simply use equal parts water and sugar.

MY LOVE LETTER TO…

A GULF COAST RITE OF PASSAGE:
HEADIN, TO SIN CITY

When I was a teenager growing up in Mobile, Alabama, we had a long-standing tradition of “breaking out.” The first vital part of this plan was getting a fake ID. Back then, our driver’s licenses were printed on small thick paper cards, and there was no such thing as a photo ID. If you didn’t have a big sister’s or brother’s to use, you could craftily use an X-ACTO knife from art class and cut out two digits from your license number, along with the last two digits from your date of birth, and switch them to make you “of age.” Then you would go to the office supply store or the local camera shop where they would laminate the license, and you were set. That was how you made a fake ID in the late sixties in Lower Alabama!

After weeks of planning, we’d start our escape with that age-old ruse of “spending the night with a friend.” And then we were off! First, a forty-five-minute drive just over the Mississippi state line to a bar called the Red Barn on Old Highway 90 off of the brand-new I-10. It was literally a barn structure painted red and housing a quintessential honky-tonk—a smoky bar with jukebox music. The drinking age in Mississippi was only eighteen, so if you were sixteen or seventeen, you could pull it off.

A round-trip to the Red Barn was where you cut your teeth, but when you really wanted a high adventure, you’d keep driving that extra two hours to the big city… New Orleans! Most of us had never been north of Montgomery; Birmingham and Atlanta were wayyyyyy north to us coastlings. New Orleans had a well-deserved mystique and allure for me, especially because we had grown up with hints of lurid family tales set there, always the topic of whispered conversations in the backyard, away from our big ears. But we kids all knew the “honest truth”: New Orleans was where the action happened. It was mysterious, forbidden, wild, loud, and unpredictable, the home of pirates, sailors, Rhett Butler, and the infamous Bourbon Street. It was a rite of passage for Southern teenagers to flock to New Orleans on any given sultry Saturday night. But we also had a secret dedicated mission when we barreled down that black highway traveling due west! We were headed to the notorious Pat O’Brien’s bar, and what we wanted there wasn’t just any drink but their famous red-fruity Hurricane cocktail, served in their signature curvy tall glass with the hand-painted green logo that you’d get refills in and then take home with you.

If breaking out was our rite of passage, that souvenir glass was our badge of courage. And when we crept back home the next day, trying to act all normal, then darting straight to our rooms for refuge, the first thing we did before crawling into bed was hide that Hurricane glass way back in the closet or in the bottom of our sweater drawer. Inevitably, months later, our parents would be looking for something and find that Pat O’Brien’s Hurricane glass and they’d know we’d been to Sin City. We’d get in trouble, but our parents really couldn’t say too much… we were only doing what they’d done before us and their parents before them! Pat O’Brien’s still sells its famous Hurricanes, and I have a feeling there are plenty of those glasses still hidden to this day in drawers and closets all over the Gulf Coast.

 

HIGHBROW MARGARITA

MAKES 1 COCKTAIL

FOR AN HONEST-TO-GOODNESS margarita, you need to use high-quality ingredients without a lot of juice or extra flavors—in other words, get to the heart of the matter.

Kosher salt, for rimming the glass (optional)

1 orange, cut into thick wedges

1 lime, cut into wedges

2 ounces Patrón Añejo tequila

½ ounce Patrón Citrónge lime liqueur

5 to 6 ounces soda water

1. Salt the rim of the glass, if desired.

2. Put 4 orange wedges and 2 lime wedges into a metal cocktail shaker. Add the tequila and lime liqueur.

3. Muddle gently, avoiding the rinds, which can add a bitter taste.

4. Add a small scoop of ice and the soda water to the shaker. Pour back and forth between the shaker and a large mixing glass a few times.

5. Pour the margarita into the salted (if using) serving glass. Garnish with a lime wedge.

 

HURRICANE

MAKES 1 COCKTAIL

1 ounce Southern Comfort

1 ounce light rum

½ ounce raspberry liqueur

3 ounces fresh orange juice

3 ounces unsweetened pineapple juice

½ ounce grenadine

Splash of high-proof or overproof white rum

Orange slice, for garnish

Pineapple wedge, for garnish

Maraschino cherry, for garnish

1. Fill a hurricane glass with ice.

2. In a metal cocktail shaker, combine the Southern Comfort, light rum, raspberry liqueur, orange juice, pineapple juice, and grenadine. Shake vigorously (“Shake it like a hurricane!”).

3. Pour into the hurricane glass, top with a splash of high-proof or overproof white rum, and garnish with the orange slice, pineapple wedge, and cherry.