HANGOVERS, PART ONE: PREVENTATIVES

We’ve divided this topic into three logical portions: what you can do before you drink and while you’re drinking, what to do if you arrive home drunk, and if you wake up with a hangover.

Ever been told you should eat bread or pasta because it’ll soak up the alcohol? Or perhaps the advice was to drink milk or consume fat, it’ll coat your stomach and prevent undue absorption. One journalist we know drank a cup of olive oil before a night out. We’re sure it kept his coat shiny (that’s what our cat’s vet says), but even if it did work, personally we’d rather have the hangover. If you’re going to try the oil trick, at least dip bread in it. Truth is, any food slows down alcohol absorption in your system, so a big meal helps. But nothing stops it. There is a sure way to reduce the absorption of alcohol. Drink less. At a party? In dire straits? Lose your drinks halfway through each one. The bottom half is never quite as good as the top anyway. Avoid sugary drinks, which isn’t hard if you’re sticking to Martinis. Avoid wine when drinking cocktails as it has all the congeners that were removed from the spirits through distillation (Jared’s Achilles’ heel is a glass of champagne late in the evening after a few Martinis). Also, be sure to drink water when you’re drinking cocktails. One junior congressman orders his Martini on the rocks and then keeps it topped up with ice and water, leaving the olive in place. A Martini or a few over the course of an enjoyable evening can be very pleasant. Too many Martinis is rarely pleasant. If it’s too late to talk about moderation, proceed to Hangovers, Part Two.

 

GARDEN OF EDEN

FRUIT MARTINIS

Proponents of this Martini Renaissance have enriched our treasury of folklore, enhanced our mixing rituals, and challenged Luddites—er, purists—who refuse to accept the drink’s inevitable evolution. (That camp proclaims that the cornucopia of modern fruit-bearing variations aren’t even remote Martini cousins.) But that’s like comparing a Serengeti elephant to an Ice Age woolly mammoth. The evolution is pretty obvious. Strangely, no one denies that the sweet, gomme-syruped, orange-bittered 1:1 Martini was the great-grandparent of the 4:1 and 10:1 Dry Martini.

* * *

NICK CHARLES:
Barkeeper, bring Mrs. Charles 240 Martinis. We won’t be long.

—Shadow of the Thin Man (1941)

* * *

We personally take a fully Darwinian view of the Martini. Just as it never followed one simple recipe and has changed over time, the Martini is still changing. And the name? Well, we all consider the Martini a cocktail, and everyone knows that “cocktail” is a broad term encompassing innumerable drinks. Yet, at one time there were purists steaming in their real cocktails, made with gin, bitters, sugar, and water, that nothing else was a cocktail dammit! We believe in the preservation of the Dry Martini and its classic family, but we’re certainly not going to wince at any of these innovative mixes either like some die-hard classicists do.

 

LOLA

CREATED BY LOREN DUNSWORTH AT DELILAH’S, VANCOUVER

Once upon a time, there was a decadent little bar-restaurant nestled into the ground floor of the Buchan Hotel on Haro Street in Vancouver’s West End. Delilah’s was its name. It opened in the 1970s and besides offering a scrumptious menu of Pacific Northwest cuisine, this tiny jewel offered a “Martini” menu built up by its head bartender, Lola (née: Loren Dunsworth) after she arrived behind the stick in 1988.

* * *

Let stand

2 oz. (60 ml) Absolut vodka

1 splash each of: fresh orange juice, fresh grapefruit juice, and Cointreau

orange wedge

Gin can be used in place of vodka.

* * *

We could break into a lounge mix of the Kinks’ 1960s hit, but we won’t. We’ll just say that Lola divined a fabulous array of concoctions comprised of no more than two to three ingredients and shaken, stirred, or allowed to stand, then simply garnished.

It was 1995 when we first met her. We sampled a few of her creations and were immediately entranced. That Halloween night, we launched our first Web site, Shaken Not Stirred^®: A Celebration of the Martini. We featured a few dozen of Lola’s concoctions.

* * *

BIG BILL BARTON:
What are you calling up that shyster for?

TIRA:
Because he helped me beat one rap and he can do it again.

BIG BILL BARTON:
How are you mixed up in all of this?

TIRA:
Like an olive in a Dry Martini.

—Mae West, I’m No Angel (1933)

* * *

Delilah’s had twelve Martinis on the menu when Lola arrived. By the time she left to open Lola’s at Century House, in 1995, the list was sixty drinks strong and the back bar featured an assortment of infusion jars filled with cranberries and other fresh fruit resting in vodka.

As we now realize, Lola pioneered the first Martini menu back in those early days. It was a landmark in the Martini Renaissance, although few people outside of the Pacific Northwest knew it.

“When we opened Lola’s at Century House, Marion [her partner at the time] and I knew that we had to create our own Martini and champagne cocktail list,” Lola recalled. She formulated an avant range of gin- and vodka-based Martinis, which were presented in the single-serving three-part shakers she made them in, accompanied by frosty cocktail glasses.

* * *

The Lola can also be served as a dinner finale. Lola’s served a Lola Granitée. Combine all the ingredients in a glass or metal bowl and place it in the freezer hours ahead of time. Every twenty minutes or so, use a fork to break up and stir any ice that forms. Do it quickly and put it right back in the freezer so it doesn’t melt. You should end up with a sorbet consistency. When it’s all frozen, you don’t have to stir it any more, and it’ll keep for a few days. If it doesn’t freeze at all, try again using less alcohol and more juice. Once it is frozen, you can add a touch more spirit, if it was also kept in the freezer.

* * *

Professional female mixologists like Lola came into their own during the 1990s. As Lola herself casually remarked: “Women are super-tasters. It’s in their makeup to be more orally sensitive to tastes and textures. They can detect subtle differences.”

That talent has certainly earned Lola a place in the Martini Mixologists’ Hall of Fame, which we will explain in a bit.

We will never forget those early days with Lola, especially that last New Year’s Eve, in 1996, at Lola’s at Century House.

The sumptuous meal was only the first course. Modern Martinis flowed like water from the center-stage bar where Lola—dressed in a silver lamé Patti LaBelle jumpsuit with big shoulders—dispensed her creations. The invitation-only guests conga-lined late into the night before making our way to the various corners of Vancouver that we all called home.

Then Lola disappeared from sight. But then so did we as we made our way down south to San Francisco and Idaho before the year was out to drink a lot of gin in the former and in the latter work as gin tasters for the United States’s first post-Prohibition microdistillery restaurant—the Bardenay.

Where was Lola? It took us a while to discover the truth of our favorite bartender’s disappearance—but most of you heard about it before we did.

 

APPLETINI

CREATED AT LOLA’S, WEST HOLLYWOOD

You lose track of people when you live in the fast lane on the spirituous road. Lola was one of the people who took that freeway down south and disappeared off our radar for years. Yet we remember that the first apple-based Martini we ever had was crafted by her masterful hands.

* * *

Shake

1.5 oz. (45 ml) Ketel One vodka

1.5 oz. (45 ml) DeKuyper Sour Apple Pucker

1 splash sweet & sour mix

slice of Granny Smith apple marinated in lemon water

* * *

Called the William Tell, she convinced us back in 1995 that apples could a Martini make. After that experience, we briefly tried an apple Martini like the William Tell or the Palace Apple Skyy a day, but our neighborhood doctor kept showing up (turned out he loved them, too).

Lola can be lauded for being sensitive to what the public wants. When she moved to Hollywood, in 1996, she knew that her guests had a sweet tooth. She did what any great bartender does. She catered to their caprices.

* * *

Many have attempted to lay clain to this but DeKuyper—the makers of the apple pucker liquor—will attest to the fact that Lola’s is where it all began.

—Loren Dunsworth, in an interview, 2011

* * *

When she opened Lola’s on North Fairfax in West Hollywood, her opening barman Adam came up with the Appletini—called Adam’s Apple, at the time. People loved it. When she tried to replace it with another drink, her guests retaliated. Six months later, the Appletini went back on the menu and is still her best seller to this day—twenty thousand Appletinis are shaken at Lola’s every month.

Queen of the first Martini menu, champion of the Appletini, we are so happy that we met Lola back in the day, when Delilah’s was the stage that she played like a violin, and even happier we’ve found her again.

* * *

When Lola was at Delilah’s she mixed the William Tell, shaking 2 oz. (60 ml) Stolichnaya vodka, 1 splash pressed apple juice, and 1 splash Rose’s Lime Cordial.

Lola’s Red Caramel Apple Martini puts a twist on her famed drink, shaking 1 oz. (30 ml) Ketel One vodka, 1 oz. (30 ml) DeKuyper Sour Apple Pucker, 0.5 oz. (15 ml) butterscotch liqueur, and 1 splash cranberry juice.

Seattle’s Palace Kitchen made a Palace Apple Skyy, shaking 1.5 oz. (45 ml) Skyy vodka, 0.5 oz. (15 ml) Marie Brizard calvados, 2 drops Goldschläger, garnished with a grilled green apple slice.

Legend has it that back in the late 1970s the Ardilaun Hotel in County Galway, Ireland, served an Ardilaun Appletini, shaking 1.5 oz. (45 ml) Absolut vodka, 0.5 oz. (15 ml) Berentzen Apfelkorn schnapps, and 0.5 oz. (15 ml) Cointreau.

While living in New York, we came up with our own Golden Apple Martini, shaking 1.5 oz. (45 ml) Ketel One vodka, 0.75 oz. (20 ml) Berentzen Apfelkorn schnapps, 0.5 oz. (15 ml) fresh sour mix, garnishing the glass with a cinnamon sugar rim.

Michael Waterhouse of Dylan Prime divined a “pietini” called Apple Pie à la Mode, shaking 0.5 oz. (15 ml) Licor 43 and 1 oz. (30 ml) whipping cream until thick. Set aside. In a fresh mixing glass, shake 1 oz. (30 ml) Absolut vodka, 1 oz. (30 ml) apple schnapps, and 1 oz. (30 ml) pure maple syrup. Garnish with the thickened cream.

Another great bartender and dear friend (yes, Mom, I’m known to and friends with bartenders around the world), Nick Strangeway, took us to meet Dick Bradsell when he was still behind the bar at the Colony Room, a hole-in-the-wall private London club with a Who’s Who’s of British art and theater as members. There was Mr. Bradsell, inventor of the Bramble, Cowboy Hoof Martini, Detroit Martini, Pharmaceutical Stimlulant . . . “What can I get you?” he asked. I replied for all of us, “Whatever you feel like making.” A few minutes later, he arrived with what he, an overworked bartender, felt like making on a busy night: a round of gin and tonics.

* * *

 

FRESH FRUIT MARTINI

CREATED BY DICK BRADSELL, LONDON

When we first launched our Web site, Shaken Not Stirred, back in 1995, no one had conceived of making a Martini with fresh fruit. Fruit juice, yes. But fresh fruit?

* * *

Shake

1.5 oz. (45 ml) Absolut vodka

0.75 oz. (20 ml) crushed fruit or fruit purée

1 splash sugar syrup (optional)

fresh fruit

To remove as much pulp as possible, double strain the drink using both a hawthorn strainer on the mixing glass and a tea strainer over the cocktail glass.

* * *

But then we hadn’t met London legend Dick Bradsell yet, who did just that after tasting a Black Martini at the Fifty-Seven Fifty-Seven Bar in New York’s Four Seasons Hotel during a 1995 bartender fam trip. He divined a version made with fresh, seasonal fruits.

A symphony of simplicity and seasonality, you may know Dick’s Fresh Fruit Martini under its various seasonal names: Raspberry Martini, Watermelon Martini, Strawberry Martini, keep going.

Maybe we get a little more obsessed than most with this recipe. We planted blackcurrants, strawberries, cape gooseberries, cherries, and raspberries in our vegetable garden and we forage the hedgerows behind the house for blackberries, quince, sloe berries, and damsons every year. Our local farmers’ markets offer up a variety of apples and pears. It’s one of the more entertaining ways to get part of our five-a-day.

* * *

One [Martini] is all right, two is too many, and three is not enough.

—James Thurber

* * *

This bounty doesn’t stop us from foraging at the supermarket for pineapples, mangoes, passionfruit, kiwi fruit, and papayas when the mood strikes. Neither does it stop us from buying packaged fruit purées from Boiron and Funkin when we want to serve up rounds of Lychee Martinis. (Don’t know about you, but the results of making a Lychee Martini with the syrup from canned lychees are equal to biting down hard on a rusty Phillips head.)

The only fruit that we haven’t heard anyone use to make one of Dick’s Fresh Fruit Martinis is durian. But then what can you do with a fruit that you have to hold out the car window while you transport it home and keep the windows opened in the kitchen when you cut it open.

* * *

Be fearless in mixing. The drain can handle even the worst mistakes.

—Jared Brown

Throw away that bottle of vermouth. Never buy another.

—Bernard Devoto

Fifty-Seven Fifty-Seven’s Black Martini shook 3 oz. (90 ml) vodka and 0.5 oz. (15 ml) Chambord.

Kittichai in New York serves up a Lychee Martini that purées 10 canned lychees in a blender with 1 oz. (30 ml) sugar syrup, and 0.5 oz. (15 ml) fresh lemon juice. Pour the mixture into a mixing glass and shake with 1 oz. Skyy vodka, and 0.5 oz. (15 ml) Cointreau.

A simplification of Kittichai’s excellent Lychee Martini, our Lychee Martini #2, shakes up 2 oz. (60ml) Absolut vodka with 1.5 oz. (45 ml) Funkin lychee purée and 1 splash Cointreau.

Bradsell’s classic Watermelon Martini muddles 1 slice fresh watermelon (from a melon cut into 16 sections) into a mixing glass and shakes it with 2 oz. (60 ml) Absolut vodka and 0.5 oz. (15 ml) sugar syrup.

Bradsell’s original Raspberry Martini shakes 1.5 oz. (45 ml) Absolut vodka, 1 oz. (30 ml) raspberry purée, 0.5 (15 ml) raspberry liqueur, 0.25 oz. (5 ml) sugar syrup, and 1 splash fresh lime juice, garnished with a fresh raspberry.

The Classic Bloodhound from the 1930s mixes 1 oz. (30 ml) French vermouth, 1 oz. (30 ml) Italian vermouth, 1 oz. (30 ml) Plymouth gin, garnished with a fresh, whole strawberry. Later versions also included 1 splash strawberry liqueur. These days, you can replace that with a splash of strawberry purée or muddle 2 whole strawberries into the mixing glass.

* * *

 

COSMOPOLITAN

CREDITED TO CHERYL COOK AND OTHERS

Yes, it’s got color, it’s got taste. It’s got about as many reputed creators as the Martini itself. Pretty and pink, the Cosmopolitan swept across Miami’s South Beach, San Francisco fern bars, Vancouver, and New York’s TriBeCa and Midtown. Each place claims to have invented it or improved it. What is certain is that two people popularized it back in the late 1980s and the hit TV series Sex and the City cemented it on the global radar.

* * *

Shake

1.5 oz. (45 ml) Absolut Citron

0.75 oz. (20 ml) cranberry juice cocktail

0.5 ml (15 ml) Cointreau

1 splash fresh lime juice

flamed orange twist

Don’t make this drink with super-strength cranberry juice from the natural food store. Your cheeks will disappear into your teeth from the tartness.

* * *

The Cosmopolitan was only one in a long line of drinks that paired vodka and cranberry juice. Take a look at the Cosmopolitan time line:

1951: Trader Vic’s Cranberry Christmas punch hits the papers with vodka, cranberry juice, Rose’s Lime Juice, water, and sugar. Later, Trader Vic’s offers a Cape Codder #1 in an old-fashioned glass and a Cape Codder #2 as a highball topped with soda.

1960: A bar on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip is serving the Santa Baby cocktail—vodka and cranberry—at Christmastime.

1963: Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice teamed up with Don Cossack Vodka and launched Tropico Sea Breeze in bottles, to be served on the rocks and up as a cocktail.

* * *

“Cranberry juice. It just occurs to me. How would vodka go with that?”

—Richard Nixon on the campaign trail in 1959, speaking at the Wisconsin cranberry center

* * *

1975: Neal Murray at the Cork & Cleaver Steakhouse in Minneapolis claims that he invented the Cosmopolitan, inspired by the idea of putting cranberry juice into a Kamikaze.

1978: John Parks at the Tropical Pub in Belmar, New Jersey, creates the Woo Woo.

1979: The Kamikaze first makes its appearance in bars across the United States.

1985/1986: Cheryl Cook at the Strand in South Beach, Miami, makes a Kamikaze with “Absolut Citron, a splash of triple sec, a drop of Rose’s Lime Juice and just enough cranberry to make it oh so pretty in pink.” (Note: Absolut launched Absolut Citron in 1988.)

1987: Melissa Huffsmith at the Odeon in New York takes a recipe that her friend Patrick Mullen had tried in Miami using plain Absolut. Along with Toby Cecchini she comes up with a Cosmopolitan, using Absolut Citron, Cointreau, fresh lime juice, and cranberry juice.

* * *

Cheryl Cook’s Cosmopolitan shook 2 oz. (60 ml) Absolut Citron, 1 splash triple sec, drops of Rose’s Lime Cordial, and just enough cranberry juice to make it pink.

Mellisa Huffman and Toby Cecchini at the Odeon’s Cosmopolitan shook 2 oz. (60 ml) Absolut Citron, 1.5 oz. (45 ml) cranberry juice cocktail, 0.75 oz. fresh lime juice, 0.75 oz. Cointreau.

Dale DeGroff’s Cosmopolitan shakes 1.5 oz. (45 ml) Absolut Citron, 1 oz. (30 ml) cranberry juice cocktail, 0.5 oz. (15 ml) Cointreau, 1 splash fresh lime juice, garnished with a flamed orange twist.

Loren Dunsworth’s Cosmopolitan at Delilah’s shook 2 oz. (60 ml) Stolichnaya Vodka, 1 splash cranberry juice cocktail, 1 splash Rose’s Lime Cordial, and 1 dash Cointreau.

When Ben Reed was at London’s Met Hotel, he created the Metropolitan, shaking 1.5 oz. (45 ml) Absolut Kurant, 1 oz. (30 ml) cranberry juice cocktail, 0.75 oz. (20 ml) Cointreau, and 0.75 oz. (20 ml) fresh lime juice, garnished with a flamed orange twist.

* * *

1988/1989: Lola at Delilah’s in Vancouver puts a Cosmopolitan and a Metropolitan on her Martini menu.

1996: Dale DeGroff at the Rainbow Room refines the Cosmopolitan recipe and introduces it to Madonna.

1998: The Cosmopolitan appears in episodes of the Sex and the City TV series.

You just can’t keep a good cocktail from being invented and reinvented and enhanced. Look at the Martini. Look at the Cosmo.

We have another story to tell about the Cosmopolitan.

Every January, from 2002 until 2010, we got together with a group of friends out in the British countryside for a weekend of cooking and drinks mixing. (Helps when 85 percent of your friends are chefs and bartenders.) The locations were carefully chosen: a Gothic folly on the grounds of the Stowe School, where Richard Branson and Christopher Milne (of Winnie-the-Pooh fame) spent their formative years, and the orangery on the Frampton Court Estate.

January 2007 was an exceptional year. We took over the entire Old Campden House estate in Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire: two banqueting houses, an almonry, and a gate house that surrounded the ruins of the original manor that was destroyed, in 1645, by a fire. The assembled weekenders included Robert “Drinkboy” Hess, London master mixologists Nick Strangeway and Dré Masso, Nick Blacknell of Beefeater Gin, and Sasha Petraske from Milk & Honey.

* * *

The Chateau Marmont’s Bar Marmont made its Cosmopolitan shaking 3 oz. (90 ml) cranberry-infused vodka (see Infused Spirits), 0.5 oz. (15 ml) triple sec, 1 splash Rose’s Lime Cordial, garnished with a maraschino cherry.

The Kamikaze Cocktail shakes 1.5 oz. (45 ml) Absolut vodka, 1 oz. (30 ml) Cointreau, and 1 oz. (30 ml) fresh lime juice, garnished with a lime wedge.

The Woo Woo built 2 oz. (60 ml) vodka, 2.5 oz. (75 ml) cranberry juice cocktail, and 0.5 oz. (15 ml) peach schnapps in an ice-filled highball glass.

The 1933 Cosmopolitan Daisy shakes 2 oz. (60 ml) Beefeater gin, 1 oz. (30 ml) fresh raspberry syrup, 0.5 oz. (15 ml) triple sec, and 0.5 oz. (15 ml) fresh lime juice. (See Raspberry Syrup for the recipe.)

Angus Winchester commemorated the full solar eclipse that was seen in Britain on August 11, 1999, by creating an Eclipse Martini, shaking 1 oz. (30 ml) dry gin, 1 oz. (30 ml) cranberry juice, 0.5 oz. (15 ml) blue curaçao, 1 dash peach schnapps.

* * *

We had just been on a major archeological excavation of the New York Public Library and had found a series of tiny volumes printed in 1933 titled Pioneers of Mixing Gins at Elite Bars. One page stopped us in our tracks when we found a Cosmopolitan Daisy, made with gin, raspberry syrup, lemon juice,and Cointreau. Along with an Elizabethan recipe for spice-crusted, slow-roasted beef brisket and a Victorian recipe for roasted goose with autumn fruits, the Cosmopolitan Daisy was our contribution to the weekend feast.

Fresh raspberries were a cinch to come by at the market (not local, sadly). So a simmering pot of fresh raspberry syrup greeted diners as they arrived in the West Banqueting House.

Eyes opened wide and anticipatory noises were heard from every corner.

The ultimate test came in June that same year when we threw an after-party on the closing day of the London Bar Show at our house in West Ealing. This time, all of the assembled took turns making drinks: gaz regan, Robert Hess, Charles Vexenat, Dré Masso, Henry Besant, Julio Bermejo, Nick Strangeway, and Dick Bradsell. As sips shaken from large antique cocktail shakers were tested, gestures of approval or dismay circulated from the kitchen to the dining room. Occasionally, we would hear Dick make the comment: “Interesting.” (He took us aside and whispered that he makes that comment when he doesn’t like something, but uses it as a cordial escape.)

© Jared McDaniel Brown

Is the modern Cosmo descended from this 1933 recipe? While it is possible, it is far more likely this is one of those rare cosmic coincidences—two drinks with remarkably similar ingredients, similar flavor, and the same name but invented in different eras by bartenders with no knowledge of each other, leaving us blissfully spoiled for choice, which is all that really matters in the end.

When we shook up our 1933 Cosmopolitan Daisy, all he said was: “Now that’s a damned good drink!”

When we found the 1933 recipe, the cocktail chat rooms were buzzing, but the news didn’t come from us. A German bartender, Jöerg Meyer, had sent a donation to our Web site’s cocktail fund, then thought he’d peek to see if we used the account’s data storage, as there were no passwords on them at that time. It was like Aladdin’s cave. There were all the cocktail books we’d photographed and scanned, including Pioneers. Reading it cover to cover, our now dear friend landed on the Cosmopolitan Daisy, mixed it, loved it, and sent it out into the world.