It is a Friday evening. An old friend has just arrived for a weeklong visit, a massive wheeled suitcase in tow. Problem: it’s not clear you have anything to say to each other. You are now standing in front of your unevenly populated liquor cabinet, pondering what to pour to re-grease the wheels of friendship. Your friend is waiting on the couch in the other room, possibly in a similar state of unease.
Your date is pronouncing, imperiously: “I am known to be an impeccable judge of character.” This date turns out to be so laughably unbearable that it might just make sense to stand up, scream with a thick accent, “I have the runs!” and goose-step out of the room with your hands cupped over your behind. But you don’t do that. You bear down. You smile. And you order a drink.
You have returned from your honeymoon. After all the gifts are unwrapped and you resume something like a normal routine, the relief of having the wedding behind you is accompanied by the realization that your youth has an expiration date. Somehow, suddenly, surprisingly, that’s okay with you. With the recklessly expensive festivities and travel now behind you, it’s time for a quieter moment of celebration, to toast to what’s to come and what you are leaving behind.
You are leaning over a bar, desperate for the bartender’s attention. He isn’t looking at you. He seems to be making some kind of sick sport out of not looking at you. He seems to be getting a euphoric high from the humiliation he is able to inflict from the simple exercise of ignoring your presence. What are the corners of his lips doing? Is he actually suppressing a smile? When he feels the farce has run its course, he finally, with great reluctance, turns to you for an order. Your moment has arrived: a chance for redemption. But even still, he looks as if he might lose interest at any time. So what do you do? You stare back blankly, feasting on the attention. And utterly paralyzed. What was it you wanted? You realize you have absolutely no idea, you never had any idea. The elements—rum, Scotch whisky, Irish whiskey, gin, tequila, bitters of every kind, apple brandy, sweet vermouth, dry vermouth, egg whites, lemon peels, egg yolks, orange liqueur, absinthe, vodka, twists of orange and lime—float and swirl in your mind’s eye without rhyme or reason. They all have a place and a relationship and a purpose. But what’s the right combination for right now? Without a clue as to the answer, you fall back on ordering your “usual,” regardless of whether or not you are in the mood for it. Anything to move on with the night.
Your standoff with the bartender is thankfully resolved. But left unresolved is the feeling that there must be a specific answer: just the right cocktail for just this moment.
This book is dedicated to giving you that answer. In fact, this book is dedicated to giving you around a hundred answers: a whole slew of cocktails for a whole slew of situations.
But before we figure out what to drink, let’s talk about why you drink. Alcohol presents a nearly unbeatable combination of downsides: it comes with the pronounced risk of liver disease; it is intensely caloric, highly addictive, and likely to cause unprotected sex with strangers who will almost surely bless you with incurable diseases or stupid, ugly children. All that sounds promising enough, but isn’t there more?
Drinks make stories more interesting. They make families more bearable. Music sounds better, food tastes tastier, and the people around you become more attractive.
But it isn’t actually the world around you that changes; it’s you that changes. And it’s not just your judgment that improves—though it unquestionably does. (The experts are wrong here.) A good drink, when it’s put together right and is suited to the occasion, transforms you into a better version of yourself. The first sip is cool to the lips, perfectly balanced on the palette, and makes your blood hum as it washes down. Your brain springs unwind. You nestle into your nestling place, and you allow yourself the silent acknowledgment that some things are still okay in the world. Still okay.
That’s what the right drink has to offer. Meanwhile, dangers abide. They lurk, waiting for you to order the wrong drink at the wrong time. Things can go bad. Bad like waking up in a Mexican jailhouse to the sound of your traveling companion screaming out in pain from an adjacent cell. Bad like a date that begins with a yawn, two rounds of beer, and a bottle of wine, and regrettably ends in your apartment with you dozing off while your new acquaintance is heading, well, south. Bad like breaking into tears of religious rapture at the office holiday party. Bad like hitting-on-your-cousin-at-your-grandmother’s-wake bad.
If any of this sounds familiar, you have already gotten your first lesson in the science of booze, which is to say you have figured out that a drink that goes down perfectly in certain situations can lead to disastrous results in others. The constellation of drinks is boundless and, like the greeting card aisle at the pharmacy, provides options for every situation imaginable. Some are sickly sweet, others just plain off, and a rare few are just right.
What we are concerned about is the kind of error that might lead to ordering a Bloody Mary at a nightclub: spicy tomato juice and steak sauce are great for mornings, bad for getting your groove on. Or a grasshopper at a pub with old friends. Sweet, creamy, and minty, it’s arguably never entirely respectable, but it’s downright disgraceful here. And we have yet to see a shot-fueled first date that didn’t end in crash-and-burn, or a Valentine’s Day ski retreat successfully consummated with frozen margaritas. If any of the above works for you, then God bless. But to us, the perfect drink is worth fighting for.
Developing a feel for the perfect drink means understanding the anatomy of a cocktail—and then also the anatomy of the situation. There are times when you want to be relaxed but alert, times when you want to be wild and carefree, and other, darker times when you crave introspection. There are moments of duplicity and moments of solidarity. Meanwhile, there are drinks you just don’t order from the surfer guy pulling beers at the beach. So there is plenty to explain about spirits, modifiers, lemon peels, egg whites, stirring, and shaking, but also much to say about second dates, barbecues, breakups, meeting the in-laws, and the day you get laid off from your job—all those moments that just wouldn’t be the same without a stiff drink.
As an author team, we bring years of hard-earned knowledge. We’ve made the wrong drinks at the wrong time, the right drinks at the wrong time, gotten sick off our own concoctions, and irreversibly tarnished relationships. Trains have been missed, flights forgotten about, lawns mauled, and mailboxes crushed. Friends have been turned to lifelong foes. But we’ve also mixed some pretty good cocktails in our day—cocktails that have won awards, made parties rage, and brought smiles to the faces of loved ones.
We believe it’s important that you use this wisdom to do more than simply remember which cocktails go with which situation—a framework that in any case is closer to a mnemonic than a code. Our aim is for something even better: we want you to have the tools to make your own judgments about what to drink. Even invent your own cocktails, based on whatever you have at hand and whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment.
Is cocktailing an art, or just a self-destructive pastime? Let the critics and doctors duke it out: really, it’s not for us to say. But if any self-destructive pastime can be elevated to an art form, we believe we have stumbled upon it. And by picking up this book, you’ve stumbled upon it, too.
SPIRITS
There are two basic steps to making a spirit. First, you need to ferment something: that is, allow yeast to infect some sugary liquid and excrete alcohol (this is how wine and beer are made). Next, you distill a fermented liquid by heating it up and capturing the vapors of the alcohol that steam up first, leaving the rest behind. Condensing those vapors will yield a liquid with a higher concentration of alcohol. Distilling that concentrated liquid multiple times will yield a purer, stronger alcohol. Some combination of aging, diluting, flavoring, and filtering the resulting liquid is what makes it palatable.
GLASSWARE FOR SERVING COCKTAILS & MIXED DRINKS
fig. 1—cocktail (martini); fig. 2—old-fashioned; fig. 3—highball; fig. 4—Collins; fig. 5—flute; fig. 6—cordial; fig. 7—cocktail (coupe); fig. 8—wine
When cocktails first came into vogue, they were typically served in a coupe. The so-called martini-style glass became popular in the mid-twentieth century. We prefer the coupe for the practical reason that it’s less prone to spill. The coupe’s gentle curves also show off a dink’s color and shine.