Chapter 6

he ancient Greeks philosophized that society is made up of two conflicting forces, which they personified in their gods. The Apollonian force represented the order and industry that made society tick, and the Dionysian force represented the irrepressible chaos of our hearts. You can’t have one without the other. The Greeks actually built this into their politics, with scheduled moments of sensual abandon. It is important even today to exercise your civic duty with small acts of senseless mirth.

A cocktail downed from a salt cup is a conscious deviation from reason. Other than that, there is no spectacular rationale for putting a perfectly good cocktail into a salt cup. (Well, maybe there is, but for the sake of emphasizing the importance of being irrational, let’s just say there isn’t.) In fact, there is a very good reason why you should not. Any drink put into a salt cup is going to take on salt in an arc that looks like this:

S = Salinity. T = Time. A drink will take on salt until it reaches about 35 percent salinity, at which point it will taste like what it is: ten times saltier than the sea. Drinks get pretty intense after 2 percent and fiercely unpalatable by the time they reach 3 percent.

The liquid dissolves a lot of salt, quickly. This brings us to one of the three chief charms of serving a cocktail from a salt cup: You will need to drink it fast. College students have a profound understanding of the benefits of slamming drinks. Sadly, but fortunately, most of us unlearn this as we grow older. Our modern adult reason puts enduring personal health above transient social catharsis. Fair enough, but putting a cocktail in a salt cup and slamming it before it gets too salty is part of a well-balanced social calendar.

Another mixological benefit of salt cups is that salt happens to be great in a many cocktails. So the trick to using them effectively is to mix drinks that are well-suited to quick quaffing, and that also benefit from a little added salt. A shot of espresso with a half-shot of Calvados is never drunk slowly anyway, and the touch of salt takes the bitter edge off the coffee.

Salt cups have thermal qualities as well, holding heat and cold far better than glass. Freezing, refrigerating, or heating a salt cup before serving opens new doors, and old ones, too. Few sophisticated drinkers these days will touch a daiquiri. The reason has nothing to do with an aversion to either lime juice or rum (both are the height of fashion these days), but rather with the sweetness and the vaguely lowbrow vibe we get from anyone drinking a cocktail that routinely comes from a slushie machine. But with an edge of salt and a mandate to slam it, a chilled daiquiri shooter in a salt cup has a restrained salty-sweetness that is thoroughly contemporary. Downing it as a shooter can be seen as ironic and hip, or classically inspired.

A successful salt cup cocktail will embrace the three technical features salt cups have to offer: improved flavor from added salt, improved temperature from salt’s thermal mass, and improved impact from expedited consumption. A fourth reason to drink from salt cups comes to mind. Salt cups are dazzling to behold, sensual to touch, and soul-stirring to ponder. What better companion for a drink?

Islay Scotch and Chocolate

Scotch is something we normally pour deliberately, while speaking in a serious voice, and then sip slowly from the glistening luxury of good crystal. Except if you’re from Scotland; then you say “Get in my belly!” and down she goes. I’m not exactly sure where I sit myself: somewhere between my intellectual thirst for savored complexity and my romantic yen for slamming a shot and pouring a second one over some haggis. A little luxurious chocolate adds a childish decadence to this drink, but the wild way the salt shifts the mineral profile of the Scotch transforms it into something that needs a new tradition all its own: a sort of slammed delectation.

Meanwhile, put the chocolate in a small ramekin or bowl and seal the top with plastic wrap. Make sure the edges of the plastic are tucked tightly around the top. Put the sealed ramekin in a larger bowl filled with enough very hot tap water to come at least halfway up the side of the ramekin. Make sure the edges of the plastic are not hanging into the water. If they are, water can get into the chocolate, which will make it grainy. Set aside for 10 minutes to melt the chocolate.

Remove the bowl of chocolate from the bowl of water. Dry the bottom and sides of the chocolate bowl and then uncover. Dip the rim of the chilled salt glass into the warm chocolate, creating a thick lip of chocolate around the opening of the glass. Return the salt glass to the refrigerator for 1 minute.

Pour the Scotch into the glass and sip, licking a bit of chocolate from the rim as you proceed. Try to finish within 5 minutes or so, lest the Scotch become too salty. The last sip will be downright briny, palate-tingling, and delicious.

Double-Fisted Tecate and Mezcal

Booze is sometimes good because it is bad. Take mezcal, for example. Speed of quaffage is the one surefire way to minimize mezcal’s rugged smokiness, and a frosty slug of beer to chase it down pays tribute simultaneously to the time-honored tradition of our Mexican forebears and our unbridled animal instinct to douse anything that smokes with anything liquid. Double-fist the two of them and you are merely embracing the natural order.

Just before serving, fill the salt glass with the mezcal. Open the beer. Pick up the mezcal in one hand. Pick up the beer in the other hand. Shoot the mezcal. Drink the beer.

Rimming your Mezcal (and your can of beer) with beautiful, flaky sea salt is a great way to go. But drinking from a salt cup can be a less distracting way to savor your serious spirits.

Quick-Cured Oyster with Gin Sangrita

It’s weird that an animal would offer itself to us as something to be slurped down in a single gulp, but oysters even provide us with the cup of their shell for streamlining the process, so who are we to question the natural order of things? This drink honors the oyster’s oddly beverage-like oceanic flavor with a little herbaceous hooch, a splash of tart tomato, and a chilled salt cup for some cool, briny zing.

Just before serving, shuck the oyster and slip it into the frozen glass; return to the freezer for 1 minute.

Grind the pepper into the glass and squeeze the lime wedge over the oyster. Swirl once. Add the gin and juice. Stir briefly. Shoot.

Iced Pepper Vodka Shooter

My dad asserts that there is only one respectable way to drink vodka. Start with a good Russian or Polish vodka (preferably potato vodka), get it bone-chillingly cold in the freezer, pour it into a shot glass, crack black pepper over it, and down she goes in one gulp. My grandparents were not vodka drinkers, and my dad spent his formative years drinking beer with poets in Bristol, England, and New York’s West Village, so I have no idea how he arrived at such authority, but I’ve never questioned it. Until I realized it was missing salt.

Just before serving, fill the salt glass with the pepper vodka and grind one twist of black pepper over it. Shoot, grimace, sigh, repeat.

Black Pepper Vodka

Combine the peppercorns and vodka in a glass jar. Seal and set aside for at least 2 hours or up to 6 hours. Strain out and discard the solids. Store in a tightly closed glass container forever, or until your father visits.

Basil Salt Daiquiri

Even though he was a master of taut prose, Ernest Hemingway was inclined toward the florid when it came to daiquiris. To the holy trinity of rum, lime, and sugar, he added the insult of maraschino liqueur and the injury of grapefruit juice. And perhaps to drown the shame of this ignominy, he decreed that his daiquiri must be served as a double. But his desire to add complexity to the original has inspired countless riffs on the classic. Salt and basil speak a complex truth about daiquiris that is happy and delicious and succinct.

To make the basil syrup, combine 24 basil leaves and 1½ cups water in a small saucepan and heat to a simmer. After the infusion reduces by half, pour the infusion through a strainer to remove the leaves, then put the infusion back into the saucepan. Add ¾ cup sugar and bring back to a simmer. Turn off the heat and allow to cool completely before using.

To make the daiquiri, combine the rum, lime juice, and basil syrup over ice. Remove the salt cup from the freezer. Shake the rum mixture well and strain into the frozen salt cup. Drink with alacrity.

Salacious Julep

The first recorded order of a julep was placed by some ladies sunning themselves outside a lavishly draped, valanced, and tasseled resort in West Virginia called The Greenbrier. These ladies of yawning lawns, absent husbands, dashing tennis pros—who were they? What were their cares, their passions? And most pressingly for me, why did they want this drink served to them in the silver cup that has helped make the drink legend? My own experience at The Greenbrier suggests only one answer: to hide just how much of the powerful drink they had imbibed. And from this hypothesis, I can only imagine that imbibe they did. The mint julep was a sophisticated invention for clandestine revelry. Drink from a frosty, salty cup and I leave it to you to imagine the revelry.

Combine the mint leaves and the simple syrup in the bottom of the frozen salt cup. Muddle to release the flavor of the mint. Fill the cup with shaved ice and pour in the bourbon. Stir for a second. Sip with purpose. Lingering unnecessarily will make the julep briny.

Amaro Salato

Italian amaros are a type of ancient elixir made by steeping aromatic and bitter botanicals in alcohol—imagine after-dinner drinks sipped behind thick medieval walls, and that’s the taste. Amaros are typically dark, dense concoctions. The sugar that is added to amaros as a foil for the delicious bitterness does little to open up their density. Sweetness brings balance, but some of the original clarity of the formulation is lost in darkness. A select few are wine-based, and that is what we are creating here, using white vermouth. Sipping homemade amaro from a salt cup unpacks the flavors that get crowded out by the sugar. Close your eyes and watch a new constellation of Mediterranean flavors phosphoresce in your mind’s sky.

Put the simple syrup on a small saucer and the orange zest on another small saucer. Dip the rim of the salt glass in the simple syrup and then in the orange zest. Refrigerate for a few minutes.

Just before serving, fill the salt glass with the vermouth and any remaining simple syrup. Add the bitters and stir briefly. Sip with purpose. Lingering will make the vermouth briny, transforming the drink from sweet to savory.

Simple Syrup

Mix the water and sugar in a small saucepan until all the sugar is moistened. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Remove from the heat and let cool. Refrigerate for up to half your lifetime.

Warm Sake Shot with Daikon

Water is serious business for sake, and sakagura (sake breweries) are keenly aware of its role as the foundation for sake’s flavor. The taste of water comes from the minerals that are in it, which is why we like mineral-rich spring water more than mineral-free distilled water. Every sake has a unique fingerprint written in calcium, magnesium, sodium, bicarbonate, and their kin. Sipped from a salt cup, the sake swirls a new mineral profile through its soul, shifting shapes in fun if sometimes fitful ways. Warming the sake accentuates the fiery heat of the drink, which distracts us from the seriousness underlying the dreamy sensation.

Place the sake and daikon into a tokkuri (sake server) or small cup and set in a small saucepan half filled with water. Bring the water in the saucepan to a simmer and then turn off the heat. Let the sake stand in the hot water for 1 minute, aiming to warm the sake to about 130°F.

Put the daikon in the salt shot glass and pour in the warm sake. Serve immediately. Without lingering too long, sip just slowly enough to follow the evolution of flavors as the sake picks up salt.

Xocolatl Xtabentún

The Mayans loved to party. Whether it was a rip-roaring ballgame or a ritualistic decapitation, the drink of choice was a heady blend of spices and chocolate. They likely added the ruby-rich spice called annatto to the mix purely because they enjoyed drinking what symbolically resembled the blood that accompanied all the fun. Add a little of the Mayan rum-based spirit xtabentún to make this drink into a cocktail, serve it in a salt cup for a little sanguinary exhilaration, and you really can imagine the good times. To make a virgin version of this drink, substitute water and a tablespoon of sugar for the rum.

Melt the chocolate in the top of a small double boiler set over barely simmering water. Stir in the spiced rum and whisk to combine. Pour into the salt glass and slurp.

Spicy Spiced Rum

Mix the rum, anise, cardamom, chile, vanilla bean, and honey together in a glass jar. Seal and set aside for at least 6 hours or up to 2 days.

Strain out and discard the solids. Store the spiced rum in a tightly closed glass container forever, or until drained.

Café Calva

Few things are more terrifying than seeing a truck barreling down toward you on a narrow European road at six o’clock in the morning. It’s not terrifying because the road is narrow and dark and you are already clipping the shrubs with your right-side rearview mirror. It’s terrifying because you know there’s a likelihood that the truck driver’s nervous system is a crazy mess of cigarettes and espresso fortified with a shot of brandy. The highways of Europe are defined by this dubious drink—from the café calva of France to the café corretto of Italy to the kaffekask of Sweden, there is no respite. The Catalonians’ name for it, carajillo, actually means “drinking and dashing.” I drink mine in the safety of my home, but from a salt cup to remind me of the taste of biting my lip as the truck miraculously passes me and vanishes into the morning.

Place the sugar in a small skillet and cook over medium-high heat until the sugar begins to melt at the edges, about 3 minutes. Continue to cook, stirring, until the sugar is uniformly golden brown and smooth, 5 to 6 minutes.

Carefully dip the rim of the salt cup into the caramel. Set aside until the sugar firms, about 1 minute.

Pour the freshly pulled espresso into the cup. Stir in the Calvados. Serve immediately. Sip with purpose. Lingering unnecessarily will make the coffee overly salty.

CHAPTER 6 DRINKING FROM SALT CUPS