“Stan Jones in 1977, From His Book.”

For the discriminating cocktail drinker, most of the late twentieth century represents mixology’s Dark Ages. From the dawn of color television to the rise of the internet, the classic American cocktail was a species in peril (I draw no correlations here, although I suspect they could be drawn). As booze-business commentator Frank Kane put it in 1965, “the art of mixing drinks is a lost cause in most bars.” Kane’s summary of the symptoms: “Not one local tavern in fifty serves a Martini or a Manhattan in a properly chilled glass. Not one in fifty asks the customer if he likes bitters in his cocktails or not. Not one in fifty will use fresh juices or take the trouble to make the drink look appetizing.” Things would only get worse: by the 1970s, bedrock classics like the Martini and the Manhattan were fighting desperate rearguard actions as on-the-rocks drinks, while mutant highballs, charged with canned juices, cheap vodka and fruity, candy-sweet liqueurs, stalked the land. As for the bartenders responsible—well, here’s Kane again: “In too many taverns, the bartender is a transient . . . . He has no training, is incapable of doing anything more than sloshing a thimbleful of whisky over tired ice and drowning it with a cheap mixer.” The ancient craft tradition, wherein a bartender was a professional who took pride in his expertise, was by and large a thing of the past. By the late 1970s, this dire state of affairs had only become more deeply entrenched. Bartenders had become customer-service representatives with bottle openers. If you, the patron, were lucky enough to get so much as a properly-made Gin & Tonic, odds are it was one of the rapidly-dwindling cadre of old-time professionals who made it for you.

Not every young bartender, however, was so slack. Take Stan Jones, of Canoga Park, California. In 1977, the 34-year-old bar manager did something nobody had done in 30-odd years, and put out an accurate, comprehensive bartender’s guide, one aimed not at transients or home hobbyists, but at real bartenders who wanted to master their job. With a history of cocktails, detailed historical and production notes on all the major spirits categories (and not a few of the minor ones) and a whopping 4000 cocktail recipes, all wrapped in a quintessential slab of 1970s design, Jones’ Complete Bar Guide is a testament to the power of hope.

By 1977, you see, the damage had been done, and Jones knew it. A generation and more of bad bartending had fatally dumbed the customers down (or perhaps it was the other way around; it scarcely matters). “The new generation of drinkers have inexperienced palates and do not like the taste of liquor,” Jones told the local paper when his book came out. “They want it to taste like soda pop, malts, you name it, anything so it doesn’t taste like liquor.” Nothing daunted, Jones had hopes for his book. “There’s talk he may write a spirit column for a popular magazine,” the reporter noted, and even of “a guest appearance on the Johnny Carson show.”

That didn’t happen. Today, Jones’ book, which saw but a single edition, is a collector’s item. But if the times weren’t right for a full-scale restoration of the classic art of the bar, by the early 1980s there was at least a little creative spirit in the air. You could find it, for instance, at P. L. Cahoots, in Frederick, Maryland. Sure, the name was corny. But spiritual cousin to the Simpsons’ Tipsy McStaggers or not, when the bar opened in 1981 it was as a temple to mixology. The standard Rum & Cokes, 7 & 7s, Screwdrivers and Tequila Sunrises to which the mixed-drink vernacular had been reduced were not sufficient for head bartender Larry Cutsail. An on-beyond-zebra man to the core, Cutsail came up with a list of 170 drinks that his bar was prepared to serve, almost all of them his own creations.

Some names: Accupressure, Fredneck, Fat Rat’s Ass, Neutron Bomb, Gangreen, Porgy Tirebiter, Enema, Horny Moose, Crotch Rot, Agent Orange, U235, Body Odor, Rubber Duck, South Bronx, Death Wish, Training Bra, Henry’s Hooch, Ooh Baby.

Some ingredients: Yukon Jack, crème de noyeaux, crème de banana, Chambord, Midori, Jack Daniels, Cream.

Okay. So Cutsail was no retro revivalist, such as we’ve become accustomed to in recent years. And his drinks were—put it this way: he was known as Frederick’s “Shooter King.” Now, to be King of Shooters in Frederick, Maryland in 2009 would be, well, pathetic. But in 1981, when most people drank the same tired highball in every bar because they knew anything more complicated would be butchered, the fact that there was a bartender who cared enough to come up with that many combinations of ingredients, each with its own little name, is nothing short of heroic. Who cares if the drinks themselves are little more than typing-monkey combinations of whatever was trendy at the time? That would change. As the 1980s wore into the 1990s, the shooter kings would become vodka-infusion kings, then fresh-juice kings, and then, as their restless spirits continued to explore, experiment, expand, classic cocktail kings. I’m sure Dale DeGroff, Murray Stenson and Gary Regan, the three pioneers of modern mixology who were behind the stick back in the 1980s, shook up many a shooter. (Hell, I bet Gary still does.) So here’s to Stan Jones and Larry Cutsail and everybody who gave a shit when nobody else did.

The Fredneck

Shake well with ice:

½ oz Jack Daniels

½ oz Cherry Heering

½ oz Bols crème de cacao (white)

½ oz orange juice (fresh-squeezed is better, if unlikely to be authentic)

Strain into shot glass. Drink.

In 1916, an impromptu little experiment was mounted in the dining room of a New York hotel that neatly illustrated the peaks that the bartender’s art had reached in those final years before Prohibition.

“Seven men sat down to dinner,” as “Dick’s Column of Gossip” recorded in a local paper. “Before the advent of the oysters a round of cocktails was ordered, each man expressing to the waiter his choice.” Coincidentally, each of the seven ordered something different. Four of the drinks were pretty standard: a Bronx, a Manhattan, a Dry Martini and a Ginger Ale Highball (that would be whiskey and ginger ale, on the rocks). But there were three rather more recherché choices as well: a Royal Fizz (gin, lemon, sugar and a whole raw egg, shaken up, strained into a tall glass and fizzed with a little seltzer), a Sherry Flip (another whole egg drink, shaken into a later, strained into a goblet and dotted with nutmeg; definitely a swell’s drink) and a Clover Club, a gin-lemon-raspberry confection that was more or less the latest thing on the Great White Way. Clearly there were some sophisticates among the seven.

But that was only the first round. When the diners at the unnamed hotel realized that each of their drinks was different, they shared a chuckle and thought they’d try it again. “It required some little thought and even consultation with the waiter,” as we’re told, but this round, too, had no duplicates. But now the drinks start to get interesting: besides an Old-Fashioned–a standard anywhere American was spoken–and a common Whiskey Fizz (like the Royal Fizz, but with whiskey and no egg), there was a Jack Rose, a Sloe Gin Fizz, a Stinger, a Blue Moon and a Whangdoodle. Now, this last one is so recherché as to be lost to history. But the other four were just the sort of thing a party of young socialites might order at the bar of the Knickerbocker Hotel, the famous “Broadway Country Club” at the corner of 42nd St and Broadway. (Indeed, the Stinger was supposedly invented by Reginald Vanderbilt, of the Vanderbilt Vanderbilts.)

These being dispatched, the waiter was asked if there was any other kind of mixed drink in the world. “Oh yes, sir, lots of them.” Then let the next round be his choice, with the same stipulation that no two drinks be alike or repeated from a previous round. When he returned again with the tray, the offerings were even more outré. Besides another two mystery drinks-perhaps specialties of the establishment?-this round featured a Ward Eight (appearing in print for the first time), a Dubonnet Cocktail, a New Orleans Cocktail (another name for a Sazerac), a Suissesse, and a Plymouth Gin Sour “with claret top.”

I’ve named all these drinks for a reason. These are precisely the kind of drinks that America’s top cocktail bars are reviving today; indeed, with one or two exceptions I’ve seen every single one of them on a modern-day cocktail list. Complex, interesting mixtures adapted to mature palates. But here’s the catch: that hotel wasn’t in New York City. It was in the upstate town of Utica, a textile and machine-tool manufacturing center of (then) 75,000 people sunk in the rural fastness of the Mohawk Valley. The cocktail revolution of the last few years has gone very far indeed in restoring traditional standards of the craft. But I’m still holding out for the day that, after a long drive, I can walk up to the bar at the Utica Holiday Inn and get a Plymouth gin Sour, made with fresh lemon juice, shaken until it’s truly cold, strained into a well-chilled glass and skillfully capped with an aromatic float of red wine. When the cocktail revolution reaches the Uticas, the Toledos, the Sacramentos, Durhams, Eugenes, Burlingtons and Springfields-then we’ll be getting somewhere.

To conclude the experiment. After the third round, when the waiter came around and asked “anything more to drink, gentlemen?” the seven “decided without argument that they had carried the experiment as close to the danger line as was advisable.” In other words, they quit before the bar did.

Plymouth Sour

Squeeze half a lemon into a mixing glass.

Stir in a heaping half-teaspoon of superfine sugar.

Add 2 oz Plymouth gin.

Fill with ice, cover with mixing tin and shake well.

Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Pour ½ oz full-bodied red wine (ideally, a Bordeaux) into a jigger or shot glass. From this, pour it gently over the back of a spoon onto the surface of the drink.

Thankfully, that’s not the city’s only popular drink. In the better sort of places, you can also get a Sazerac, a simple mix of rye whiskey, sugar, absinthe (or Herbsaint, a local substitute) and the city’s own Peychaud’s Bitters. Indeed, the Sazerac has even been declared the Official Cocktail of New Orleans. There’s only one problem with that: none of the historical claims made for the drink–that it was the first cocktail; that it dates back to the 1830s; that it was characteristic of New Orleans and nowhere else, that it was the exclusive signature drink of the Sazerac Coffee House, on Royal St–are actually verifiable in the historical record as we now understand it.

But that brings us to still another New Orleans paradox, which is that Antoine Amedee Peychaud, an apothecary who never set foot behind the bar, has somehow become the city’s iconic mixologist, while Henry Charles Ramos languishes in semi-obscurity. Anyone who has ever had a properly-made Ramos Gin Fizz will recognize the injustice here.

From 1874, when he stepped behind the mahogany at Eugene Krost’s lager beer saloon on Exchange Alley, just off of Canal Street, until 1919, when Prohibition came and he wielded his shaker for the last time, Ramos was the consummate bartender: dignified, courtly, immensely hard working. What’s more, from the early 1880s, when after running saloons in Baton Rouge and Birmingham he returned home to the Crescent City and opened his famous Imperial Cabinet Saloon on Gravier Street, he was “recognized as the most famous mixologist of the South” (to quote an 1895 article in the New Orleans Times-Democrat).
In part, it was the way he carried himself (“if all the saloon-keepers had been like Mr. Ramos,” the New Orleans Item wrote after his death in 1928, “Prohibition would never have come to pass”). In part, it was his polished hand with a Mint Julep, a Roffignac, a Brandy Crusta and all the other New Orleans classics. But mostly it was his Gin Fizz. But don’t take my word for it; here’s what the (anonymous) man from the Times-Democrat had to say about the experience of securing one from its creator’s hand:

“‘A gin fizz, if you please’ says the customer at the bar of the Imperial Cabinet to the polite, wide-awake, white-aproned bartender.

“Gin fizz, sir,” comes the reply, and forthwith the magic begins passing from this bottle to that; with a wonderfully deft rapidity, the nebulous mixture in a long glass is handed in just one minute and a half to one of the many shaker boys, who do duty as agitators behind the bar. Then for two minutes the delicious concoction is shaken and jousted, the ice tinkling against the glass, the rich cream rising; the delicate color becoming richer. A deft movement, the silver cornucopia [i.e., the shaker tin--DW] is removed, and the fizz in all its toothsome glory stands ready to be sipped in ecstasy by its fortunate purchaser.
What does this wonderful mixed drink taste like? You might as well ask for a description of a Mediterranean sunset-its frothy delicacy-its quaint suggestion of fruit trees and summer odors-its evanescent flavors blending like the hues of the rainbow-its cool, delicious whiteness-its sweet caresses as it wafts like an angel down the joyous throat-all of these are things no person can adequately describe.”

How I envy that man. Fortunately, Henry C. Ramos did humankind one last favor before he took up his station at the Great Saloon On High, and committed his recipe to print. Here it is, verbatim:

“One and Only One
Ramos’ Original Gin Fizz
(1) One tablespoonful powdered [i.e., superfine--DW] sugar.
Three or four drops of Orange Flower Water.
One-half lime (Juice).
One-half lemon (Juice).
[Stir these together before proceeding-DW]
(1) One Jigger of Old Tom Gin. (Old Gordon may be used but a sweet gin is preferable) [I suggest Hayman's or Ransom Old Tom gin, or Plymouth gin-DW].
The white of one egg.
One-half glass of crushed ice.
About (2) tablespoonsful of rich milk or cream.
A little Seltzer water (about an ounce) to make it pungent.
Together well shaken and strained (drink freely).
To those who may have forgotten, a ‘jigger’ is a stemmed sherry glass holding a
little more than one ounce.”

Sweet, fragrant, cool and rich, there’s no more pleasurable drink in existence. I would never diss a Sazerac, or Mr. Peychaud and his excellent bitters. But maybe New Orleans should have two official cocktails; it could handle ‘em.

Photo by Kent Wang

A year and a half ago, I published a book about Jerry Thomas, the man who wrote the world’s first bartender’s guide. In it, I bemoaned the fact that none of Thomas’s contemporaries (he was born in 1830 and died in 1885) had ever thought to write an “American Bariana” — a book chronicling the sayings and doings of the men who pioneered America’s first indigenous culinary art; who invented the Julep and the Cocktail and the Sour and, in short, made “American Bar” a global watchword for refined intoxication. Every time we step up to a bar we toast their achievement, and yet in the absence of such a work they are for the most part as mute and inglorious as the “rude forefathers of the hamlet” who sparked Thomas Grey’s churchyard musings.

There are exceptions, to be sure. We know that a Mr. Willard, barkeeper at the City Hotel in New York, first introduced the Mint Julep as a bar drink, after learning it from a traveling Virginian (or so the story goes); that was in 1820, or thereabouts. We don’t, however, know when he was born, when he died, or even his first name-and he was the most famous bartender of his age, America’s first celebrity mixologist. About his fellow pioneers, we know even less. A few names survive-George Vennigerholz, of the Mansion House in Natchez and Shed Sterling of New York’s Astor House both disputed with Willard for the unofficial title of Master of the Julep; Sandy Welsh, who kept an eating house in lower Manhattan, was famous for his drinks until he took the pledge in 1840; the head bartender at the Tremont House in Boston, William “Billy” Pitcher, liked to spout Ancient Greek to his customers (it’s that kind of town). But we don’t know who came up with the Julep in the first place, or the cocktail shaker, or even the very Cocktail itself. That’s like not knowing who made the first jazz record, or who invented the six-gun. It’s positively un-American.

There is, however, a glimmer of hope that we may be able to get to the bottom of these vital questions. It turns out, someone in a position to know did in fact publish the annals of American bartending — and that someone was none other than Jerry Thomas himself. In 1863, the year after his “How to Mix Drinks, or the Bon-Vivant’s Companion” came out to excellent reviews and wide sales, from which he received not a penny, he decided to try it again. This time, he would publish the book himself. His first book had been a recipe book, pure and simple. Once Thomas was his own boss, however, he set his sights rather higher: “The Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Bar-Keepers,” the sequel would be called. It would have drink recipes, to be sure, but it wouldn’t stop there. It would also have an autobiography, the rather colorful incidents of the master’s life in his own words, with illustrations (in addition to being a sailor, prospector, theatrical entrepreneur and drink-artist, Thomas was a skilled sketch-artist). And, finally, it would feature the “likenesses and autobiographies” of other “prominent barkeepers.” The quotations come from a review of the book in a California newspaper. The extent of the book’s success can be measured by the fact that until last December, when a reader of “Imbibe!” turned up that review, the only notice we had of the book’s existence was a three-line squib I found last spring attacking the very idea of writing a history of barkeeping. Needless to say, no copy of the book itself has come to light.

A good bartender has to be an on-the-fly systems engineer. He (and I use the masculine pronoun for convenience; some of the very best bartenders I know are women) has to be able to visualize the finished drink as soon as it’s ordered, and check off in his brain all the steps it will take to produce it. Usually, since he’s making more than one drink at a time, for more than one person, he has to integrate several of these flow charts at the same time. This is no more than what a short-order cook does, though. But a bartender has to also project his personality in such a way that a roomful of people who have been drinking strong drinks will respect the very social conventions that they’re drinking to erode. He has to be dignified but amusing, precise but fast, sympathetic but no chump. At its best, bartending is one of the great vernacular arts. While I wait for “The Portrait Gallery of Eminent Barkeepers” to surface, I intend to run this column as a tribute to the best artists of the bar; as a place where the words, deeds and drinks of the great barkeepers will get the attention they so richly deserve.