Author: Bob Westal

For me, the best thing about St Patrick’s Day is that it’s an excuse to play around with Irish whiskey.  I’ll never understand why this mellow, easy drinking spirit isn’t considered more mixable. As a holiday, however, St. Paddy’s  is something I can take or leave — I prefer my bars not too crowded and the mixologist not under maximum game day pressure. Also, the great Tom Bergin’s notwithstanding, my hometown of L.A. is more of a Cinco de Mayo kind of a place. Here, the Irish are just another strain of white person, much like the Italians, the Poles, the Germans, and…

We’re enjoying a brief pause in the weeks long  cold snap here in Greater El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles, but the chill and the rain will be back the day after this post goes live. So, I’m following up last week’s very standard, but very good, bourbon toddy with something I came up with that has a touch of Greater Aztlán to it. You can accuse me of doing some post-Oscar  cultural appropriation by cashing in on the enormous Mexican contribution to worldwide food and drink. However, if you could see my bank account you’d know…

As I write this I am shivering in my approximately 65 degree home office and cat sanctum as the people of Los Angeles issue a collective “brrr.” followed by a hardy “WTF!.” The space heater located a foot behind me will soon be turned on and my electric bill will rise with the temperature. Yes, this native Angeleno is here to tell you that even townspeople who came here from the frozen tundra of the Midwest start to freak out just a little when the day time temperature doesn’t rise above 60 and the nighttime temps drop into the low…

Last week, I proudly obeyed the rule of law. Now, I present you with a true cocktail classic inspired by contempt for it. Naturally, it comes from the prohibition era, when respect for the law was almost as at low an ebb as it is today. The Scofflaw was invented circa 1924 at Harry’s Bar in Paris and was actually named for a word intimately associated with the hated 21st amendment to the U.S constitution. As per the mighty Wikipedia, “scofflaw,” which means anyone who flagrantly  disregards a law, was actually coined as part of a contest to come up with…

It may no longer be a big factor in the White House, or in the state houses of Pennsylvania or North Carolina, but here at beautiful DOTW Manor, we believe in the rule of law. Others might arrogate to themselves the right to call today’s beverage a revisited take on the Bacardi Cocktail, but we have grown wise since 2011. We now realize that, on this Presidents Day weekend, we must abide by the 1936 ruling of the New York State Supreme Court which held that fobbing off a drink containing another brand of rum as a Bacardi Cocktail was…

According to Google, the term blue moon refers to two things: a second full moon in a single month or a moon that actually looks blue “owing to smoke or dust particles in the atmosphere.” Regarding the latter, I’ve lived in the smog capital of the United States for nearly all of my not so short life and I’ve never seen an actually blue moon. While the former type blue moon occurs fairly rarely — i.e., once in a blue moon — the world from L.A. and New York to London, Tokyo and Australia recently witnessed something called a “super blue…

I could try to tie in today’s drink to the Superbowl but, honestly, I can’t. However, if you’re having the most fancy game day party in history, I certainly wouldn’t stop you from giving this unabridged classic a go. In the still very early days of DOTW, I went at a drink that, while still obscure to a lot of people, seems to turn up at maybe half the bars that aspire to make classic cocktails. Most go with a variation of the expurgated recipe I went with in 2013. Now, however, I have finally bit the bullet and paid the…

When last we met I was nearing neak apple brandy. Over the last couple of months, I’ve managed to go through five bottles of different varieties of Laird’s straight American brandies and French calvados. With so many bottles a hair’s breadth from meeting their final reward, it was time for a break lest. However, I determined to go out with the best known apple brandy cocktail of all. As a somewhat less seasoned booze blogger way back in the more innocent days of 2013, I was impressed by the Jack Rose, However, back then even the Southern California big box liquor stores only…

Back in mid-December, I explored a recipe I  found online named the Applejack Cocktail. It was sort of a mixed bag, but good enough to reconsider. I said I’d return the following week with another cocktail of (almost) the same name. However, I suddenly remembered it was the holidays and so I did something different for the next few weeks. Now, with Santa gone back to Palm Springs and playing golf with the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and the Republican Party’s integrity, it’s time to return to this column’s regular business — making really old cocktails no one’s heard of!…

Byrrh was discussed a little in my final post of 2017, but it’s also going to figure in my first post of 2018. So, to answer your first question, byrrh is pronounced “beer.” Yeah, I know. “Who’s beer/byyrh is on first?” In Europe, products like Byrrh Grand Quinquina — the only  brand widely available in the States — are typically consumed on the rocks and maybe with soda, but we Americans like to mess with things. Today’s drink might be American in style, but it’s pedigree is mostly European. The Byrrh Cocktail, which I found via The Washington Post  and…