If you’re hoping for a cool story behind this week’s cocktail, my apologies. As far as I can tell, it’s not even clear who Lord Suffolk might have been. My first Google search brought up information on a Duke of Suffolk and an Earl of Suffolk, but not a Lord Suffolk. A more precise search turned up a Lord of Suffolk featured in “King Henry VI, Pt. 2” a Shakespeare play that, if I ever read it in one of my college Shakespeare classes, I have entirely forgot. A more likely candidate was the Lord Suffolk who apparently served in…
Author: Bob Westal
Bob Westal
Writer guy Bob Westal was literally born in Hollywood and has commented on the worlds of movies, popular culture, politics, and food ever since. His interest in cocktails is more recent, but he made up for lost time with hundreds of “Drink of the Week” blog posts for Bullz-Eye. In addition to writing and editing, Bob also talks a lot.
I’m breaking my recent string of posts failing to properly acknowledge holidays with a drink inspired by the unlikeliest of boozing occaions: Yom Kippur, which begins tonight at dusk. It’s the 24 hour period when all healthy Jews 13 and over are supposed to contemplate their sins and are not supposed to eat or drink anything. This might seem like an odd inspiration for a cocktail blog post but, happily, we Jews are not completely insane. When the holiday ends tomorrow night, observant Jews — and not-so observant Jews with family in town — will be partying down with big…
This will be the fourth and final entry in a series of related mixed drinks, all good to great, that come to us from Harry Craddock’s The Savoy Cocktail Book, the 1930 tome where so many booze classics were finally committed to print. Back in April, I brought you the Rose, a minimalist but delicious beverage comprised of kirsch, dry vermouth, and grenadine. More recently, we had the Rose Cocktail (French Style No. 1) and the Rose Cocktail (French Style No. 2). Today, we’re wrapping up with what might be least obscure of these drinks, most often called the English…
I love Canada, and not just because of the whisky and the great fries I had when I was there last. It’s not just SCTV and The Kids in the Hall or that Montreal is the most beautiful city I’ve ever been to. Maybe it’s that famous niceness. While I’m sure Canada produces its share of sociopaths, narcissists, and garden variety jerkwads, Canadians really do seem nicer and more polite than we Americans. Moreover, on a national level, our maple leaf bearing friends represent something more important than being nice: human decency. NPR and other news sources have reported on how…
We continue our exploration of obscure drinks that sound the same but taste different with yet another recipe from 1930’s The Savoy Cocktail Book. As with last week’s selection, this one is alleged to be in some way French, even if it is most people would make this using Danish Cherry Heering, German kirschwasser, and English dry gin. Not much is known by me about this Rose-by-any-other-name but, as a fan of the unsweetened, unaged black cherry brandy called Kirsch, I was definitely more eager than usual to give this one a try. The Rose Cocktail (French Style #2) 1…
It”s Labor Day Weekend, but today we look back to April, when I gave you one version of the Rose, which I loved quite a bit. Turns out, however, that owners of Harry Craddock’s famed post-prohibitionary The Savoy Cocktail Book can find four, count ’em, four separate drinks calling themselves the Rose Cocktail — and none of them are exactly the same as mine. Don’t worry, I won’t be giving you all four, but I couldn’t resist trying a couple of them. The first of the drinks with an allegedly French provenance lacks kirsch — a dry, unaged cherry brandy…
Last week we had a drink from the prohibition era called the Millionaire. Because I always like to keep things interesting, this week we have, you guessed it, a drink from the prohibition era called the Millionaire! Never fear, however, because this is a completely different drink from last week’s delightful frosty beverage. We’re going from dark rum to rye whiskey and throwing in one of my very favorite non-alcoholic ingredients: egg white! There are multiple versions of this drink running around online, including a very booze-forward recipe by uber cocktailian David Wondrich, but I’m pretty fond of what I’ve…
Who wants to be a millionaire? (Everyone, except for greedy bastards who insist on being billionaires.) Who wants to drink like a millionaire? (Everyone and, considering my booze bills and cocktail tabs, sometimes it feels like I do!) Well, I can’t make you a millionaire, and I can’t even make you drink like a millionaire, but I can help you to drink a Millionaire — and in more than one way. That’s because there’s several cocktails running around calling themselves the Millionaire. This is a similar case to the Corpse Reviver, where we have multiple drinks running around with the…
As I mentioned last week, the Orange Blossom Cocktail is something I stumbled upon while trying to research the much more obscure Orange Bloom Cocktail. Though both drinks have many things in common — being equal parts gin, sweet vermouth, and a sweet orange flavored liquid (Cointreau in the latter, the original orange beverage in the former), and they’re both very good, today’s drink is lighter and probably more of a mass appeal beverage that’s likely to go down well with non-cocktail snobs, while in no way being offensive to cocktailians. At least, I have a hard imagining anyone dissing…
Google “orange bloom cocktail” and the search engine will insist that what you’re really looking for is recipes for the Orange Blossom cocktail, which is probably a cousin to this drink and which I plan to get to next week. I think it’s fair to say this is a an especially obscure beverage, like many that can be found in Harry Craddock’s “The Savoy Cocktail Book.” Indeed, the only person online who seems to have written about the Orange Bloo is San Francisco bartender Erik Ellestad, who took on the task of making every drink in Craddock’s 1930 tome some…