Author: Bob Westal

A recent Liquor.com article tells us that the Deshler goes back to what might be the last cocktail book published before the launch of U.S. prohibition, 1917’s Recipes for Mixed Drinks. While Liquor.com credits its updated recipe to New York Tiki specialist Brian Miller, I found a very similar recipe in Robert Hess’s The Essential Bartender’s Guide, which has certainly been essential to this never-ready-for-prime-time mixologist. (I take about 5-10 to make a drink for one person. I’d be fired by any sensible bar within 15 minutes — unless they wanted to keep me on as a paid in-house know-it-all, which remains my dream occupation.)…

You may remember the slogan, “Remember the Maine!” — but do you remember the Maine, the US Navy boat that exploded in Havana Harbor in 1898? The cause of the explosion that killed 266 sailors was a mystery but William Randolph Hearst and other dishonest journos decided that they could sell more papers and exert more power if they could blame a rival power. “Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain!” swept the land, along with tales of alleged Spanish atrocities. It wasn’t the last time Americans were fooled into backing a needless and immoral war but this time the outcome…

Why did an anonymous New York mixologist call our latest drink the Lady Liberty Cocktail? Maybe July 4th, 2014 was coming up and they wanted an appropriately named cocktail. Or, maybe they wanted to salute the stunning Hudson River sculpture – a symbol of everything good and fragile about our nation. In any case, it’s a strong choice if you’re drinking to a freer future. The Lady Liberty Cocktail 2 ounces white rum 1 ounce fresh lime juice ¾ ounce orgeat (almond syrup) ¼ ounce Green Charteuse ¼ ounce maraschino ¼ teaspoon (dash) absinthe or other strong anise liqueur The…

Do you have a hard time making up your mind? Prone to hedging your bets when it comes to food or drink orders? Fond of splitting the difference with combos? If so, you are someone I can relate to! Here’s a martini to gladden both our hearts. The Indecisive Martini started as my beloved, extra wet, 50/50 gin and vermouth martini referenced in my very first recipes for Bullz-Eye. You see, sometimes even a 50/50 gin martini is a little too heavy on astringent and herbal flavors for my taste. Yet a 50/50 made with vodka might be too tidy. I split…

I gather that relatively few Torontonians have tried the Toronto. That’s a shame — unless they hate bitter flavors, in which case it’s not for them. However, it is for me and it might be for you. We are told that the Toronto began life as the Fernet Cocktail. We are also told that it once may have featured a much larger proportion of Fernet Branca, the infamously hairy-chested amaro favored by Alfred Pennyworth and bartenders everywhere. The original recipe, published in the early 1920s, reportedly mentioned that the tough guy digestif was popular in Toronto….except that Prohibition had reached Ontario by…

“Runaway Train” Is a spiffy 1985 oddball action/adventure flick in which everyone appears to freeze their butt off during a midwestern snowstorm. It’s what I just happened to be watching when I first got the idea for this revved-up, ice-cold White Russian. In honor of the Andrei Konchalovsky film and all runaway trains, everywhere, I decided to make it a higher octane  beverage suiting a movie that blends a shelved Akira Kurasawa screenplay, a former Soviet arthouse director, and the testosterone-heavy lunacy of the Israel-bred Golan-Globan production team. With high-proof vodka, high-nutrition milky goodness, and the booze versions of chocolate and coffee, the…

Scottish-American sportswriter William “Sparrow” Robertson passed away in Nazi-occupied Paris in 1941. Though believed to be significantly older than his official age of 83,  one obituary suggested he died partly of a broken heart. I don’t know how William Robertson felt about the Nazis but the German Occupation meant the end of his gig as sports editor of the shuttered European edition of The New York Herald Tribune — but it was the curfew imposed by the occupiers that might have been the last straw. Well into his very senior years, the formidable night-owl was still known for his ability to outlast the young’uns and…

I first wrote about today’s drink back in 2012 but I was reminded of it recently by a good friend of very long standing. I’ve enjoyed making the drink several times over the last week as if reacquainting myself with an old pal…but that’s another drink I may revisit shortly. The Lucien Gaudin Cocktail is one of the many cocktails first revived for the 20th century by Ted Haigh in his epochal Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails. It was named for an Olympic fencer, a two-time gold medalist. In 1934 he committed suicide; after a company he formed making some of the first sports films…

Unlike the Black Manhattan, the Black Feather Cocktail is not dark in color – and the garnish isn’t a crow’s feather. Robert Hess, a founding father of the cocktail renaissance, named it after the home bar featured on his outstanding YouTube series. As he describes it, the drink was an attempt to create a slightly unusual cocktail with all French ingredients. In the video for the Black Feather Cocktail, Hess cautions newbie mixologists against focusing on creating their own cocktails. I get his point but I don’t want people to be overly intimidated either. My guess is that the writer of The Essential…

Today’s drink might look like the simplest possible Manhattan variation – and it is – but there’s still some 21st century cocktail history to it. The Black Manhattan was created circa 2005 by bartender Todd Smith. Smith worked at San Francisco’s Bourbon & Branch, a leading-edge joint that was also one of the very first nouveau speakeasies. At that time, subbing sweet vermouth with Amaro Averna in the Black Manhattan was a bold move simply because nobody knew from amaros. Fernet Branca was still mostly a secret as a bartender’s handshake and it would be nearly a decade before the Negroni craze…