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Cocktail Pairing at PS7's

Sherette Williams was in Tonic marinating on a glass of Gran Marnier.  She told me that she found the perfect dining experience for Nicole and I.  Gina Chersevani and head chef/owner Peter Smith set up a cocktail pairing menu at PS7's in Chinatown.  Sherette said if Nic and I tried it, we'd "fucking love it."  

Then I happened to stumble upon Jane Black's article in the Washington Post about her experiance at this cocktail pairing. 

Needless to say, the sense of urgency had doubled.  So I asked Sherette to set up a reservation as soon as she could.    

She did.  We went.  And guess what...

We fucking loved it.

So when we arrived, Sherette had set up a spot at the bar for us.  They gave us this little menu which lays out the cocktail/food pairings that you'd be experiencing.  Each plate had some basic descriptions of the ingredients.  Both the cocktails and the food had some pretty imaginative names.  Many of the names had some sort of funny story behind them as we came to find out. 

From my perspective, the arrangement of the cocktails in the menu had a particular order.  In fact, I'd even say there was some symmetry, at least in the first part of the menu.  Here's what I mean:

Cocktail List:
a) Tea Punch
b) Cytron Sake
b) Soooo... Sake
a) Toasted Spice Punch

I realized also that we'd experience not only a symmetrical layout but also a slight historical progression. 

Did Gina set the menu up on purpose?  I dunno.  But it was fun to try and interpret it.

The first cocktail was Tea Punch.  Punch is considered the first version of drinks that we now consider to be cocktails.  British sailors had been drinking punch in their travels throughout the British Empire, especially India. In fact, the word "punch" is believed to be an Indian word (thank you Wikipedia). Anyway, the bartender tells us a little about the drink and how this particular punch was used by sailors to fight scurvy. And shlabadabading dong if it didn't kill my scurvy.  The pure lime was the most noticeable flavor initially. 

But once that initial lime flavor subsided you began to taste the other ingrediants.  The tea, the sweetness, the rum.  All of these flavors are bouncing off of each other, ready for interaction with our first course.

The Cast Iron plate was one of the most delicious vegetarian dishes that I have ever had.  A genuine vegetarian dish bursting with flavor.  I was sad to see it go so quickly. 

Did the Tea Punch pair with the Cast Iron well?  Sure.  It all had a very earthy theme.  The celery root, mushrooms, and the sweet potato were a great match for the tea.  Meanwhile, it kept things light with the citrus of the lime.  I got it.

Next, the Cytron Sake which I can't even begin to explain.  It had a very classic cocktail look.  The citrus garnish was an exclamation.  The curveball flavors of the sake and hibiscus tea.  It certainly wasn't lacking in flavors to explore.

The Red Bullet plate was fantastic.  Win.

The (snack pack attack) dish was the molecular side to the experience.  Thin, crisp, chip-like wafers.  Bite one, you taste popcorn.  Bite another, you taste beef jerky or a frito lay flavor.  It was a fun departure from the rest of the meal.

The best drink of the night.  It was called Soooo....Sake.  It was so good I crushed it well before receiving the Pho dish it was meant to accompany.  It was light and refreshing.  I fancied the pineapple trident garnish.  Believe it or not, this beauty had Miller High Life as one of its ingredients.  I could have drank these all night.  Bonus win.

At this point, you would have noticed that you had crossed the axis of the symmetrical menu.  Have I given you vertigo yet?  Anyway, the sake drinks mirrored each other.  Only this sake drink was little less classical and fitted a more contemporary sensability. 

The Pho dish.  God almighty I loved this dish.  The menu listed noodle, Thai basil, sprout.  The protein consisted of duck with a dabble of foie gras. 

Did it pair with the cocktail well? I couldn't think of anything else that I'd put with that dish.  Gina nailed it. 

Our next beverage was the Toasted Spice Punch.  The ingredients were Old Overholt Rye Whiskey, Navan, powdered sugar,fresh apple cider, orange peels, bitters, soda water and roasted cardamom pods/cinnamon sticks/whole star anise.  It was refreshing and clean.

I felt like this cocktail was meant to mirror the Tea Punch at the beginning of the meal.  The punch was a little more modern.  And it paired well the next dish...

The Tatonka.  Bison.  This dish reminded you why it is not a sin to be a meat-eater.  Nicole said that this animal died happy.  I guess I had never really thought of it like that.  Anyway, it was perfectly prepared.  I couldn't help but notice the crisp earthiness with the apple and the rutabaga.  It was delicious.

Effin Starbucks was a steamy, nutty, sipper drink.  It was accompanied by the chocolaty nugglet you see below.

Perfectly sized.  It was a hazelnut mousse with a chocolate coating and I could barely fit it into my stomach.  I liked the presentation: an almost Impressionist chocolate paint brush stroke.

Finally, we had the scorched milk.  By this time, I could barely remember my own name.  And, while I tried hard to record some of my thoughts for this blog in the moment.  At a certain point, the alcohol took a hold and I was loopy.

In the end, Gina Chersevani put together a great pairing and Peter Smith's dishes were wonderful.  Before the end of the experience, we had a great time chatting with the people that worked there.  

Thank you Peter, Sherette, Andrew, Eric, Frank, and Jason.  We had a wonderful time.

Next Song for the Jukebox

Bill Murray Bartends at SXSW 2010

I've always been a huge fan of Bill Murray.  Ever since I was a kid.  He has been, arguably, the funniest man on the planet for well over three decades now.  Since this is a blog about booze and the industry that surrounds it I figured this video would be a treat - particularly for bartenders.

Rum Runners

Anyone who knows me knows that I know politics. I am actually kind of a political junky. But that's all I'll say about that...


I found this report interesting. Booze politics is surprisingly very involved in the tides of history. Anyway, let NPR's Greg Allen educate you on the politics of rum - Enjoy.

Pick Your Poison

I just read this article by Deborah Blum in Slate:

The U.S. Treasury Department, charged with overseeing alcohol enforcement, estimated that by the mid-1920s, some 60 million gallons of industrial alcohol were stolen annually to supply the country's drinkers. In response, in 1926, President Calvin Coolidge's government decided to turn to chemistry as an enforcement tool. Some 70 denaturing formulas existed by the 1920s. Most simply added poisonous methyl alcohol into the mix. Others used bitter-tasting compounds that were less lethal, designed to make the alcohol taste so awful that it became undrinkable [...] By mid-1927, the new denaturing formulas included some notable poisons — kerosene and brucine (a plant alkaloid closely related to strychnine), gasoline, benzene, cadmium, iodine, zinc, mercury salts, nicotine, ether, formaldehyde, chloroform, camphor, carbolic acid, quinine, and acetone. The Treasury Department also demanded more methyl alcohol be added — up to 10 percent of total product. It was the last that proved most deadly.

Amazing stuff.  Is this where the phrase "pick your poison" comes from?  I dunno.  But I do know that I almost completely agree with the analysis by Megan McArdle from The Atlantic.  Her blog entry in Asymmetrical Information reads: 

I wish I could say I found it surprising, but it seem to me to be of a piece with too many other brutalities in American law.  We pass a law with the best of intentions, and find it doesn't work, and so we pass new regulations and policies designed to crack down on non-compliance, until we are brutalizing the population all out of proportion to the original good we were pursuing.  Consider the way we have cracked down on pain medications, impeding the effectiveness of pain control for people in chronic agony out of the fear that somewhere, someone might be getting high.

This unfortunate story, if you think about it, is an ancestor to so many things that are currently going on.  I think just like anything else it's important to note a few things.  First, it's really not astonishing to me that our government did something as brutal as this.  It's more important to me that we learn something from it and ensure our government knows it's pretty much unacceptable to start putting incrementally poisonous doses of formaldehyde in junk food.  There are better ways of curbing the appetite of Bebe's kids in America. 

Furthermore, I think we all can think of other activities that are currently illegal but seem pretty pointless to prosecute.  Dare I say, pointless to the level that prosecution produces no greater good to the society than other more progressive alternatives? 

I digress...

The reason this story relates so closely to this blog and cocktail making in 2010 is crystal clear.  For starters, the application of science and the principles of chemistry in cocktails have become more frequent (albeit less for the reason of outright poisoning people).  Now, I don't know very much about chemistry so this thought may seem a little ridiculous.  But I am curious to know if any of the same principles and/or processes that were used by bootleggers (and, consequently, U.S. Treasury Department chemists) are used by anyone for today's alcohol experimentations in any capacity.  Now be easy.  I'm pretty sure Todd Thrasher from PX isn't playing with strychnine in his cocktails.  I'm also not trying to take mixology to a whole new level or anything.  Maybe this is over-simplifying the science here, but it is the poisonous properties of alcohol that makes us loopy after all. 

It would just be a fascinating topic to explore.    

Anyway, this sinister application of chemistry juxtaposed against the scientific renaissance in bartending we've seen in the past decade also kind of imparts some signal that our society has progressed.  It may seem like a stretch but many times it feels like our society often flips aspects of its shadowy past around into a light-hearted, powerful or poignant symbol.  In turn, as a relic, it helps to enrich the culture even more moving forward.  Ok, so maybe I got too deep there... 

Anyway, I think it should also be noted that the scientific approach to hooch has developed an aura of professionalism in cocktail-making for some parts of the industry.  Maybe its a prestige that is long overdue.  The once comical scientific-sounding term "mixology" or the professional-scientist-sounding "mixologist" somehow gained some degree of legitimacy. 

The prohibition history of this story also relates more obviously in the speakeasy-style bar concepts have sprung up in cities like Washington D.C. (Have they peaked?  Read Derek Brown's entry regarding Gossip Girl).

History is pretty crazy when you get down into it.  And there's a great deal of history in the bar/booze industry.  I guess you can tell I'll take any chance I get to learn and talk about it.  If you'd like to expand on any of these ideas feel free to comment.

Next Song for the Jukebox

The Rusty Root

So I brought my bottle of ROOT liqueur to Tonic with me.  I've been playing with a concoction quite a bit by now (as you can see from a few posts ago) so I had a drink ready for people to try.  Lucky for me, a bunch of my friends made it to the bar to booze it up. 

The drink was a hit.  It was limited only by the fact that we only had enough in the bottle to make approximately 8 drinks.  Here's the recipe for it.  I'm not totally sure someone hasn't already come up with this.  My inspiration was Dark & Stormies.  I call this the Rusty Root.

The Rusty Root

2 oz ROOT liqueur
Gosling's Ginger Beer
2 limes wedges

Glassware: pint glass

Squeeze one lime wedge into a pint glass and drop in.  Fill the glass with ice.  Pour 2 oz of ROOT liqueur into the glass.  Pour Gosling's Ginger Beer on top.  Squeeze the other lime on top and mix.  Enjoy.

Vegan Beer, Wine and Liquor Guide

The good folks at Barnivore have put together a beer, wine and liquor guide for vegans.  I took particular interest in the Barnivore beer guide.  There were some brewing companies that I wasn't really surprised to see as vegan friendly (Anchor Brewing Company, Rogue Ales, etc).  Then there were the brewing companies I was surprised about (Mickey's?  Who knew).  Anyway, anybody who knows me knows that I am certainly not a vegan.  But I thought the guide was interesting and maybe even helpful to those of you in the other Green Revolution.  Sláinte!

Art in the Age - ROOT Liqueur

I love moments like this... meandering your way through experimentation until a solid cocktail is found. I got a bottle of ROOT liqueur from my good friend Virginia Lee for Christmas last year. I brought the bottle to Tonic with three ROOT cocktail recipes ready to test out.  My guinea pigs? Tonic employees who were going to be sitting down to have their shift drink anyway.

I first undertook the Rootini. While the name itself sends shivers down my spine (see Derek Brown’s Goodbye to '80s Bartending Trends entry #1) I decided to give it whirl. Here’s the ingredients:

The Rootini

2 oz ROOT liqueur
½ oz Navan
Splash of heavy cream
Granulated sugar

Glassware: chilled martini glass

Begin chilling down a martini glass. In a shaker, add ice and 2 oz of ROOT liqueur. Add ½ oz of Navan and a splash of heavy cream. Rim the chilled martini glass with the granulated sugar. Shake the ingredients vigorously in the shaker and pour straight up into the martini glass.

So this cocktail received a mixed response. Some people hated it. Some people didn’t mind it. Those two reactions told me it wasn’t quite ready for prime time. OR this cocktail will need time for a little more experimentation to hit the right flavors.

I worked on this particular drink throughout the evening when I could. Then, as things began to wind down, I thought about the ROOT and ginger beer cocktail I’d seen. So I decided to start off simply putting ROOT with Gosling’s Ginger Beer. The result was great and it got a good reception from everybody. My bar manager, Doug, called it "a great summer drink." So keep this in mind when the warm weather comes back to DC.  I'll keep experimenting. 

Next Song for the Jukebox

Anchor Bar for Superbowl XLIV

For Superbowl XLIV, Nicole took me to Anchor Bar, home of the original Buffalo wing. We found ourselves a seat close to the bar. Nicole and I got a couple of Labatt’s, a beef on weck, and a plate of Buffalo wings. And yes the Buffalo wings kicked ass. They were crispy and sloppy.

Jim's SteakOut - Buffalo, New York

Nicole has been begging me to come to Buffalo, New York ever since we met. It’s her hometown. Most of all, she wanted me to have her favorite "junk food" - a Chicken Finger Sub from Jim’s SteakOut. She’s obsessed with it. So we went to Buffalo just as Washington DC was being consumed by a record-breaking blizzard (ironically, Buffalo was forecast to get no significant snow accumulation).

We made our way to Elmwood Avenue to the Jim’s SteakOut location of Nicole’s childhood. We ordered. And I am happy to report that the Chicken Finger Sub lives up to the hype. If you happen to be in Buffalo, New York stop by Jim’s SteakOut and grab one. Then grab another for the road.

Note: This post has been revised since its original publication

Bombay's Take

I read a post on the blog Cocktails with M about gin-based cocktails like the The Savoy, The Sapphire Savoy, The Communique, The White Lady, and The Pink Lady. The blogger addresses, consequently, the difficulty of naming a cocktail with slight changes in recipe. This topic is worth discussing and I hope to tackle it one of these days.

However, I was more interested in the recipe of Bombay’s Take on the Communique or as I call it: Bombay's Take. I reproduced this little ditty and got a good result – that is to say, the people I served it to enjoyed it. Here’s the recipe with a few of my own adjustments:

Bombay’s Take (on the Communique):

- 1 ½ oz of Bombay Sapphire Extra Dry Gin
- 2 oz of grapefruit juice
- ½ oz of orange liquor (I used Gran Mariner)
- 2 dashes of Fee Brothers Grapefruit Bitters

- Grapefruit rind

Glassware: Chilled martini glass

Chill down a martini glass. Add ice to a shaker and pour 1 ½ oz of Bombay Sapphire Extra Dry Gin into it. Add 2 oz of grapefruit juice. Add ½ oz of orange liquor and 2 dashes of Fee Brothers Grapefruit Bitters. Shake vigorously and pour straight up into a martini glass. Shave off a piece of grapefruit rind over the mixture for zest. Twist the rind and drop into glass. Serve.

Next Song for the Jukebox

The Tamarind Rickey

I stole the idea for this drink from Dan Searing and Rico Wisner. Dan is the Bar Manager at Warehouse Theater and Rico is the Bar Supervisor at Poste Brasserie. Dan's drink is called the Rickey-Tikki-Tavi and Rico's is called the Papa Joe (both great names!).  They entered their respective cocktails into the DC Craft Bartender's Guild Rickey contest this past summer.  Here's the variation I came up with:

The Tamarind Rickey

- 2 oz of Hendrick's Gin

- Jarritos Tamarind Soda
- Slice of lime

Fill a rox glass with ice. Pour 2 oz of Hendrick's Gin into the glass. Pour Jarritos Tamarind Soda on top. Squeeze the lime wedge on top of the mixture and stir.

Tonic at Mount Pleasant donates to Haiti

Today, Sunday Jan 17th Tonic in Mount Pleasant will be donating 50% of their PBR sales to helping the earthquake victims in Haiti. This is a great cause and it's wonderful that Tonic is trying to do a little to help the relief efforts. Go and have a beer.

Summer Drinks in the Winter Time

As you can tell it's a Friday night and I am bored. I'd be out at the bars embarrassing myself but I'm trying to conserve my money after the holidays. Not only that, I figure it‘s winter. It's cold. It's windy as hell. Do as the animals do. Hibernate – or stay in your habitat and experiment with some cocktails at the very least.

I saw a post on the blog A Thirsty Spirit about a summer drink called Please Don't Go (Summer). The picture in the blog was enticing enough to make me try it. It turned out to be very refreshing. Definitely worth a revisit after the snow has finally melted away, the trees are green again and it gets so hot your balls stick to your leg. No? Not you? Just me? Ok let's see the cocktail.

Please Don’t Go (Summer)

- 2 oz Gin (I used Seagram’s primarily b/c it’s the only gin I have. I'd like to experiment with Hendricks next time)

- 1 oz St. Germaine Elderflower Liqueur

- 5 1 inch squares of cantaloupe

- Juice of 1/2 a lime

- A pinch of salt

- Club soda

Cut a slice of the cantaloupe into 1 inch squares and place them into a tall glass.

Add juice from ½ a lime. Add a pinch of salt. Muddle the ingredients.

Add ice. Cover the glass with a shaker (or pour contents into a shaker). Shake.

Strain the mixture into a rocks glass filled with ice.

Top the drink off with club soda.

Enjoy.

Next Song for the Jukebox

"Willy Wonka Cocktailing"

I’m a sucker for stuff like this. The Liquid Lab in the Bronx is doing "Willy Wonka Cocktailing." I love it. I want to go there as soon as possible. Who's comin with me?

Derek Brown on The Rachel Maddow Show

Apparently, Derek Brown served cocktails at the White House just recently (shocker! this guy is like DC's bartender laureate). Rachel Maddow picked up the story. She’s been trying for almost a year to get a menu from one of these cocktail parties the POTUS has been hosting. 3 drinks that were featured at this particular White House event which Maddow attended are listed below with their ingredients.

The Emerson

- Old Tom Gin

- Sweet Vermouth

- Lime juice

- Maraschino Liqueur

Stone Fence

- Laird’s Applejack

- Apple cider

- Fee Brothers Aromatic Bitters

- Mint

The Robert Frost Cocktail

- Sherry

- White Port

- Bourbon

- Sugar

- Orange Bitters

Stone Fence's ingredients reminds me of Veritas created by Todd Thrasher from PX which I described in an earlier post. Thrasher served up his version of a Laird's Apple Jack based cocktail with cider at the Repeal Day Ball we attended this past December. Derek's drink has mint which seems to me to be a very slick addition and probably was that "wow" factor in this drink when people first drank it. God I wish I could have been at the White House to try this stuff.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

New Years Eve - Twenty10th Street Punch

I made a punch for New Years Eve. It was delicious and got us plenty drunk. I call it the Twenty10th Street Punch. Happy New Year!

- 1/2 bottle of Canada Dry Ginger Ale

- 1 bottle of Bacardi Gold Rum

- 1 bottle of Andre's Sparkling White Wine

- 5 bottles of Jarritos Tamarind Soda

- 1 cup of Gran Marnier

- 1 cup of lime juice

- 3 limes

Combine ingrediants into a punch bowl. Cut the limes in halves and drop into punch. Mix. Add ice.

The New Bartender

I love this.

I have great respect for this blogger, Camper. I admire his courage for writing in a raw form about such a potentially awkward experience. If you’re a seasoned bartender (“seasoned” meaning more than 5 years) I’m sure it’s difficult to even put yourself in the newbie mindset again. But this blog entry is a nice little window into the mind of someone who has never bartended before. Moreover, this gentleman demonstrates how having extensive knowledge of alcohol is not necessarily the key to performing as a bartender when you first start out. Anyway, here’s a list of my favorite revelations:

1) “I'm not used to standing up for more than half an hour in a row. The entire next day my legs were sore.” If you’ve never worked in a restaurant before and today is your first day – you should expect this.

2) “You can feel all of their thirsty, beady, greedy little eyes on you.” This really hits the nail on the head. It should take less than a shift for a new bartender to notice this. If you’ve been bartending for more than a few weeks and don’t get this feeling you should probably quit because you aren’t cut-out for bar work. Everyone else probably hates you as a bartender.

3) “Some people watch every pour to make sure they're getting their full amount of alcohol… But it would still be easy to fool those people and put in less if you wanted to.” Beautiful observation. Whether its greediness or stupidity, these types of customers are encouraged by fast food places like Subway and somehow thinks this same behavior is not insulting to the bartender.

4) “Paying attention to whether or not there are customers at the bar waiting for drinks seems to be the most important part of the job.” This guy gets it. I’ll repeat what I said in #2 – if you’ve been bartending for more than a few weeks and don’t get this you should probably quit because you aren’t cut-out for bar work. Everyone definitely hates you as a bartender.

5) “I need to learn to do the nod that says, ‘I see you and will get to you just as soon as I finish this drink.’” Non-verbal communication: a cornerstone of effective bar work. Its all in the eyes, folks. It’s all in the eyes. When you make eye contact with the bartender you are either a) telling him/her that you need something or b) you want to make sex with them.

On a related note, if you read the comments to this post you’ll notice person named Erik who writes “Don't forget that you are 50% better looking when you are behind a bar or on stage.” So true. But that's for another blog post on another day.

Avatar

I saw Avatar tonight. The movie was good... let's just get that out of the way. It was worth the money I paid for the ticket. The 3D was great - even from the side of the theater. BUT it was way too long and the script could be pretty cheese ball. What're you gonna do... it's sci-fi. James Cameron did produced a good movie.

I also don't know if 3D is anything more than a gimmick. Plus it makes people sick. I got to admit I started feeling nauseous during a slow scene before the climax of the movie. Once the action picked up I snapped out of it and enjoyed the rest of it.

Even without the 3D, Avatar would have been an incredible visual achievement. And I don't care what anyone thinks; a blue Zoe Saldaña with a tail and pointy ears for some reason is hot. It's like when I was a kid the weirdness of having the hots for Kirstie Alley and Robin Curtis as Saavik the Vulcan woman in Star Trek II & III. First alien chick I ever wanted to go to third base with. Am I sick for that? Anyway...

I think had the script been slightly better and the length cut down so I'm not walking out of the movie theater cross-eyed it would have been perfect. I'd go see it again though. I'd just take an unofficial intermission and go smoke a cigarette.

The Sazerac

With the ban on Absinthe in the United States over - the Sazerac is whole again. It is New Orleans’ official cocktail. But how important is the Sazerac?

As an English major, I studied the beginnings of American literature and understood the reverence for the first uniquely American writers and what they meant to the history of our culture. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathanial Hawthorne, Herman Melville – these writers constitute a distinctly American identity in rhetoric and literature. The Sazerac fulfills that space in American cocktail history and identity in much of the same way.

The Sazerac is reported to have come from antebellum New Orleans, Louisiana. Not surprisingly, the cocktail has a distinctly French heritage. The name itself it is generally agreed to have come from a popular type of French cognac called Sazerac-de-Forge et Fils. Over time some adjustments have been made to the recipe. Yet, the almost ceremonial preparation of the drink has likely remained consistent. They just don’t make cocktails this way anymore. It’s the passing down of the recipe and preparation that fascinates me the most about the Sazerac. To be preparing a drink in the tradition of our American ancestors connects you with them and history. In a world where instant gratification is king, a diligent and graceful cocktail like the Sazerac is a relic of a time where things seemed to be made with so much more care. Here is the recipe for the Sazeracs that I've been drinking:

- 2 oz of Old Overholt Straight Rye Whiskey (original recipes called for cognac)

- a few dashes of simple syrup (modern adjustment from the sugar cube)

- 3 dashes of Angostura Bitters (traditional use was Peychaud's Bitters)

- 1 or 2 dashes of oz St. George Spirits Absinthe Verte

- 1 lemon

Begin chilling down a rocks glass. Add 3-5 ice cubes and 2 oz of Old Overholt Straight Rye Whiskey into a shaker. Add a few dashes of simple syrup and 3 dashes of Angostura bitters. Stir approximately 10 times. Take your chilled rocks glass and pour 1 or 2 dashes of St. George Spirits Absinthe Verte into it. Coat the inside of the glass completely with the Absinthe so the inside of it has that nice fresh licorice smell. Using a strainer, pour the mixture from the shaker to the rocks glass. Take the lemon and shave a piece of the rind over the cocktail dusting it with lemon zest. Twist the piece of lemon rind over the drink to release some of the oils and drop it in. Enjoy.

Here is Chantal Tseng from The Tabard Inn making a Sazerac (Washingtonian.com):

The key to enjoying any cocktail (particularly old cocktails which sometimes are so removed from our modern sensibilities) is identifying with it. If any of these exact recipes do not fit your palate, make some adjustments and fit it to your own tastes. Cocktails, like literature, are ever evolving and open to the contemporary individual’s interpretation. I hope you enjoy the Sazerac as much as I enjoy it.