Alcoholist Yet another cocktail blog.

TotC2009 notes: Cocktails of the Tales

Led by Xavier Padovani (I think, he’s not listed on the official page, but neither is Angus, and Xavier is Hendrick’s world brand rep, as Charlotte and Jim are regional ones), Charlotte Voisey, Jim Ryan, and Angus Winchester led Cocktails of the Tails, a series of readings and descriptions of drink’s various appearances in literature. Not the most technical or historical (although a bit of that) sessions I attended, but it was definitely one of the most fun.

Xavier opened up by talking about punch:

• Punch was brought back from India to England by sailors in the 17th century.
• The name comes from “paantsch”, which means “five”, referring to the five ingredients: spirit, sugar, lemon, water, and spice.
• In 1694, Edward Russel, First Lord of the Admiralty, took the record for the largest punch: it was in a fountain. It was 8-10 thousand gallons containing brandy and Malage wine.
• The party ended when the punch ran out… a week later.
• Moving onto Dickens, 1812-1870.
• “Charles Dickens drank a lot of gin. He drank a lot of punch.”
• At his death, there were found in Dickens’s cellar 185 (12-bottle) cases of wine, 25 cases of champagne, 844 bottles of port, [and a longer list I couldn't keep up with]
• Recommends Convivial Dickens by Edward Hewett and William F. Axton and Drinking with Dickens by Cedric Dickens, in one of which [I've forgotten] resides a good Hot Gin Punch recipe.
• In gin houses of the 1800s people were drinking to get drunk, and there was lots of punch. The bartenders were “pretty ladies” because customers were sailors.
• [A few minutes of searching hasn't told me what this note meant, so I'll just transcribe it verbatim:] 202o.net (?) [definitely not the right site] quote from SM – probably Samuel Mathers [the occultist...?]
• Back to punches… nutmeg was used in most of them.
• Punch was drunk at all hours of the day
• White Congo punch recipe:
  • 8 L Hendrick’s gin
  • 2 bottles maraschino
  • 4-6 L vanilla ice cream
  • grated nutmeg
• From Xavier’s experience, a bathtub of punch servers 250-400 people for ~6 hours
• I then have: “Nick Strangeway recipe” — he’s a bartender in London, maybe the above is his? Maybe something else I wanted to track down is?

Charlotte (much of what follows are snippets of quotes I intended to look up and flesh out after I was home; I’m not doing that yet so that I can get through the rest of the week, but you should be able to find them too):

• Montgomery Martini, for British General Montgomery who refused to fight in WWII without overwhelming odds, like 15-1 – proportions for this cocktail.
• Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms – “One day, when I was in bed with jaundice…”, great volumes of Kummel; nurse finding protagonist with a huge quantity of empty bottles
• PG Woodhouse, Cocktail Times – “corkscrews are straight and a spiral staircase is the shortest line between two points”; “never trust a man with a thin, black moustache”; “lopping up martinis like a vacuum cleaner”
• Dorothy Parker – “I like to have a Martini, two at the very most; three, I’m under the table, four I’m under my host!”
• Barnaby Conrad III quote re: Martini [perhaps in here?]
• Sue Grafton, “B” is for Burglar – [When one character enjoys the first sip of a Martini:] “I can leave the room if you’d like to be alone with that.”
• Bernard Devoto, The Hour (which is rather impressively out of print) – “There are only two cocktails”, a slug of whiskey and the Martini; “cocktails are cold!”; includes a Martini batching recipe to get it to the right temperature:
  • fill a pitcher with ice
  • let it chill
  • dump the melt
  • refill with ice
  • mix Martini at your proportions in the pitcher on the ice
• The Hour is, of course, the source for the “violet hour” turn of phrase (and Chicago bar’s name)

Jim, dressed in a full-body roach costume, begins by…:

• … reciting the introductory paragaphs of Kafka’s Metamorphosis (with Charlotte providing the voice of Mother), asserting, after a round of applause, that it was the quintissential morning after.
• Isaiah 5:11 – “Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; that continue until night, till wine inflame them!”
• Lord Byron, Don Juan – “And the small ripple…”, “wine and women, mirth and laughter, soda and water for the morning after”
• Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat – “Two gallons of wine…”
• Baudelaire: “Get drunk. One must always be drunk…” (An alternate translation.)
• James Wring (1927-1980), Two Hangovers

Angus:

• owns 700-800 cocktail books
• Ogden Nash: “Parsely is ghastly”; “Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.”; [not sure the context for:] martini, old-fashioned, mint julep, etc.
• Flemming, Thunderball – bad things for a cocktail: cherry; celery; olive, “the testicle of the devil”
• Noah S. “Soggy” Sweat – “I can’t drink bourbon any more, it makes me a bit feisty.” – from (?) first speech on legalization of liquor
• Gary Regan – “Sexiest bit of cocktail writing I’ve ever read” (Angus) – Gary’s description of making an old-fashioned (location?)
• Toby Cecchini, Cosmopolitan – day in the life of (the departed) Passerby; of “bar chefs”: “bruisingly expensive”
• Hayward Buel, Cocktail – 500 pages long, everything in the movie happens in the first 75 pages; “bad choices, bad women, and bad drugs”; includes a (good?) zombie recipe
• Art Hopper’s Drinking School – “Their problem, obviously, is they don’t drink enough.”
• [I have a feeling that Charlotte stepped back into things here, but it's not in my notes... maybe it's just because I've seen he read this passage in a video.] George Augustus Sala: “The Barkeep and his assistants possess the agility of acrobats and the prestidigitative skill of magicians. They are all bottle-conjurors. They toss the drinks about; they throw brimful glasses over their heads; they shake the saccharine, glacial, and alcoholic ingredients in long tin tubes; they scourge eggs and cream into a froth; they send bumpers shooting from one end of the bar to the other without spilling a drop; they give change, talk politics, tell quaint anecdotes, swear strange oaths, smoke, chew, and expectorate with astonishing celerity and dexterity. I should like to be a bar-keeper, if I were clever enough.” – final line on conference ID lanyard
• Gary Regan – “Who can refuse … green-eyed Chartreuse …”