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New Version of New Book on Old Drinks

Several years before the craze in classic cocktails really took off, Ted Haigh wrote the book Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails that helped allow it to happen. The book was essential to learning about lost ingredients and drinks, many of which have now made a comeback. People have recreated the drinks and approximated the vintage spirits in the book since then, and new versions of old spirits have come back onto the market.

Since so many of the drinks are no longer lost, it was time for an update. And it sounds like Haigh did a doozy of a job on it.  Here is what's new in the new edition:

• There are fully 25% more forgotten recipes to try.
• The book is over twice as long.
• Lots more history and drink explanations (for both the original drinks and the many newly revealed ones as well).
• This new book is hardcover. The cover is water resistant. The result of a clever binding trick, the book opens to any page and lies flat.
• The substantial historical research yielded photographs, discoveries, and insights, much of which will be newly revealed.
• The resource appendix was entirely rewritten with expanded, up-to-date resources.
• There is a completely new section of the book looking at the Internet and the effect it has had on the cocktail renaissance we now enjoy. I name the twenty-five most influential online cocktail pioneers, interview them about it, and share their thoughts.

It just so happens that I am one of those 25 influential cocktail pioneers! (Am I having a good month or what?)

Haigh interviewed me via email a while back when he was rewriting the book. I have no idea what I said but it is probably useless information, full of typos, and long gone stale like unrefrigerated vermouth.

The book comes out July 1 and you can pre-order it on Amazon now:Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails: From the Alamagoozlum to the Zombie 100 Rediscovered Recipes and the Stories Behind Them

A Camper Cocktail

SeanMike over at Scofflaw's Den is making cocktails for mixologists, bloggers, and other folks, and naming them for those people.

And now he's made one named The Camper, made with blanco tequila, grenadine, lemon juice, pineapple grapefruit soda, and Peychaud's bitters. Sounds tasty- I can't wait to try me.

And the Nominees Are...

The annual Tales of the Cocktail Spirit Award nominees were announced this weekend- and I'm one of them!

The other writers in the category each have multiple books to their credit out based on years of research, while I'm all, "Hey y'alls! Drinks is good over here!" So it really is an honor just to be nominated.

The winners will be announced on July 11th at the awards ceremony. It's a lot like the Oscars except everyone is drinking and nobody can remember the next day who won.

Best Cocktail Writing
Criteria: Great journalism is one of the best ways to communicate to the general public the value and significance of great cocktails and related products. This award is for any non-book journalism (Magazine, Newspaper, Website, etc) that promotes bars, bartender, or cocktails in general.

Camper English
Dave Wondrich
Gary Regan
Jared Brown & Anistatia Miller

Best New Cocktail/Bartending Book
Criteria: The best book published in 2008 regarding cocktails, liquor, and bars, bar design or bartending in general. New editions of existing works may also be nominated.

Cocktails Made Easy - Simon Difford
Mud Puddle Books - Greg Boehm
The Essential Cocktail - Dale DeGroff

World's Best Drinks Selection
Criteria: A venue stocking an outstanding range of spirits and liqueurs. The judges will favor discernment as well as sheer numbers of bottles stocked.

The Merchant Hotel, Belfast
Le Lion Bar de Paris, Hamburg
ZigZag Café, Seattle

Best American Cocktail Bar
Criteria: This award recognizes the influence on cocktail trends within the United States and seeks to award the country's best cocktail bar.

Death & Co, NYC
PDT, NYC
Pegu Club, NYC

World's Best Cocktail Bar
Criteria: Only truly world-class bars will be considered for this illustrious title. Some bars attain worldwide recognition and this award recognizes the very best of the best.

Door 74, Amsterdam
High Five Bar, Tokyo
PDT, NYC
Pegu Club, NYC

World's Best New Cocktail Bar
Criteria: Only bars which opened after 1st March 2008 may be nominated. This award aims to reward new creativity and ideas as well as well executed drinks.

Clover Club, Brooklyn
Drink, Boston
Quo Vadis, London

World's Best Hotel Bar
Criteria: The classic 'American Bar' played an important role in the history and development of cocktail culture. The judges are looking for hotel bars, which uphold this tradition (but are not necessarily old) and offer five-star service and consistently well-made drinks.

Dukes, London
The Connaught, London
The Merchant, Belfast

American Bartender of the Year
Criteria: From Jerry Thomas onwards, American bartenders have been amongst the most influential on drinks styles and cocktail culture in general. This award seeks to recognize the most influential American bartender today. The winner should be proficient at making all recognized classic drinks and also have created contemporary cocktails, which have been copied by his/her peers.

Audrey Saunders
James Meehan
Phil Ward

International Bartender of the Year
Criteria: The absolute best drinks mixer in the world. The winner must have received international recognition of their work with their own recipes crossing borders to appear on cocktail menus in numerous countries. (US citizens are not excluded.)

Agostino Perrone
Charles Vexenat
Tony Conigliaro

Best New Product
Criteria: This is awarded to what the judges consider to be the best new cocktail ingredient (spirit, liqueur, syrup or juice) or piece of cocktail equipment (muddler, shaker etc.). To qualify products must be on general retail sale in at least three US states.

Angostura Orange Bitters
Bols Genever
Ocho

World's Best Cocktail Menu
Criteria: The judges seek to reward innovative and thirst inducing cocktail menus. Both the design and content will be considered.

Hawksmoor, London
Le Lion Bar de Paris, Hamburg
Merchant Hotel, Belfast

Best American Brand Ambassador
Criteria: An award, which recognizes the importance of personality in the promotion of drinks brands across America.

Jacques Bezuidenhout, Partida
Julio Bermejo, Tequila
Simon Ford, Plymouth

Another Carrot Cocktail

For some reason I am obsessed with carrot cocktails this year, despite not having consumed any. Here's an earlier post about carrot cocktails, that refers to another post about carrot cocktails.

Here's another recipe that came in the G'Vine newsletter that sounds tasty to me. Carrots and gin, yum!

G'ZANAHORIA

Ingredients
1 part    G'Vine Floraison
1/2 part Fresh carrot juice
1/3 part Fresh lime juice
2/3 part Fresh pineapple juice
1/6 part Agave nectar
1/3 part Cointreau

Instructions
Pour all the ingredients in a shaker. Add ice, shake and strain into a cocktail glass (Martini). Garnish with an orange wheel and gooseberry.

Killing You Softly, With Coco Lopez

Is Your Bartender a Terrorist?

If you're in Bermuda and a Chinese bartender serves you a $12 dollar Pina Colada, then he is probably a terrorist trained in Afghanistan who later took up the profession to kill you. So say the brilliant minds at Fox News seen in this video.

More accurately, he was illegally imprisoned by the US for several years and dumped on Bermuda, but whatevs.

This doesn't seem like a likely scenario to me. I've met some grumpy bartenders in my day, but not, you know, terrorist grumpy.

Alcademics Giveaway: The King of Vodka

I'm giving away five copies of the new book The King of Vodka: The Story of Pyotr Smirnov and the Upheaval of an Empire, by Linda Himelstein.

To win a copy sign up for Alcademics A-Plus (remember, this email list is only for giveaways and never any junk) and await instructions.

I haven't had a chance to read the book yet, but luckily Steve Weinberg of USA Today did. Here's what he has to say:

As a writer for BusinessWeek magazine during the 1990s, Linda Himelstein covered the story of a family with Russian roots, the Smirnovs.

Their ancestor, Pyotr Smirnov, dead since 1898, had accumulated wealth in 19th-centuryRussia against gigantic odds by rising from rural slavery (serfdom), finding his way to Moscow as a teenager, learning the commercial realm despite near illiteracy, producing vodka, then marketing the alcoholic beverage ingeniously.

After the death of the patriarch, his heirs fought relentlessly. Their inability to get along, combined with the Bolshevik Revolution in their native land and other upheavals around the globe, led to the demise of the family business.

The name Smirnov became attached to high-quality vodka again only after World War II, and only because a visionary marketer outside the family devised a plan.

When those in the Smirnov bloodline tried to wrest back their commercial heritage through the courts — the story that attracted Himelstein at BusinessWeek— they failed. Himelstein could not let the saga go, however.

There's much more to the review- you can read the full thing from USA Today here.

Whisky and the Environment

The Scotch Whisky Association released a statement [pdf] announcing that they've agreed on green commitments including reductions in fossil fuel usage, packaging weight reduction, and sustainably harvested wood for barrels. They have goals to reach by 2020 and 2050.

I still hold out hopes that our bourbon producers will start moving towards non-GMO corn and working towards similar goals.

Easy Quiz

What do these three singers have in common?