Alcademics.com

Rare Macallan Scotch You Didn’t Know Existed

Today's post is written by Lou Bustamante. Lou is a contributor to publications including the SF Chronicle, SF Weekly and Wine & Spirits. Anyone who is into whiskies will tell you one thing: it is a rabbit hole of knowledge and bottles. Just like with bread and cheese, a handful of ingredients can produce almost endless variations. There is always something interesting you’ve never tasted or that is historically interesting. It seems like every whisky comes with a story. I recently got a chance to try a very rare flight of Macallans from the 1940’s and was amazed by one... Read more →

Live from Buenos Aires: David Wondrich on Drink History in the Americas

Hello from Tales of the Cocktail on Tour in Buenos Aires! I am attending three seminars today held at the lovely Intercontinental Hotel. (Then the rest of the time I'll just be in bars.) The first seminar was a talk by David Wondrich called Drinking the Americas from Punch to Prohibition Below are notes I took in the seminar, mostly unedited, but let me know if these raise any questions and I'll try to answer them. When Columbus arrived some South American and North American peoples had localized fermented beverages but not really any trade or exchange in them. When... Read more →

Harry Yee, Hawaiian Cocktail Godfather

I know a lot about Trader Vic and Don the Beachcomber, but I didn't know about Harry Yee until this year. I learned a bit about him at a seminar called Modern Tiki: A Pirate's Life for Me, which took place during Hawaii Cocktail Week at the Moana Surfrider Hotel. The seminar was lead by Julie Reiner (owner of the Flatiron Lounge, formerly Lani Kai, and consultant on Hawaii's Tiki Iniki) and Brian Miller (bartender for hire). Harry Yee lived in Hawaii and was the inventor of the Blue Hawaii cocktail, shown above. He was also the first person to... Read more →

Drinking Boston by Stephanie Schorow: Book Review

I've mentioned the book Drinking Boston by Stephanie Schorow here on Alcademics twice already, so clearly I've found it useful: Once when I was researching When did Grenadine Become an Artificial Ingredient? Once when I was looking at the Ward Eight cocktail. But I haven't given the book a proper write-up yet, so here's this. The book is a history of drinking in Boston, from the earliest days of the tavern culture in th 1600s right up through today's cocktail renaissance. The first 70 or so pages take us through the taverns of Boston and their crucial role in the... Read more →

Book Review: The Deans of Drink, about Harry Johnson and Harry Craddock

The Deans of Drink by Anistatia Miller and Jared Brown is a biography of bartenders Harry Johnson and Harry Craddock. Harry Johnson is famous for his book, Harry Johnson's New and Improved Bartender's Manual from 1882. (Apparently there was also an 1860 that nobody can seem to find.) Johnson worked as a bartender in San Francisco, Chicago, Ne York, and Philadelphia. Harry Craddock was a London bartender and author of the Savoy Cocktail Book from 1930. You can read all about him in this previous post on the matter. The Two Deans details the lives of these bartenders, but also... Read more →

A Tribute to Harry Craddock on the 50th Anniversary of his Death

In January I flew to London for an event to celebrate the life and career of Harry Craddock, author of the Savoy Cocktail Book. The event was sponsored by Plymouth Gin, which is mentioned by name many times throughout the Savoy. The tour was attended by Plymouth's distiller Sean Harrison, the top London bartenders, and a few special folks flown in from around Europe. Just a few of the bartenders presernt were Ago Perrone, Alex Kratena, Esther Medina, Gareth Evans, Geoffrey Cannilao, Stuart McCluskey, and Nick Strangeway. They helped bring over Erik Ellestad from San Francisco; probably the only person... Read more →

Please Don't Hoard The Malacca

That was the surprising message of a little talk I attended about Tanqueray Malacca. As you've likely heard by now, Tanqueray has released a single batch of Malacca, a gin they produced years ago but then took off the market. They replaced it with Tanqueray Ten as they didn't want to have two line extensions to market at the same time. This was long before today's gin boom, of course, when there were only a few new gins hitting store shelves. Malacca had many fans, however, and even though the product was no longer sold, there were plenty of bottles... Read more →

Drinkin' Like Lincoln: : 19th-Century Cocktail Trends That Are Trendy Again

My latest story for Details.com is up! It started as a story about how cocktails in Lincoln's day were different from what they are today, but then I realized that many of the drinks are trendy again. Drinkin' Like Lincoln: : 19th-Century Cocktail Trends That Are Trendy Again Daniel Day-Lewis wasn't sucking back any mai tais in Lincoln, so if you want to coordinate your Oscar-party cocktail menu with this Best Picture nominee, you'll have to think historically. When our country's very first bartender's guide, How to Mix Drinks, was published the year after Abraham Lincoln took office in 1861,... Read more →