November 5, 2013
My un-stopping love for the great English novelist Anthony Trollope continues with each of his books I read (there are a lot, luckily). Recently I finished the lesser-known treasure Is He Popenjoy?, all about class and legacy and inheritance in multiple ways. What I wish now is that some fine bartender out there would make up a drink called The Popenjoy. I would pay a pretty penny for that, if it was awesome. It would have to contain cherry brandy, which is mentioned in the books, as well as curaçao, which is in the dandy quote below (oh, if you do make up a drink here, go with Pierre Ferrand curaçao, please). If you create The Popenjoy, please let me know asap.
She was in the habit of sitting by him and talking to him late in the evening, while he was sipping his curaçao and soda-water, and had become accustomed to hear odd things from him. He liked her because he could say what he please to her, and she would laugh and listen and show no offence.
–Anthony Trollope, Is He Popenjoy?
October 29, 2013
Hello dear hearts. There’s time I think for one more quote from the The Compleat Imbiber #5, which we’ve been talking up here on the ol’ Spiked Punch due to it’s greatness and my love of The Compleat Imbiber series. This time, it’s from a piece called Four O’Clock at the Five O’Clock, by a gentleman named Hugh Massingham. It’s mainly a look at American drinking establishments by someone not native to this country, and is built off a stop at a spot in Denver (I wonder if it’s still there) called the Five O’Clock, which didn’t at first seem friendly, but which had, from the below quote, quite a friendly line up for the times.
Suddenly, behind the bar, artfully lit from below, is a blaze of welcoming friends. There is good old Johnnie Walker, as spry as ever. There is that authentic notes of Floreat Etona, Harvey’s sherry. There is historic Beefeater – the snob gin in the United States – and those two dogs yapping away on behalf of Black and White, and soft-tasting ding-dong Bells and kindly tempting Teachers and Cutty Sarks in full sail. There is bicarbonate of soda on draught and tots of Alka Seltzer – the necessities for a hangover morning, familiar sights in an English bathroom, but unknown in English pubs. True, there are a number of bottles that are strangers, and that wink away at you with the offer of novel and perhaps dangerous pleasures. Leroux’s ‘Ginger-Flavoured Brandy’ should surely tickle some secret spot hitherto unexplored by the milder and less adventurous brews of your native land? Then there is gay Dixie Rose, a cross, perhaps, between a Gone-With-The-Wind lady and a gypsy, who is offering for your relaxation in this subdued light a bottle of London dry gin. There is Hill Billy Reserve Whiskey, with its suggestion of some smoky still in a mountain chasm. There is Popcorn Straight Cut Whiskey, made, apparently – and yet can this be true? – from the same fat white salted ears piled up in the dish by your elbow. There is ancient Carstairs (established 1788) with his White Seal Blended. There is good old Thompson – don’t let’s forget his blended bourbon. And there is Vernon and Paddy and a bottle with a playing-card label, showing a King both face upwards and face downwards – delights still not tested after all these weeks of travel.
— Hugh Massingham, Four O’Clock at the Five O’Clock, The Compleat Imbiber #5
Tags: Bars, bars. whiskey, Beefeater, Bells, Cocktail Talk, Cutty Sark, Hill Billy Reserve whiskey, Johnnie Walker, lots and lots of booze, Popcorn Whiskey, Teachers, The Compleat Imbiber, White Seal
Posted in: Bars, Cocktail Talk, Whiskey
October 15, 2013
A few posts ago, I talked about my recent purchase of The Compleat Imbiber #5, and said there’d be more to come from it – and I didn’t lie, because now here we are and have another delightful Cocktail Talk quote straight from that august compendium. This particular one is from a story called A Party for the Girls, by H.E. Bates, in which a hero is tasked with making a Moselle Cup, but he can’t quite remember how it goes. So, foraging his path via experimentation, he ends up with a drink that ends up being “genius.” Sometimes it takes a little luck . . .
‘You said mint. What about mint now? Shall I go and get it? We’ve got lemon mint, too, I think’
Horace, who was trying hard to remember the exact proportions of the cup’s ingredients, put a dozen cubes of ice in a jug and coloured them with a golden film of brandy. Hesitant about something, he stood biting his lip. Oughtn’t there to be a dash or two of curaçao? Something seemed to tell him so.
‘You haven’t a spot of curaçao, I suppose?’
No, but they had maraschino, Maude said, and she thought also a little Cointreau. By now Horace was mildly confused. He couldn’t remember for the life of him whether it was curaçao, Cointreau, or maraschino that the cup demanded and again he stood biting his lip with that shy perplexity that affected Maude far more sharply than any look of open appeal.
–H.E. Bates, A Party for the Girls, The Compleat Imbiber 5
October 1, 2013
Those chosen few, who have dawdled here on Spiked Punch since days of yore, or since days of long ago, may have been blessed enough to chance across a Cocktail Talk post featuring some wit or wisdom from one of the Compleat Imbibers that I am lucky to own. If you, rascal that you are, missed one of those earlier posts (my guess is you were out chasing whiskey bottles up trees), then by all means, go read them. Now you know that The Compleat Imbiber was a series of anthologies covering everything about drinking, with lots of wine talk, some boozy poems, some pictures of glassware, some etching of famous tipplers, and more. Overall, awesome. And during my recent trip to the U.K., I managed in a London bookstore to find a copy I didn’t yet own, number 5. So, expect some quotes over the next little while from it, starting with this one from a short essay by C. Gordon Glover about those who might bore you at the bar with their chatter.
‘Good gracious Fossbridge! Never seen you drinking gin before.’ ‘Hollands, dear boy. And chilled. I always telephone Mrs. Mason in the afternoon if I propose to drink a glass of Hollands in the early evening. She puts a bottle in the refrigerator for me. But not gin, as you understand it – definitely not the brutish juniper. . .’
Of course, there is no need to suffer it at all. There is always the snug fireside. But yet, and yet – they would be missed. And we, too, possibly, may bore the dying nightlights out of them!
– C. Gordon Glover, Boring at the Bar, The Compleat Imbiber 5
September 24, 2013
Just last week, I talked about finding and reading and digging the book by Madison Smartt Bell called Straight Cut. Go read that post if you haven’t. Back now? Great, that means it’s time for you to dive right in to some more Cocktail Talk quotes from said book. The first is about grappa, and the second, for balance, is about rum.
In the early evening I went to the trattoria for an early supper and mainly to get out of the house and there I remembered about grappa. There’s no language difficulty about ordering grappa. You just say “grappa” and the man brings you some, in this case a sizable portion for the equivalent of about thirty U.S. cents.
On the Bayswater Road, near the corner of Kensington Gardens, I found a booze shop and bought a quart of dark naval rum. Circling back about Queensway, I picked up some plastic cups at a grocer’s and then I went back to the room. It was time to get drunk and think it over.
— Straight Cut, Madison Smartt Bell
September 17, 2013
I recently picked up a random read from Madison Smartt Bell called Straight Cut. If I’ve ever read a book by Mr. Bell, I’ve forgotten it (sorry!), but this one was from the reliable Hard Case Crime label, had a great cover, and at least (so the cover told me) takes place partially in Rome. I’m all for all three of those, so I dove in. And it’s a dandy read, sort-of a thoughtful caper revolving a bit around films and film-making, with lots in Rome, and lots (which is why I’m mentioned it here on this blog) of nice drink-y moments. Enough so that I’m going to put a couple Straight Cuts quotes on here – two posts worth! Starting with this one that starts with a question and ends with mint:
Did I want a drink or did I want a drink? I reached out my hand then thought, don’t get belting it out of the bottle, that’s not the way. Get a glass and some ice at least. Then I decided I’d do it fancy, go out in the field and pick some mint for my drink.
There wasn’t enough moon to make much light, and I went stumbling over clumps of uncut grass until my eyes adjusted to the dark. The ground here on the flat was spongy from the rain, and it was pleasantly cool. The mint grew wild in a ditch somewhere about halfway across the field, which I found by tripping into it, soaking myself to the knees.
I picked a handful of broad leaves and a couple of tops for decoration. The fine sweet smell rose from the stalks as I broke them, and it covered both of my hands. I tore a leaf and chewed it on my way back toward the house. It was a quiet night. No drunk teenage drivers for me to pick out of my fence, not yet anyway.
I thought I might not want a drink anymore once I’d had my healthy little walk, but I was wrong. I did. In fact, I wanted two big drinks.
— Straight Cut, Madison Smartt Bell
August 27, 2013
I have to admit – I don’t know a whole lot about G.B. Stern. She (full name: Gladys Bronwyn Stern) was a British writer, who wrote a whole lot of things, including a short story called Gemini, which was printed in The Pocket Book of Mystery Stories from 1940. That collection is pretty swell, if you ever come across it, with a wide range of stories and (as the back cover lets us know), “Gasps and Ghosts Galore!” But only one story has slivovitz in it, and that’s the one by G.B. Stern.
I was going to mix the cocktails and have them ready, just before any of you turned up, when it struck me that I might invent a new one with a strain of slivovitz in it.
—G.B. Stern, The Pocket Book of Mystery Stories
August 20, 2013
Those who are regular readers (and who among can admit that you are not? None of you, that’s who. Cause then I’d cry, and pout, and do the whole crying-pouting thing, which would make everyone a little embarrassed, so just say you read this blog all the time, okay?) will remember that I’m a big fan of the works of Anthony Trollope. So much so, I have to admit, that I own every book of his that’s readily available, and a number that aren’t as readily available. But there are still a lot that I haven’t read – he was a prolific dude. To track one remaining Trollopean holdout, I had to find a copy via a company called Forgotten Books, which prints facsimiles from old old texts. So, no footnotes here. But that’s okay with me, cause I’m knee deep in another Victorian country tale, one that started early with the following quote (said quote why the book is being mentioned on this blog. But you might have guessed that) talking about the town and about the townspeople’s drink of choice:
There rages a feud in Bullhampton touching this want of a market, as there are certain Bullhamptonites who aver that the charter giving all rights of a market to Bullhampton does exist; and that at one period in its history the market existed also – for a year or two; but the three bakers and the two butchers are opposed to change, and the patriots of the place, though the declaim on the matter over their evening pipes and gin-and-water, have not enough of matutinal zeal to carry out their purpose.
¬ Anthony Trollope, The Vicar of Bullhampton
