We mourn the death of the three-martini lunch. We are aware that even the success of Mad Men will not bring it back. Life is not what it was, the boites are filled with barbarians ordering Evian (naïve spelled backwards) and we are disconsolate. Perhaps we weep.

But then, at the perigee of our despond, we are buoyed. Hope springs in our collective breast with the arrival of the two-martini breakfast. Lunch may be doomed, but the morning is suddenly brighter. We bow our heads in thanks to a London mixologist, a Peter Sellers doppelganger from the Amalfi coast, who has freed mother England, and us, from the dreaded a.m. mimosa.

Salvatore Calabrese is our savior. He’s the proprietor of Salvatore at Fifty, a private club (yes, we can join, even if we don’t have family retainers and a country house) at 50 St. James, conveniently just around the corner from the Ritz in the West End. Before that, he transformed the Lanesborough’s Library Bar into a must-stop, and before that he poured for the discriminating at Duke’s Hotel. He’s been making London’s well heeled sippers happy for quite some time, and his life is devoted to filling mixological lacunae with new, and splendid, drinks, often on the spur of the moment.  “Make me something charming and sublime, with a touch of naughtiness,” a lady-in-waiting for a drink once ordered, he says, smiling. This means we should try to warn our dates not to order an appletini.

How about a nice salad?

No, I didn't think so. Don't take this the wrong way, but people who read about about wines, spirits, cocktails and imbibery in general, aren't usually tripping over each other up trying to be first in line to the arugula.

And yet, there are all those farmers' markets, where you should probably buy something. And you do need roughage; everybody says so. So, herewith, a reason to buy cucumbers. And in bulk.

Heretofore, a great many people I happen to know in the spirits game have relied completely upon Hendrick's gin for their cucumber intake. Lovely stuff, Hendrick's. Made with actual roses as a botanical, too, but the cucumber is just a grace note, and can't really be counted as a vegetable item for your dinner.

On the other hand, the Lucky Jim is the perfect way to get some green into your system without resorting to parsley-soy shakes. Readers of a certain age will recognize the name Lucky Jim as the novel that made Kingsley Amis famous. Readers below a certain age will recognize the name Amis as belonging to Martin, Kingsley's son. Non-readers won't recognize anything, which is so often the case. You know who you are. Whom.

The Bartender's Gin Compendium, by Gaz Regan.  Bar Rags, LLC, Cornwell on Hudson, NY.  371 pp.

Well, gin. In the end it may have taken a television show to bring it back, a bunch of Madison Avenue guys pretending to drink martinis in 1963, but it took a Brit to write the definitive book about it. Gaz Regan (the booze writer formerly known as Gary) did similar work on behalf of Bourbon some years ago, and if you can find that book for under $75 today, buy it. Meanwhile, buy this one before it becomes a collector’s item too.

The Bartender's Gin Compendium is not, I hesitate to point out, for professionals only—by all means try this at home. It’s got a juniper-packed history of the spirit that ruined generations of London mothers, a cook’s tour of the nearly endless botanicals that can flavor the spirit, an encyclopedic guide--with tasting notes--to every gin on the market, and over 250 recipes for gin cocktails, old and new and tasty.

Plus he’s funny. And willing to share stories about his 20-some years behind the stick, from when he was slinging drinks instead of scribbling about them. I recommend you put down that flavored vodka and go buy this book. And buy a gray flannel suit while you’re at it, because you shouldn’t look like a schlub when you order the drinks in this volume.  

In paper, $24; Hardcover, $31. Available from Xlibris.com, Amazon.com, or from the author at www.ardentspirits.com.


Lush Life, Portraits from the Bar, by Jill DeGroff. Mud Puddle Books, NY, 74pp.

By a coincidence too good pass up, the aforementioned Gaz (nee Gary) Regan is the cover caricature on Jill DeGroff’s collection of saloon portraiture—Lush Life. The book is everything it ought to be: oversized, brilliant, and Hirschfeldian in its uncanny ability to snatch the souls of America’s best bartenders, booze writers and dedicated saloon habitués and pin them to the page forever. It includes over 75 sketches, most ot them in color, of folks like Regan, Audrey Saunders, Tony Abou-Ganim, Adam Seger, David Wondrich, Ted Haigh, Dale DeGroff (with whom the artist shares a booth in life’s bar and grill) and many, many others in the booze and mixology ;game. If you don’t know them, you should, and I can think of worse ways to spend the next few years than traveling around the country seeking them out in their boites of choice and sitting down to share for a quiet glass or two.

The sketches are paired with stories, usually by the folks in question, that together make up some of the best saloon lore I’ve ever read.  And the best part is that the book’s cover says “Series 1—Cocktailians of the 21st Century,” meaning, I can only pray, that more volumes are on the way.

In oversized paperback, $24.95. Available from Amazon.com or www.saloonartist.com.

“Gimme a pig foot and a bottle of beer,” the sainted Bessie Smith sang, and you should note both the beverage and that she used a conjunction, not a preposition.  She did not say she’d like a pig foot in a bottle of whiskey, which is what I saw before me on a bar-top recently. Wasn’t a bottle, actually, it was a large jar, because whole pigs’ feet (like camels through needles’ eyes) cannot pass through the neck of a bottle.

The pig foot was in there to flavor—to infuse—the whiskey, and I won’t tell you who was doing this because he’s an otherwise sensible mixologist. Working on a BLT cocktail, he was. This is the result of the constant pressure for innovation in the cocktail game and of the new law that requires every bar in the country to have a line-up of bottles filled with stuff—chili peppers, boysenberries, ginseng, cucumber, grapefruit, basil, and anything else that’s handy—oozing in vodka.  The newest flavor sensation is bacon, and this guy had just taken it a step further to a whole pig foot.  

Now, I genuflect to no man in my devotion to pork products. The single best meal I ever had, better than all those vertical creations in restaurants with names like Nobu, NoMi, Naha, and Tru, was a bacon butty, eaten at dawn, from a van parked on the edge of the Spey River. I was on my unbreakfasted way to the Tamdhu distillery to see what a saladin box looked like, and the bacon smell got me. The greasy little treat was so good I risked being late to have a second one, and I’d have head-butted my grandmother if she’d gotten in my way. I’ve paid 18 Euro for a plate of 5-year-old jamon Iberico in Madrid, and I’ve successfully carried guanciale (that’s pig cheeks, pilgrim) wrapped in dirty shirts past those dope-and-meat-sniffing beagles at O’Hare Airport. I firmly believe that a bacon-doughnut sandwich is among the finest brunch offerings on the planet (don’t trust me—try it). In short, I’ll eat any part of a pig you can think of, but I do not want to see it in my glass at the end of a long day.

I had a moment of hope last year. A brief glimmer of a flash of possibility that there might be a sliver of hope for the current generation of saloon lizards. This was during the period when bacon was the flavor of the month. It was the new tamarind, which was after tamarind was the new sage, which had been the new lychee juice, which was the new hibiscus, which had once been the new pomegranate, right after pomegranate was the new cucumber.

But bacon, I thought. Bacon could have legs. Bacon is the doughnuts of meat. They were serving bacon-tinis in La Vegas. (Probably still are.)  And suddenly you could buy bacon-flavored salt, chocolate, and, yes, water. There were bacon-flavored bubbles you could blow to torment your dog with. Some bartender had invented a bacon-vodka cocktail with pineapple juice called the Hawaiian Pizza and there was a guy in Virginia, a serious “molecular” mixologist, making a cocktail that combines cantaloupe-infused rum with hand-powdered bacon and tapioca, which was almost as crazy as the guys coating the edges of martini glasses with bacon grease. “But still,” I said to myself, “if they like bacon enough to soak Bourbon in it and use it as a garnish for bloody Marys, they can't be complete idiots.”

You are complete idiots. A brief flash in the glass, that bacon. A week or two after  I'd carefully analyzed the bacon phenomenon, it was over. What killed it (and you have my pity) was the marshmallow. Marshmallows are the new bacon.

It started with the S'more-tini, an unfortunate attempt to combine chocolate, graham crackers (crushed, to coat the rim of the glass), marshmallows, and vodka so that misguided souls who actually enjoyed fourth grade, summer camp, or both, could relive their pathetic youths.  I thought the S'more-tini was a one-off. I was wrong.

Bigfoot Lodge in LA, if Caroline on Crack's website is to be believed, is serving the Toasted Marshmallow, a drink that's a “creamy blend of premium vanilla vodka, butterscotch liqueur, Angelico and Bailey's Irish Cream” served with a flaming, rum-soaked marshmallow. This appeals, I assume, to people who start their day with a nice mocha bananafrappucinno.  Jesus wept.

At the other end of the country, at Apothéke in New York, they (and by they I mean bartenders dressed like pharmacists and wielding beakers) are using liquid nitrogen to make Tequila marshmallows. The only upside I see here is that at least nobody can spill a marshmallow on you. The downside is a bar that reminds you of your high-school chemistry lab.

The trend was completely nailed down yesterday, when the normally sensible Jack Daniel's folks sent me a large package announcing the celebration of Mr. Jack's 159th birthday. I thought, “OK, not a major milestone, but I like a party.”

Inside the box was a pint of their sweet whiskey, but also a miniature of Tuaca, a mini-can of Sprite, a quarter-ounce of “marshmallow syrup,” and a glass. And a marshmallow. And a candle. They invited me to make my very own Jack Daniel's Liquid Cake Cocktail. After mixing it up, they said, I should singe the marshmallow and perch it on the edge of the glass with a lit candle stuck in it. I considered this for approximately as long as I considered joining the Marines after the Tet Offensive. (That was during Vietnam, when Scotch was the new Bourbon.) Then I did what I believe Mr. Jack himself would have done and threw away everything but the Tennessee whiskey and the glass.

They sent this stuff, along with a digital press kit, in the hopes, of course, that I would write about it. Probably didn't have this sort of column in mind, of course, but (if you're reading this down in Lynchburg) there's no such thing as bad publicity. And the whiskey was just fine, as was the free glass.

And I understand completely why they have to do this. There's a generation out  there in the boites of 21st Century America who are so finely balanced on the cutting edge that marketeers have to stay up nights to find out that elderflower is the new allspice.

Me, I'm just watching the mail to see what's next. I'm thinking Cool-Whip is overdue, or the liquidized pop-tart. Given recent trends, however, I think the smart money is going to look for insulin to be the next new cocktail flavor. You heard it here first.

(Some form of the following piece originally appeared in Malt Advocate)

The light of my life—the usually Steadfast Monica—has taken to telling new acquaintances, who mighty have innocently asked what I do for a living, about the morning she was headed out the door to work at 7:30 when she passed me at the kitchen table, in a bathrobe, with several bottles of gin, assorted liqueurs, glassware and an ice bucket.

I was working, I told her.  She uttered what phoneticists call a subverbal vocalization, and closed the door--no doubt already honing the story for future use.

But I was working.  Really.  Which just goes to show that a writer’s life isn’t all peaches and cream; sometimes it’s gin and Sambuca for breakfast.  In this case, I was late on an assignment to create a drink for the launch (or a “re-launch,” they said, like an “encore premiere”) of some upscale haberdashery.  Yes, people will pay you American money to do these things.

But it isn’t always pretty.  Which is part of the problem—the client always wants the drink to be really pretty, by which they often mean it should be the color of a sport coat in an Elvis movie, circa 1963.  Now there are two ways to create drinks.  You can concentrate on the taste, engage in alchemy to bring into being a cocktail heretofore unknown, to achieve greatness in a glass.  Or you can take money from corporations to create a drink for them to serve to the hipsters they’re going to invite to a party in order to publicize a product they dearly wish to sell to other, lesser hipsters.  The first is penning the great American novel; the second is ghost-writing speeches for Dan Quayle.

Sheep, very short men with pug noses and great bellies, beer, sheep, extremely narrow roads, sheep, beer, ruined castles, sheep, beer, sheep, wild ponies, sheep, moors, beer, sheep, pubs with very low ceilings, sheep, hedges, beer, dry stone walls, sheep, golf courses, sheep, lamb chops, sheep, monasteries, beer, and sheep.

Some of the sheep will be dead, of course. I mentioned to Trevor, my driver through the Dartmoor, where the wild ponies roam, that there seemed to be an awful lot of sheep just standing in the middle of the road, looking curiously at the passing cars. “Do they always stand in the road like that,” I asked. “Oh, no. At night, when the tarmac holds the heat better than the moor, they lay down in the road to sleep.” There’s some who hold the theory that the origin of “pub crawl” dates to the early days of the automobile in these parts, when the return from the pub meant a long, slow crawl around the sleeping sheep in the road. The wild ponies on the same moor are generally smarter, just, than the sheep. They wait alongside the road for the traveling Americans to come up to them and pet them. “Then, likely as not, they bite their fingers off,” Trevor said. Which made me feel better about the autumn round-up, when that year’s crop of ponies are gathered and sold—some to become pets/cart pullers to the children of country gentlefolk and the rest, according to Trevor, “bought and sent to France.” “To pull carts through picturesque Normandy villages?” I asked. “Well, no,” he said. Oh. Poor ponies. On the other hand, if they’re going to bite off vacationers’ fingers ...