This week's Imbiber post in FoodRepublic introduces the Bareback, a variation of the Pickleback that is all the rage in the cocktail community. Here's a teaser:
It’s my understanding that the “Pickleback” — a jigger of Old Crow chased with a shot of straight pickle juice – was invented at the Bushwick Country Club in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. And were I not, at this writing, on an uncomfortably heated train bound for the Scottish Highlands while what feels like a pack of yapping hyenas practices skateboard tricks between my ears, perhaps I’d be a bit more motivated to make inquiries in the interest of verifying that information.
I do recall reading something in The New York Times last year about a controversy involving the makers of Jameson Irish Whiskey taking credit for the Pickleback craze. But T.J. Lynch of the Breslin in the Ace Hotel in New York — the very bartender Jameson claimed had invented the drink — called bullshit on that claim. There are some folks in Texas as well who assert that truckers have been downing pickle juice with whiskey for decades, but again, I cannot personally verify that information. (And it ain’t unlike a Texan to tell tall tales, after all, now is it?) Then there are the Russians, who’ve been chasing vodka with pickles since the days when Ivan the Terrible was calling the shots.
Point being, I don’t rightly know who really invented the Pickleback.
