Here’s another in the series of four marvelous videos produced for the New York bar Dutch Kills by Shlomo M. Godder.

ROYAL SMILE
(adapted from The Artistry of Mixing Drinks, by Frank Meier, 1934)

1 ounce gin.
1 ounce apple brandy.
3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice.
3/4 ounce real pomegranate grenadine.

Combine with cracked ice and shake for 10-12 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail coupe, and garnish with two thin slices of apple on the edge of the glass.

I was perusing my old cocktail index on The Gumbo Pages’ beverage page and realized that in the Great Cocktail Article Migration of 2009 I missed a few, including this one. Eek! What was I thinking?! Rectification of oversight commences!

This one may be familiar to many of you, but if you’re scratching your head thinking, “Nope, never seen this one before, and grapefruit juice? Ew!” it’s another “forgotten” cocktail that comes to us courtesy of Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh, who first served it to us years ago. The Blinker is the creation of a bartender whose name has escaped into the mists of history, but it was first mentioned in print in 1934 by bartender Patrick Gavin Duffy. (There’s a bit more about it in Doc’s most excellent book, Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails.)

Doc tinkered with the recipe; originally the drink was made with grenadine (and a horrifying amount of it, equal to the grapefruit juice). Raspberry syrup gives it a lovely complexity, especially when considering most commercially-made grenadines. I think it’s a terrific variation.

The thing that made the drink Doc made for us so much better than the first one we made at home was his use of Smucker’s brand raspberry syrup, right from the grocery store, instead of the Torani raspberry syrup we used. Nowadays for prepared syrups I’d generally go with Monin, which would also be good. But man … that Smucker’s stuff had an fabulously fruity, aromatic and intensely jammy quality (unsurprisingly) that really put this drink over the top. Even better was a raspberry syrup from Harry and David, the Fruit of the Month Club folks, which was hands-down the best raspberry syrup I’d ever tasted (and didn’t have the tendency to sink to the bottom of the drink that Smucker’s has). Sadly, the product’s been discontinued.

If you have a really good, homemade pomegranate grenadine or an excellent commercial product like Trader Tiki’s Hibiscus Grenadine, by all means use that if you like. Otherwise, try the Smucker’s, or better still, a homemade raspberry syrup from fresh (or even frozen) raspberries.

Of course, it goes without saying that you should not use bottled grapefruit juice. Freshly-squeezed white grapefruit juice, please. It takes half a minute to cut and squeeze a grapefruit, and it’s eleventy million times better. Also, if you’re one of those folks that doesn’t like grapefruit juice, this may be your conversion moment; you’ll like it here, even if you only ever have it in this cocktail (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Enjoy the Blinker — it’s a simple yet really lovely drink, and don’t worry about the silly name (drives Doc crazy).

Oh, the image below is temporary, shamelessly purloined briefly borrowed from the fine folks at Modern Drunkard magazine, who in turn lifted it from Ted’s book (naturally, since the article was an interview with Ted about his book). I’ll have one of my own up by the weekend, especially since I haven’t had a Blinker in a while, and I want one.

The Blinker Cocktail

2 ounces rye whiskey.
1 ounce fresh grapefruit juice.
1 teaspoon raspberry syrup.

Combine with cracked ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake vigorously for no less than 10 seconds, until very cold; strain into a cocktail glass.

Doc didn’t garnish this, and I don’t know if the original recipe called for a garnish, but we like a pretty grapefruit peel curl cut with a channel knife (Doc opts for lemon). Don’t squeeze any grapefruit oil over the drink, though; we don’t want this one to be too bitter.

To quote Wes, “What the world needs is more rye cocktails.” Amen.

Chef Celestino Drago’s latest Los Angeles restaurant Drago Centro has looked and sounded so good for so long (a whole year and a half!) that it was almost criminal that we hadn’t been there yet. We finally made reservations for this past Saturday night, which promised to be an evening full of WIN. (And it was, in a couple of ways. Dinner was fantastico, bellissimo! I’ll have some food porn up from that later.)

We’ve been big fans of Chef Drago’s other restaurants around town (and I still miss his late, lamented Sicilian restaurant L’Arancino in West Hollywood). In addition to the enticing menu they’ve got a very good cocktail program (regularly spoken of with enthusiasm by our friend Mark, who’s a bartender there) that’s headed up by sommelier and beverage director Michael Shearin and head bartender Jaymee Mandeville.

Michael and Jaymee have been up to something interesting. They’ve organized something called the People’s Cocktail Contest, and it’s primarily happening via Twitter. Yes, I’ve been dragged screaming and kicking into the Twitter thing (I still refuse to use the word “tweet” as a verb), and despite having had problems with certain Twitter+food combinations in the past, I found myself inexorably drawn into this one (especially since it involves making cocktails and doesn’t involve anyone sending hundreds of the Teeming Masses into my neighborhood to wait 90 minutes in line for an expensive taco). Here’s how it works:

The contest lasts for four weeks. Each week on Monday, a “secret ingredient” will be announced via Twitter. (“Kyo no tema … KORE DESU!”) Participants will create an original cocktail featuring that ingredient. Cocktails are judged on appearance, aroma, taste, creativity, name, and its compatibility with the existing Drago Centro cocktail list. You post your recipe on Twitter, directing it to Drago Centro’s account (@DragoCentro) with the hashtag #pplscocktail to identify it. Include all instructions, muddle, shake, stir, whatever, and use 2-3 posts if you have to. The secret ingredient will be different each week, and each weekly round will end on Friday at noon. After 4 weeks the winners will battle it out live for a panel of judges. The winner will have his or her cocktail featured on Drago Centro’s list.

Week 1 was this past week, and last Monday the secret ingredient was announced, something “seasonal and appearing at all of our local farmer’s markets … BLUEBERRIES.”

Well! That sounded fun. I gave it some thought, then decided to work with flavors that I knew worked well together, to use an Italian amaro and to keep it simple. I’ve enjoyed berry-infused whiskeys before, both Bourbon and rye, and decided to go with a higher-proof Bourbon. I probably would have preferred to steep the berries in the spirit for a couple of weeks, but there wasn’t enough time, so vigorous muddling was called for.

The first tries yielded not enough blueberry flavor, so I upped the number of berries until it seemed right. 12-16 was definitely too few, and about 20 seemed right. Taste your blueberries for tartness and flavor to determine how many you’ll need. The amaro was Ramazzotti, one of my favorites, not too bitter and with a nice flavor from Sicilian orange peels, along with rhubarb and a touch of cinnamon. I love the flavor of blueberries and cinnamon together — I recalled a fantastic risotto I had at Trattoria Tre Venezie in Pasadena with wild blueberries and cinnamon — and wanted to accentuate that cinnamon flavor while bumping up the sweetness just a bit. My friend Blair’s excellent new product did the trick, but you can make your own cinnamon syrup by steeping cinnamon sticks in hot simple syrup, or adding a cinnamon tincture to simple syrup if you’ve got it.

I wanted to name the drink after Violet Beauregarde, who was turned into a gigantic blueberry in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” but “beau regarde” (literally “beautiful look,” in French) didn’t sound like something that’d fit into the cocktail menu of an Italian restaurant where all the drink names are in Italian. A quick (and bad) Google translation of “beau regarde” into Italian yielded “bello sguardo,” the grammatical and idiomiatic correctness of which got a “Nope” from Italian speaker and general manager Matteo Fernandini at the restaurant. He said he’d give it some thought, but I didn’t think to ask him later (and he was somewhat busy with that whole running-a-restaurant thing). Anita came to the rescue yesterday, saying that if we’re trying to be literal with “beau regard(e),” a better rendition would be “bell’aspetto,” an Italian expression for “handsome.” Bingo. Thanks, Anita. (I should really start learning some Italian.)

BELL’ASPETTO

2 ounces Woodford Reserve Bourbon whiskey
About 20-24 blueberries
1/2 ounce Amaro Ramazzotti
1 barspoon (tsp) Trader Tiki’s Cinnamon Syrup
Lemon peel

In a mixing glass, muddle the blueberries thoroughly in the whiskey. Add the Amaro and syrup, ice and shake for 15 seconds. Double-strain over ice into a large Old Fashioned glass, and garnish with a large swath of lemon peel.

We tried another one last night using Knob Creek Bourbon, at a higher proof of 100. We really liked it. We may even have liked it better. (Bonkers Wesly wants to try it with Stagg now.) Play around with your own favorite higher-proof Bourbon, but the “official” version still uses Woodford.

Oh, by the way, yesterday afternoon they sent out a Twitter post that out of fifteen entries — including one described as tasting “just like pot” (?!) — this past week’s winning cocktail was … this one. Hoo!

A new theme ingredient goes up this afternoon. Check the @DragoCentro Twitter feed to find out what it is.

The legendary Pat O’Brien’s Bar in the French Quarter, New Orleans. Opened its doors on December 3, 1933, two days before the end of Prohibition (well, ya had to have a coupla days to get ready).

As the story goes, back in the 1940s the bar’s partners Benson “Pat” O’Brien and Charlie Cantrell were forced by liquor wholesalers to order as many as 50 cases of rum along with whatever other spirits they wanted, or else no deal. There was a glut of rum post-Prohibition and the dealers wanted to move it. Problem was, Pat and Charlie couldn’t care less about it. What the hell are we going to do with all this rum?! Their solution — create a drink to use up all this rum. After some tinkering they wound up with a powerful mixture of rum, passion fruit syrup and fresh lemon juice and created a taste sensation.

Pat O’Brien’s is quite possibly the most popular bar in the French Quarter, certainly among tourists — (a Times-Picayune article on the history of the place from a couple of years ago said that 95% of all first-time New Orleans tourists go there. You’ll even sometimes see some locals in there, although probably not so much as in older days. The Main Bar and Piano Bar in the front were once popular haunts for locals, and the Courtyard Bar, with its flaming fountain, is one of the most beautiful bar spaces in the city, and you should really go see it if you haven’t … as long as you don’t mind sharing the space with loud tourists and Texas frat boys.

There’s just one little problem — the drinks are pretty terrible.

Oh, you can get some okay mixed drinks there, but … well, Pat O’Brien’s put me off Mint Juleps for years because I made the mistake of ordering my first one there. I got a bright green concoction made with mint syrup and not a speck of fresh mint other than a wilted garnish that looked and tasted like Scope, and the bartender actually mocked me when he served it to me.

Regarding the Hurricane as currently served at Pat O’Brien’s, I have one word for you: sweet sweet sweet Sweet SWEET! (Okay, one word five times.) Rum? Oh yes, and lots of it, four whole ounces per drink. They go through a lot of it; it’s said that Pat O’s is the single largest purveyor of rum in the world. Passion fruit? Um … not so much. I’d say that flavor is undetectable in the drink. Lemon juice? Zilch. There is no balance of tart in this drink. Did I mention that it’s SWEET? Teeth-shatteringly sweet.

“A stealthy drink” is how my friend Chris Clarke once described it, and that it is. It’s like an alcoholic kool-aid in which you cannot taste the alcohol. And you can forget about any fresh ingredients — the recipe at the bar is rum (I don’t know which one they use in their well) plus “Hurricane mix,” which at the bar is a premade, artificially colored, artificially flavored bottled red stuff, which is also available in envelopes in powder form.

If you’re serious about cocktails, this isn’t anything you really want to be drinking.

In fact, in a post from Tales of the Cocktail’s weblog a while back, the Hurricane was listed as one of the worst drinks on Bourbon Street (then again, can you get a good drink on Bourbon Street anywhere past Galatoire’s?). Research for this post resulted in a highly amusing photo of a bunch of cocktail bloggers sucking down their Hurricanes like mother’s milk.

Shamelessly purloined from Trader Tiki

They look thrilled, don't they?

I don’t know when Hurricanes stopped using passion fruit syrup and citrus and when they started being red, but if you look at the list of ingredients — rum, passion fruit syrup and lemon juice — you don’t see anything red in there. Perhaps someone dumped grenadine in it once, and that evolved into the syrup … I really don’t know. If you do, let me know.

When I was in college, having just moved to Los Angeles from New Orleans, I was really homesick and didn’t know a damn thing about proper drinking. My homesickness caused me to bring back many envelopes of that awful powder and throw “Hurricane Parties,” the object of which was to socialize and get stinking drunk. (To be honest, we did have a great time, even though after the first round or two I stopped using “the good rum,” i.e. Bacardi, ahem, and started mixing them with plain wrap rum that was probably a step above tiki torch fuel.) If I didn’t have the powder, I used a a “faux-Hurricane” recipe that I found in an old local cookbook called La Belle Créole calling for a mix made with 46 ounces of Fruit Juicy Red Hawaiian Punch (back in the olden days, that was “one large can”), one 12-oz. can of frozen orange juice concentrate, and one 6-oz. can of frozen lime daiquiri mix. Though it didn’t taste all that much like the Hurricanes served at Pat O’s it was fruity, red, and we were too drunk to be able to tell the difference anyway.

A long time ago I found a recipe somewhere — I think it may have been in the Times-Picayune — to make a Hurricane out of all fresh ingredients. It looked pretty good, and I tweaked it to suit my tastes. It didn’t taste much like what was served at Pat O’s, but it was a pretty nice tropical drink and it was still true to the rum-passion fruit-citrus base. (It’s also nothing like the actual Original Hurricane; I’ll teach you how to make that in a bit. Keep reading.)

I had that older recipe up in an previous version of the website for ages, and it ended up in Gary Regan’s The Joy of Mixology. Here’s that version, slightly adapted; gaz swapped out lemon juice for my lime. If you can find fresh passion fruit juice or purée, use 2 ounces of that plus 1/2 ounce of simple syrup instead of the passion fruit syrup, otherwise mix as below:

Hurricane Cocktail: A Variation
(adapted from my recipe as published in The Joy of Mixology)

1-1/2 ounces light rum
1-1/2 ounces dark rum
1 ounce fresh orange juice
1 ounce fresh lime juice
2 ounces passion fruit syrup
1 teaspoon of real pomegranate grenadine

Shake with ice and strain into an ice-filled Hurricane glass or tiki glass. Garnish with a “flag” made of an orange slice and a cherry on a cocktail pick.

This is still a bit sweet but not nearly as sweet as the Pat O’Brien’s premix Hurricane, and it’s all fresh and not artificial.

Oh, and don’t skimp on the passion fruit syrup, either for the above variation or the real thing below. The go-to passion fruit syrup for years has been Trader Vic’s, but it has been reformulated with artificial ingredients and is no longer acceptable. You can get passion fruit syrup from Monin or Torani, opinions of which range from decent to acceptable to yuck, but you’ll really want to go to Aunty Lilikoi from Hawaii and order the best in the world. Seriously, it’s an order of magnitude or two better than the aforementioned ones.

As I understand it the original drink was made with lemon juice. If you’re a stickler for history and if you prefer it that way, use freshly squeezed lemon juice and you’ll be drinking some true New Orleans history. However, I think that lime works so much better and so perfectly in this drink that at home we make it with lime juice. Try it both ways and see which one you prefer.

For the rum try Appleton V/X from Jamaica, or Old New Orleans Amber Rum for a local touch. Jeff “Beachbum” Berry likes Gosling’s Black Seal, and Matt “Rumdood” Robold prefers Coruba “by a factor of about a billion point seven.”

This is for a reasonably-sized drink, not the super-sized one you typically see; unless I’m seriously getting my tiki on, perhaps quaffing at Tiki Ti when someone else is driving, the original proportions might be a bit much. That proportion called for four ounces of spirit, and two ounces of each of the other ingredients. If you want a big one served in a hurricane glass, just double this recipe, then prepare for blottofication.

The Original HURRICANE COCKTAIL
(adapted from the original recipe as seen in
Beachbum Berry Remixed, by Jeff Berry)

2 ounces dark rum
1 ounce Aunty Lilikoi passion fruit syrup
1 ounce fresh lemon juice (the original recipe) or lime juice (which I prefer)
Orange slice and cherry.

Combine rum, syrup and juice with ice and shake vigorously until the mixing tin frosts. Serve in a double Old Fashioned glass or tiki glass over crushed ice, and garnish with an orange and cherry "flag."

Now THAT’S a Hurricane, brah.

Well, not you personally, probably. Maybe. Have you? Fess up!

Have you ever served someone a pink Mai Tai? Or thought you could just mix rum and pineapple juice? Or gotten some kind of blended slush? Or worse still, come across a bartender who thinks that a Mai Tai is “aah, just some rum and a buncha juices?” I’ve been unfortunate enough to have all of the above (that quote is a direct one, and in a tiki-themed restaurant no less), more times than I care to count. The most recent one was in a local restaurant and bar which supposedly prided itself on authentic cocktails. They listed the Mai Tai on their menu as “The Original Trader Vic Mai Tai,” listed all the correct ingredients even … and then proceeded to dump a jigger of fake Rose’s grenadine into the mixing glass at the very end. *facepalm*

(I returned it — gently, politely and even apologetically — but the bartender instantly hated me anyway. Sigh. To be fair, I was assured later that none of the other bartenders in the joint would have done that, and nobody liked the one who happened to serve me.)

The Mai Tai is one of the greatest tropical cocktails, and one of the most sadly abused. It was created by Victor “Trader Vic” Bergeron in his Oakland bar in 1944 and, as the story goes, first served to a friend who was visiting from Tahiti. Supposedly the friend exclaimed in Tahitian, “Mai ta’i roa ae!, variously translated as “The best!” or “Out of this world!” and hence the name.

If you’re not a cocktail geek, or if you haven’t been frequenting the right bars, it’s entirely likely that you’ve never even had a truly authentic Mai Tai, although I’ll bet you’ve had a lot of rum ‘n juice. A lot of folks don’t realize that the only juice in a proper Mai Tai is lime — no pineapple, no orange, no grapefruit. The orange flavor comes from curaçao, the sweetness from rich simple syrup (or “rock candy syrup,” made 2:1 sugar to water) and orgeat, a French-style almond syrup with hints of orange blossoms and roses. No grenadine. No red, no pink.

When you taste one, it’ll be like dawn breaking. You’re going to love the interplay of flavors, the sweetness and tartness in perfect balance, and the blend of fruit and nut and the tiniest hint of flowers make it taste truly exotic. You won’t get that from “rum and a buncha juices.”

If you haven’t done so yet, as of today you are now going to carry the torch for a real Mai Tai, and you’ll be taught by the best.

Now, we must admit that the really authentic Mai Tai will cost you more than you’d likely care to spend. Vic used a 17-year-old Wray and Nephew Jamaican rum for his initial Mai Tai which hasn’t been made in over 50 years, and remaining sealed bottles of it have sold for tens of thousands of dollars. However, if you’re idly rich or a Lotto winner keen on squandering your fortune on drink, there is an original, authentic Mai Tai to be had. Go to The Bar at the Merchant Hotel in Belfast in the north of Ireland. There bartender Sean Muldoon will make you a Mai Tai with one of their precious bottles of Wray and Nephew 17-year — I think they only have one left — and serve it to you as Vic served it to his Tahitian friend, for the low, low price of £750. That’s about $1,129.42 at today’s exchange rate. If you have one, please let me know how much you enjoyed it.

For the rest of us, a good aged rum will do, preferably a blend of two.

Let’s watch Martin Cate, owner of the fabulous Smuggler’s Cove in San Francisco, show you how it’s done. This is from Chow.com‘s series, “You’re Doing It Wrong!” (Sorry about the commercial.) Martin likes Appleton Estate 12-year from Jamaica and El Dorado 12-year from Guyana, which is a great combo. I like to mix Jamaican rum (that Appleton being one of my very favorites) with a Martinican rhum agricole like Saint James Hors d’Age or Clément VSOP. Whichever you choose, make sure they’re dark and aged, and use one ounce of each.

Take it away, Martin!

The Mai Tai
(Original version by Trader Vic Bergeron, 1944, and therefore the ONLY acceptable version!)

2 ounces aged rum (preferably a blend of two)
3/4 fresh lime juice
1/2 ounce orange Curaçao
1/4 ounce rich simple syrup
1/4 ounce orgeat

Combine in a mixing glass with crushed ice and shake until the metal portion is frosty. Pour the whole thing into a double Old Fashioned glass. Garnish with half of a spent lime shell, face down, and a healthy sprig of mint (spank the mint before garnishing to release oils and aroma).

Remember Martin’s rules — no mixes! (That’s a general rule that if you read this site or any other cocktail-related sites you should know by now.) No juices other than lime. No grenadine. No flavored rums. Make rich simple syrup — it only takes a few minutes. Buy Trader Tiki’s orgeat! It’s ready-made, authentic and delicious!

And raise your glass to Trader Vic. Mai ta’i roa ae!