:: best moments of the boston cocktail summit ::

After each Tales of the Cocktail, I make a highlights post about the event. Usually, I compose these thoughts over the week as well as write an outline at the airport or on the flight. With the event not requiring more than a 10 minute bus ride down the street and only being a few days long, I took the past few days to reflect instead. In this post, I also included events that were planned around the Boston Cocktail Summit including the Origin spirits tasting and Speed Rack events on Wednesday and The Thing formal on Thursday. Here they are in semi-random order:

• Most Sentimental Moment - At The Thing charity event at Locke-Ober, Deep Ellum's Max Toste was wearing the bow tie that he used to wear as a bus boy working at Locke-Ober as a young teenager. In fact, the man who trained and supervised him was at the restaurant that night.
• Best Long-Time-No-See - Lauren Clark of DrinkBoston fame is back in town! I spotted her at the Origin tasting event and saw her throughout the week. Lucky for us, she is back on the Right Coast.
• Most Symbolic Drink - Drinking Boston's symbolic drink, the Ward Eight, at Locke-Ober where it was created 114 years ago. I had three Ward Eights that day, and the one that John Gertsen made us at the downtown Boston talk actually tasted the best (John's theory is that orange juice and whiskey are a poor combination).
• Punch - I had the honor of drinking bowls of punch made by Dave Wondrich on two occasions. They were not the fanciest of punches, but it did feel like it was being crafted by an artist.
• Distillers - There was a stronger than average showing of distillers who I met at talks, events, and tasting rooms. Of the local ones, I met the distillers from Privateer, Turkey Shore, Ryan & Wood, and Whistlepig. I may take some of them up on the offers to visit the distilleries.
• Most Absurd - Fernet Branca Menta luge?
• Best Thing Out of Gary Regan's Mouth - At the rebuttal section of the Gaz Regan roast, Gaz held up a large stick and asked if we knew what it was. "This [stick] will be auctioned later with proceeds going to the Museum of the American Cocktail. It was pulled out of Paul Pacult's ass." However, Pacult might have gotten the better of him that night.
• Best Tour of Boston - Given by writer Warren Bobrow while we were on the shuttle bus going from Cambridge to Boston. He started telling us about his crazy college years in Boston during the early-mid 1980s. He also asked many of the luminaries to pose with his 80-plus year old German drinking gnome statue. See Klaus the Soused Gnome's Facebook fan page for pics.
• Best Event Setting - Well the Locke-Ober for being the Locke-Ober, but the Bacardi event at the Sonesta impressed me for they decorated the entry to the terrace to look like the side of an airplane replete with stewardesses. The waitresses inside with cute Cuban-inspired outfits and the lady handrolling cigars were also nice touches. Above is Sam Treadway competing in their competition (which he won) and Ran Duan is in the picture (who placed second).
• Books - I'm excited that I bought or traded for two great new books. Stephanie Schorow's Drinking Boston (out November 1st, but available at the Boston Shaker now), and Joseph Carlin's Cocktails: A Global History.
• Best Costume - This has to go to Drink's own Will Thompson who wore a strangely surreal walrus mask at times during The Thing when he was not doing bartending shifts. I guess a "salty attire" formal can be interpreted as salty sea mammal as well.

:: whiskeys and the bar ::

On Friday morning, I went to hear David Wondrich and Wayne Curtis talk about New England Rum in a talk entitled "Medford Gold." Instead of a summary, I will behoove you to read Wayne's And a Bottle of Rum book. And if you want supplemental learning materials, go taste the Old Ipswich, Privateer, and Berkshire Mountain rums like we did. Wayne and David's conclusion was that the new style of New England rum has the consensus flavor of molasses notes and a dry tang at the end. There was even a suggestion that New England rum should fight to get its designation back and join the ranks of Bourbon again.

The middle talk of the day was held at the Citizen Public House which hosts one of the larger whisk(e)y collections in town. This made the perfect setting for the session entitled "Whiskey and the Bar" given by Sean Frederick, Chad Arnholt, and John Gertsen. While we did taste six whiskeys, the true meat of the talk revolved on how to teach customers about whiskeys. Indeed, it was a bartenders' take on the spirit and not the distillers' story.

Selling whiskey can be broken down into 4 points:

1. Confidence - The right attitude and approach is needed for salesmanship.
• Genuine enthusiasm and honesty.
• Need to stand behind the products you love.
• Learning needs to be incremental.
• Optimistic mindset: there is a whiskey for everyone.

2. Product Knowledge - Knowing what sets each spirit apart.
• How is the whiskey made including what grains are used, pot vs. column stilled, all malted or grain neutral spirits mixed in, filtered or not, age in barrel, barrel type.
• Knowing the profile: sweeter, spicier, peated, hot/high proof.
• Understanding terroir especially with Scotch.
• Do not think about whiskey in one or two dimensions. Think three: mash bill (sweet to spicy), proof, and barrel. There are also intangibles like locale.

3. Be a Good Shepherd - Keeping people close to their comfort zones.
• Know which are good gateway products such as those with lower proof, lighter, more grain & less barrel. Often Irish works well here.
• Educate but do not be overly aggressive.
• Take your own tastes out of the equation.
• Just because a person drinks it, does not mean they want to learn about it.
• Do not leave them with a headache: quantity, strength, and the amount of food they have had that night should be taken into consideration.
• Thread your selections so one whiskey order will lead into the next logically. i.e.: connecting wheated Bourbons into a flight or succession. 
• Ask the customer if they are here for one whiskey or for four. Knowing the path length is important.
• You cannot go backwards in whiskey profiles, so as Misty Kalkofen says about spirits tasting, "Don't blow your wad." Leave yourself room to navigate.

4. Communication
• Know your blind spots and do not bullshit guests.
• Do not just ask what they like, but why they like it.
• Know your mass market brands -- you need to know the basics before the esoterics.
• Ubiquity does not necessarily mean poor quality.
• Do not be a whiskey hipster -- just because a lot of people like it does not mean it isn't worth drinking.
• Getting the bottle on the bar is your friend. Let them read the label, take photos to put on Twitter/Facebook, use Google on their phones to learn more. This will allow you to help other guests as they make their decision or drink their glass of whiskey.

:: gaz regan's tales ::

After the talk at Silvertone on Thursday, I made my way over to Storyville with bartender Ian Strickland who will soon be working at Pigalle. The title of the talk was supposed to be "Tales from Behind the Stick," but Gary Regan decided to do a talk about a period when he was not a bartender but a bar manager. During 1988-92, he was the manager at the North Star Pub frequented by the businessmen of Wall Street and the tourists of the South Street Seaport. The new title was, "Of Mushy Peas, Men as Tall as Trees, and Singing Spies in the South Street Seaport." As for Gaz's commentary on being a manager instead of a bartender, it was less money and more responsibility, so don't do it. The focus was not making drinks, but instead how to promote events and extend hospitality to bring in more business as well as to make the guests' experience more memorable.

Devon, the owner of this British pub, loved to hold outrageous events to get press. The first one in the talk's title was mushy peas. Stuffy, one of the bartenders, taunted the North Star Pub's chef that they could not be a true British pub if they did not have mushy peas on the menu. The chef agreed and decided to make them. Devon and Gary got into the act by making this into a major media production. In the guest list was every food and drink writer they could come up with to introduce them to this British comfort food. However, the production value was deceiving. Since the silver serving covered bowl did not reach the rental minimum, they also rented a pair of large silver candelabras to place on either side of it. When it came time to pass out samples after much Scotch and food, it was served in absurdly small demitasse cups with small spoons. Just as the media was figuring out that they might have just been tricked, Gary told them that the blandness was the mark of authenticity. I guess the above sentiment reminds me of the Sex Pistols' John Lydon quote, "Have you ever had the feeling that you've been had?" especially since Gaz played Sid Vicious' rendition of Sinatra's "My Way" as we had our cocktails before the talk began.

Speaking of cocktails, midway through the talk, Gary informed the room that he was in need of a Negroni. Luckily, Storyville bartender Ryan McGrale saved the day.  As I later learned during Gaz's roast, this was nothing new.

There were plenty of other stories that Gaz spun about the years at the pub including the singing spy story about promoting a World War II-themed night to give the guests the feel of London during the bombing raids (replete with hiding underneath the tables with their drinks after the air raid siren went off). And the steak and kidney pie day is a good one that also appears in his The Bartender's Gin Compendium as well as on his website. But the one that touched me the most was about promoting a miniskirt competition of all things. Regan needed a host but had no budget. He had learned that one of his heroes was now living in New York City, and he decided to find him in the white pages and give him a call.

That person was Quentin Crisp. Quentin was a flamboyant gay man who in London during the 1920s used to dress up in women's clothing, go out, get beat up, return home to fix up his makeup, and hit the streets again since no one could tell him who he was. Quentin described his life during that time in his Naked Civil Servant mémoires. Gary got through on the phone to Quentin who was then in his eighties and eventually convinced him to do the gig for a car ride over to the pub, dinner, and drinks. Quentin lived next to the Hells Angels club on 12th Street and told Gary to tell the driver to look for guys as tall as trees and twice as shady.

A lot of Regan's stories factored into his mindful bartending philosophies even though he was not being a bartender during this period. However, making the customer, the press, or the flamboyantly gay man in your establishment feel special was all the same art. With a low budget, the promotion of the absurd made the event differ from the every day. I was reminded of the cocktail parties we used to throw and how the themes had to be unusual. A surrealist New Years replete with surrealist games, strange piles of objects, and the like, a Groundhog's Day cocktail party, a Johnny Appleseed's birthday punch event, and the infamous International Migratory Bird Day gala that ended up in DrinkBoston. None of these themes cost that much more to do over a regular party, but the guests felt like there was something extra in the experience when the theme was that unusual.

:: the history and change of downtown boston bar culture ::

After focusing on the Colonial to pre-Prohibition era drinking life in Boston with David Wondrich, I moved on to my next talk held at Silvertone's Chez Freddie Lounge. I was really excited for this talk given by John Gertsen, Ryan McGrale, Tom Mastricola, and Josh Childs, and they most certainly did not disappoint. The title was "The History and Change of the Downtown Bar Culture."

Josh Childs started the talk with a little history about the space we were in. Silvertone was built at the turn of the century; in the pre-Prohibition days, it was the Century Grill's tap room and was one of the 35 bars in the downtown Boston area. After Prohibition, the space was the Chez Freddie Lounge from the 1930s to 1970s. In the room we were in was a Chez Freddie sign from the 1950s that was discovered in the Parker House's basement; Josh could not resist removing from their inventory system for a mere $10.

Josh opened up Silvertone 15 years ago, and he spoke of what the norm was then. Roses Lime Cordial and sour mix instead of fresh juice, no stirring only shaking, and garnish trays that ought to have been tossed a shift or more ago. The revelation came when Josh and Tom Mastricola from No. 9 Park went to bar camp in Oregon. When Tom saw them fresh juicing citrus, he made it his goal to switch and to proselytize the practice. Josh went so far as to declare that Tom was the one single person who helped start the Boston craft cocktail movement.

It was time for the first drink, so John Gertsen took over and described Boston's cocktail, the Ward Eight, that had been created in the downtown bar of Locke-Ober in 1898. Back then in the end of the 19th century, color was beginning to enter into the cocktails so the grenadine was a big deal. Similar drinks to the War Eight were being made elsewhere, but the history of the drink helped to make the recipe survive. In the early 20th century, the drink was often adapted to show off with elaborate garnishes of citrus, berries, and mint sort of how foams were big in the mid-2000s. John's variation can be found here; he left out the orange juice because he finds that while it works well with Champagne and Amaretto, it does not mesh with whiskey. Therefore, he replaced the juice with orange peel curl and orange bitters garnishes. Indeed, of the three Ward Eights I had that day, John's was certainly the best probably for that reason.

With a drink in hand, we could now continue on properly. Tom Mastricola explained how Barbara Lynch was a long time friend of his from South Boston and how she wanted to open a fine dining establishment in Boston in a way that did not exist here yet. The bar traditionally would be used as a waiting area to get into the restaurant; No. 9 Park wanted to change that by making the bar not only another major revenue center for the restaurant but by making it a dining space as well.
The drink that started the No. 9 bar program in motion is still their No. 1 best selling drink, the Palmyra. The Palmyra is a reference to a big leaf meant to fan and cool you off. It still rings of freshness which was not something that was happening much at the time it was created; had it been created elsewhere, Roses would have most likely been used. It soon became part of the first of many cocktail flights; the other two in that flight trio were the No. 10 (see below) and the Pear Martini. With the cocktail flights with three 2 oz cocktails, the staff could introduce the drinkers to new flavors such as No. 10's Campari.

Palmyra
• 3 oz Rain Vodka
• 3/4 oz Mint Syrup
• 3/4 oz Lime Juice
Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lime wedge laid over a paired segment of mint leaves such that it looks like a winged bird on the edge of the glass.

No. 10
• 2 1/2 oz Tanqueray 10 Gin
• 1 oz Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice
• 3/4 oz Campari
Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

Garrett Harker, No. 9's general manager at the time, told Gertsen after Gertsen joined in 2002 to purchase and study books by Dale DeGroff, David Wondrich, and the classic 1916-17 Hugo Ensslin's Recipes for Mixed Drinks. These led to John to help create an Aviation flight that I recall trying in 2007.

Silvertone's history was intertwined with No. 9 for Silvertone for it was the end of the night place for many people at No. 9 and other establishments in the area and often the beginning of many bad mornings. It took on a living room-like vibe but with a higher-that-average drink intelligentsia for the time. People were drinking pastis and water, for example. Tom declared that Garrett, No. 9, and Silvertone were the reason that Fernet Branca took off in Boston in 1998. The match was sparked at No. 9, they told Silvertone to carry it and thus the kindling was lit, and the fire took off at Eastern Standard. Ryan McGrale's first job out of college was working at No. 9. He described how he learned the art of the bar at No. 9 Park, but he learned about family and camaraderie at Silvertone by hanging out to the wee hours of the night. When writer Warren Bobrow asked, "Is [Silvertone] the Cure of New Orleans?", Gertsen replied, "This is more the cause than the cure." Other post-shift establishments were cited such as the Franklin and the B-Side Lounge as places where people got together, talked, and tried interesting bottles and combinations of spirits.

For the fourth drink of the event, John served at Cognac Old Fashioned. He declared that removing the muddled fruit from the Old Fashioned equation was a very big paradigm shift in the cocktail scene akin to fresh fruit and stirring straight spirits drinks. Of course this cocktail was followed by a goodbye toast of a standard post-shift drink of a Miller High Life pony and a shot of Fernet Branca. Josh ended the event with describing how Cedric Adams was pouring the first Green Chartreuse around town at Silvertone and how he got the ball moving with that. And how there were not twenty great bartenders in town, but 250. "Bartenders are like mothers, there are a lot of great ones."

:: greasing the hub ::

The first talk on Thursday at the Boston Cocktail Summit was Greasing the Hub by David Wondrich. Wondrich took a subsection of his Imbibe! and Punch research and crafted a very Boston-centric view on drink culture from the Colonial years into modern day. The talk started a few minutes late since Wondrich refused to begin until the drinks arrived. Once they did, he fixed a bowl of punch and toasted the official start of the Boston Cocktail Summit.

Initially, the Colonists drank in an English style especially in the 18th century with small beers replacing water up and down the social strata. Gentlemen and those with social aspirations drank wine, but it was rather expensive and there was not a robust wine smuggling industry as there was in England. Most of the wine drank was fortified by wine merchants who altered the taste to the British palate as well as making transport across the Atlantic easier. Originally, the British thought that the American colonies were their hope to start their own wine industry for the British Empire; however, they could not get the native grapes to taste good. Moreover, almost every variety of European grape died for the phylloxera louse to which the local grapes were resistant were able to ravage the noble vines' root stock.

The British and their colonies were not big drinkers of distilled spirits until the 1660s coinciding with the East India Trading Company's activity. The sailors brought their love of punch to the colonies, and through manipulating components of spirit, sugar, citrus, and water, a balance akin to wine could be achieved. Punch quickly became the drink of everyone from rich gentlemen to the common man.

New England taverns had strong political affiliations which was something that Christine Sismondo discusses in America Walks into a Bar: A Spirited History of Taverns and Saloons, Speakeasies and Grog Shops. These taverns sold punch, flip (not the egg version but the rum and beer combination heated with a red-hot poker), Tom & Jerry, sling, and glog. Basically a lot of egg, beer, and rum-rich drinks. Whiskey and fruit brandies came later once transportation from the grain and orchard growing regions to the people-rich seaboard took off thanks to the Erie Canal and trains. By 1702, the New England Almanac firmly supported that liquor culture here was strong.

Boston played a strong role in the cocktail triangle which had Albany and New York as the other two corners. The first reference in print of the cocktail in Boston was in the 1810s-20s. The first landmark of the Boston cocktail was the Tremont House. Built in 1829, it was the first modern hotel replete with indoor plumbing and key-locks for the individual rooms. The bar there was so notable that Charles Dickens wrote about it his 1842 travelogue American Notes for General Circulation. Not only did the gin slings, sangarees, cobblers, and cocktails catch his eye, but Dickens was introduced to the art of perpendicular drinking. Without the need to sit, more people had access to the bartenders' attention as people could approach and then move away to make room at the bar. Dickens drew a bit of attention to the Tremont, and his stories brought in celebrities. William Pitcher soon became one of Boston's celebrity bartenders with his time at the Tremont starting around 1860. Around 1855, the Parker House opened up across the street from the Tremont Hotel and later became the best bar in town.

During the 1840s, ice began to enter into the cocktail equation. Frederic Tudor became known as the Ice King and started harvesting, storing, and transporting around the country and world. His source ponds surround Boston such as Walden Pond, Fresh Pond, Spy Pond, and others. This ice trade began to cool the drinks of the Gold Rush saloons and help to change the face of the cocktail as well as advance the cobbler and julep.

There were not many Boston-specific cocktails recorded though. One was the Worthington Cocktail which was only captured by name only. Of the two major newspapers in town, the Boston Herald was a Temperance paper, and the Globe was not and frequently sent reporters to get news at the bars. This news was light and gossipy to fill space in the publication. The Herald company owned various properties including one that housed a bar. The Globe decided to create a drink a drink named after the Herald's top guy, and they would describe drinks at bars as being good, but not as strong as a Worthington Cocktail. The Temperance movement in the late 19th century did affect drinking in Boston. The governor banned perpendicular drinking and tried to ban Sunday drinking, but this was hard to enforce. While many women's organizations were Temperance related, Boston had its own toast club where ladies would drink Green Swizzles and other libations and speak of the chosen topic of the day; they pre-dated the Boston LUPEC group by well over a century but with a similar purpose.
Boston did play a role in cocktail tool technology. The Hawthorne Cafe opened up in Boston in 1890 and the Hawthorne strainer was produced through their ingenuity in 1892. Above is an original strainer from Wondrich's collection.

The best known cocktail from Boston is surely the Ward 8 created at the Locke-Ober in 1898. Lucius Beebe described how the sporting life was strongly entrenched at the Locke-Ober during this time, but the drink was created for the political crowd at a victory dinner before the election even took place. The first evidence of what was in the drink was in 1906 where A Bachelor's Cupboard describes how it was sweetened with grenadine. By 1915, it became the Boston cocktail with variations that used raspberry syrup or Bourbon. Wondrich served the room a Ward 8 -- the first of three that day for me. The next was by Gertsen and crew at my next talk, and the last was at the Locke-Ober itself for a cocktail formal that night! The last Boston drink that was mentioned in the talk was the Periodista, an obscure concoction created in Cuba in the 1940s that found its new home in Boston in the mid-1990s.

:: origin tasting event ::

Good morning and welcome to the Boston Cocktail Summit!  Yesterday were a pair of greeter events, the Origin Beverage Company fall portfolio tasting during the afternoon and the SpeedRack competition at night.  I am going to give my highlights to the tasting events before I run off to catch my bus to hear David Wondrich's "Greasing the Hub" talk.  These are new to me spirits that stood out.

• Delirio Reposado Mezcal - While their joven was good, their reposado had fruit, vanilla, and smoke notes in harmony on the smell and swallow.
• Clandestine Absinthe - Perhaps not new to me since I had a taste back in 2009 at Tales of the Cocktail, but my first formal Boston taste.  Peppermint and anise notes; like St. George's Absinthe, the other botanicals diminish the anise-fennel dominance in a pleasant way.
• St. George's Single Malt - Speaking of their distillery, I had not tried their whiskeys.  They approached their single malt like a beer by selecting roasted barley for richer flavors and aromas.  Smoke was present from alder and beech but was not dominant.  Apparently aged in used Bourbon, port, and sherry casks and French oak casks, but such nuances were lost in my small tasting dram in a big plastic cup.
• Uprising Whiskey - Also a beer-driven brew process to proceed the distillation, the Sons of Liberty Distillery in Rhode Island made the mash like an unhopped stout so the roast notes came through. Unique.
• Imbue Vermouths - There were two that I tasted and both were as good as I had heard. The Bitter Sweet was Lillet Blanc-like but with a well-balanced chamomile and tangerine notes on a Pinot Gris-base.  The Petal & Thorn took it up a notch with bitter notes though; chamomile and orange on the front with a bitter wormwood-cinnamon like finish.