:: 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.

of thee i sing, baby

1 1/2 oz Jamaican Rum (Coruba Dark)
1/2 oz Cointreau
1/2 oz Grenadine
Juice 1/2 Lemon (3/4 oz)

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a cherry and a small sprig of mint.

Two Thursdays ago for the cocktail hour, I began flipping through Bottoms Up when I spotted the Of Thee I Sing, Baby. The drink was created by actor William Gaxton and named after a stage musical he was in during the 1930s. What drew me to the recipe was that it had a resemblance to the Periodista with grenadine and lemon instead of apricot liqueur and lime.
The mint garnish contributed to the drink's bouquet along with the fruitiness of the citrus and grenadine and the funkiness of the Jamaican rum. The citrus and pomegranate notes continued on into the sip and were chased by the flavorful dark rum on the swallow. The lemon certainly took the drink in a different direction from a Daiquiri or Periodista, but it definitely worked in this combination.

fox hunt

1 1/2 oz Pimm's No. 1
1/2 oz Tanqueray Gin
3/4 oz Lemon Juice
1/2 oz Simple Syurp
1 dash Peychaud's Bitters

Shake with ice and strain into a coupe glass rinsed with Cynar. Garnish with 7 drops of Peychaud's Bitters.
Two Wednesdays ago, I searched through the online recipe list from the Violet Hour bar in Chicago and spotted the Fox Hunt. While it was similar to other sodaless Pimm's Cup recipes, the Cynar rinse was enough to convinced me to make this one. Once mixed, the Fox Hunt greeted the nose with anise from the Peychaud's and a little fruitiness from the Pimm's; in fact, the anise aroma made Andrea ask if there was a dash of absinthe in there. Next, the lemon-berry sip was followed by gin on the swallow that was accented by a bitter herbal hint from the Cynar and spice from the Peychaud's.

pirate slave

2 oz J.M. Rhum Agricole Blanc
3/4 oz Punt e Mes
1/2 oz Campari
1 tsp Cane Syrup (Sirop J.M.) (*)
1 dash Regan's Orange Bitters
1 dash Fee's Orange Bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a rocks glass containing a large cube. Garnish with a flamed orange twist.
(*) Sub a 2:1 simple syrup

Two Tuesdays ago, I decided to make the Pirate Slave that I had spotted on Imbibe Magazine's website. The recipe was created by Colin Shearn and Al Sotack at Philadelphia's Franklin Mortgage & Investment Co. Indeed, the rhum agricole, Campari, and aromatized wine combination reminded me of Scott Holliday's Defensio, so I was definitely willing to give this one a go.
The Pirate Slave greeted the senses with an orange aroma with a bitter undertone. A dry grape sip led into the rhum agricole blending into the Campari flavors on the swallow; perhaps the Punt e Mes functioned to smooth over this rhum-Campari transition. In addition, the drink was a bit more rhum-forward at first, but with some ice melt, the Campari began to take the lead. Overall, I never expected a rhum agricole Negroni to be this well balanced.

utrecht-baden

1 oz Bols Genever
1 oz Aperol
1 oz Cinzano Sweet Vermouth
1 barspoon Fernet Branca
1 barspoon Mirto
2-3 dash Regan's Orange Bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a rocks glass. Twist an orange peel over the top.

The other drink I had at Estragon was the Utrecht-Baden. Bartender Sahil Mehta explained that he had created it for the Spanish Sip event back in August of 2011, and that the recipe was a riff on a Negroni. Utrecht and Baden were two treaties signed by the combatants in the War of the Spanish Succession and the treaties helped to maintain the European balance of power in the 18th century. The two treaties were signed in the Dutch city of Utrecht in 1713 and in the Swiss city of Baden in 1714. The Dutch aspect would certainly explain Sahil's use of Genever here.
The orange twist brightened up the Genever's malt aroma. The malt continued on into the sip where it mingled with the fruit notes of the Aperol and vermouth. The swallow was a combination of the Fernet Branca, Mirto, and the Bols Genever's botanicals. Indeed, the Aperol in conjunction with the Fernet and Mirto did give a similar impression as Campari.

south end sling

2 oz Cherry Heering (*)
1/2 oz Del Maguey Mezcal Crema
1/2 oz Fernet Branca
1 oz Lime Juice

Shake with ice and strain into a Highball glass filled with fresh ice. Top with ~1 1/2 oz ginger beer. Garnish with a mint sprig and add a straw.
(*) Update 3/16/2015: I spotted in Sahil's notebook that he now makes this recipe as 4 equal 1 oz parts.

Two Mondays ago, Andrea and I headed over to the South End to dine at Estragon. For a first drink, bartender Sahil Mehta wanted to showcase a recipe that he had entered in the Heering Sling competition. When he mentioned that there was Fernet Branca in there, I immediately thought of how well that pairs with Cherry Heering such as in Misty Kalkofen's Darkness Til Dawn and in the classic Pinto. About a week later, Sahil sent me an email that this drink was selected as one of the ten finalists for the competition!
This homage to Estragon's neighborhood in Boston began with a mint and ginger aroma for me and a mint and cherry one for Andrea. The cherry and lime filled the sip; despite there being a large slug of Cherry Heering in the mix, the flavor balance did not suggest that. The spicy herbal swallow contained the ginger and Fernet notes with light smoke accents.

palmetto bug

1 1/2 oz Del Maguey Mezcal Vida
3/4 oz Drambuie
1 1/2 oz Grapefruit Juice
1/2 oz Lime Juice

Shake with ice and strain into a Collins glass with a salt rim. Fill with ice cubes, top with 1 oz soda water, and add a straw.

As I was drinking my Newmarket Swizzle at the Hawthorne, Boston's Drambuie rep Tara showed up and sat next to us. She asked if she could treat Andrea and me to a Palmetto Bug. Tara traced the recipe to Sylvain in New Orleans where a bartender made a mezcal Paloma. Once back in Boston, Tara asked bartender Jen Harvey at Zócalo to tinker with it, and soon the Palmetto Bug was born. Hawthorne bartender Katie Emmerson soon set to work crafting three of these Highballs.
The mezcal's smokey agave notes mingled with the Drambuie's honey aroma on the nose. A crisp, carbonated sip contained the grapefruit and lime flavors. Next, the swallow was a combination of smoky mezcal and Drambuie's Scotch notes. Indeed, the mezcal-Drambuie combination worked well here as it has in Eastern Standard's Proclaimer and my Crush on a Bartender.