Finally got around to reading “The Cocktail Renaissance” by Robert Messenger in the August 3rd edition of The Weekly Standard. It’s a little arcane for me – witness this bit of business early on in the piece:

We’ve forgotten where we came from. The names of many cocktails survive, but what they are sits in a realm of hazy inexactitude. The highly reputable drinks writer of the Wall Street Journal not long ago implied that “fresh orange slices” were essential to an Old-Fashioned, which may have been true during Prohibition with the rotten liquor, but wasn’t when the drink was born and isn’t today. What makes the confusion in this case almost amusing is that the Old-Fashioned originated in purists’ rejection of the fancy concoctions of the 1870s–when the modern cocktail was truly born–by ordering an “old-fashioned whiskey cocktail,” that is, one without all the syrups, fruit juices, and wines. But, one of the things that makes this true beauty is that you can vary it in endless ways, not with extra ingredients but with different types of alcohol and different bitters. Old-Fashioneds are splendid with the more aromatic gins and aged rums. I make them with Armagnac and with Calvados, or with Laird’s worth-any-search bottled-in-bond Straight Apple Brandy. The basic recipe is just that. And there’s the rub. There are only a tiny number of foundational cocktail recipes: the Martini, the Manhattan, the Old-Fashioned, and the Daiquiri. Making these well is just something to master: like the sound of Bessie Smith’s voice, how to carve a turkey, and the order of the Triple Crown races.

I’m not on this earth long enough to care about fresh orange slices and Old-Fashioneds. But the piece did trigger some memories (up to several of them fond) of my old man, who was a card-carrying member of the boozeoisie, as well as a killer drinkmaker according to numerous first-hand accounts.

Martinis were Jack’s specialty. My godmother, the fabulous Pat McBride, swore by his martinis and sometimes afterwards. I have no idea what my godfather Boyfriend Johnny Cullen drank, but I’m pretty sure he did.

Jack was nothing if not catholic in his bibulous sallies; he was a magus of martinis and Manhattans, a genius of Gibsons and Old-Fashioneds. It was said that his Brandy Alexanders stayed with you for days.

Despite Jack’s mixology magic, our home decidedly lacked the rarified air of A.R. Gurney’s The Cocktail Hour.  We, by contrast, lived in a third-floor walkup one block downwind of the Ruppert Brewery, which sprawled from 90th to 92nd street, and from Third to Second avenue.

That would be two square blocks of malt-and-hops apéritif, all day, every day.

No surprise, consequently, that many of the family heirlooms I inherited  were drinking-related, most notably a Waterford crystal decanter and The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, a hollowed-out book that contained a flask.

Cheers!