12 Bottle Bar

1.5 oz Leopold’s Gin (or English Gin, if you want to be proper about it)
0.75 oz Orange Liqueur
0.75 oz Passion Fruit Juice
Dash Grenadine

Add all ingredients to a mixing glass
Shake with ice and strain into a coupe

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If there’s one thing our cousins across the Atlantic love, it’s a good royal wedding.  With Prince William’s marriage to Kate Middleton upon us, we thought it only appropriate that we succumb to the pressures of our Anglo amigos and offer up a proper royal cocktail (and, since we have enlisted Britannia to crown our drinks selection these days, we also felt it high time that we gave something back).  Unlike most of the “Kate’s Old New Borrowed Blue Cocktail” affairs out there, we knew we had to provide something with a real royal pedigree.  So, without further ado, we give you the Royal Romance, which claimed the top prize at the 1934 British Empire Cocktail Competition.

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Many will tell you that mixing great drinks is an art form.  We beg to differ.  While there certainly is an art to mixology – the crafting of new recipes – mixing drinks is really more of a craft than an art.  The difference?  A craft is skill that, with training and practice, can be learned and mastered.

Take, for instance, the case of Brian Rea, a bartending and bar management legend who certainly didn’t start out that way.  Although we know the man of today, Brian was kind enough to share one of the less-than-masterful moments from his early days behind the bar.  This excerpt is from Rea’s forthcoming book, B.A.S.T.A.R.D.S. (Bars and Saloons, Taverns and Random Drink Stories), which chronicles both the history of the bar and Brian’s personal experiences behind it.

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By Lesley Jacobs Solmonson

What becomes a legend most?  In the case of Brian Rea, winner of the 2010 Tales of the Cocktail Lifetime Achievement Award, the answer is sheer breadth of experience – the man has done every job out there.  A walking history book of the beverage industry, Rea has tended bar, as he says, “in gin mills, waterfront bars, saloons, nightclubs, taverns, hooker bars, (and) gourmet restaurants.”  Perhaps most importantly, he was head barman at the 21 Club – for those of you youngsters, the 21 was the quintessential New York restaurant/bar from its early history as a speakeasy (it had an “invisible” wine cellar) to its modern iteration as one of Manhattan’s classic watering holes. Read More…

By Lesley Jacobs Solmonson.  A 12 Bottle Bar original. 

Gin-Pineapple-Mint Sorbet (recipe below)
Champagne

Add a scoop (or, if you’re feeling fancy, a quenelle) of sorbet to a chilled coupe.
Fill glass with champagne.
Garnish with a sprig of mint.

For the kids:  Leave the gin out of the sorbet and fill with ginger ale or 7UP.

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While some may choose to debate the Christian versus pagan symbolism and circumstance surrounding the Easter holiday, we at 12 Bottle Bar instead turn our sights on that most eternal of vernal demagogues:  the PEEP®.  Whether you are in the love-em or hate-em camp when it comes to PEEPS®, we’re certain that you’ll appreciate the question that begat today’s Easter post:  Could we booze “peeps” up?  The answer proved to be simple, yet eloquent:  Hell, yeah.

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