12 Bottle Bar

2 oz Dry Gin
0.5 oz Orange Liqueur
0.5 oz Sweet Vermouth
1 Dash (tsp) of Lemon Juice

Add all ingredients to a mixing glass.
Shake with ice and strain into a coupe.
Finish with a lemon twist.

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By Lesley Jacobs Solmonson

2 oz Brandy
1.5 oz Orange Liqueur
0.75 oz Fresh Lemon Juice

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass
Or, pour directly into a rocks glass over ice

Featured Glassware:  Scotch Whisky Tumbler No. 1 by Villeroy & Boch

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Fat Tuesday –better known as Mardi Gras – is upon us and, with it, celebrations spanning the globe from Belgium to Brazil to the Big Easy.  Each Mardi Gras is unique in its way, but, given our current affection for all things 1912, it is the pre-Lenten revels of New Orleans that interest us today.

Originally a religious festival, Mardi Gras was brought to the Crescent City by French settlers who indulged in rich food and drink – as well as parades, masked balls, and late night carousing – before the fasting of Lent.  Most of the festivities were and still are centered on krewes and social clubs, among them the Baby Dolls who celebrate their 100^th anniversary this year.   Tracing their roots to New Orleans’ 6^th Ward, historically a cornerstone of Creole culture, the Dolls are one of the many “second line” groups in the brass band parades, which evolved out of traditional jazz funerals. Read More…

Today, we’re doing a drink post with no drink attached. There’s a reason for this, of course — something beyond us wanting to cut out early for the long weekend, but in truth, that’s as good a starting point as any. Since we’ve been long overdue in discussing things like Bartles & Jaymes, Seagram’s Escapes, and Captain Morgan’s Parrot Bay Frozen Pouches, today will be the day. Like it or not.

But before we kick off President’s Day weekend (let’s wish George and Abe happy birthdays), I’m going to jump back to this past Christmas, when I shared the gift of frozen, pouched love with my family: namely, Parrot Bay malt beverage daiquiris. My reasoning was simple: I needed stocking stuffers and, at 3 for $5, how could I not buy them? As a joke, I also recently smuggled along a 4-pack of Bartels & Jaymes strawberry coolers on a multi-day trip to Disneyland. Since our nights would be spent in a dark, quiet hotel room – a self-imposed womb conducive to inducing sleep in our toddler – we needed something other than books to pass the hours. And since cheap, low-alcohol bottled coolers have been a staple of my drinking repertoire since my white-bread teen years, I’ve always had a soft-spot for them – much like my weakness for equally cheap pop music sung by cute girls (Holly Valance, you know what I’m talking about).

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2 oz Dry Gin
1 oz Dry Vermouth
1 tsp Grenadine or Raspberry Syrup
1 dash Angostura Bitters

Add all ingredients to a mixing glass with ice
Stir well and strain into a cocktail glass
Garnish with a cherry, naturally

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Today may be Valentine’s Day, but it is also – more significantly – the Arizona Centennial,  marking the 100^th anniversary of  our 48 contiguous united states and, as a by-product, the end of the Old West.  After all, when your last “territory” dons statehood, things stop being as fast and loose as they once were.  Fortunately for us, we’re talking Arizona, which – state or not – has always seen things its own way.

“Forty-Eighth Star To Be Placed On Flag Of The American Nation On St. Valentine’s Day” read the February 14, 1912 headline in Arizona Journal-Miner.  Across the state, canons, dynamite, bells, and, guns of all sizes would toll 48 times in honor of President Taft’s signing of the statehood proclamation and George W. P. Hunt’s assumption of the Governorship of the state.  And, while the term “Arizona Territory” may conjure images of the Old West, by 1912, Arizona the state was a relatively civilized place.  Contained in the very same issue of the Journal-Miner mentioned above are advertisements for Model Ts, Sealshipt Oysters, Wine Companies, Electricity, Cigars, and Hart Schaffner & Marx suits – all the comforts of a modern life.  Of course, that was in the cities. For those looking for it, the rough and wild west of old was still very much alive in mining towns like Jerome. Read More…

By Lesley Jacobs Solmonson

Near, far – whenever you are…

In this, the first official stop in our self-styled Year of the Doctor, we’d be remiss if we didn’t pick one of the juicier points in history to kick things off.  So, here we go:  1912.  Why 1912?  As years go, it was a pretty bang up one.  The Republic of China was established, as were Paramount and Universal Pictures.  Piltdown Man was discovered (only to be, forty years later, revealed as a hoax).  Julia Child, Charles Addams, and Gene Kelly were born.  The Oreo cookie was invented.  T. E. Lawrence was poking around archeological expeditions in the Middle East, quite unaware of how life-changing his knowledge of the area would soon become.  And, of course, let’s not forget the folks over at Downton Abbey, who we first met when they found their lives shifting dramatically as news of the RMS Titanic sinking reached them.

And so, the Titanic.  This year – April 15^th, to be exact – marks the 100^th anniversary of the epic end of the great ocean liner. Rather than rehash that tragic tale, we’ve chosen to celebrate the remarkable ship herself and how she symbolized the Edwardian era itself — a period fat on the rewards of industrialization and fascinated with opulence, yet struggling with social equity.  It is rightly called a second “gilded age”, when the surface of things was exquisitely polished, covering the tarnish beneath.  And, while scholars put the end of the Edwardian era as anywhere between 1910 and 1919, it is not hard to see how the sinking of the Titanic defined a generation and signaled a loss of innocence and a change of seasons to come, much like the Kennedy assassination defined a very different generation. Read More…