12 Bottle Bar

This is a re-post.

1.5 oz Dry Gin
0.75 oz Dry Vermouth
0.75 oz Sweet Vermouth
0.50 oz Freshly Squeezed Orange Juice
2 Dashes Angostura Bitters

Add all ingredients to a mixing glass.
Stir with ice and strain into a coupe.
Garnish with an orange twist.

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By Lesley Jacobs Solmonson

2 oz Rye
0.25 oz Manischewitz Concord Grape Red Wine
Angostura Bitters

Instructions per Mr. Handler:

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice.
Pour in the rye and the Manischewitz, and add one dash of Angostura bitters for each living female relative over the age of seventy in your extended family.
Shake, then pour into a cocktail glass and garnish with a cherry you’ve plucked from a fruitcake someone gave you.
Sip frugally while arguing over something that does not matter in this world or the next, and allow the ice to melt in the shaker.
When it has melted completely, pour it into your cocktail glass and convince yourself that you are drinking a second cocktail for free.

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2 oz Gold Rum
2 oz Unsweetened Cranberry Juice
1 oz Fresh Squeezed Orange Juice
1 dash Angostura Bitters

Add all ingredients to a mixing glass and stir together without ice.
Pour into a rocks glass filled with crushed ice and stir gently.
Garnish with an orange wheel.

Featured Glassware: Boston Double Old-Fashioned by Villeroy & Boch

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Yes, I realize that it’s Thanksgiving today, and yes, I also know that of any cocktail we could present today, one called the Bermuda Triangle may not be, well, the most logical drink.  But it is – in part because Thanksgiving means cranberries and, in another part, because at our house cranberries on Thanksgiving also mean Lesley’s homemade orange-accented cranberry sauce, one of my favorite additions to our holiday table.  Actually, there are two sauces on our Thanksgiving table – the homemade one and those Industrial Age jellied wheels of burgundy I don’t-know-what.  It’s a generational thing – the grandparents remaining suspicious of any food which doesn’t properly reflect mankind’s triumph over nature.

Of course, what I’m most thankful for today – and, for that matter, on each and every day – are my wonderful wife and child.  Sure, it’s an obvious choice, but if you know them, you won’t blame me for not trying to be clever here.  Some things just are, and Lesley and the boy keep my rudder steady and the wind in my sails.  I suppose that’s why we’re keen on having families –they keep us on the straight and narrow and provide us with second chances when we might not deserve them.  Even when we’ve tried to incite a mutiny and overthrow the local government. Read More…

By Lesley Jacobs Solmonson

4 or 5 dashes Angostura Bitters
3 – 4 oz Dry Gin

Shake the Angostura into a stemmed cocktail glass. Per Charles H. Baker, from whose book (Jigger, Beaker, & Glass; 1939) this recipe is taken: ‘Tip the glass like the Tower of Pisa and twirl it between thumb and fingers. Whatever Angostura sticks to the glass through capillary attraction is precisely the right amount.’ Pour out any bitters that do not cling. Fill the glass with gin. Alternatively, you may put both ingredients in a shaker, then shake and strain.

We recommend the former method, with the gin and the glass being ice cold.

Featured Glassware:  Octavie Martini by Villeroy & Boch

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So, you’re out of vermouth, but want a martini?  Swirl a few drops of bitters and add some gin, presto, you’ve got yourself Gin Pahit, Pink Gin, or Gin and Bitters — however you choose to call it.  You might even call it a martini sans vermouth.  It’s a powerful drink to say the least, and one that gives credence to the English phrase “stiff upper lip”.  After drinking one of these, your lip will indeed be quite stiff, and proper, and, well, British.

Today, we offer an outtake from “Gin: A Global History”, focusing on gin’s role in empire building, and how gin cocktails went hand in hand with conquest. Read More…

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…