Boozehound - Jason Wilson [24]
At Tales of the Cocktail, one moment you’ll be tasting a new product like a gin from France distilled from green grape flowers or sampling a liqueur made from “baby Vietnamese ginger” or comparing four different kinds of absinthe. The next moment, you’ll attend a panel discussion with a title like “Citrus: In History and Application” or “Aromatics and Their Uses in Cocktails” or “Spice and Ice: The Art of Spicy Cocktails” or “Tiki Drinks—From A to Zombie.” Then you’ll attend a panel called “Molecular Mixology,” being served a Ramos Gin marshmallow or a Sazerac gummy bear, and you’ll hear something scolding and manifestoish like, “I hope people in this community will think a little bit more about how you shake.” And then a few hours later, in another panel called “On the Rocks: The Importance of Ice,” someone else might declare, “We’ve all been preaching ice. We all realize what a travesty ice has become in the American bar.”
During the week, you might attend a presentation on “Big Trends” where someone talks about “bartender proactivity” in getting people to try new spirits. Perhaps someone suggests how important it is for a spirit to have something called an “equity delivery vehicle.” Tequila, for instance, is fortunate to have the popular margarita as its equity delivery vehicle. Perhaps, it will be suggested, pisco and cachaça need better equity delivery vehicles to expand their appeal? “What’s new in fruits right now?” the moderator will ask. “In Europe, we’re over fruit,” will come the reply from a British bartender. There will possibly be talk of a movement to eliminate tedious muddling in high-volume bars. And it will be agreed that mezcal, rye whiskey, and grapefruit juice are all hugely popular.
At various points during Tales of the Cocktail, the issue of vodka will be addressed. Someone will say something solemn like, “We needed to kill vodka in order to create a place for ourselves.” Later, a famous bar owner—a leading figure in the so-called mixology renaissance—will cause audible gasps by telling the cocktail geeks to lighten up a bit. “If someone wants a vodka drink, give ’em a vodka drink. Are we fascists? Vodka tonics pay the rent.”
Then, later on, you’ll be tasting an aged rum next to someone wearing a fedora, a kilt, or a seersucker suit and bow tie.
In the midst of my first visit to this craziness, I attended a panel called “Lost Ingredients: Obtaining (or Making) Rare Ingredients for Even Rarer Cocktails.” Eric Seed was among the experts on this panel. We all got to taste falernum, Swedish punch, Amer Picon, and what the presenter referred to as the “holy trinity of lost spirits”: absinthe (this was several months before legalization), pimento dram, and violet-flavored Crème Yvette (out of production for a half century). For some people in the room, that tasting clearly was a life-changing experience. I cannot say I wasn’t one of them.
For years, the holy grail of our Liquor Store Archaeology game had been Crème Yvette, which was a purple-hued violet-and-vanilla liqueur, a variation on the traditional crème de violette liqueurs found in Europe. Crème de violette and Crème Yvette pop up as ingredients over and over again in old recipe books. Even as late as the 1940s and 1950s, bartending guides suggested that a particular brand called Crème Yvette was part of any well-stocked home bar. But by the late 1960s, Crème Yvette had simply disappeared. The Charles Jacquin et Cie distillery, in Philadelphia, was Crème Yvette’s final place of production. Since that’s near where I’m from, I searched for years, with false hope, wasting hours in dicey Philly bottle shops and neon-lit “package