Boozehound - Jason Wilson [29]
I hadn’t really thought about flair bartending for many years. It’s been, after all, more than two decades since Cruise portrayed an acrobatic, poetry-reciting bartender. In fact, allow me to quote one of his poems from the film:
I am the last barman poet. / I see America drinking the fabulous cocktails I make. / Americans getting stinky on something I stir or shake. / The Sex on the Beach / The schnapps made from peach / The Velvet Hammer / The Alabama Slammer. / I make things with juice and froth. / The Pink Squirrel / The Three-Toed Sloth. / I make drinks so sweet and snazzy. / The Iced Tea / The Kamakazi / The Orgasm / The Death Spasm / The Singapore Sling / The Dingaling. / America, you’ve just been devoted to every flavor I got. / But if you want to got loaded / Why don’t you just order a shot? / Bar is open.
Some might say that this poem (and the entire film itself) pinpoints precisely the nadir of bartending in the twentieth century. Just look at the list of drinks. Long Island Iced Tea? Alabama Slammer? Orgasm? Maybe the classic-cocktail crowd should lobby for a remake: Tom Cruise could be replaced by a hipster who comes to work at a popular speakeasy in Brooklyn.
Inspired, I bought two practice flair bottles from the gift shop in hopes of auditioning for the potential remake (possibly as the grizzled older bartender who takes the young upstart under his wing). Once home, I immediately spilled a lot of liquor on my kitchen floor, and then put the bottles away, never to be practiced with again.
A couple of days after visiting Bols, I took a train to the historic distilling town of Schiedam, near Rotterdam. As late as 1880, Schiedam boasted about four hundred distilleries, with dozens of windmills in operation to produce the malt for its famous genever. But as worldwide demand for genever diminished over the course of the twentieth century, Schiedam ebbed into a quiet, pleasant town with canals, cobblestone streets, and six windmills still in operation.
At least until the remaining distillers realized they could export expensive vodka to the Americans. It wasn’t a hard transition. Vodka is made from neutral spirits. And the distilleries were already making genever out of neutral spirits. So, hold the malt wine, tinker a bit, and voila! For instance, Nolet Distillery in Schiedam sells jonge genever under the label Ketel 1 for about ten dollars a liter. Now, it sells vodka under the label Ketel One (numeral spelled out) for more than thirty dollars a liter.
That’s not to say there weren’t unique flavors in Schiedam. For instance, I made a stop at the Jenever Museum, chronicling three hundred years of Dutch distilling tradition, where I ate a bowl of a custardlike spirit made with egg yolks and brandy called advocaat. After that, I sampled some small local brands at Jeneverie ’t Spul. The bartender there certainly didn’t want to hear anything about a genever specially made to Americans’ taste. In fact, he deplored cocktails, the existence of which he blamed on Americans. Moreover, as I drank some of his finest aged genever, he make it clear that it was the Canadians, and not the Americans, who’d liberated Schiedam in World War II. In fact, to make the point, he showed off a portrait of the Canadian general on the wall.
I visited Dirkzwager Distillery for a classic illustration of how tradition gives way to contemporary tastes. Dirkzwager has long been the producer of a popular genever, Floryn. In 2000 it produced its first flavored vodkas, imported to the United States under the name Van Gogh. What began as a sideline has taken over. In the early 2000s, Dirkzwager bottled vodka about once every other month. Now, three of every four weeks are spent bottling flavored vodka. Van Gogh exports about twenty flavors, including wild apple, pineapple, double espresso, and, yes, mojito mint and açai-blueberry.
I spent some time in the flavor laboratory with master distiller Tim Vos, who has been making spirits for twenty-five