But Mama Always Put Vodka in Her Sangria!: Adventures in Eating, Drinking, and Making Merry

by Julia Reed

  Savannah is not the only Southern city whose punch recipe can be put to good holiday use. Charleston’s militia had a punch too, the Charleston Light Artillery punch, a delicious version of which, containing brandy, peach brandy, and Jamaican rum, is served at Sean Brock’s irresistible Husk.

  Then there’s Charleston’s St. Cecilia Society Punch, a classic brandy, rum, tea, champagne mixture that’s always served at the annual ball of the august society, formed in 1763 and named for the patron saint of music. In 1896, the Baltimore Sun reported that there is “no social organization in America so old or so exclusive” and that the balls are “characterized by dignity.” Maybe so, but after the only one I ever attended (a boarding school running mate was being presented), I woke up with my date on a park bench in an evening gown and missed two subsequent airplanes out of town. As a result, I prefer the slightly more refined punch recipe given to me by my friend Laura Steiner from Montgomery, Alabama, where it is something of an institution. First published in the cookbook of the local Episcopal Church ladies, it consists mainly of champagne, Sauternes, and brandy, and is especially pretty with a decorated ice ring.

  But then even the stoutest punches can be things of beauty. My hero Charles H. Baker, Jr., the professional bon vivant, intrepid world traveler, and occasional drinking buddy of Ernest Hemingway, gets borderline teary-eyed over the “Ritual of the Punch Bowl” in the Exotic Drinking Book volume of his seminal The Gentleman’s Companion: “Few things in life are more kind to man’s eye than the sight of a gracefully conceived punch bowl on a table proudly surrounded by gleaming cohorts of cups made of crystal or white metals, enmeshing every beam of light, and tossing it back into a thousand shattered spectra to remind us of the willing cheer within.”

  Baker’s book contains an extensive section on punch, but there’s mention of eggnog too, specifically one considered a “Scottish institution” (who knew?) from the Clan MacGregor, “a lovely, forceful thing based on brandy, Bacardi, and fine old sherry.” I was never a huge fan of eggnog, from Scotland or anywhere else, preferring the milk punches that are ubiquitous in New Orleans, where I live. But that was before I tasted the version made by my friend Mimi Bowen, who grew up in Memphis and who now owns a very chic New Orleans boutique that bears her name. The recipe comes from Mimi’s grandmother and namesake Myrium Dinkins Robinson via her aunt, Lynn Robinson Williams, whom Mimi calls the “Auntie Mame of Memphis.” Aunt Lynn, who died in her bed on her ninety-sixth birthday with both a cigarette and a glass of champagne in hand, sounds like someone with whom I would’ve actually enjoyed spending the holidays. Well into her eighties, when she finally passed the recipe along to Mimi, she put it in the mail with a note reading, “For your file. Don’t lose it.” I reprint it below exactly as she typed it.

  WORLD’S GREATEST EGGNOG

  4 cups bourbon

  2¼ cups sugar

  12 large egg yolks

  8 cups whipping cream

  Pour bourbon into large mixing bowl. Stir in sugar and let sit several hours. Overnight, if you can wait. Beat egg yolks until they are an ugly yellow color. Fold them into the bourbon and sugar mixture. Let sit for 2 hours if you can wait. Whip the cream until very stiff, fold into the bourbon and egg mixture. Let sit for 1 hour if you can wait. Mixture may be cut in half if you are clever enough to know how to divide 2¼ by two! Serve in cups. Serves 20-30 people. Nutmeg not permitted! ENJOY.

  MONTGOMERY CHAMPAGNE PUNCH

  ( Yield: About 24 servings )

  1½ cups sugar

  2 cups lemon juice

  1 cup brandy

  2 bottles champagne, chilled

  1 bottle Sauternes, chilled

  Combine sugar and lemon juice, stir until lemon is dissolved, and chill.

  Just before serving, mix this combination with brandy and pour over an ice ring in a large punch bowl. Gently stir in champagne and Sauternes. Float orange and lemon slices in the bowl.

  FOR THE ICE RING

  Procure a ring mold (as for tomato aspic) or an angel food or bundt cake pan that will fit into your punch bowl. Scatter orange and lemon slices evenly on the bottom of the pan and sprinkle with brandied cherries. Fill the pan with ice cubes to hold fruit in place and then pour in cold water to the top. Freeze for a few hours or overnight. Remove from freezer just before serving. Briefly hold the pan upside down in the sink beneath a stream of hot water to separate ice from mold.

  16

  One Two Punch

  Several years ago, when Quentin Tarantino made Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch into a film called Jackie Brown, it captured almost none of the book’s genius. Leonard’s work is deceptively multi-layered, full of mood and pitch-perfect rhythm. The action is entirely unforced; plot twists that come out of nowhere are somehow altogether believable. Most important, there’s never been an Elmore Leonard novel that contains a single thing it shouldn’t.

  The latter, especially, could not be said of the appalling mixtures that often constitute an actual rum punch, which, when crafted as meticulously as the work of my hero, can offer the same restorative—if slightly off-kilter—faith in the generally entertaining reliability of even the darkest sides of human nature. Too often, people make like Tarantino and show off by trying out not-quite-successful retro references (think ceramic pineapples or paper umbrellas) or adding such heavy-handed ingredients as frozen limeade and cranberry juice cocktail.

  In her book Rum Drinks, the culinary historian Jessica Harris reminds us that rum punch is as old as rum itself. A strong, unrefined quaff, rum was perfect “for a world that required a little muting around the edges,” she writes, specifically the brutal culture of the sugarcane growing, slave-trading islands of the Caribbean in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. During this period, the per capita intake of Barbados reached a whopping 10 gallons, much of it (by the ruling classes, at least) in the form of Planter’s Punch, of which there were as many versions as there were plantations. That early rum had a viscous texture that needed at least as much muting as the environment in which it was imbibed. Individual planters offset the oiliness by mixing rum with cane syrup, a touch of island spice (usually clove or nutmeg), and the juice of whatever citrus they happened to grow.

  In the 1860s, a Cuban named Facundo Bacardi figured out how to refine rum, producing a smooth beverage that could blend well with a wide range of mixers that were used to enhance, not mask, the taste of the liquor. Thus, the daiquiri, including Hemingway’s favorite, the Papa Doble (a double shot of white rum shaken with both grapefruit and lime juices and a bit of maraschino liqueur) was born. It also meant that unlike any other liquor, rum almost begs to be mixed with itself. Mixologist Dale DeGroff, aka “King Cocktail,” once explained to me that despite the fact that there are literally dozens of different styles of rum, the molasses base is so consistent you can mix dark and light, spicy with not spicy, aged and young, high proof and low, all to good effect. DeGroff says that most good rum punches call for at least two rums, and sometimes a third as a floater on top. “You’d never think about mixing three Scotches or two gins,” he says. “It would be disgusting.”

  Alas, a lot of what has been done to rum in recent times, especially in my adopted home of New Orleans, is also pretty disgusting. Drive-through daiquiri shops sell sickly sweet frozen daiquiris flavored to mimic everything from a White Russian to a margarita. When made properly, Pat O’Brien’s great contribution to rum punches, the Hurricane, is delicious; in most places on Bourbon Street, it is transformed into a powerful, but particularly vile version of hot pink Hi-C.

  It doesn’t have to be this way. DeGroff, who was famous for his Planter’s Punch when he presided over Manhattan’s Rainbow Room, finds it the most “elegant” of rum punches, but designates the mai tai as the “most sophisticated and interesting.” Ever the willing student, I decided to test them both—and many more—on a recent sojourn to my mother’s beach house. My good friend and Florida neighbor Joyce Wilson, who lived in Hawaii for years, contributed the rec
ipe for the mai tai. She’d procured it from Honolulu’s Halekulani Hotel, where they serve at least a hundred of them a night, and it was as advertised—complex and packing a delicious punch in the form of a 151-proof floater.

  Elizabeth Cordes, a seasoned mix-mistress, contributed the Peach Daiquiri. Now, I love a classic daiquiri like the many I enjoyed years ago at Havana’s Floridita (or, indeed, like the excellent Haitian daiquiri at New Orleans’s Herbsaint). But in a pinch, both Elizabeth and I have been known to pull into a daiquiri drive-through. We knew we could improve on anything those establishments have to offer—plus, we had a plethora of farm stand peaches on hand. Also, since we were running low on white rum, we decided to apply the rum punch rule of adding at least two different rums to great effect.

  Finally, the three of us experimented with the one that started it all, the Planter’s Punch. DeGroff, who gives his version a rosy glow with the addition of grenadine, turns out to be justifiably renowned for his creation. But another, seemingly off-the-beaten-path version also caught our collective eye, courtesy of Charles H. Baker, Jr., the world-class imbiber and author of four invaluable volumes known as The Gentleman’s Companion and The South American Gentleman’s Companion. Called a Savannah Planter’s Punch, Baker’s discovery combines rum and brandy, a partnership that actually makes a lot of sense. After all, French brandy was the slave trade’s primary means of exchange until rum replaced it in the late eighteenth century. Further, Savannah was often a West Indian colonial’s first mainland step before reaching England.

  Which leads us back to my man Elmore. Like his work, rum’s history is packed with vivid examples of man’s many transgressions toward his fellow man. In addition to the fact that rum fueled the trans-Atlantic slave trade for more than three hundred years, a pirate gave his name to Captain Morgan rum, and Churchill once dismissed British naval traditions as “rum, sodomy, and the lash.” There’s not a lot we can do to make up for that, but we can offer up at least a modicum of redemption in the form of a carefully made cocktail that shows rum the respect it finally deserves.

  HALEKULANI MAI TAI

  ( Yield: 1 drink )

  MAI TAI MIX:

  ½ ounce orgeat syrup

  ½ ounce orange curaçao

  ½ ounce simple syrup

  ¾ ounce Bacardi Gold rum

  ¾ ounce Bacardi Select rum

  1¼ ounces lemon juice

  ½ ounce Lemon Heart 151 rum

  Combine mai tai mix ingredients and pour over crushed ice. Add Bacardi rums and lemon juice. Gently pour Lemon Heart rum on top so it floats.

  The Halekulani bartenders are instructed to garnish each drink with a lime wedge, a lime wheel, a sugarcane stick, a mint leaf, and a Vanda orchid. You could easily get by with only the lime and the mint.

  NOTE: If you don’t have a good jigger, mixing is made easier when you remember that ½ ounce is the equivalent of 1 tablespoon.

  FROZEN PEACH DAIQUIRI

  ( Yield: About 4 drinks )

  8 to 10 ripe peaches, peeled and cut into chunks

  4 ounces white rum

  4 ounces Mount Gay rum

  ¼ cup fresh squeezed lime juice

  ¼ cup simple syrup

  Ice

  Myers’s rum

  Fee Brothers peach bitters

  Put the first five ingredients in a blender. Turn the machine on for a minute or two until the ingredients are blended, and then add ice until you reach the desired consistency. (Ours was slushy, not frozen hard and smooth like those from a drinks machine. We liked it a tad loose, with the odd chunk of peach.)

  Test for sweetness, as you may have to add more simple syrup or lime, depending on the sweetness of your peaches. If desired, float a little Myers’s on top—we loved the way the dark rum played off the peach flavor. And to really gild the lily, get hold of a bottle of Fee Brothers sublime peach bitters and add a few drops to the Myers’s after floating it on top.

  DALE DEGROFF’S PLANTER’S PUNCH

  ( Yield: 1 liter or about 6 drinks )

  5 ounces dark rum (Dale likes Myers’s)

  5 ounces white rum (Dale likes Appleton White)

  3 ounces orange curaçao

  6 ounces fresh orange juice

  6 ounces pineapple juice

  3 ounces simple syrup (one part sugar, one part water)

  ½ ounce St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram Liqueur

  3 ounces fresh lime juice

  3 ounces grenadine

  1 tablespoon Angostura bitters

  Pineapple, orange, and lime slices, for garnish

  Mix all the ingredients together in a large pitcher or punch bowl. Before serving, shake the drinks individually in a cocktail shaker with ice and strain into a large goblet or punch cup filled three-quarters of the way with ice. Garnish each drink with pineapple, orange, and lime slices.

  SAVANNAH PLANTER’S PUNCH

  ( Yield: 1 drink )

  2 ounces Jamaican rum (like Myers’s or Appleton Estate Dark)

  3 ounces cognac

  Juice of 1 lime

  ¾ ounce fresh pineapple juice

  Pineapple, cherries, and orange slice, for garnish

  Mix all liquids together in a shaker or pitcher. Pack a crystal highball glass or silver julep cup tightly with finely shaved ice. Pour in the pre-mixed liquids, stir briskly for a moment with a long spoon or swizzle stick. Garnish with a finger of ripe pineapple, a cherry, and an orange slice. Serve when the glass frosts.

  17

  Champagne Charlotte

  On my nineteenth or twentieth birthday, I can’t remember which, I announced that from that moment on I would drink nothing but champagne. Never mind that I was still in college and living with two other girls in an apartment on the first floor of a Georgetown townhouse. Never mind that my disposable income at that point consisted of the roughly fifty dollars a week I made working in Newsweek’s Washington bureau and the largesse of my roommate Nora Cooney, whose father, Ace, had—incredibly—given her one of the first gold American Express cards I’d ever seen. Never mind that it was illegal for me to drink anything alcoholic whatsoever.

  In retrospect, my birthday declaration was not just laughably pretentious but also ill-advised—providing, as it did, further evidence of my penchant for what used to be called “high living” that still makes my father crazy. I should take this opportunity to remind him that it was he who first took me to places like the Jockey Club when I was all of fourteen and he who introduced me to the Georgetown hostess Susan Mary Alsop. (It should be noted, too, that Susan Mary’s ex-husband, the columnist Joe Alsop, once referred to his brother John and my father as “Champagne Charlies,” when they dropped him at an important dinner and made their own way out on the town.) I was included in so many of both Susan Mary’s and Joe’s august gatherings as the token “young thing” that my mother was forced to allow me the use of her own Neiman Marcus card to buy a proper evening wardrobe. I had, therefore, drunk a lot of champagne (if memory serves, Susan Mary was especially partial to Bollinger), and I liked it. A lot. Also, I’d seen that quote from Madame de Pompadour about champagne being the “only wine that leaves a woman beautiful after drinking it.” And then there was John Maynard Keynes, who said his only regret at the end of an otherwise productive and celebrated life was not having drunk more of the stuff. I figured I’d get a move on.

  I’m pretty sure that within the month I was back to drinking beer and Scotch and everything else I still drink, but I’ve never lost my deep love for those golden bubbles. I remember my first sip of Cristal (in a Paris hotel room with a future fiancé and my friend McGee who’d made a well-timed delivery of the Clairol electric rollers I’d asked to borrow), and my first sip of Krug (in Paris again, at Karl Lagerfeld’s hôtel particulier, where Elton John also played the piano—it was a very good night). But what I never fell for was a champagne cocktail. Maybe it was the Angostura bitters that define the original recipe and which are still not among my favorites. Maybe it was an aversion to s
crewing around with something already pretty perfect—and not just a little expensive. Whatever it was, I’ve since come around—hard. As usual, it was a McGee that did it. In this case, McGee’s sister Elizabeth.

  It was my first Thanksgiving in New Orleans and I was spending the day with Elizabeth’s two girls and her late husband. Mike was an excellent but slightly obsessive cook who’d spent two whole days on the chocolate cake that would end the meal. I knew better than to bring anything that would mess with his long-planned menu. But I also knew Elizabeth adored champagne cocktails and I’d just received a galley of what would be Simone Beck’s last cookbook. So I whipped up a batch of very un-Thanksgiving-like tapenade to nibble on while Mike cooked, and made the base for Simca’s Champagne Cocktail, along with some macerated cherries for its garnish.

  Elizabeth and I toasted the day with two or three cocktails, and then Mike joined us and we drank some more (one bottle of champagne, by the way, will make six drinks). By the time we sat down at the table, I remember thinking that it might be the best Thanksgiving I’d ever had. I know it was the longest—we didn’t eat the cake until the next morning and Elizabeth and I stayed up chatting until well into the night. In 1937, Billy Wilder made a movie called Champagne Waltz and its tagline was “As gay and sparkling as a champagne cocktail!” Naturally, we were, too.