Tasting Whiskey

by Lew Bryson

  Two things: obviously, use fresh juice. And use the whiskey that works for you: bourbon’s plenty authoritative, rye will amp the explosion, Canadian plays well. I probably wouldn’t go for Irish, as it might get overwhelmed, or Scotch, though the right one might work for you.

  Here’s how I make a whiskey sour now: fill a shaker with ice. Add 2 ounces of bourbon or Canadian, the juice of half a lemon, and a teaspoon of sugar (if you use superfine sugar, you’ll get that nice fizz and pop; it means a better tip, I’m telling you). Shake it for a while, and not halfheartedly, either. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and garnish with a maraschino cherry with a stem. If you use sour mix, I don’t know you.

  (Oh, and the Kahlua sours? They were horrible, iridescent, like used motor oil. But since I mentioned them, here’s a bonus cocktail recipe for you: Kahlua sours, made the right way, as I learned it in Mexico and have practiced many times since. Fill a rocks glass with ice, add 2 ounces of Kahlua, and squeeze half a lime over it, hard. Drop in the lime shell, and stir twice. The fresh lime juice lightens and lifts the heavy sweetness of the coffee liqueur and brings out the vanilla and caramel. Delicioso!)

  Bitters

  Bitters are called for in many cocktail recipes. You’ve probably seen the paper-wrapped bottles of Angostura bitters, and you may well frequent bars where the mixologists make their own.

  What are they? Tinctures, essentially, and not difficult to make. Choose your aromatic elements — herbs, seeds, spices, bark, flowers, roots, grasses, fruit or fruit peels — clean them as necessary, and put them in a bottle with unflavored alcohol. A clean 80-proof vodka will do, though 100 proof is better — more extraction, better concentration. If you can get it, use grain alcohol (a bottle of Everclear will make a lot of bitters). Cap the bottle, put it in a dark cupboard, and leave it alone for a month.

  Did I say bitters weren’t difficult to make? Sorry, they are difficult to make well. Balancing the aromatics isn’t easy, nor is choosing the right ones, but it is fun to try. I just buy them. I usually have a bottle of Angostura (clove, cinnamon, a Moxie-like scent of gentian) and a bottle of Peychaud’s (anise-tilted, red fruit), and sometimes a bottle of Regan’s Orange Bitters (orange zest, freshly twisted).

  I’m not really good at making cocktails, which is why I love and respect good bartenders. But a couple of dashes of good bitters makes an old-fashioned a drink I can always pull off with panache. Bitters don’t really flavor a drink so much as they meld it, bringing together the opposites, and putting just a nip of aromas across the top. A subtle but important component.

  Bitters are also useful in other ways that may appeal to the whiskey drinker. When I was growing up in rural Pennsylvania, my Amish neighbors always kept a bottle of Angostura bitters for stomach upsets, dosing themselves with a tablespoon of a 50:50 mix of bitters and water. (The popular German digestif Underberg performs the same service in a handy single-serving bottle.) If I’m the designated driver, I’ll ask the bartender for ginger ale or club soda with a dash of bitters. It’s a tasty addition. It still feels like I have a cocktail, and a manly one at that.

  Finally, if you have an intractable attack of hiccups, I swear by the old bartender’s cure of a slice of lemon, sprinkled with bitters. Bite down and hold it, sucking the bitters and lemon juice out of the slice. It’s worked every time for me.

  Sazerac

  A Reason for Rye

  One of the most disappointing cocktail experiences I’ve ever had was with a Sazerac cocktail. I ordered it in a hotel bar in Montreal, where the bartender was dressed right, had the right booze, and had a great manner. And yet as I watched, brow furrowing in perturbation, he put together sugar, Canadian whisky (an acceptable substitute for American rye, given the location), bitters, and lemon juice; shook it; and strained it into a cocktail glass, serving it with a twist of lemon peel. It was a whiskey sour, a fairly good one, but it wasn’t a Sazerac.

  After some years of asking for Sazeracs and getting a variety of bad responses — some like the aforementioned sour, some of stunned ignorance, some of “Yes, we have Sazerac rye, do you want it neat or on the rocks?” — I think we’ve finally gotten to the point where most cocktail bars and good restaurants will make you a good Sazerac cocktail with little urging. My little heart skipped a beat at San Francisco’s House of Prime Rib last year when the response was, “Yes, sir, which rye would you like it made with?”

  Because, you know . . . it’s not that hard! It’s pretty much a rye old-fashioned with an absinthe rinse. Here’s what you do. Muddle a teaspoon of sugar with just enough water to wet it in an old-fashioned glass, give it 2 dashes of bitters (Peychaud’s to be authentic and right, but you can use Angostura, or some of each) and a good 2 ounces of a better rye whiskey (Sazerac 18-year-old or the younger “Baby Saz” bottlings are great, as is Rittenhouse if you’ve got it), add ice, and stir.

  Once you’ve got that built, splash about half a teaspoon of absinthe (or Herbsaint) in a second, chilled glass, swirl it around to coat the glass, and pour the excess out. Strain the built cocktail into the rinsed glass. Twist a swatch of lemon peel over the drink, and enjoy. The hardest part is the rinse, and that’s just because I’m fussy about catching every bit of the glass.

  Rejoice that it’s easier, because it’s delicious. The old-fashioned part is already good — the Peychaud’s adds a zesty extra snap of anise to things — and the absinthe rinse will bring the enhancing aromas of this herbal spirit to the rye. The anise/fennel/wormwood blend goes so well with the grassy, minty, herbal aromas of rye that everything gets intensified, the kind of synergy you’re looking for in a good cocktail.

  It’s hard to lose with the Sazerac. It’s a great way to start your night, to aromatically get the juices flowing, and the ritual of the rinse helps set the mood that you’re just not at home anymore. But it’s simple enough that you can have one before your commute home (via train or taxi; the Sazerac packs a solid slug of liquor) and not feel underdressed.

  Best of all, like an old-fashioned ordered sans fruit, there’s nothing froufrou about it. This is a solid cocktail, a drink the pros drink, and one that will get the bartender’s tacit approval. You’re not messing around when you get a Sazerac.

  Manhattan

  The Chameleon

  We’re into serious slugging territory here. The Manhattan is a no-nonsense, big-boy drink that demands respect. It’s all booze, made with a martini-strength slug of whiskey and a good dollop of vermouth, with enough bitters splashed in to encourage the whiskey and wine to shake hands. Stirred, strained (or not; this is one you can do on the rocks if that’s your pleasure), and garnished with either the traditional cherry or a more sophisticated orange twist, it sits there, eyeing you as you eye it, simmering, quivering, powerful.

  And the dangerous part is that it tastes so damned good.

  Whatever origin story you like, the real story with the Manhattan is how it has changed, and keeps changing, a veritable Lon Chaney of cocktails. The basic, “real” Manhattan is, as is often the case with the classics, quite simple: 2 ounces of rye, an ounce of sweet/Italian vermouth, and a couple of dashes of Angostura bitters in a mixing glass full of chunk ice; stir, strain, and garnish. The spices and sweetness of the vermouth (and don’t give in to martini thinking and skimp on it; you need the full ounce) complement the spicy, dry rye, and the bitters perk it, round it, meld it. What more would you need?

  But mixologists like to fiddle with every ingredient and come up with something new — really new, not just a new name. Exchange half the vermouth for dry white vermouth, and it’s a Perfect Manhattan. Replace the bitters with Amer Picon, and it’s a Monahan. Switch the rye for Scotch, and it’s a Rob Roy. It goes on and on; it’s like a bartender isn’t a mixologist till he or she has cut a notch on the Manhattan.

  Some of it was evolution. There’s a bar I go to just outside Boston, called Deep Ellum. I usually go for the beer (they have a great selection of lower-alcohol craft beers, my faves), but they also
have a cocktail menu with almost a dozen variations on the Manhattan variants. One of the owners, Max Toste, told me the story of the Manhattan menu.

  “A guy named Billy Rose taught me how to make Manhattans in 1994,” he said. “His Manhattan was of its day: Maker’s Mark, sweet vermouth, a big cherry, Angostura, and a barspoon of cherry juice. That’s what got me into it.” (I remember those Manhattans. I drank them in the mid-’90s, sweet and juicy, 180 degrees from the spicy rye Manhattans I drink today.)

  “Then I found this book, Famous New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix ’Em [Stanley Clisby Arthur, 1937],” he said, “and it was a moment. His Manhattan is a rye Manhattan, uses Peychaud’s bitters, and vermouth at 2:1. It opened my head up to the drink and made me think about how different eras looked at cocktails.”

  It was that era idea that caught my eye. Deep Ellum does a 1950s Manhattan: “Classic Dean Martin,” Toste describes it. “Bourbon, big old dash of bitters, and a Luxardo cherry.” I had the ’70s Manhattan the last time I was in. “That’s my granddad’s Manhattan,” Toste said. “Canadian Club, 2:1 with vermouth, a dash of housemade bitters, served over ice with a twist.”

  The Manhattan morphed to meet changing tastes and changing availability, when rye whiskey started to go missing from American bars. It changed to meet different demands, when people wanted flavors they couldn’t get in other drinks, or just a change. It changed at the whim of the mixologists, which is how we’ve been blessed with some great cocktail discoveries.

  But it’s still around, in all its forms, including the original, thanks to cocktail revivalists and the rye comeback. Celebrate that, with the Manhattan that meets your particular tastes.

  The Highball

  Whiskey and . . .

  The first time I heard the word “highball” was in a children’s book (appropriately enough, since I was a child at the time), Mr. Twigg’s Mistake, by the noted illustrator and author Robert Lawson. Lawson had a gift for writing books that appealed to children without talking down to them (and an absolute genius for illustration), so his books often included adults, having adult conversations.

  In this case the main character’s father made highballs for visiting town officials, who had come to complain about the boy’s giant mole. The highballs made everyone friendly and I wondered what kind of drink they were to be so good, and so effective!

  I would keep wondering for a while. Mr. Twigg’s Mistake was written in 1947, in the American golden days of this tall, refreshing style of drink, and by the time I started drinking, 30 years later, no one near my age had any idea what I was talking about. It would take another 10 years before I got hold of a cocktail book and figured it out: a highball is simply liquor, a mixer (juice, water, club soda, or a soft drink), and ice in a tall drink. It was a leisurely drink, something you could sip or gulp, a way to stretch the enjoyment of your drink by making more of it.

  There are plenty of nonwhiskey highballs — the Cuba Libre, the Moscow Mule, the humble yet perfect gin and tonic. Even the Wisconsinite’s beloved Brandy Old-Fashioned Sweet is a highball with cherry juice and bitters. But let’s stay on topic. The best thing about this cocktail category is that everyone gets to play. It’s time for the Whiskey Roll Call!

  Scotch! Let’s have a big glass of Scotch and soda, the classic champion of hot-weather Scotch drinks. Pour a couple of ounces of blended Scotch into a tall glass, fill it with ice, and top off with club soda. (I’ve been drinking the Compass Box Great King Street Scotch recently, a project by this whisky blending company to bring back respect for the blends, and it’s tasting great in Scotch and soda.)

  This so-called cocktail is actually pretty interesting: what you get is more than what you put in, which is essentially whisky and water. You’d think you’d just get diluted whisky, not all bad when you’re pacing or refreshing yourself. There’s more to it, though. Of course there’s the physical snap of the bubbles from the club soda, which your tongue feels as effervescent tweaks, but it also turns out that some of the carbon dioxide is converted in the mouth to tiny bursts of carbonic acid, which tweak those same nerves in your tongue as your old friend ethanol. It gives Scotch and soda a bite that Scotch and water just doesn’t have. Add the extra aroma carried up from the bubbles, and you can see why this drink is so popular. Try one soon.

  Irish! Irish whiskey had been quite resistant to the idea of highballs, because an amazing amount of the stuff is polished off neat, often with a glass of beer nearby. I’ve only recently been able to train myself to stop saying “and a shot of Powers” whenever I order a Guinness; it had become a reflex because the combination was so good.

  But the crafty sons of fun at Jameson have hit on a highball that people love: Irish and ginger ale. It actually started at a bar in Minneapolis, called The Local, where they were serving a highball made with ginger ale and Jameson that they called Big Ginger. It went over so big that they became the biggest Jameson account in North America . . . so big they decided to cut out the Jameson middleman and went direct to Ireland, developing their own Irish whiskey brand, 2 Gingers. After reaching a legal settlement about the drink last year — a legal settlement over a highball? — Jameson is pushing the drink all over the world. And you know, it is quite tasty. Ginger ale works pretty well with a lot of different whiskeys!

  Bourbon! If you’ve ever heard of “bourbon and branch” and wondered just what “branch” was, it’s water. “Branch” is a Kentucky term for a small creek flowing into a larger one. Branch water is cool and pure — if you’re lucky! — and thus a good addition to whiskey. I do like adding cold water to bourbon (I might even chill the bourbon) for Kentucky tea, a 2:1 ratio that is quaffable and still tastes clearly of the whiskey. It’s great with a meal, and you can pace yourself on a hot day. If you’ve never had it, do yourself a favor.

  Today, though, the big highball with bourbon is made with cola, but it’s most famously connected to another whiskey, so it’s time for . . .

  Tennessee! Jack and Coke is the call. I’ve been told that as much as 70 percent of Jack Daniel’s is consumed with Coca-Cola or ginger ale, and I’m willing to believe it. Drop in any bar in the country, and it’s almost even money that someone will be drinking a Jack and Coke.

  Except, of course, that I should say Jack and cola, because my first experience with Old No. 7 was a Jack and Pepsi. It was fizzy, it was sweet — it’s Pepsi! — and the vanilla-corn sweetness of the whiskey tasted a lot better to me than the syrupy Cherry Cokes the girls at work were always drinking.

  It’s a combination that goes way back, and it even found its way into Prohibition. H. L. Mencken’s account of visiting the Scopes trial (in 1925) gives a moonshine account: “Exactly twelve minutes after reaching the village I was taken in tow by a Christian man and introduced to the favorite tipple of the Cumberland Range: half corn liquor and half Coca-Cola. It seemed a dreadful dose to me, but I found that the Dayton illuminati got it down with gusto, rubbing their tummies and rolling their eyes.” They still do; they just age the liquor a while now.

  Rye! When it’s hot and sticky in my far southeastern corner of Pennsylvania — and Lord, does it get humid here in the summer — and I have to tend the grill (or laze about in the hammock), I don’t turn to beer. Beer’s good up to a point, but when the dewpoint hits 80, I look at a cold beer and start to think about death, and where its sting might be.

  That’s when I turn to a big tumbler, plenty of ice, a good ginger ale, and cheap rye whiskey. Whenever I cross the border into Maryland, I’ll pick up a handle of Pikesville Rye, and that’s my hot weather buddy. I’ve heard the drink called a Rye Presbyterian (the original’s made with Scotch), but I just call it a Rye and Ginger. The spice of the rye, the zing of the ginger: rye is just amazing, baby. How did you old guys do without it for so long?

  There’s another rye drink I wanted to tell you about, if only because of its nickname. The Black Water Cocktail is another one from the fertile minds at Deep Ellum, the place I mentioned in our discussio
n of Manhattans. It’s equal parts Old Overholt and Moxie over ice, with a generous squeeze of lemon on top. “It’s gentian soda,” Max Toste says gleefully. “It doesn’t even need bitters!” Max’s bartender, Dave Cagle, calls it — and this is the nickname that grabbed me — “the thinking man’s Jack and Coke.”

  I had to try it, and you know, it’s quite savory. In fact, I was moved to add more Moxie to bring it up to a more highball-like ratio. It may be the best whiskey aperitif I’ve ever had, come to think of it. Moxie’s weird gentian assault grabs the rye by the scruff of the neck — rye whiskey, pushed around! — and drags it into your mouth like a dog on a leash, and then makes it do tricks in there, the best of which is making Moxie taste good. It doesn’t work without the lemon, though; the citrus crimps the Moxie’s sweetness, and without it, the drink’s a sickening mess.

  Canadian! The big quiet guy on the American whiskey scene. We drink an amazing amount of Canadian whisky, but it’s largely under the radar because mixologists haven’t discovered it (and mainly it’s your dad who’s drinking it).

  Here’s a funny thing: it’s also the favorite booze of my son and his 20-something friends. When they found out I had a cabinet full of Canadian samples, we became fast friends, and I learned a little something about what “those kids up at college” are drinking. Too much, actually, because they drink Canadian mixed with anything that comes in a two-liter bottle. I’ve tried to help by buying them good ginger ale and a bottle of Crown Royal.