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Food & Beverage Industry

DrinkBoy.com: Rich in Cocktail knowhow, and everybody knows your online name

Nation's Restaurant News, March 4, 2002 by Gary Regan

I think it's about time to tell the full story about the members of the Cocktailian Club. It's not a real club - and to tell the truth, I'm the only "member" to think of it under that name. Most of the rest of my fellow cocktailians just think of us as members of DrinkBoy's Community for the Cultured Cocktail (hhp//communities.com com/drink/).

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Most of you will recognize at least some of these names: LibationGoddess, Dr. Cocktail, Porgy McNasty, Stinger, Dangermonkey, Bobbeaux and, of course, DrinkBoy himself, all of whom meet regularly at this Internet community. We all take the subject of cocktails seriously, and dozens, if not hundreds, more people with similar interests can be found there, too. Raphael, a Spaniard who dissects each and every drink and tirelessly experiments with ingredient ratios, is another ardent cocktailian, and David Wondrich, the guy in charge of cocktails at esquire.com, appears frequently under his own name. Among us is an art director in the movie business, a high-ranking computer geek at Microsoft, and a guy whose family owns tens of thousands of antiquarian books that he is cataloging. Plenty of real bartenders are also around to point us in the right direction, should we go off on tangents.

So what do we "talk" about over at DrinkBoy's community? You might find some of this hard to believe, but, recently, we discussed the correct ratio of sugar to water in simple syrup. That led to one member's bringing up sirop de capillaire, a French version apparently calling for additional ingredients, such as lemon juice or curacao We've struggled with the problem of whether drinks sweetened with liqueurs should be balanced by the addition of more liqueur if they remain too tart. Or is sugar water the way to go? We've wrestled with the question about which apricot brandy is best to use in a Hop Toad cocktail. It's pretty interesting stuff if you're a cocktailian.

Long ago I read about a man who, at the beginning of the 20th century, traveled the length and breadth of Britain, notating the steps of Morris dances -- a peculiar but very entertaining form of country ritual. Each village had its own version of a Morris dance, and they were all recorded for posterity. In 1914 the Great War came along, and so many young Englishmen lost their lives over the following four years that it's been said that, had that man not come along at the exact right moment, Morris dancing could now be a thing of the past.

I like to think that the cocktailians over at DrinkBoy are doing something similar for the cocktail world. Not that I'm anticipating all the bartenders in America suddenly will die, mind you, but if the gang hadn't started to research all the 100-plus-year-old cocktail books in recent years, it's possible that they, too, could have been lost to history.

What strikes me most about this group of people is the fact that each shares his or her knowledge and resources freely. For instance, my copy of one of the all-time great 19th-century cocktail books, Harry Johnson's "New and Improved Bartender's Manual of How to Mix Drinks," is dated 1900, but the first edition was published in 1888. The Old-Fashioned was in my book, but was it detailed in the earlier edition? I don't have a copy Cocktailian Club to the rescue -- no, it wasn't, but we did find it in an 1895 book, so we were a little closer to pinning down its date of birth. The first recipe is headed "Old-Fashioned Whiskey Cocktail," So" Old-Fashioned" was being used as a descriptor in 1895.

I'm sure that some of you are thinking that we should get a life and look into nuclear fusion or the effects of the Euro on the world economy and other matters that are of true importance to the world. But perhaps, just perhaps, one day in the distant future, a few bartenders might look at our discoveries and appreciate the gang at DrinkBoy.com. Perhaps they'll be drinking Hop Toads after a good evening of Morris dancing.

Food & Beverage Industry

DrinkBoy.com: Rich in Cocktail knowhow, and everybody knows your online name

Nation's Restaurant News, March 4, 2002 by Gary Regan

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