Anatomy of a cocktail: the cosmo grows up

Cheers, Jan-Feb, 2005 by Gary Regan

A few years ago I was out of town when, to my surprise, I found myself sitting at a bar with an old friend, shooting the breeze and imbibing a cocktail or three. Wonders will never cease. My drinking buddy, who shall remain anonymous, was looking for something different to drink so he asked the barkeep for a Sidecar, adding, "would you make it with bourbon, please?" The guy behind the stick was an amiable soul. Every bit the bartender. He smiled, and said, "Sure thing," strolling down the bar to make the drink. All was well until the cocktail got to my friend's lips. He spluttered, he coughed, he almost gagged. He asked me to taste it, too. Some friend, I thought.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Turns out that instead of substituting bourbon for the Cognac, the base spirit in a Sidecar, our man of the moment had substituted bourbon for the triple sec, or Cointreau, in the recipe. He obviously had no concept about what each ingredient in the cocktail brought to the drink. Now this faux pas doesn't make the guy a bad bartender as far as I'm concerned. In fact he was a darned good bartender. He spent a little time with every single one of his customers, constantly walked the length of the bar, giving everyone a chance to get his attention, and when our glasses were almost drained he was right there asking if we'd like another round. Mixing cocktails is but a small part of the job, as we well know. But a decent grasp of the basics doesn't hurt, either.

I'm very lucky in that bartenders from Europe, Asia, and the U.S. often send me recipes for their newly created drinks to me. Some of these fresh-hatched babies are obviously based on classics such as the Margarita, or the Rob Roy. However, many others show me that cocktailians in the twenty-first century are capable of thinking outside the box, bringing ingredients together in harmony that, at a glance, don't seem as though they could possibly survive side-by-side in a Boston shaker. And yet, when I test the recipes I sometimes discover incredible symphonies in my glass. The craft of mixology is truly alive and well in many bars across the globe. But as that one bartender made clear, not everyone working behind the stick knows the fundamentals of mixology.

If you mix three different rums with four kinds of fruit juice, the chances that the finished product will be a pleasant quaff are pretty good. The drink might not have been well thought out, but if it tastes good and people buy it, there's no harm done. And there are drinks such as the Long Island Iced Tea, a good glass of tipple as far as I'm concerned, that surely was the result of good luck rather than good thinking. The drinks I really object to, though, are the ones that are completely out of balance. For example: "Martinis" made with a spirit, three liqueurs that mask the base completely, and no tart ingredient, such as citrus juice, to act as a counterpoint to the liqueurs. There are far too many sweet, sweet, sweet drinks being pushed across our bars.

I know that sweet drinks sell well. I also know that before consumers started to be educated on the finer points of wine, maybe sometime around the 1970's, sweet wines sold well, too. And Joe and Jane Public drank them alongside steak and game, not fruit or chocolate cake. It's up to bartenders to educate customers on the finer points of well-balanced cocktails, just as the sommeliers of our fairly recent past showed people how to appreciate fine wines.

The best way to understand how to create new drinks, I believe, is to first understand the classics. Let's briefly look at just one family of drinks, Sours. We can easily pull the ingredients apart, categorize them, put them back together and see how easy it is to play with the basic formula.

Take a base spirit of rum, sweeten it with sugar or simple syrup, and balance the sweetness with fresh lime juice, and you just made a Daiquiri, right? It's a Rum Sour. Now take the lime juice out of the drink and substitute lemon juice. You have a new drink. Remove the sugar and add, in its place, a fruit flavored liqueur and you've made yourself something different. Use tequila instead of rum, just for the heck of it, and you'll end up with a cocktail of a different color. All these drinks should work at least fairly well but if, like the chap who served my friend a double-barreled Sidecar that was completely out of whack, you remove a sweet ingredient and replace it with a straight spirit, you'll have a recipe for disaster on your hands. Be forewarned.

Here's a recipe from a great cocktailian who really knows his stuff. It's adapted from a recipe by beverage specialist George Delgado.

 Crazzmopolitan

1 1/2 ounces Boru Crazzberry
   Vodka
1/2 ounce Cointreau
1 ounce cranberry juice
1/2 ounce fresh lime juice
1 fresh raspberry, for garnish

Fill a cocktail shaker two-thirds full of ice and add all of the ingredients. Shake for approximately 15 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Add the garnish.