Liquid Sexy

There's a psychosomatic effect by which the body rejects substances or experiences that at one time resulted in an extremely negative experience. In layman's terms, it's the mechanism by which we learn to never again drink the substance that resulted in our very first hangover. I've heard several generations of drinkers tell similar stories about the ill effects of Southern Comfort, a liqueur sweet enough to entice novice drinkers into familiar territory, but also brutal enough to push many of them away from the hard stuff for a long time. While I personally never much enjoyed SoCo, I had a much crueler first hangover experience that, several years later, I am still coming to reconcile.

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I had a few jobs in college. Some were good, some were awful and some were strange. While I was making my bones as a part-time, entry-level copywriter, I also pulled a night shift tending bar in a variety of mostly unpleasant places. I got my mixology certification just shortly after turning 21 and I quickly discovered that even holding a state license doesn't trump experience. Bars have a fairly high turnover rate, but most popular or high-end places won't hire someone for anything better than a barback shift if they don't have a year or two of experience slinging suds and rocks glasses somewhere else. For all the newbies, that first job is almost guaranteed to be somewhere shady.

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In an old New Yorker article Roger Angell wrote a long and exhaustive bit of sophistry about the Martini and its place in American culture. In between name-dropping his stepfather, writer E.B. White, Angell went about tracing the cocktail's iconic stature from its early dominance in the 1950's, to its evolution into the preferred after-work drink of the newly minted suburbanite, to its re-emergence as the drink of the social elite in the 1980's. Angell's article is thought provoking, if not a little ham-fisted in its evocation of cultural stereotypes. The problem is that he never takes the time to ask exactly why this cocktail above all others has such a reputation.

The Martini is one of the oldest cocktails in the world. As such, its exact origin is clouded in as much apocrypha as fact. Like so many drinks it has a variety of tall tales associated with its creation, all involving one remarkable individual, a traveler, or an unassuming saloon.

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 Let's talk about the Daiquiri, one of many special drinks that has gone to the dogs thanks to pre-packaged mixes, unnecessary machines and unprepared bars. Sure, a lot of us think we're familiar with this island-born beauty, but the truth is ugly. Say the word "Daiquiri" and you'll probably conjure an image of some half-frozen sludge that looks like a melted Popsicle and tastes like potpourri. After today, let's hope that changes. The Daiquiri has its origins on the island of Cuba, where it shares the name of a beach and an iron mine. Legend has it that some American sailors put the first batch of it together, but like most cocktail legends this is probably apocryphal. Regardless of who named the thing, liquor augmented with lime juice is as old as the introduction of limes to Western people. English seamen were known to flavor their gin with the vitamin-C richness of lime juice to help stave off scurvy. This became so popular that a British Minister of Medicine named Dr. Gimlet officially endorsed the drink. When Europeans came to the Caribbean Sea, they were introduced to rum and rum was likewise introduced to lime. Why all this talk of lime juice?

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