Shadows of Obsession, An erotic novel that cautions us that sometimes one touch, one taste of undulated ecstasy, or one chance encounter, is all it takes to become the object of someone's affection, or the desire to become someone's obsessional affliction
An erotic psychological thriller that sets the heart racing, and the pulse pounding
An intimate romance that indulges your wildest and illicit fantasies
Ever since the cocktail was a thing, bartenders have relied on a potent product known as Angostura Bitters. This is that stuff usually found in a tiny bottle with an oversized label and a yellow cap that your resident mixologist uses often but in small quantities. Angostura Bitters, like most esoteric cocktail ingredients, began its life as a 19th century tonic used for a wide variety of things it mostly wasn't actually capable of treating. No doctor worth a damn would ever prescribe this stuff for anything these days, but it's still the key ingredient in a lot of awesome drinks. Honestly, these days I'm surprised when my favorite bar doesn't include at least a few drops in a recipe. What a lot of people don't know is that the world very nearly lost this treasure forever.
Back in 2009, the global economic crisis was hitting hard. As bad as things were (and still are) in America and throughout Europe, Caribbean island nations were reduced to day-to-day struggle. The House of Angostura in Trinidad and Tobago very nearly went under. They more or less ceased producing their trademark bitters for around a year, resulting in a world-wide shortage that put a lot of bars and cocktail enthusiasts on edge.
The problem is that there are only a handful of people in the entire world who know the full recipe for Angostura Bitters and they all belong to the House thereof. It's a trade secret more heavily guarded than the chemistry of Coca Cola, one of the last bastions of the classic cocktail arcana. It's such a valuable property that there's no guarantee the recipe would survive the collapse of House Angostura. We almost witnessed such a collapse in our lifetime.
Granted, someone could probably concoct a vague approximation of Angostura Bitters. We know that involves gentian root and vegetable extracts, and government regulation forces the company to tell us exactly how much alcohol is in it, but there's no telling exactly what makes Angostura do the complex backflips of flavor that it does.
So, that brings us to the Trinidad Sour, the cocktail I'm humbly submitting as the most decadent cocktail in the world. Sure, there's probably some bored billionaire who pounds champagne laced with diamond dust, but you can't get that at any proper bar. The Trinidad Sour is well within your trusted barman's resources, though. There's no definitive recipe, just the insistence that it involves a splash of rye whiskey and a full fluid ounce of Angostura Bitters.
Let's put this in perspective. Most cocktails involving bitters of any sort use, at most, six to eight drops of the stuff. That comes out to maybe an eighth to a sixth of an ounce maximum. Drinking a full ounce of bitters seems pointless and masochistic. In the Trinidad Sour, stuff like orgeat syrup (sweet almond syrup with a touch of rose water and citrus) balances the aromatic intensity of Angostura Bitters to create a deceptively smooth cocktail. It's one of the tastiest things you'll ever imbibe and it's made from a liquor that was very recently on the endangered potables list.
Thankfully, House Angostura got back on its feet and has been churning out plenty of their odd tonic over the past year, especially because of the resurgence of classic cocktails. I highly recommend trying a Trinidad Sour for seasoned cocktail drinkers. It's insane on paper but delicious in execution.
If you are a drinker, you are a recreational drug user. This is an idea most drinking cultures have never been able to accept in a healthy way. Those few times in history when alcohol has been treated as an illicit substance, it has been demonized and subjected to damaging myth in lieu of scientific fact. This mostly has to do with the difficulty of forming a culture-wide perception of intoxicating substances that is mature and realistic. We feel the need to classify mind-altering substances in a variety of semantic categories so some can get away with altering minds without being perceived as "evil" or deadly. The danger of classifying alcohol as what it truly is, a psychoactive substance that people consume for the express purpose of enjoying intoxication, is that doing so forces us to approach all psychoactive substances with the same nonchalance with which we approach alcohol.
Herein lies the complexity of the situation. We are a bit too nonchalant about alcohol precisely because it is a drug. We soften the idea of intoxication by labeling it "drunk" instead of "high" or "stoned", even though there is no functional difference between those ideas. We turn the oral consumption of the drug ethanol into a food experience by referring to discreet amounts of it as "drinks" and not "doses", even though one "drink" of whiskey is considerably less in total liquid volume than one "drink" of beer. All culture and stigma removed, the difference between beer, wine and whiskey is functionally identical to the difference between Vicodin, Vicodin ES and Vicodin HP (5 mg, 7.5 mg and 10 mg of hydrocodone, respectively). As with any other drug, the effects of alcohol can intensify or change, as well as the prevalence and intensity of side effects, depending on the dosage of the active substance and the accompanying contents of other substances, such as water, sugar and caffeine.
Ah, but we can't really treat alcohol like a drug because in our culture, many drugs are tightly controlled. We need prescriptions from doctors for specific substances, we need to visit pharmacies and fill out forms, we need special permission to get refills and we're given detailed instructions about proper use. Even though the duration and intensity of the high produced by five fluid ounces of ethanol is comparable to the high produced by 15 mg of hydrocodone, the former is vended in grocery stores to anyone over the age of 21 in possession of a valid ID while the latter is vended in pharmacies behind several layers of security to only those in possession of a valid prescription.
The real difficulty of promoting this argument is that neither the ease of acquiring alcohol nor the inconvenience of acquiring other, equally dangerous, intoxicating substances are a truly superior social model. The difference between alcohol, prescription medication and even illegal substances is that society has learned to deal with the ubiquity of alcohol and the stoned people it creates. All drinking cultures have long been acclimatized to the presence of those under the influence of a particular drug, so much so that few people even think of alcohol as a drug. It'll be a long time before society at large comes to accept the presence of the ever-expanding variety of drugs flowing through the collective system, legally or otherwise, so it remains the responsibility of the individual to be honest about what alcohol truly is. It's a recreational drug, a medication with a number of applications that is available in various doses and methods of delivery. It's not food, it's not evil and it's not more or less dangerous than any other drug.
America is a young country. We forget this sometimes, especially those of us who are riding the strange, aimless ship that is this star-spangled nation. We don't have castles (not real ones) and we don't have anything but trees that are properly ancient. Nothing we do here has been going on for more than a few centuries, which is pocket change time for the rest of the world, especially on the other side of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Our attempts at culture and refinement must look quaint to those who can casually walk the streets and hills of regions that have already seen a handful of empires come and go, that have been growing produce and flowers since before America was a glimmer in the tea-stained teeth of a British colonist. All told, we've been making wine in the United States for all of 70 years, give or take, and our soil is just now starting to yield the right levels of nutrients to produce respectable stuff. For a very long time the wine that came out of the much-revered (and let's face it, overrated) Napa Valley of California was considered cut-rate swill. It's what people bought for formal events they didn't care about, what the misers of the family brought to the reunion. Guys like the Gallo Brothers made a small fortune on the cheap stuff, but before long some proper wine crafters started working on barrels of palatable potables. These days, California, Oregon and Washington make some damn decent wine, but this has led to a certain degree of snobbery about the stuff. I think we Americans need to adjust our perceptions.
Wine is old. It's one of the oldest cultured products of our adventurous species. The earliest evidence we have of wine production dates back to around 8000 BCE around the Black Sea region, which remains a robust wine-producing locale, as well as for cognac. Let us consider what 8000 BCE looked like. This is an era before the majority of recorded history, when the concept of cities was novel and written law was a futuristic innovation. Plainly, people have been drinking wine since we were three hairs short of chimpanzees.
That's why it's so baffling that wine has become a thing of elitism as of late. Sure, there have always been preferred vintages that go for more money than the simple stuff the commoners drink, but this has become especially pronounced in the past few decades. Somehow, especially in America, the divide between rich and poor was drawn in two, long dribbles of pricey Pinot Noir and Carlo Rossi. High-end wine and "the cheap stuff" have been put in two dramatically different categories, resulting in a downright classist perspective on what people drink. This is absurd because the majority of affordable wines (in the 5-12 dollar range) are perfectly acceptable compared to the ultra-cheap poison that gets sold in boxes and jugs.
Really, wine ought to reclaim its place as the universal drink of revelry after a few interminable American decades as a signifier of wealth. This really is a problem for the culture of the United States, too. Europeans and those few Asian countries that haven't ignored or forbidden wine understand that there's a spectrum in viticulture, as with all things. There's table wine, the stuff you drink with your sandwich at lunch. It's not complex and you don't have to let it swim around on your palate so you can pick out the notes of lavender and sea air, or whatever the hell wine snobs look for in their fermented grape juice. Wine is the food/drug we consume as a reminder that we're alive, and most of life takes place in the mundane, not the spectacular.
So, it's my recommendation that Americans learn to drink wine as if it's the ancient, universal libation it truly is. There's nothing wrong with marveling at the complexity of a symphonic Bordeaux or lingering in the sharp power of a Carneros vintage, but there's also no reason to dismiss the simple pleasure of a cheap, local bottle at dinner on a Wednesday.
As a lush I try to advise my friends against doing things with alcohol that will make them miserable the next day. I attempt to dissuade them from mixing drinks that will compete with one another, pounding cocktails with high sugar content and going through a night of partying on an empty stomach. But that's the rub with drunk people: They don't listen. We all have nights when we do ill-advised things, no matter how practiced we are at the art of drinking. That's why it's important to have a plan for those likely, though not inevitable, hangovers. Here's my loose collection of best practices for recovering from a night of liver abuse.
1. Hair of the Dog is a Terrible Idea
Treating low-level alcohol poisoning and dehydration (which is what a hangover really is) with more alcohol is a recipe for two things which do not always occur together but are not mutually exclusive: Alcoholism and vomiting. The latter is more likely, especially if you down fool concoctions like Beer and Tomato Juice or anything with a freaking raw egg in it. Even the classic Bloody Mary won't make you feel any better, it'll just further dehydrate you and put long-term stress on your organs. Don't be an idiot. Steer clear of booze when you're hung-over.
2. Trust Your Cravings
Some folks will tell you that you'll want to eat greasy food with a hangover. Others will recommend mild, bland things like oatmeal. Everybody's got a different idea of proper hangover food because everybody craves something different when they've got one. Listen to your body on that brutal day after. If it wants a cheap burger from the stand down the street, that's what's for lunch. If it wants a bowl of grapes, then Concords it is. You'll be functioning at a lower level than usual, so it's better to go for instincts over intellect.
3. Electrolytes=Friends
Water is all fine and dandy. In fact, if you were smart you would have had a few tall glasses of the stuff before you went to sleep after drinking. But water is only one part of hydration. You're going to need electrolytes, those chemicals that facilitate the transfer of fluids in and out of your body's cells, to make that water count. Just chugging a gallon of H2O isn't going to fix your hangover. You're going to want to go after three of the easier-to-find electrolytes: Sodium, Calcium and Potassium. This is why breakfast is important. Sodium, most commonly found in table salt, goes with everything and can be found in sports drinks, though you'll want to be careful with the Gatorade because of the sugars. Calcium is most easily consumed through milk and is usually added to milk substitutes like soy or nut milk. For Potassium, a banana should do the trick.
4. Bed Rest
There's no magic in treating a hangover. You abused your body, so now you need to let it recover. Sleep in, take a midday nap and avoid strenuous activity if at all possible.
5. A Shower and Fresh Clothes
This one is mostly for psychological benefit, but there's something about shedding the grime of the night before that makes the road to recovery a lot smoother. If nothing else, being clean will reduce your level of stress and discomfort, which should allow your body to address more pressing issues like over-worked kidneys and imbalanced stomach lining.
A long time ago in the very first city, a walled outcropping of stone long lost to history, someone had the bright idea to start selling alcohol out of a particular building. This was the first bar. Then, somewhere else in the city, somebody else had the same idea and opened up the second bar. People either went to one or the other, whether by proximity or preference, and it went this way for a long time. Then, on a particularly inspired night, a patron at one of the bars convinced his friends to walk with him to the other. This was the first bar crawl. Since then, it has been a time-honored tradition that has transcended culture to make a night of going from one alcohol-serving establishment to another in search of, if nothing else, variety. It is an understatement to say that many mistakes have been made throughout history in this practice. Don't make the mistakes of your forebears. Follow these rules to have a safe, satisfying bar crawl experience.
1. Don't Crawl Blind
Not all bars are created equal. These days, liquor vendors vary greatly in price, atmosphere, clientele and products served, so going in without a plan of attack can lead to some confusion and ugliness. At least one participant in the bar crawl should know the city well enough to navigate the party toward the right establishments and far, far away from the wrong ones. Which leads us to the necessity of...
2. Choosing The Right Places
Do not include your favorite bar in your crawl. Do not include your second-favorite. Hell, make a list of your top ten favorite bars in the city and then do everything you can to avoid them on the night of the crawl because you absolutely don't want to drag places that respect you into what is practically guaranteed to be a less than respectable night. Go to bars you've never been to before, go to dives you don't care about, even throw in a bar you absolutely hate so nothing will be lost if your drunk, wandering behavior gets you thrown out.
3. Travel With Trust
You may have a lot of people you like to drink with, but that doesn't mean you have a lot of people you should trust in a crawl. The party needs to be composed of (mostly) trustworthy folks who can rely on one another to keep the whole group safe. Remember, you're not just wiling away the night in the confines of a single, stable atmosphere, you're venturing out into the night in progressively deeper states of drunkenness. The last thing you want is a leak in the boat. Also, don't bring a date. They'll want to spend more time with you than with your friends, which will force you to choose between them.
4. Stick To One Drink
Just because you're looking for variety in people and places doesn't mean you should be looking for variety in libations. Your ideas are bound to get worse as the night draws on, so do your stomach and your friends' shoes a favor by choosing a drink you like and committing to it for the duration.
5. For Heaven's Sake, Eat Something
It doesn't matter when, just that you put something other than alcohol in your stomach some time over the course of the crawl. At the end is usually the best time, as it's clear by that point who's going to get sick and who's going to handle their stuff. Find an all-night diner, an after hours pizza place or even just a convenient hotdog stand and let the party decompress around the timeless satisfaction of comfort food.
I love tables. Big, high tables packed tight with chairs, round or square, it doesn't matter. Tables are amazing because they're socially brutal. Consider this, for a moment: A table is a setup that forces a person to face one direction for however long he or she sits, often staring directly at another person who is also forced to face in one direction. Turning away from whomever one is facing just results in making eye contact with a different, similarly stranded person. Isn't that a delightful arrangement? Seriously, people being nailed down, unable to make decent excuses to run away, compelled by the fear of supreme awkwardness to pursue conversation. This is why tables are some of the most honest places in society. Try as one might, personal affectations and little gestures of etiquette can't help but fail under such constant pressure. People sitting around a table for an extended period of time put their true character on display, whether they like it or not. Thus why liquor and wine come in large bottles.
Though I do genuinely love the ego-crushing power of a sober table, there's even more value in a well lubricated one. All good dinner parties devolve into a group of people leaning elbows-first on a stained tablecloth with wine pouring like intermittent storms. Yes, wine really is the best drink for this scenario because no one, not a single person in human history, can control wine. Unlike liquor, which is potent and easy to doll out in doses like medicine, and beer, which takes up enough space in the stomach to have very real volumetric limits, wine is too much like food to be totally understood. It both intertwines with appetite and tempts independent of it. Wine gets people drunk slowly but steadily, the sharp spikes and sudden mood swings of harder stuff almost entirely absent from the gradual descent into sentimentality and confession.
And that's the core of wine around a table. There is nothing in this world more cathartic than telling the truth, especially when you've been keeping it pent up for a long time. That's why the Romans had their saying about truth and wine. As the alcohol inhibits the speed of thought and the nerves cease to process the full extent of pain, wine soothes the mood with the assurance that the body is well fed, warm and maybe, in some roundabout way, prosperous. Thoughts our sober minds work hard to smother start requiring more effort than we're willing to make to shackle. With softened, sweetened and unleashed tongues, we let ourselves say those things we'd never say in the psychological shell of sobriety.
But it's the table that makes it so damn good. That social pressure, being forced to make eye contact with others, drives us to drink, but the drinking drives us to confess the truth. After so many bottles get uncorked, everyone has already lost their pretenses to the constant scrutiny of the table. In a perfect storm of defense mechanism dissolve, the wine-drunk folks around the table are more themselves than they'll ever be otherwise.
And yes, tomorrow when that sugar-and-sulfide headache blooms and the recollection of all those confessions breaks through the haze, there will be regret. But it's too late, right? Confessions, like wine, can't be put back in the bottle once past the lips. Try and you'll just embarrass yourself and make a mess.
To serve 6 single drinks you will need (if you need more than 6 just double or triple everything):
1 bottle of Champagne (the cheap stuff is just fine)
1 can orange juice concentrate (pulp? no pulp? you decide!)
2 - 3 cups tequila to taste (you are so going to be taking off your top tonight!)
Lemon slices (not wedges) to garnish
To prepare: mix all of the ingredients together in a punch bowl or pitchers, serve chilled. Enjoy!
There's a reason we all love James Bond. It's not because he can get any woman he wants (except, apparently, Miss Moneypenny). It's not because he's deadly accurate with a gun smaller than the average adult hand. It's not even because he has an exciting, important job. We love Bond because the man has class in his blood. He has impeccable taste and manages to be nonchalant about it rather than pretentious. 007 sees the finer things of life as matters of aptitude and engagement, not as mere indulgences for the moneyed people of the world. Though his love of the vodka martini was powerful enough to make Smirnoff a household name, the first drink Bond put his heart into was far more complicated and, for anyone who has ever tasted one, far more satisfying. That drink is the Vesper, a cocktail that deserves more attention for its divine flavor, crisp character and astute use of a once-neglected, now resurgent ingredient.
The Vesper has the soul of a martini, insofar as it gets the majority of its punch from a body of clear liquor. The unique thing about it is that it doesn't favor gin or vodka, but asks them to play together in an elegant, intuitive way. The proportions, according to Bond and any modern bartender worth his salt, involves three parts strong gin to one part strong vodka.
Let's take a moment to explicate the meaning of “strong” versus modern liquor. Classically (re: prior to the 1990's when many popular brands of liquor went through a process of reformulation to appeal to a larger customer base), hard liquor occupied a range of 94-105 proof, giving them a slightly sharper sting than we're used to in the 84 proof days of the 21st century. That said, it's no problem to get high proof liquor these days. Though Bond in the movies preferred Smirnoff, in 2011 Stolichnaya makes a better 100 proof vodka. As for gin, be careful of today's standards. Bombay Sapphire, delicious as it is, has been knocked down to a paltry 80 proof. Best to stick with a sharper London Dry like Booth's, though look into your local distillers. There's been a clear spirits boom as of late.
So, why does the Vesper need higher proof liquor? Well, because the other key ingredient, Lillet, softens the drink considerably. The gin brings a lot of flavor to the Vesper while the vodka is meant to increase the bite as it simultaneously mellowing the gin and Lillet, which are both potent on the tongue. The Lillet itself should be used in much the same way as vermouth is used in a modern martini, only with more enthusiasm (meaning in larger proportions, about a quarter ounce at least). That said, the original recipe calls for Kina Lillet, another spirit that has been tampered with since Casino Royale first hit bookshelves. Today, it's best to stick with the more citrus-like and easier to find Lillet Blanc and augment it with a few drops of Angostura bitters to capture that old-fashioned aromatic flavor.
Lastly, the large lemon peel garnish is essential to the Vesper. It's not there just to look pretty. The flavor people associate with lemon is as much in the zest and rind as in the pulp and juice. That peel will make the Vesper considerably more refreshing and it will anchor those sharp top notes with a full-mouth brightness much in the same way as a summer martini with a twist will.
The Vesper is a glorious cocktail that eschews the overly sweet tendencies of the average 21st century mix bar. It doesn't kick quite like a martini but it doesn't go down like liquid candy, either. If ever there was a drink primed to be a go-to favorite, the Vesper is it.
When it comes to potables, I'm not a classicist. Wine, liquor, beer and the cocktails we make with them have only been improved with augmented recipes and more informed sensibilities. It was this lack of reverence that changed the Martini from the sour, vermouth-heavy concoction it was in the early 1900's to the crisp, subtle bar standard it is today. It's what transformed scotch from the mediciney rot-gut it was in the 1800's to the pinnacle of craftsmanship it became in the 20th century. Innovation is also what rescued beer from the one-note swill it had been for thousands of years and allowed it become a modern delight of variety and regional flare. That's why I'm not too keen on keeping sangria as close to the classic recipe as possible. Truth is, sangria can be either wonderful or awful and I happen to believe that it's at its best when the recipe gets fiddled with.
First, let's talk about the all-important wine base. My sangria recipe forgoes Spanish wine altogether because, frankly, I don't think it has the right characteristics for the drink. Spanish wine is bold, sharp and about as subtle as a howler monkey. It doesn't dance with other flavor notes because it has no other flavor notes itself, at least when compared to other European wines. It has the roughness of Argentine wine and one-dimensional character of Australian wine. Hitting it with fruit and other flavor agents is pointless because those flavors never really combine.
That said, really complex wine like the French love to make and the full, robust wine that comes out of Italy don't fit the bill, either. For my preferred sangria base, we have to look at the bottom of the Italian shelf. That's where we'll find Lambrusco, the stuff that has been Italy's high-yield table wine since Ancient Rome. Lambrusco is perfect for sangria because it has a slight fizz to it, the alcohol notes are barely noticeable and even its dry varieties are open to fruit flavors. In essence, it's cheap stuff that embraces its cheapness instead of trying (and failing) to be fancy.
Making sangria with bottled fruit juice is a crime, which is where my recipe and the classic recipe agree. As for what fruit to use, my mix prefers the hearty to the tropical. Skip the pineapple, the berries and the stone fruit. They'll all bring too much of their own flavor to the party. Orange, apple, pear and some kind of melon or even mango make for a refreshing but not overpowering mix.
When it comes to the sweetener, I prefer to go natural. Honey is perfect because it brings a distinct, full-mouth flavor without being cloying or sharp. Think of it this way: People eat spoonfuls of honey but not spoonfuls of sugar or simple syrup. It's an even-spreading taste. Also, honey dissolves in cold liquid, unlike sugar.
I'm also not too keen on hitting sangria with a lot of spice. It's not mulled wine. It's supposed to be refreshing. A little vanilla bean, some lemon zest and maybe a tiny amount of ground ginger should do the trick.
All of the above steeped and chilled overnight should suffice, though for a little extra punch feel free to add a small amount of decent brandy to the mix. It shouldn't impart that much flavor but it will raise the alcohol content, if that's what you're aiming for. It's not the traditional recipe but it's also not a crazy derivative. I just think it makes more sense and tastes better.
