By Edward Washington
Photography by Steve Brown and Rob Palmer
Photo credits: seattlefoodgeek.com
Name: Murray Stenson, Zig Zag Café (Seattle)
Cocktail: The Last Word (c1920s/ 2004)
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Recipe: 20ml gin, 20ml maraschino liqueur, 20 Green Chartreuse, 20ml fresh lime juice. Shake and strain into a chilled coup.
When Murray Stenson (Seattle’s own, George Clooney) pulled this recipe out of Ted Saucier’s 1951 Bottoms Up! he hadn’t given a thought that he was recreating a legend. “The Zig Zag Café was one of the few bars that stocked both Green Chartreuse and maraschino liqueur,” Stenson told Bartender for this month’s Trend feature. “I sampled The Last Word to customers with success and it sold well for two years when cocktail consultant Ryan Magarian took it to New York [and] it exploded.”
“I don’t believe Seattle has a definitive cocktail, yet. We are lucky to have an adventuresome drinking public. While the Last Word helped put Seattle on the cocktail map, I think we are still finding our way.” Murray Stenson, re-creator of The Last Word
Not everyone was quick to jump on the bandwagon however and ironically, according to Stenson, the Detroit Athletic Club (where the drink had originated in the 20s thanks to a man named Frank Fogarty) only caught on again about two years ago. Tan Vihn, of the Seattle Times, has covered the rise and rise of Stenson and The Last Word cocktail and spoke to Bartender about the contemporary impact of the drink. “When the Last Word came out, drinkers in Seattle, like most cities, were just drinking margaritas and Martinis. The Last Word was like a punch in the face. No one ever tasted anything like it.” Vihn attributes its popularity to the lack of a ‘craft cocktail scene’ at the time, and so The Last Word sort of revolutionised the landscape. “You either hate it or you love it – but you talked about it,” Vihn explained.
“Remember this was before the Twitter and Facebook craze, so its popularity was just word of mouth, not social media. This makes its popularity even more impressive.” So here’s to Stenson and his stroke of genius.
Name: Ada Coleman, American Bar (Savoy Hotel, London)
Cocktail: Hanky Panky (c1920s)
Recipe: 45ml gin, 45ml sweet vermouth, 2 dash Fernet Branca. Shake well with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with orange peel.
Ada Colemen was the first female head bartender at the iconic American Bar (Savoy Hotel, London) whose legend lives in the Hanky Panky cocktail. She is said to have taken a job at The Savoy in 1903 thanks to a close family friend, Rupert d’Oyly Carte, who was the hotel’s chairman. Colemen stayed until 1924 by which time she had become something of a certified bartending celebrity and created, among other concoctions, the Hanky Panky, for the actor Charles Hawtrey.
In 1925 she explained to a newspaper how the cocktail came to be. “Hawtrey was one of the best cocktail judges that I knew and came into the bar [some year’s ago] when he was overworking and said, ‘Coley I am tired. Give me something with a bit of punch in it.’ I spent hours experimenting until I had invented a new cocktail and the next time he came in I told him I had a new drink for him. He sipped it, drained the glass, and said, ‘By Jove! That is a real hanky-panky. And Hanky-Panky it has been called ever since.“
The cocktail is something of a variation on a sweet Martini, save for Coley’s fateful addition of Fernet Branca which has helped to immortalise its place in cocktail lore. Simple and elegant this is certainly not a girly drink, although it has all the grace and elegance that the creator would certainly have had.
Name: Count Camillo Negroni, Caffe Casoni (Milan)
Cocktail: Negroni (c1919)
Recipe: 30ml of each gin, Campari and sweet vermouth. Add to a mixing glass and stir over ice. Pour into a heavy Old-Fashioned glass. Garnish with an orange twist.
The word on this drink is that Count Camillo Negroni, fresh perhaps from a rodeo jaunt in the USA, by way of gin-enthused London, returned to Italy and asked Fosco Scarselli (who worked at Caffe Casoni) to substitute gin into his Americano cocktail thus giving it powerful edge worthy of a man who rode bulls for fun. Today, this equally proportioned concoction is by far and away a stalwart drink for bartenders.
But what is the attraction? Perhaps it’s the challenging flavour of the drink, what with its strong kick (from the gin), its noticeably bitter taste (from the Campari) and the harmonious marriage of these two with some sweet vermouth. Bartenders love to drink cocktails that others might find a bit challenging. It puts them into an elite group, one that is only accessible if you’ve spent years behind the bar, ‘know your stuff’ and drink shots of bitters to prove it – accomplished ‘peer-reviewed’ bar keeps are the haut-tipplers of the contemporary world if you will. If it’s not the taste of the drink that draws them, then it’s certainly the simplicity and challenge in creating one. Any patron that actually orders a Negroni is probably a well-seasoned drinker so they’ll know a good one, and tell you if it’s not.
Name: Hugo Ensslin, Hotel Wallick (New York)
Cocktail: The Aviation (c1916)
Recipe: 50ml gin, 20ml lemon juice, 2 dash maraschino liqueur, 2 dash Crème de Violette. Shake with ice in a shaker and strain into a Martini glass.
This cocktail is a ripper and not just because of the significance it has had as a classic, but because of the period in which it was created. Hugo Ensslin, the bartender to whom it is attributed, was a German born American living in New York during the First World War. Aside from a small volunteer force the USA was not yet involved in Europe’s conflict, however German-Americans were feeling the wrath of anti-German sentiment. Some were prosecuted, many were placed ‘under suspicion’, and one unfortunate fellow was lynched in 1918 for unpatriotic remarks. Americans, we know, are prone to patriotic reactions and they took to them with pride. Sauerkraut was renamed ‘liberty cabbage’, streets with German names were changed, newspapers published anti-German propaganda (and the names of German-American ‘aliens’) and German measles became, you guessed it, ‘liberty measles’. Ok I’ll be fair all European orientated nations reacted similarly, so how did the zeitgeist in NYC affect Hugo? That’s going to be tough to find out as he has not left behind much of a CV*, save for his self-published Recipes for Mixed Drinks released in 1916.
The book apparently did not set any records as a literary best seller, perhaps one of the reasons that Ensslin’s Aviation later appeared in Harry Craddocks Savoy Cocktail Book (1930), with slight changes to the drinks and no credits for Ensslin. It does show that Ensslin had a firm grasp of the mixology business and how to put together a finely balanced cocktail, especially when it came to the light dash of crème de violette (Craddock omitted this). In 1916 aviation was perhaps the most exciting thing since, well, the Wright brothers had cracked the rudiments of flight. Continental Europe was awash with fighter aircraft and a portion of the American war volunteers in France flew were fighting with the Lafayette Escadrille squadron – a French fighter squadron. Their exploits certainly captured the attention and imagination of the American public, so the Aviation cocktail might have been a smart way for Ensslin to tap into their wallets and avoid too much scrutiny.
*As ever, David Wondrich has found a worthy mention of an ‘aviation’ cocktail buried in the American paper press which pre-dates Ensslin’s book. A 1911 edition of The Knickerbocker Press casually noted, “The ‘aviation cocktail’ is the latest.” It gives scant detail to any inventor or bar that served it.
Name: Salvatore Calabrese, Liberty Bar (Lanesborough Hotel, London)
Cocktail: Breakfast Martini (c2000)
Recipe: 50ml gin, 15ml Cointreau, 15ml fresh lemon juice, 1tsp medium slice orange marmalade. Add ingredients to a shaker and stir together to combine marmalade. Add ice and shake hard. Strain into a chilled coupe and garnish with orange twist.
Well known as ‘The Maestro’, Salvatore Calabrese is a veritable cocktail aficionado with flair, style and grace. Gary Regan once described him as ‘the bartender’s bartender,’ perhaps bestowing him a compliment to which there is no higher praise. Calabrese has done much the contemporary memory of our cocktail histories, for example he recently hosted a unique and audacious cocktail evening at his venue The Playboy Club which saw some of the best known classic cocktails recreated using spirits from the 18th and 19th century. In order to ensure the accuracy of the drinks Calabrese had the recipes read from a first edition copy of Jerry Thomas’ cocktail book The Bartender’s Guide etc.
Not just satisfied with recreating the cocktails that have passed before him, the Maestro is well known for his iconic Breakfast Martini – a delicious mix of orange marmalade, gin and lemon juice. Harry Craddock’s Savoy Cocktail Book lists a Marmalade Cocktail among its pages, although he wasn’t as daring as Calabrese and suggested it be served as a ‘luncheon aperitif’, not at breakfast. Calabrese calls for a rich, quality orange marmalade in his – the use of which he credits to his wife’s insistence that he had marmalade on toast one morning for breakfast.
Name: Albert Edward, The Prince of Wales
Cocktail: The Prince of Wales (c1880s)
Recipe: 45ml straight rye whiskey, dash maraschino liqueur, dash Angostura bitters, 1 tsp castor sugar, 1 piece fresh pineapple, 30ml brut NV Champagne. Muddle pineapple in shaker, add ingredients (excluding Champagne), shake and strain into coup. Sabre the neck of a Champagne magnum and liberally add to your drink.
When you look at the life and times of this future King of England it is not a hard stretch to think that Albert Edward should have actually created a dozen lasting tipples, let alone the one that bears his name. He was well endowed with wit, charm and effervescent sociability – traits that held him well on his many official duties. The trouble was that his Queen mother was as persistent in remaining on the thrown as a leech on an artery. She also blamed him for the death of his father – who died after visiting his son to bollock him for hiding a well-known female actress in his tent whilst out with the army, so perhaps it was her definitive mindset that Edward was a disaster that saw the old girl hang on for so long. “I never can, or shall, look at him without a shudder,” said Queen Victoria in 1862, of her son.
With naught to do but while away the time, marry a Danish princess and propagate numerous affairs, old Berty took to the bottle. Not as a rambling drunk mind you, but as something of a cocktailian. David Wondrich gives a great account of the prince’s flair, in Imbibe! proposing the man “probably sabered the top off magnum[s] of Mumm and hosed it about with gayish abandon,” rather than using the more subtle Champagne tap or screw. He also took off on royal jaunts loaded with liquor, wine and soda water, so he knew a thing or two about how to win friends and influence people. Wondrich also makes a note of a meeting between one sir Jerry Thomas and the Prince of Wales in New York during the 1860s. The liaison, he admits, is “possible” bar the lack of empirical records so it’s worth digging up (p.27 Imbibe!). The cocktail shown here – a good example of an Improved Whiskey Cocktail – was first published in 1901. It apparently had quite a reputation at the Prince’s social club, at which, no doubt, he would have stood the bar a few rounds on the royal funds.
Name: James Bond, Casino Royale (France)
Cocktail: Vesper (c1950s)
Recipe: 3 parts gin, 1 part vodka, dash Kina Lillet and lemon peel for garnish. Add to a shaker, shake until it’s a cold as Bond’s heart and strain into a Martini glass.
It’s probably the “shaken not stirred” phrase that’s most associated with Bond, James Bond. 007. Licence to kill. But his other cocktail creation, and one first noted in the 1953 book Casino Royale is the Vesper – a heady mix of three parts gin, one part vodka, dash of Kina Lillet and lemon peel. Ian Flemming wrote the book, but apparently attributes either the cocktail, the name ,or both, to his friend Ivar Bryce. Nevertheless, the Vesper cocktail actually didn’t appear in a Bond film until the 2006 production featuring Daniel Craig (when he ordered it at the famed Casino Royale). The cocktail’s name comes later, Bond simply tells the waiter the proportions, and in the original book Bond states that he’s planning on patenting the drink when he can think of a suitable name.
Not surprisingly 007 finally named it after a strikingly beautiful lady called Vesper Lynd, played by Eva Green (the only redeeming feature of this poorly produced Bond film in my opinion). Long story short Bond’s heart is later crushed when Vesper turns out to be a double agent and in a surprise twist kills herself declaring her love for him and begging forgiveness. Not surprisingly, Bond finds ‘Vesper’ a touchy subject going forward (remember the 2006 movie was supposed to be the first one) avoiding memories of her as well as anything else that might jolt him to remember his love lost. So it’s goodbye to the Vesper cocktail from then on and he drinks an assortment of concoctions throughout his long career including: Scotch & sodas, vodka tonics, Americanos, gin and vodka Martinis, Old Fashioneds, Stingers, Mojitos and a Mint Julep in Goldfinger.
