BOOZE

Cocktails

Easy mixers

Petronella Wyatt

THE first time I saw a cocktail was in a grainy version of the film The Thin Man with the fiber-urbane William Powell. Pow- ell, as private detective Nick Charles, was standing at a slippery-shiny chrome bar and telling the man behind it how to mix drinks. A Manhattan, he said, must be shaken to foxtrot time; a dry martini to waltz time. He then proceeded to drink five, while tossing off wisecracks as thy as the martinis.

From then on, cocktails were associated in my mind with sartorial elegance and witty remarks. While wine tended to induce a coarse and lurching sort of drunkenness, a mixture of gin and vermouth appeared to concentrate the mind. As Robert Benchley quipped, 'Let's get out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini.' Cocktails were about aphorisms and glamour; about dancing chic- to-chic in nightclubs with polished floors.

Once every few years someone says that a cocktail revival is on the way. We are going through such a time now, with hotel bars in the West End of London offering cocktail happy hours. But the truth is that, apart from the egaliterian beer-swilling Seventies, there has always been a cocktail revival. Not everyone has been aware of it, but we afi- cionados have kept the flame burning.

Mixed drinks have existed since the time of the Greeks, who invented retsina by mix- ing wine with resin. Spiced wines and those with other ingredients were known long before spirits came to Europe. In Britain, drinks were being mixed as early as the 14th century, when ale was combined with mead and called 'a bragget'.

The mint-julep was first made in 18th- century Virginia. Mint sprigs were put into rum or brandy and served as morning eye- openers. The word 'cocktail' — meaning a horse with a cocked tail; that is, one cut short and made to stick up like a cock's tail — appeared in the first decade of the 19th century. Apparently, rooster tails were used to stir the drinks served to gamblers on the Mississippi.

The first appearance of the word in print has been attributed to a newspaper in Hud- son, New York, which in 1806 described the cocktail as 'a stimulating liquor composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water and bitters'. Victorians knew about cocktails, imbibing

NOW FOR THE GOOD BOOZE

Gum Ticklers and Corpse Revivers — a mixture of brandy, calvados and sweet ver- mouth. In 1851 the first cocktail bar was opened at Gore House, near Hyde Park, in London.

An American barman, Jerry Thomas, pro- duced the first book of cocktail recipes in the 1860s. A decade later someone invented the dry martini, arguably the greatest of all mixed drinks. H.L. Mencken said that the martini was the 'only American invention as perfect as the sonnet'. Soon the clear, cold, diamond liquid was exciting the imagina- tion. The first literary reference to a martini was in a short story of 1896: One of the jeunesse dor& tipped his chair back as indication that he had retired from the argument and, as he sipped his martini, a faraway look came into his baby-blue eyes.

The cocktail hour became a compulsory rite during Prohibition when a great deal of creative thinking was devoted to inventing new and imaginative ways of making what alcohol could be found into something drinkable. Demon alcohol could be mixed with, and disguised by, more innocent ingredients. The writer Diana Trilling, recalling her courtship with Lionel Trilling in 1929, said, 'Neither of us was entirely sober when we were together.' Their romance was lubricated with Brandy Alexanders (creme de cacao, brandy and double cream).

Alec Waugh claimed to have invented the cocktail party in 1924, when he invited guests over for tea and instead served them a rum punch mixed by a friend visit- ing from New York. One of my favourite cocktails (also the favourite of the late Ian Gow), the White Lady, was created in 1925 at Harry's American Bar in Paris. It is drunk repeatedly in Molly Keane's nov- els as, exhausted by the day's exertions, her characters recharge for the exertions of the night.

The white lady is a miraculous drink; not a Baccarat crystal like the martini, but the palest of opals. It is made from gin, Coin- treau and lemon juice. The greatest heresy is to use not freshly squeezed juice but a concentrate, or, worse, a cordial out of a bottle. Even expensive hotel bars some- times do this. The results might as well be thrown out. The lemon juice must be pure to take the sweetness from the Cointreau. Some people add beaten egg-white, but this is gilding the jewel.

But, ah, the martini. It is shocking how many London restaurants can't grasp the principle of the drink. One asks for a dry martini and is given a tumbler of sweet ver- mouth. I have never much liked vodka martinis either. The base ingredient has to be gin, the way Truman served a martini to Khrushchev, who remarked that it was 'the USA's secret weapon'. There is no point to a martini if you can taste the vermouth. Some recipes suggest a drop of vermouth, but even that is too much. The best way to do it is pour a tea- spoonful over some ice, drain the ice and then use it in the shaker with the gin. Churchill liked his martini so dry that it is said he didn't actually use the bottle of ver- mouth, but merely glanced at it. As for accoutrements such as olives and onions, these are desecration. A twist of lemon rubbed around the rim of a glass that has been in the freezer is all the adornment this drink requires.

As winter draws in, it is worth mentioning warmed cocktails. Hot buttered rum is a delicious final chapter to a November evening. Made from dark rum, cinnamon sticks, cloves, nutmeg, cider and butter, it has been around since the beginning of the 19th century. A Hot Toddy is a variation using whisky and lemon. Two more good winter cocktails are the Americano and the Manhattan. The first has sweet vermouth and Campari and the second, sweet ver- mouth and whisky. Cocktails are seasonal: a character in Salinger is horrified when a man drinks a Tom Collins during December.

But wait: last but elite is the champagne cocktail that can be made from any cheap champagne, brandy, bitters and a lump of brown sugar. Just remember that a piece of ice ruins a neat drink and the most vital piece of equipment, after the shaker, is a strainer with a coil spring.

Champagne Cocktail 1 cube brown sugar 2 dashes bitters 1 ounce brandy chilled champagne twist of orange peel

Place the sugar lump in the champagne glass and add the bitters. Pour the brandy in, then fill up the glass with the cham- pagne. Twist orange peel over the top.

Corpse Reviver 1/4 ounce sweet vermouth '/,ounce Calvados 1/4 ounce brandy

Stir well over ice cubes in a mixing glass. Strain into a cocktail glass and serve with a glass of ice water.

White Lady

lY 2 ounces gin

1Y, ounces Cointreau 1 ounce lemon juice

Pour all the ingredients into a shaker full of ice and give it a really good shake until the outside of the shaker becomes frosted. Serve in a cocktail glass.