Boozehound (5 page)

½ teaspoon absinthe

1 dash angostura bitters

Fill a mixing glass halfway with ice. Add the cognac, Dubonnet, absinthe, and bitters. Stir vigorously, and then strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

So what exactly is Dubonnet? Obscure spirits become obscure for many obscure reasons. But there may be no bottle more enigmatic than this fortified wine. Its strange journey from popularity to obscurity begins with malaria; involves the French Foreign Legion, the Queen of England, and Pia Zadora; and ends with it languishing on the dusty bottom shelves of your local liquor store, usually next to the vermouth.

Luckily for us, malaria hasn’t been endemic in the United States in decades. If it were, we might be better acquainted with Dubonnet and its category of wine-and-cinchona-bark-based aperitifs called
quinquinas
. Long before the days of modern medicine, a cinchona bark extract called quinine was the only weapon against the deadly mosquito-borne parasite that caused malaria. And so, by the nineteenth century, pharmacists were continually mixing up ways to mask the bitter taste of quinine in a drink. British colonials began drinking gin mixed with quinine-rich tonic water in South Asia and Africa for prophylactic reasons.

During the French conquest of North Africa in the 1830s, the government offered incentives to anyone who could create a recipe that would help make quinine more palatable to the soldiers. Not long afterward, Dubonnet was born, created in 1846 by a Parisian chemist named Joseph Dubonnet. Its “infusion of sensual flavors” (according to the bottle) “won world-wide acclaim after Madame Dubonnet began serving it to family and friends.” An image of Madame’s cat remains the brand’s logo. Dubonnet’s distinct port-like flavor is spiced with cinnamon, coffee beans, citrus peel, and herbs (a secret formula, of course), but the quinine is what creates its slightly bitter edge.

Dubonnet reportedly is a preferred tipple of Queen Elizabeth II and was favored by the late Queen Mother. “I think that I will take two small bottles of Dubonnet and gin with me this morning, in case it is needed,” the Queen Mother once wrote to her butler in preparation for an outdoor lunch (this handwritten note was sold at auction for £16,000).

Dubonnet even had a sort of moment in the late 1970s and early 1980s when Pia Zadora starred as the “Dubonnet Girl” in television commercials. Those might be among the cheesiest liquor ads of all time: Zadora plays sensually with ribbon and peers out between gauzy curtains while her Continental lover approaches by motorcycle—wearing a helmet, tuxedo, and white scarf—for their rendezvous. Excellent, really, if you’re a connoisseur of Eurotrash, as I am. It may help you forget for a moment that, these days, Dubonnet is actually made and bottled in Bardstown, Kentucky.

Dubonnet comes in either Rouge or Blonde, and let me be clear about one thing: the white is to be avoided at all costs. It has an unpleasant aftertaste and a god-awful cat-pee smell (perhaps channeling Madame Dubonnet’s feline?). Dubonnet Rouge, on the other hand, makes an excellent mixer, particularly with gin. It doesn’t have a million applications, but the few it does have stand out and make it worthwhile. Case in point: The Dubonnet Cocktail (the Queen Mother’s drink) is a mix of equal parts gin and Dubonnet that’s simple and wonderful, an early-twentieth-century classic. Add a dash of orange bitters to the mix, and it might give the martini a run for its money. It’s the perfect drink to share with the Queen. Or with Pia Zadora. Or if you happen to be sent off to the French Foreign Legion. Or if you’re relaxing at home and want to be super-certain that you remain malaria free.

CHAPTER 2

FLAVOR AND ITS DISCONTENTS

ALL OF LIFE IS A DISPUTE OVER TASTE AND TASTING
.

—
Friedrich Nietzsche

W
HEN WE TALK ABOUT FLAVOR
, we must make a simple distinction. First, there are actual tastes that grow out of a place, a tradition, an artisan method; then there is Flavor™, which is conceived in a conference room, developed in a lab, and validated by focus groups.

With that in mind, I feel the need to say a few words about the explosion of flavored vodkas. Well, maybe just two words: totally ridiculous. No, that is perhaps too harsh, too strident, and ungenerous. So maybe a few more. I mean, I can understand the impulse behind, say, a basic citrus vodka, and maybe even vanilla. But is there any earthly justification for the existence of a lychee-flavored vodka? Or coconut vodka? Watermelon vodka? Green grape vodka
and
red grape vodka? Cherry
and
black cherry vodka? Huckleberry vodka? Kaffir lime vodka? Blood orange vodka? Pink lemonade vodka? Organic cucumber vodka? Sweet tea vodka? Cola vodka? Root beer vodka? Sake-infused vodka? Protein powder–infused vodka? Dutch caramel vodka? Espresso vodka? Double espresso vodka? Triple espresso vodka? So-called mojito mint vodka? Bubble gum vodka? Yes, every one of these vodka flavors has sat on a liquor store shelf, and this list represents only the tip of the iceberg. In 2003, there were about two hundred flavored vodkas on the market. Today, there are more than five hundred.

The liquor store has swiftly come to resemble those Jelly Belly stores that sprung up when I was a kid in the 1980s. I can remember the first time my brother Tyler and I were let loose, on a family vacation, to scoop our own half pounds of jelly beans from dozens of varieties. You were allowed to taste all the beans as you scooped, and we went nuts, bingeing our way into a sugar overdose. “Cotton candy! Dr. Pepper! Green apple! Chocolate pudding! A&W root beer! Piña colada!”

“Can you believe this jelly bean tastes like buttered popcorn?”

“Taste this one! It’s like cheesecake!”

“Toasted marshmallow!”

There was certainly no pretense of
real
flavor. The idea of
authenticity
was rendered utterly irrelevant—I mean, all the flavors came from freaking identically shaped beans! They were a food engineering marvel and it was absolutely awesome … at least when I was, um, eleven. You know what else I liked when I was eleven? Garbage Pail Kids, Mr. T, parachute pants, snapping Jenny Bellamente’s training bra strap, and building forts in the woods. These days, I go to the liquor store for a slightly different experience. (Although ironically, in the summer of 2010, Jelly Belly introduced several “adult” flavors as part of their new Cocktail Classics line: Mojito, Peach Bellini, and Pomegranate Cosmo among them.)

Flavored vodkas follow the same flavor fads that sports drinks, fruit snacks, and sugar cereals follow. A flavorist for Givaudan, the world’s largest manufacturer of flavors, explained the development of these trends in a 2009 article in the
New Yorker:
“You are trying to sell a flavor. It’s not like you are getting judged on how close you are to the real fruit. At the end of the day, you are getting judged on how good the flavor tastes.”

With that sort of calculation, it’s no surprise that flavor trends seem to work a little like high school. One day, the cool kids—usually the people with suspicious job titles like “flavorist” or “cool hunter” or “trendspotter”—wake up and decide that, say, pomegranate will be the next big flavor. There’s usually talk of antioxidants or benefits to the urinary tract, but everyone knows the popularity is really all about the crimson-purple color. Suddenly, everywhere you turn, they’re putting pomegranate into everything. How did we ever live without the sweet-and-sour nectar of the pomegranate? So you welcome the pomegranate into your life. Then, without warning, you’re told that pomegranate is so, like, last year. Pear is the new pomegranate. Hadn’t you heard?

Yeah, well, me neither. When I first began writing about spirits—basically before I learned to ignore 99 percent of the emails I received—I got this from the Pear Bureau Northwest: “Pears Make a Splash as Fresh Drink Trend for 2007.”

Okay, so pears were the New Black. This, of course, made total sense … if I just could overlook the fact that pears have been cultivated and enjoyed by humans since about 5000 BCE. But I kept receiving the same message. In another breathless news release, a spokesperson for Absolut vodka declared pear to be “the next big flavor.” Said this spokesperson, “We constantly have flavorists on the hunt for all the new scents, flavors, and tastes, and pear was ‘ripe’ for us.” Not surprisingly, Absolut was, at precisely the same moment, launching a new flavored vodka, Absolut Pears. Within weeks, Grey Goose unveiled its own pear vodka, La Poire.

Now, anyone who understands lifestyle journalism knows that three of anything is a certifiable trend, and so by early 2007 we were getting dangerously close to the tipping point on pear vodka. When I tasted the two new pear vodkas, what struck me immediately was how differently each company interpreted pear flavor. Grey Goose had a delicate, sort-of-natural-ish pear bouquet. But the mild flavor was so subtle as to be nearly lost in the mouth. Absolut Pears had a strong candy scent and an assertive, “fruity” taste that no pear in nature could possibly convey.

So what was one supposed to do with pear vodka anyway? That is a very good question—one that I ask myself every time I see those two three-quarters-f bottles that sit in the back of my liquor cabinet. No one else seemed to know, either. This post on the industry site Webtender was typical: “I work at a rather nice upscale restaurant in Manhattan and our bartender recently ordered Absolute [sic] Pear. After we all tasted it in several drinks we decided to make a few drinks based around it for our signature drink list. We aren’t having much luck.” Or this, regarding La Poire, on the website Chowhound: “I don’t get it, personally. I’d rather drink poire eaux-de-vie.” Or harsher still: “I tried it straight and would’ve rather of [sic] drank warm piss through a dirty sock.”

I kept waiting, but a year or so went by, no third pear vodka ever appeared, and the pear vodka trend came and went with a whimper. But no matter. By then, people had moved on to sweet tea or bubble gum or some other ridiculousness. People, people, people.

By “people,” of course, I mean the vast majority of spirits consumers. The largest liquor companies in the world haven’t launched more than five hundred flavored vodkas because no one wanted to drink them. Of course, whenever a vast majority pursues any kind of macrotrend, there will always be a backlash from a smaller group who vehemently resists the mainstream. Which means that, as usual, we’re right back in high school. In the world of spirits, these vodka rejecters might be called cocktail connoisseurs or aficionados. But since high school continues to be a useful metaphor here, let’s just call these people what they are: cocktail geeks. I must confess that I usually sit at the cocktail geeks’ lunch table.

What the cocktail geeks’ rejection of the most popular spirit wrought was the alternative trend of the so-called classic cocktail, culled from the dusty pages of antique drinks guides like Jerry Thomas’ 1862
Bar-Tender’s Guide
, or Harry Johnson’s 1882
New and Improved Bartender’s Manual
, or William T. “Cocktail Bill” Boothby’s 1908
The World’s Drinks and How to Mix Them
. These classic cocktails called for more challenging, forgotten spirits like rye whiskey, applejack, maraschino liqueur, Old Tom gin, and crème de violette—spirits with more assertive, unclassifiable flavors that can be a shock to a modern palate weaned on the likes of Jelly Bellys.

The classic cocktail trend led to the rise of faux speakeasy bars, which began in places like New York and San Francisco but soon enough trickled down to most other cities. Certain conventions of the faux speakeasy quickly became universal (and soon thereafter risked cliché). There’s usually no sign, and often some kind of “secret” entrance: through a phone booth in a hot dog shop (PDT, aka Please Don’t Tell, in New York); through a side entrance of an Irish fish-and-chips shop marked by a blue light (PX in Alexandria, Virginia); below street level through a black unmarked door under a sign that reads “Liquids” (Franklin Mortgage & Investment Co. in Philadelphia). The speakeasy bartender’s uniform is an old-timey vest and tie and maybe sleeve garters; beards and tattoos and maybe a man-bun; and possibly a waxed mustache, depending on how much pre-Prohibition role-playing is going on. Some ironically retro rules (“Gentlemen must remove their hats”; “No roughhousing, horseplay, tomfoolery, or high jinks”) will usually be listed on the menu. Other, nonironic rules, like “You can’t stand at the bar” or “You need to be on the list” will be enforced by a hipster in skinny jeans at the door. Most importantly, at the faux speakeasy you will find almost no cocktails with vodka. Your cocktails will be handcrafted and wonderful, but they will also sport double-digit price tags.