STEP 1: FROM VISUALIZATION TO LIBATION
I make my own ginger-infused cachaca, spiked with brown sugar. If one of my guests feels for a regular capirena, then imagine offering a ginger spiced cachaca with fresh lime juice and muddled basil leaves instead of mint. This takes weeks to create, but is my labor of love.
I also make an Indian spiced rum.
And cook up a subtle take-off on Bailey's Irish cream, with fennel, vanilla, and vodka.
Even my own ginger beer.
But this past Sunday was the least sexy of all: mixers. But I'm ahead of myself. Weeks past I looked up some great articles at home on tiki cocktails, those fruity drinks with umbrellas and six kinds of fructose as garnishes. Little did I know that these are classics and deserve respect. The more I read of them, the more I respected them.
After World War II there was a tiki craze in the states. Don the Beachcomber, as he called himself, was an expert in these Polynesian concoctions and is the man responsible for making Trader Vic's a household name. He was a celebrity bartender from the 40's to the 70's. He changed the way America drank, which is to say, he is now my hero.
The drink that put Don the Beachcomber on the map was the Zombie. What a name! My favorite thing about this drink is that you could have two before he cut you off, period, thanks for coming/here's the home-game. If there was a table of eight and they ordered two Zombies, no third Zombie would be served. It was just too much booze in too easy a cocktail to swallow.
Light rum, dark rum, a splash of pernod of all things, and some fruit juices, and finally the hard part: grenadine, "Don's mix", and something called falernum. Grenadine is pretty easy to make (equal parts pomagranate juice and simple syrup) and Don's mix is equal parts grapefruit juice and cinnamon spiked simple syrup.
But falernum is something used only in small touches, a bit more than a splash. Originally it started out as a bitter/astringent rum from Barbados. I based my recipe on Sir Dale DeGroff's. (He's not a knight, but he should be.) He is the Ben Franklin of my industry and he makes falernum by marinating white rum with lime zest, cloves, and almond oil. (Personally, I softened mine by adding some grapefruit rind, and crushed macadamia nuts instead of some oil. At the risk of heresy, I need to show my boss that I can sell falernum if my Zombies fail to conquer the city. But I digress....)
Finally, a true mai tai needs a white syrup called orgeat --pronounced "OR-zat." I'm sure it's ten dollars a bottle at Whole Foods, but who cares? Why buy what you can make?
Internet to the rescue: blanch almonds for a half hour, then grind them up in a food processor. Then set them into water for two hours, and strain through cheese clothe.
But it doesn't end there. Once the oil/water mix has been separated from the almond mush for two hours, you put the mush back in. Then let it sit two more hours. Strain through cheese clothe and let the two separate for another two hours.
Blah blah blah, this goes on and on for four repetitions. I actually measured my time out so it sat for four hours and once the solution sat overnight. Why? Because when it comes to trying a recipe for something you've never tried to make a drink you've never had, why not be careful? After all, it's my first time.
Believe it or not, this IS the short version of my story. Making orgeat is a mess, and sticky, all of this goes on while I work a shift around it and create hours of cleaning once I'm done--no guarantees this works either. However, once I'm done I've got a liter and a half of orgeat syrup that tastes incredible, as well as several fantasies of making drinks in a Hawaiian shirt.
At the end of my Sunday night, I had made falernum, Don's mix, and grenadine. The orgeat would take two days to make. Two shirts and pants, too. The stuff is messy if you don't know what you're doing.
Now to test them out.
Step 2: TIKI TAKES THE FIELD
There was a small party in the Roger Smith Hotel's Singular Solarium--only thirty people. I came prepared to make Mai Tais, Zombies, and navy Grog. These are classics, the cosmos of their day. They were huge hits in the 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, and 70's. There is a subculture of people even now who love tiki bars and their cocktails and follow bartenders wherever they go if the product is right.
I wrangled my way into working the portable bar in the solarium. The party was a sit-down dinner with a cocktail hour beforehand for a tech company from California. Translation: if I messed up my tiki cocktails, then no one would be the wiser, since all involved would get back on a plane in a few days, thus my reputation was protected.
Take it from a bartender for fifteen years: what matters to a patron is the favors in the glass. If a drink is bad, then no one cares what movie star drinks them, and the cute name will not matter. If my drinks suck then no one will drink them.
Long story still reasonably long: few of the guest in the solarium enjoyed their mai tai or zombie. One man was honest enough to tell me my Don's mix tasted overpoweringly of cinnamon. He was right. It tasted too much of cinnamon. Since then I toned it down, as well as adjusted the amount of lime juice, and made special garnishes of tropical fruit.
The most important change was the name of the Navy Grog. The word "grog" implying something too strong that does not taste good. And make no mistake: a good Navy Grog is like Arthur Miller performed well or Douglas Fairbanks in his prime. A perfect thing with both an edge and reassurance, strength and subtlety.
My Uncle Don, who died less than a year ago, was one of a great many brave man who served in the navy during World War II. He was the kind of that tough old man who worked with his hands all his life and spoke of himself as little as possible. My father had done astonishing things in the Korean War (and marvelous things after) but Dad always felt paled in Uncle Don's presence.
At an age when I was a high school sophomore anxious to meet girls, my Uncle Don was diving on sinking ships in the middle of the attack on Pearl Harbor. He nearly died during the second wave, yet he continued on for twenty six hours in a diving suit with a broken collar bone. He was an amazing man who loved to laugh, to fix things, to drive long highways.
Thus, after tweaking the Navy Grog for a more modern sensibility, I now call it Don's Punch, after my Uncle Don.
Epilogue: while the tiki cocktails did not take off with my thirty techies, they loved the Indian spiced rum, and most inexplicably the ginger beer. You never know...
The lesson: try everything you can afford to try. Why not?
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