The Mint Julep

This is an all-American drink. Kentucky bourbon and fresh, grown in the U.S.A. mint. Icy cold, refreshing and potent, found in the claws of the well-to-do mingling in the winner’s circle on Kentucky Derby Day. DeGroff suggests use of a bourbon no less than 90 proof so as to “stand up to all that melting crushed ice.” I always use Maker’s Mark and that is 45% ABV (90 proof). When I was a young ‘un, I remember seeing something a restaurant called a Mint Julep and it was a disgusting green color. I was too young to drink alcohol, however so I am still oblivious to how horrible it must have been. Double this recipe if you want it to look good in the photos…I did (again). I wasn’t going to drink the whole thing but I hate to waste good bourbon.

2 1/2 ounces bourbon (at least 90 proof)
2 sprigs of fresh mint (one for muddling, one for garnish)
3/4 ounce of simple syrup

Muddle a mint sprig with the simple syrup, then add the bourbon. Fill an old-fashioned glass, or a silver julep cup if you have one, with crushed ice (not too crushed), then strain the bourbon and syrup mixture over the ice. Stir this together around and around the glass until a frost forms on the outside of the glass. Stick in the other mint sprig. Neat-o!

It’s sweeter and mintier than I expected. I muddled about eight big mint leaves for mine but remember, mine was a double. Let the ice melt a bit first lest you exhale onto any open flames. It is freaking tasty but I’m a bourbon lover so I’m an easy audience. The outside of the glass gets frosty and that makes the glass slippery. All the components of the drink assert themselves in a very playful way. The bold bourbon, the freshness of the mint, the sweetness of the syrup. There is a reason this drink is a classic. Don’t wait until Derby Day, folks.
 

The Kentucky Colonel

DeGroff doesn’t say much in The Essential Cocktail  about The Kentucky Colonel. So I’ll tell you what it means to me. The Kentucky Colonel is and will always be Kyle Macy, Phoenix Suns guard 1980-1985. Phoenix radio legend and Suns announcer for 40 years Al McCoy used to introduce Macy, a 6′ 3″ sharpshooter from the University of Kentucky, as such over the AM airwaves just before every tipoff. If you gave me only 10 things I’d use to describe myself, Suns fan would be in there. Hah, see, just when I think I’m not your average boneheaded, I mean, red-blooded American male…

1 1/2 ounces bourbon
3/4 ounce Benedictine
Dash (1/2 teaspoon) orange bitters (I used Regan’s…great stuff)

I thought I already knew a lot about cocktails before I started this project. But now, I really feel like I had been a fool. Only now am I starting to appreciate subtle nuances between drinks. Before, I would have thought the Kentucky Colonel was a very badly made Manhattan. Not that it’s bad, it’s just nothing like a Manhattan. Now I can taste the bite of the Benedictine, the citrus “crunch” of the orange bitters. And also how these heretofore strange ingredients pull even more interesting flavors from my old friend bourbon.

The Kentucky Colonel is a fine, fine cocktail.

By the way, tonight I’m crunching on Bugles for my salty snack. When you do battle with strong spirits like bourbon, a salty snack to cut through is always appreciated. I usually have Rold Gold Tiny Twists on hand but the crispy lightness of Bugles are a worthy addition to the pantry. (I know, I always see “panty” instead of “pantry” too. Incorrigible? Infantile? Adorable? You decide.)
 

The Colony Cocktail

When I made the line up for today’s post, I thought “Hey the Colony Cocktail can go with the Kentucky Colonel, right?” COLony. COLonel. But after drinking both the Mint Julep (double) and the Kentucky Colonel, I’m thinking of the Colony being some sort of creepy, dark, cult compound…a cult where they worship ants… I’m not usually paranoid under the influence.

It smells fantastic. Since vodka is odorless, it must be the combination of the Southern Comfort and the lime juice. It smells like really delicious floor cleaner. The taste does not live up to the smell unfortunately. This cocktail might be something you simply dab behind each ear before going out at night. I’m not too experienced with Southern Comfort, a peachy, orangey infused bourbon created in the late 1800s. My experience is probably limited to some shot I had to drink whilst playing Quarters at a party at Keith’s in high school. I think I’d like to try Southern Comfort in something else. Any suggestions?

As always, if you are over the age of 21 please be careful trying these drinks. If you are under the age of 21, don’t try them at all! Leave SOME dumb mistakes for us old folks!

The Grog

Once again, DeGroff’s recipe in The Essential Cocktail  looked so pitifully and embarrassingly small in the glass, that I had to make it a double. And yes, I drank it. I had a bit of a sore throat this morning, so there. The engraved glass in the picture was a gift to me over two decades ago. As many times as I’ve moved, it’s pretty impressive that the thing is still in one piece. Here’s my recipe (cut it in half if you are a pussy want to follow DeGroff’s advice):

3 ounces rum
1 1/2 ounces honey syrup (1:1 honey and filtered water)
1 ounce freshly squeezed lime juice
3 ounces hot water
Stir it all in a mug with your name on it

I don’t know who’s messing about with toddies during the cold and flu season. Grog is where it’s at for a warming, soothing, comforting, inebriating beverage. First of all, it’s hot and we all know you drink hot stuff when you’re sick. Then it’s got lime juice which is vitamins, innit? Then there’s the honey syrup: Well, honey is good for the throat, can I get a “Hallelujah!” from the musical theatre folks out there? And rum kills all manner of things so why not infections? You might say to an applicant “Hey it’s like medicine, drink it!” and they’d say “Yeah it tastes like it!” then you’d say “Hey it’s 50% rum!” and they’d say “Yeah give me more!” Really, though, unless you are hunkering down in the galley of a crab boat, being tossed about on the winter waves of the Bering Sea…there’s no need for making this.

I picked it because it’s name is Grog for fuck’s sake. Grog is a cool name. Grog is the name of a 60′s sci-fi movie beast. Grog is the name of your Grandpa Chuck’s favorite bulldog. Grog is what you want to drink when you’re feeling crusty about the edges. Grog is a cool, cool name.

The Cuba Libre

It’s a rum and coke. It’s a Cuban-style rum, yes, but we don’t call a regular rum and coke a Puerto Rico Libre do we? Maybe we should. Hey kids, go fuck with your bartender and ask for a Puerto Rico Libre. Yeah, yeah, this was named for a political slogan. Nothing goes together like politics and alcohol right?

1 1/2 ounces Cuban-style rum (DeGroff says Matusalem or Brugal…I used Brugal)
4 ounces Coca-Cola
1 lime wedge

There’s Coke in here? Damn that Brugal rum has a flavor. Why did I bother to buy a special rum just for this one drink? I didn’t have any Cuban-style rum and the damned thing is called a CUBA Libre. Of course, I still screwed it up and bought añejo instead of silver but the BevMo didn’t have silver. It’s not as if Dale DeGroff is standing behind me in a nun’s habit wielding a ruler. He isn’t, right?

I should say something about Rum and Coke. It’s popular because it’s simple, yes. Maybe this is where a good bartender could take some initiative though and make the ingredients special. Buy Cuban-style rum; it’s okay because you can use it in other rum drinks. Use the cane sugar Coca-Cola instead of the corn syrup bottling; it’s less “sweet for sweet’s sake.”

Folks, remember to share with the world those things for which you have a particular passion or talent. Life is short for all of us, not just you. Throw us a bone.

Oh and, if you are over the age of 21 please be careful trying these drinks. If you are under the age of 21, don’t try them at all! Leave SOME stupid shit for us old folks!

These are the red-headed stepchildren on my cocktail to-do list. I wanted to try them but they didn’t really fit with any other drinks. They are also quite simple to make, so whacking out three in one night was no problem.

The Absinthe Drip

There is plenty of information online about Absinthe and its mysterious history. Most of it is bunk. Absinthe, however, is NOT bunk. Ignore how hip it may be becoming and go get a bottle. There are special contraptions crafted for making an Absinthe Drip: Ornate slotted spoons and cut glass brouilleurs. I just used my julep strainer to hold the sugar cubes as I dripped about 4 ounces of c-c-c-cold water over them and into the 2 ounces of Lucid Absinthe.

It tastes like a Good N Plenty soaked in vodka. It’s slightly viscous in texture even though it’s 1:2 in water. I like licorice so I really like the Absinthe. This is a perfect sipping drink. If you gulped it you would most assuredly wake up hours later examining the underside of your dining table. There is a slight sweetness from the sugar but there’s a tiny bitterness, a perfect counterpoint to the licorice and sugar.

The draw of the Absinthe Drip, besides the 62% ABV of the absinthe (that’s 124 proof, kids), is the ritual. Watching the shimmering emerald liquid turn a milky pale green is fascinating.

I go on a particular camping trip every summer. My buddy BA and I meet up with our Arizona friends JC and EC for a week in the wilds for relaxing, hiking, playing games, eating, drinking, drinking, and drinking. We trade off locales every summer: One year BA and I drive to northern Arizona, the next summer JC and EC drive over to California, etcetera. Last summer, our sixth annual, we met up at Frog Meadow in the Sequoia National Forest. As usual, we brought all manner of interesting potent potables. But JC pulled out a bottle of La Tourment Verte, genuine absinthe made in France. JC, celebrated in story and song for bodging together highly unusual but equally successful rigging for all manner of tasks, invented some tools to prepare our own backcountry Absinthe Drip. Though not his fault since we didn’t read the darned instructions, here’s BA doing it wrong at Frog Meadow:

The Dubonnet Cocktail

1 ounce Dubonnet Rouge
1 ounce London dry gin
Poured over ice into an old-fashioned glass and stirred

My first reaction is that it’s the worst tasting thing I’ve ever put in my mouth. Stephanie’s response? “I don’t hate it.” If the best thing you could say about something is that it isn’t terrible, why would you order it? Why would you go out of your way to make it? I almost put 7up in it immediately. I think if you put a bit of club soda in it, it might be alright. It’s kind of a fruitier tasting gin and tonic but without the tonic. That would be because Dubonnet was one of history’s many malaria-fighting apéritifs; it has quinine in it. It definitely grew on me. The more I compared it to the Negroni, the more I appreciated the Dubonnet Cocktail. Alone, the Dubonnet is not unlike port. Simply on the rocks with a splash of club soda and a twist of lemon might be quite a fine drink indeed. Oh it is? Yes it’s called a Dubonnet Fizz. Alright, I’ll keep the bottle on the bar then. Plus, Dubonnet is one of those fun names to say with an outrageously cartoonish French accent.

The Pimm’s Cup

Pimm’s No. 1 is a gin-based apéritif from the good old days when everyone drank apéritifs. Thankfully, someone figured out how to drink this stuff and still kind of be a normal person. They mixed it with 7up of course. DeGroff says it’s “the mint julep of the Wimbledon tennis championship.” Sounds good to me…oh crap that reminds me that I have to do the Mint Julep. The Pimm’s Cup is 1 1/2 ounces of Pimm’s No. 1 in a glass with ice, a cucumber spear, a slice of green apple, and topped with 7up.

I remember my first Pimm’s Cup was during the one and only time I had dinner at The Ivy on Robertson. Not as good as the Manhattan story, I know. This is a delicious drink indeed, though Pimm’s No. 1 is not a strong flavor when mixed with so much 7up. Alone, Pimm’s is mighty tasty. It’s an apéritif but not a bitter, face-screwing abomination. It’s smells not unlike a cola or root beer. I just took a sip of it straight and it’s not bad. It’s only 25% ABV so to make a couple of these a summer afternoon quaff is certainly appropriate. I wouldn’t say that the cucumber spear and the apple slice impart any flavor, but smelling them each time I take a swig is very pleasant. Plus I get to eat them afterward and count that as today’s dietary fruit and vegetable.

You see, I had lunch at Ribs U.S.A. today. Even their collard greens are brown. They may even be covered in sauce, I don’t know. I hate collard greens. No, I had the baby backs/pulled pork combo with mac and cheese. Ribs U.S.A., absolutely serviceable barbeque, is on Olive in Burbank.

By the way, if you are over the age of 21 please be careful trying these drinks. If you are under the age of 21, don’t try them at all! Leave SOME stupid shit for us old folks!

The Manhattan

2 ounces Maker’s Mark bourbon
1 ounce sweet vermouth
2 dashes Angostura bitters
Stirred with ice and strained into a chilled cocktail glass, garnished with a Maraschino cherry

Quite simply, my favorite cocktail. At once clean and smoky, sharp and sweet, sophisticated and strong. When I make these for myself I usually shake the hell out of it with ice because I like the fleeting effervescence swirling in the glass. When you have a muscle-bound spirit like bourbon, lightening it with bubbles adds a delightful dimension. But The Essential Cocktail says to stir it with ice so that’s what I did here. I love how it smells quite different than it tastes; it makes drinking it a thought-provoking experience. It culls from the drinker a series of pensive “oohs” and “hmmms” after sips. You KNOW you are drinking a cocktail when you enjoy a Manhattan.

Not unlike many origin stories related in The Essential Cocktail, my own “first Manhattan” story may or may not be apocryphal. A good friend of mine had taken a job as the night accounting manager at the Hotel Griffon in San Francisco. It’s a charming boutique hotel built in 1906 that overlooks the waterfront (I got that from Hotels.com). I met this friend for dinner at the hotel’s restaurant one evening…yes, she was a “special” friend, a sparkly-eyed woman of deep intellect, barbed wit, and puckish charm. A woman who had forgiven my childish actions in our long past history to such a gracious degree that this dinner melted into rhythm with the cracklingly romantic atmosphere of San Francisco at night. In the crowded, electric dining room, flanked by picture windows looking out to the winking lights of the City and the Bay, she suggested I order a Manhattan.

The Long Island Iced Tea

This doesn't scare you even a little bit?

I wonder how sheepish a look DeGroff had on his face when he put this in the Modern Classics section of The Essential Cocktail. He covered himself by looking down his nose at this drink as being fit for the basements of fraternity houses. Dude has never played Liar’s Dice at McGee’s in Alameda though so what does he know? Okay, well, that’s not entirely true. He comes up with a quite civilized recipe.

1/2 ounce each of vodka, gin, rum, and tequila. 3/4 ounce each of simple syrup and fresh lemon juice. 3 ounces of Coca-Cola. All of it over ice.

And yet, it is tasty. Completely unlike the one you’d get at your neighborhood bar. I KNOW it’s unlike the ones Rajiv the Bartender at the Veranda Bar in the Hotel Figueroa would make you. The Teas he made us had full ounces of each liquor and only a drop or two of cola. Good man, that Rajiv. The hero here is the freshly squeezed lemon juice. It tempers the sweetness of the Coca-Cola and The various liquors are really just there to punch you in the brain with their tiny but powerful little alcoholic fists. It’s not like you can taste the dry juniper notes in the gin, or the smoky vegetal flavor of the tequila. Just so you know, I used the Coca-Cola imported from Mexico. It’s made with sugar, like the original, and not with corn syrup. Thanks BevMoWeHo for stocking it. I hear you can get it at Costco as well.

My position on corn syrup is not that it’s “bad” for you, though it is more of a processed food than sugar. Processed foods are not really good for you. My problem with corn syrup is that because of government subsidies and its economical production, corn syrup makes things cheaper. You’d think that would be good, but what ends up happening is that we eat and drink more. More is bad. Eat less, people. It’s almost as simple as that. No, I’m not a doctor but people have been calling me Marcus Welby, MD since I was tiny. He was a character on television many years ago for you infants out there. Oh and get off my lawn.

Back to the Long Island Iced Tea….oh it’s gone. Never mind.

So the end is nigh on this project. I gave myself 100 days to make and drink 100 cocktails. That 100th day is January 20th, coincidentally the one year anniversary of my return to sitting up, standing up, walking, peeing while standing up, many things we may take for granted. What shall I bore you with once this booze ship has sailed?

One of the reasons I liked the title “Bent at the Elbow” was because of these guys. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…Elbow…

 Here I am knocking out (almost) the last of the tropical drinks on my list, all featuring pineapple juice. 

The Singapore Sling

This thing has just too many ingredients but DAMN it is tasty. Don’t make this if you are thirsty because after one sip you’ll be rummaging through your kitchen drawer of soy sauce packets and take-out menus searching for one of those huge boba straws. 

What, no kitchen sink?

And it doesn’t just taste like pineapple juice. The smokiness of the Benedictine is there. The bitter-sweetness of the Cointreau and the Cherry Heering peeps through. And though I wouldn’t say that you can taste the gin, you somehow feel it’s comforting and junipery presence. I feel like this is a famous drink so I would whole-heartedly recommend you order one in a bar…on second thought, you surely wouldn’t get it made with all of these proper ingredients. Tell you what to do, take a cheat sheet to the bar and ask the bartender what is in a Singapore Sling. If she gets it right and has them on hand, order one. There isn’t anything I had to buy special for this drink so maybe I protest too much on the complexity front. Anything that helps rid my bar of Benedictine and Heering, albeit a splash at a time, is worth a more than occasional try for me. 

The Bahama Mama

Is this called a Bahama Mama because you are certain to conceive if you drink one? It’s got even measures of light rum, añejo rum, and dark rum, with a little bit less of coconut rum. Then you hit it with 3 ounces of pineapple juice and 2 ounces of orange juice. Shake that up with ice and strain it into a goblet with ice. Whack in a cherry and an orange slice and wave goodbye. 

Well now I’m really going to get hammered. I don’t know if this needs four different rums but I am not going to care by the time I get to the bottom of this glass. You’d think this would be really fruity but it’s not. It’s sweet what with all the rums, but the scant 1/2 ounce of coconut rum really takes the fruitiness to a much sexier place. I read that everyone visiting an all-inclusive resort in the Bahamas automatically receives a lifetime supply of drink tickets for these kind of rum drinks as soon as they step down on the gangplank. I wish I had the Excedrin concession there. It’s tasty, it’s tropical, it’s fantastic but with all the sugar you are guaranteed a crushing headache in the morning if you overdo it. Drink water, kids. 

Sometimes you find a drink that you can abuse and not feel too bad the next day. I remember how delighted I was to find that Finlandia vodka seemed to be more forgiving in the morning. Stoli made me feel like I had had my innards scrubbed with a giant steel pipecleaner. Smirnoff gave me the yurps just looking at the label. But with Finlandia I could achieve such perverse acts of bodily whangle and dangle and still feel at most a simple and clean pain the next day, just enough to regret the evening’s haps and mishaps…but with a chuckle. 

Dead Flamingo? Brown Flamingo?

The Flamingo

It’s interesting because the lime juice is pretty sour. There isn’t too much pineapple and even after adding the optional splash of simple syrup, the drink is NOT sweet. All in all, I’d rather have a daiquiri. I can’t really write more about this drink. I’m so fed up with the grenadine bullshit I could just spit. Those of you who were with me for the “Pink” Lady and other drinks calling for grenadine know how I feel. Several recipes in The Essential Cocktail call for grenadine and not just for the sweet pomegranate flavor but for the red color it imparts. Well DeGroff insists on pure and fresh ingredients so I have used Stirrings brand grenadine: All natural, no fake-ass colors or flavors added. It’s still red though. Unfortunately the food stylist that the publisher hired took irresponsible liberties to achieve pretty pictures.
That results in an incongruous image in the book. The Flamingo is worse because DeGroff himself writes that the drink features a pink foam…hence the name Flamingo. I challenge you to combine 1 1/2 ounces of añejo rum (brown), 1 ounce of pineapple juice (yellow-ish), 1/2 ounce of lime juice (opaque white), and two DASHES of grenadine and come up with a product that is anything but yellowish-brown. Remember, a DASH in The Essential Cocktail is defined as 6 DROPS. Okay, I’ll stop there. Nobody likes an angry drunk.

New Word All The Kids Are Using To Describe A Debilitating Nausea: Yurps. Part “yack”, part “burp”. That first gulp you take trying to keep your gorge from being disgorged. Used in a sentence: “I tried to talk her into making out but then I got a bad case of gin yurps.”

The Sidecar

This drink is 1 1/2 ounces cognac and 3/4 ounce each of Cointreau and lemon juice. But the star of the show is the sugared rim of the glass. Just wet about 1/4 inch of the OUTSIDE rim of the glass with an orange slice, then press the rim into a small mound of sugar and repeat around the circumference of the glass. Put the glass into the freezer for a few minutes so the wet sugar re-crystallizes.

The Sidecar is the kind of drink I think of when I hear the word “cocktail.” That and Scott “Scooter” Smith, owner of the Kwik Kopy on Indian School Road. He always used the word “cocktail” when he meant the word “drunk.” You know…”Let’s go get cocktails” meant “Let’s go get drunk by any and all means necessary.” He was also the first person I ever heard use the word as a verb, as in “I did a little too much cocktailing last night.” This was 1988 so I was still in the information-gathering phase of my serious, adult drinking career. Scott was one of those guys you hate until you know him. He was and probably still is, a blond, suntanned, golfing chauvinist who calls everybody “Bro”. He simply stunk of fraternity house. But as a business-person he was sharp and he knew that it took all kinds of people to be successful. Once you spent time with him, it didn’t matter what your social status was, or your skin color, or your predilection for long-hair music. He accepted you kind of as family. My last day at Kwik Kopy, he took me and the pressmen to the Hi-Liter strip club. His favorite strip bar, The Great Alaskan Bush Company, had been raided recently or something so we went to the nudie landmark on 12th Street instead. I stole a lot of charming shit from him…like calling people “Slick” and “Ace” and emphasizing odd syllables in the cadence of a sentence to stress or de-stress meanings. Usually that just involved stressing the word “What” instead of “doing” in the oft-used question “What are you doing?”

Back to the Sidecar. This is an elegant looking drink. The color is luminous, the rim glistens with sugar, the orange peel bobs languidly just below the surface. At first I was a bit distracted by the sugared rim. The first impression wasn’t clear until the third sip. It’s pretty tart without the sugar from the rim but ultimately it’s a tasty drink. If you use Courvoisier and Cointreau like I did, I’m betting it tastes better and packs more of an honest wallop than if you get your brandy from the bottom shelf and use triple sec. A lesson I’ve learned: If you don’t want to feel like a bag of smashed assholes in the morning, use as close to premium ingredients as you can.

The Between The Sheets

A Sidecar with Benedictine.

When you smell Benedictine you think “Why on earth would I want to drink Absorbine Jr.?” But it really adds a mysterious layer of flavor to the drink. This may actually be better than the Sidecar. It’s like cognac is saying “I want to be a bad-ass like scotch.” and then goes down to the alley behind the Frolic Room to pick fights with drunkards. But just in case, he takes his buddy Benedictine along for back-up. Nobody messes with cognac when Benedictine is standing behind him because fighting the two of them is almost like fighting with Scotchy McScotch. Only not really. Where the hell am I going with this terrible metaphor? I think it’s that this drink tastes a little bit like it has scotch in it because of the Benedictine. And there’s no alley behind the Frolic Room.

It’s disappointing though that a drink with such a sexy name is not very sexy.

The Flip

I made this with Dry Sack Sherry, one of several possible bases prescribed by DeGroff. He also says that the Flip can be made with cognac or other brandy, or even whiskeys. Beat a small to medium egg (about 1 1/2 ounces worth) and drop that into 2 ounces of sherry in a mixing glass. Add an ounce of simple syrup and five ice cubes to that lot and shake like hell. Strain the mess into a small cocktail glass or wine glass (I used my beloved Reidel port glasses), and dust the top with fresh nutmeg.

This is another one of those absolutely weird drinks that is worth trying simply because it is unlike anything you’ve ever had before. Like a watery eggnog. I don’t know when it is appropriate to have a Flip since it’s kind of a winter drink (nutmeg, sweet-ish) and yet kind of refreshing in a funny tasting way. It’s an age-old cocktail so you’d think you could order this in your better prepared hotel bars. I think if you are attending some kind of Edgar Allan Poe Festival, the Flip would fit right in. Poe the man always struck me as a cross between gritty London docks and dusty Tombstone streets.

When I was a teen, my grandfather Ralph sent me a book of Poe writings. Ralph had enclosed a note: “Edgar Allan Poe was a first cousin of Cynia Poe, who was your great-great-grandmother Lacy’s sister. That makes you a shirt-tail relation of some kind or other.” For a long while after that note I tried to use my relation to a reputed opium-puffing whack job to explain some pretty wild ideas. It turns out Poe WASN’T a drug addicted madman though, so what’s my excuse now?

The Whisky Sour

Apparently a sour can be made with rum as well, or even vodka. But why? The Essential Cocktail says bourbon is the current default, and being a Maker’s Mark Ambassador, you don’t have to tell me twice.

It’s lemonade with a little bourbon kick. Well, I like lemonade and I love bourbon. This is a little, simple drink with a good amount of alcohol so it could be dangerous. I always thought a whisky sour was one of those drinks old guys had when they had long lost the use of their tastebuds. Whisky isn’t the friendliest of spirits and too much lemon can be like tiny fists punching the crap out of your tongue. Yet the silky peacemaker that is simple syrup not only gets these pugilists to the bargaining table, she manages to have them happily clapping each other on the back and lighting each other’s cigars as they tumble down your throat to warm your innards. If you have one Whisky Sour, you will order another.