Me Elsewhere: Brooklyn Revisited

Over at Eat Drink Films, the latest of my Down The Hatch columns is up. Last month I considered three cocktails created to honor the Brooklyn. This go-round I take a look at the often-imitated-never-duplicated original and its return to prominence thanks to the advent of Bigallet’s China-China Amer. Also included is bartending legend Murray Stenson’s take on the Liberal using that same ingredient. This week’s issue of EDF is packed with goodness, like DC Comics veteran Steve Englehart’s inside take on Batman and how it relates to the new film Birdman. Check it out.

Cocktail of the Week: The Liberal

A few years ago, prior to one of my periodic trips back to New York, I stopped by my usual haunt to ask the crew where I should bend an elbow. They suggested one bar in particular. Good drinks, good people, lots of buzz. Then they asked me to prank the place.

“Go in, tell them we said hello,” I was instructed. “At some point, a round or two in, order a Liberal.” The cocktail is made with Amer Picon, the bitter orange liqueur from France which regular readers know can be tough to acquire. Said Big Apple bar had a bottle of Picon prominently displayed on their shelf.

And there, I was told, it would stay. “It’s just for show. They refuse to open it because they’re afraid they won’t get any more. So go in, ask for a Liberal, and tell us what they say.”

Subterfuge on behalf of my home away from home. Who was I to say no?

I entered the bar in question and spotted the Amer Picon exactly where I was told it would be. I began with a superb house drink. A highly competent bartender asked, “What’s next?” Ice water in my veins and nary a quaver in my voice, I suggested a Liberal.

The highly competent bartender didn’t bat an eye. “That’s a good one. The Zig Zag makes those beautifully, don’t they? But they use a very specific type of bitters and we’re out of them. Let me fix you something like it I think you’ll enjoy.”

He did, and I did. In Seattle I relayed my report, which was met with nods of approval. “Blaming the bitters? That’s a smart play.”

Now that Bigallet’s China-China amer is being imported to the United States, Amer Picon is no longer the problem. It’s the rest of the Liberal that’s giving me fits.

The recipe as it first appeared in George J. Kappeler’s Modern American Drinks (1895) couldn’t be simpler: “one dash syrup, half a jigger Amer Picon bitters, half a jigger whiskey ... a small piece of lemon peel on top.” Maybe too simple; half whiskey and half Picon isn’t the modern version. We’re a bit closer by the time of Albert Stevens Crockett’s 1931 Old Waldorf Bar Days, which drops the syrup, adds a crucial missing ingredient – the drink is now half whiskey and half sweet vermouth – but scales the Picon down to a mere three dashes, which hardly seems worth the trouble of flying back from Marseilles with several bottles taped to your chest.

The China-China burning a hole in my liquor cabinet, I set out to find an acceptable contemporary variation and was flummoxed. Rye had become the default whiskey choice, but aside from that the recipes frequently contradicted each other. One called for equal parts rye and vermouth while preserving Crockett’s minimal quantity of Picon. Another was spirit-forward but boasted equivalent, hefty portions of vermouth and amer. The whiskey was too dominant in my initial attempt. What was the formula for the lovely, balanced cocktail I’d enjoyed in the past?

So I did something I’d never done before. I reached out to the man who’d made many of those cocktails and contributed mightily to the Liberal’s revival, bartending icon Murray Stenson.

Professional that he is, Murray replied to my question with more questions. Bourbon or rye? Which sweet vermouth? Amer Picon or ... ? The ryes I favor are robust, so Murray suggested an equally sturdy vermouth like Carpano Antica Formula. Which, naturally, I didn’t have. That meant only one thing: trial and error.

My next Liberal paired James E. Pepper’s 1776 straight rye whiskey with Cocchi Vermouth di Torino. It was a very good drink, but these elements were almost too similar. Their spiciness echoed each other and overwhelmed the China-China, even with a dash of orange bitters to bolster the citrus notes.

For Liberal Number 3 (a phrase previously only heard on the MSNBC version of The Dating Game), I opted for Rittenhouse bonded rye and a vermouth with some feistiness, Punt e Mes, along with Angostura bitters. Result: pay dirt. The Angostura provided a solid foundation, the cleaner taste of the rye giving the amer room to run. Murray told me the Liberal recipe “just depends.” But with the master’s formula in hand, you can continue to experiment.

Unless I’m pranking you. Or he’s pranking me.

The Liberal

Murray Stenson variation

1 ¾ oz. robust whiskey (rye)
¼ oz. sweet vermouth (Murray suggests Carpano Antica Formula)
¼ oz. Bigallet China-China amer (in place of Amer Picon)
1-2 dashes orange or Angostura bitters

Stir. Strain. Garnish with an orange twist.

Want more Cocktail of the Week? The first fifty-two essays are available in the Kindle bestseller DOWN THE HATCH: ONE MAN’S ONE YEAR ODYSSEY THROUGH CLASSIC COCKTAIL RECIPES AND LORE. Buy it now at Amazon.com.

Cocktail of the Week: The Brooklyn

It’s one of the great ironies of the classic cocktail renaissance that the drink best showcasing the movement’s ingenuity does so because of how often it can’t be made.

Once upon a time the Brooklyn might have given the Manhattan, named for a neighboring borough of New York City, a run for its money in terms of popularity. The cocktail allegedly devised at Kings County’s Hotel St. George riffed on its better-known predecessor, adding maraschino to the mix of rye and dry vermouth. One curiosity regarding that last ingredient: PDT’s Jim Meehan cites Jack’s Manual, a 1910 book by Jacob A. Grohusko, as the earliest appearance of the Brooklyn. But the recipe as it appears in Grohusko’s guide calls for equal parts rye and Italian (sweet) vermouth, pushing the formula even closer to that of the Manhattan. The vermouth was listed as the now-standard French variety in 1930’s Savoy Cocktail Book, playing second fiddle to the whiskey (Canadian Club in the Savoy, but trust me, you’ll want rye). When this change occurred is a mystery to me.

It’s what replaces the Manhattan’s bitters that is the Brooklyn’s elusive element. Amer Picon is a dense orange liqueur created by France’s Gaéton Picon in 1837. Picon (the amer, not the Frenchman) wasn’t all that easy to acquire back in the Brooklyn’s heyday and has not been exported to the United States in some time; as I have recounted, it can be difficult to put your hands on a bottle in la belle France. The stuff was scarce enough in 1948 for David Embury to suggest in The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks substituting Angostura bitters – which would mean you were making a dry Manhattan with a whisper of maraschino. Further complicating matters was the reformulation of Amer Picon in the 1970s, reducing the alcohol content and altering the flavor.

Bartenders rose to the challenge by improvising. Some deployed Torani Amer syrup seasoned with orange bitters. Seattle’s own Jamie Boudreau concocted his own version based on the amaro Ramazzotti. But the greatest flowering of creativity came simply by working around Picon’s absence. The previous decade spawned a host of Brooklyn-inspired drinks christened after the borough’s neighborhoods, among them the Greenpoint and my all-time favorite cocktail the Red Hook. You can even head across the river for an applejack variation in the Newark, provided of course you can clear the George Washington Bridge.

But now there’s another option that gets you closer to what Jack Grohusko would have whipped up prior to Prohibition. The amer China-China was cooked up by Felix and Louis Bigallet in 1875 at the family’s Lyon distillery. Like Amer Picon, it combines orange peels with cinchona, gentian and other spices. Unlike Amer Picon, it is being sold in the United States as of 2013. It’s also 80 proof, compared to the original Picon’s 78 proof formula. Think of it as a boozier, more viscous variety of present-day Picon with a more pronounced orange flavor. The ready availability of Bigallet’s China-China – I picked up my bottle at Whole Foods – means that a host of vintage libations that in recent years had been solely the province of craft cocktail bars can now be prepared at home. The Brooklyn is the ideal place to start.

The Brooklyn

2 oz. rye
¾ oz. dry vermouth
¼ oz. maraschino
¼ oz. Bigallet China-China amer (in place of Amer Picon)

Stir. Strain. No garnish.

Want more Cocktail of the Week? The first fifty-two essays are available in the Kindle bestseller DOWN THE HATCH: ONE MAN’S ONE YEAR ODYSSEY THROUGH CLASSIC COCKTAIL RECIPES AND LORE. Buy it now at Amazon.com.