Piss-Takes, Hurt Feelings, and Vamping

What I’m Watching

Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre (2023). “Piss-take” is too good a term to be used solely by our cousins across the pond. For me, a piss-take isn’t a parody so much as a clear-eyed version of a story, one that says, “Yeah, here’s how that would actually work.” In Guy Ritchie’s gleeful savaging of globe-trotting action thrillers, the caper springs from ignorance and is motivated by greed. His version of an elite operative isn’t a square-jawed do-gooder like Ethan Hunt, but a prickly oddball with expensive tastes. Plus he’s blessed with the singular handle of Orson Fortune, and he’s played by Jason Statham.

Fortune is tasked—only elite operatives are “tasked,” nobody else is—with recovering … well, something. The British government doesn’t know what has been stolen, only that billionaire arms trader Greg Simmonds (Hugh Grant, a welcome addition to the Ritchie company of players) is brokering its sale. How to access the man who has (almost) everything? Give him what he craves, the friendship of his favorite movie star. Josh Harnett is winning as the actor strongarmed into espionage and uncertain about his ability to play the role in which he has been cast: himself. Aubrey Plaza is also on hand to mercilessly mock the gun-wielding hacker babe archetype that always turns up in these movies.

As is frequently the case with Ritchie, the entire enterprise is filled with fine clothes. Ritchie is one of the filmmakers whose work I watch for the wardrobe. See: Exhibits A and B, his still underrated The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015) and Colin Farrell’s coordinated track suits in The Gentlemen (2019). Operation Fortune keeps the streak alive.

My Twitter ramblings about the movie convinced Ethan Iverson to watch it, and I love his take.

You Hurt My Feelings (2023). You don’t have to be married to a writer to enjoy Nicole Holofcener’s latest film, but boy, does it help. Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tobias Menzies play one of those perpetually fretful, well-to-do Manhattan couples. But at least they’re happily married—until she overhears him telling a friend that he doesn’t care for her work in progress, despite the encouragement he’s offered her. It’s the funny hook on which Holofcener hangs a deeper look at the many kinds of honesty required in meaningful relationships. I’ll watch it again to wrap myself in the deep, fuzzy blanket of Menzies’ voice. If he was actually a therapist, I’d see him three times a week.

The Innocent (US 2023). Louis Garrel’s crime comedy is exclusively on the Criterion Channel, yet another reason to sign up for the best streaming service there is. Garrel’s Abel, a still-grieving widower, tries to put the best face on his mother’s latest impulsive act, marrying one of her students in a prison acting class. When new stepdad Michel (Roschdy Zem) is released, Abel starts following him—and soon finds himself roped into Michel’s next job for the sake of family unity. Anouk Grinberg is fantastic as Abel’s impetuous maman, a character worlds away from the no-nonsense jurist she played in The Night of the 12th. And Noémie Merlant deservedly won a César Award for her turn as Abel’s surprisingly encouraging friend.

John Early: Now More Than Ever. When I first saw John Early in the TV series Search Party, I thought, “If there’s ever a Mike Nichols biopic, he’s the guy.” His new HBO special blends comedy and music. The pseudo-documentary framework doesn’t add much, but the material—especially a brutal analysis of his generation’s spotty education and their resulting contributions to the English language—is strong, as is the “Wait, he’s not really gonna sing that, is he?” closing number.

What I’m Drinking

The latest issue of Imbibe magazine spotlights clear spirits in summer drinks. I’m already partial to the Three of a Kind, created by Weisi Basore for Bar Cleeta in Bentonville, Arkansas. Maraschino liqueur is typically used sparingly—even a scant quarter-ounce will boldly declare its presence in a cocktail—so the generous pour here surprised me. But it plays beautifully. I expect to call this complex cooler in from the bullpen often as the season progresses.

1 oz. London dry gin
1 oz. Cocchi Americano bianco
1 oz. maraschino liqueur
2 dashes grapefruit bitters

Stir. Strain over fresh ice. Garnish with a lemon twist.

Cocktail of the Week: The Culross

First, some news. I’m pleased to report I’ve joined the merry band of writers at online magazine EatDrinkFilms as cocktail columnist. Food, booze, and movies? Those are three of my favorite things! “Down the Hatch” – hey, like my book! – will be a monthly feature. My maiden effort honors the magazine’s Northern California roots by looking at the Meyer Lemon Whiskey Sour and the Frisco. Go read it and the rest of the issue while you’re at it.

Whenever I encounter an unfamiliar drink recipe and realize I already have the required ingredients, it’s something of an effort not to cry out “To the bar!”. I stumbled across one the other day while paging through The Savoy Cocktail Book – yes, I do spend my valuable downtime paging through cocktail books, usually in front of a roaring fire with a (rented) dog at my feet, and what’s it to you? – and decided such a voyage of discovery would make the ideal subject for the one hundredth Cocktail of the Week post. Champion, the loaner Labrador nestled by my slippers, barked his assent.

I’m going to repeat that. The ONE HUNDREDTH post. Surely that calls for a drink.

Why not the Culross? I’m not saying this cocktail is unknown. If it’s in Savoy, it’s on a menu somewhere. I’m saying that up to now it’s managed to miss me.

Its Savoy appearance seems to be its debut. No one knows where the name came from, although the Scottish village on the Firth of Forth would be a safe bet. The original recipe called for one-third each Bacardi rum, Kina Lillet and apricot brandy, along with the “juice of ¼ lemon.” Bastardized versions turn up in a handful of later books, often with a heavier pour of rum.

The ratio that was good enough for Harry Craddock would suffice for me. I made my usual substitution of Cocchi Americano for Kina Lillet, the additional snap of cinchona in the Americano a better match for what Harry poured in his day.

As for the juice of one-fourth of a lemon, who has the time to make such calculations in our hectic modern age? A few contemporary recipes upped the lemon juice to full partner, so in went three-quarters of an ounce like the other ingredients.

Drinking the Culross raised another question: Why isn’t this cocktail a perennial favorite? It’s woefully underrated, offering a lovely balance of sweet (brandy), sour (lemon juice), and bitter (Americano), with the rum as stabilizer. Some experts endorse making the drink with apricot eau de vie and I have no doubt it’s splendid in its drier way, but I remain an unabashed brandy partisan. And a Culross convert.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to return this dog while I can still get my deposit back.

The Culross

¾ oz. light rum
¾ oz. Cocchi Americano
¾ oz. apricot brandy
¾ oz. lemon juice

Shake. 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.

Cocktail of the Week: The Abbey

If you’ll open your hymnals and turn to the initial selection …

Harry Craddock’s The Savoy Cocktail Book is a veritable Bible of booze, and the Abbey is the first drink named in its sacred pages. Considering it’s batting leadoff, you’d think I would have gotten to it long before now.

The Savoy recipe calls for one-half gin, one-quarter each Kina Lillet and orange juice, and a dash of Angostura bitters. While Lillet Blanc is now used in place of the discontinued Kina, that ratio has remained unchanged – except in some corners of England, where the aperitif is omitted and the denizens of that scepter’d isle are left sippin’ on gin and juice. (Snoop Dogg raps about the Abbey on import versions of Doggystyle: “With my mind on my monks and my monks on my mind.”) Innovation has been limited to the bitters. gaz regan says Peychaud’s also works well, while bitters guru Brad Thomas Parsons favors the orange variety and also a cherry garnish, which I heartily endorse.

Speaking of garnishes, King Cocktail Dale DeGroff recommends finishing off the Abbey with one of his patented flaming orange peels. This step entails expressing the oils of the fruit’s rind through a lit match, which caramelizes them and subtly alters their flavor. A fine idea, but that kind of flash is why I go to bars and have drinks made for me. Plus open flames are a violation of my lease.

I did try another DeGroff suggestion, placing an orange slice into the shaker before the other ingredients, bruising the fruit’s meat and skin with a muddler, then applying some extra elbow grease to the shake. It worked wonders in boosting the citrus flavor – a flamed peel would just be showing off at this point – but it made me glad I’d recently started double-straining cocktails.

One other modification undertaken on my own initiative: using Cocchi Americano in place of Lillet Blanc in the same proportion. This substitution is now standard practice for me, given that the snap of cinchona bark in Cocchi Americano renders it closer to Kina’s now-lost flavor. Little surprise that the Abbey is heralded as a reliable brunch cocktail; most OJ drinks are. But the additional bitterness of the Cocchi Americano proves an equal match for the sweet pop from the juice, making a drink spry enough to break out of that Sunday morning ghetto and cause trouble in the twilight hours.

The Abbey

1 ½ oz. gin
¾ oz. Cocchi Americano
¾ oz. fresh orange juice
2 dashes of Angostura bitters

Shake. Strain. Garnish with a cherry.

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: Tales of the White Negroni

At the heart of this week’s entry lies a temptress known as Suze. Her wiles are such that I haven’t actually tasted the drink this post is putatively about, much less prepared it myself. Instead I offer two variations that attempt to carry on in her absence.

Suze is made with a species of the flowering plant gentian. According to Amy Stewart’s The Drunken Botanist, gentian’s use for medicinal purposes dates back to 1200 BC. The plant is harvested at an age when its roots weigh several pounds. The bitterness of those roots informs a host of liqueurs including Campari and Aperol, but in Suze it’s the whole show. I’ve tasted Suze. The best word for its flavor is funky. Additional tidbits about Suze –

- It’s beloved in France, where gentian grows in the mountains, but has only been commercially available in the United States since 2012.

- It comes in a bottle approximately the size of the torpedoes from which Joaquin Phoenix got his squeezings in The Master.

- In Washington State, one of those bottles will run you about seventy dollars.

- As the product of a Catholic union household, I cannot in good conscience drop seventy dollars on a mammoth bottle of liqueur possessing a taste I am inclined to describe as funky.

- Craft cocktail bartenders in Washington State are also galled by that price, particularly when they know you can pick up a bottle of Suze in Parisian supermarkets for the spare Euros found in the couch cushions. So plenty of craft cocktails bars don’t have Suze, either.

The Fatty 'Cue White Negroni

All of which comes as a disappointment in light of the growing popularity of a drink called the White Negroni. Created by U.K. bartender Wayne Collins in 2002, the drink riffs playfully on the basic structure of the Negroni: gin/aromatized wine/potable bitters. The relative scarcity (and high price) of Suze has led others to tinker with that formula even further. Several of those later innovations, mercifully, all use ingredients I happened to have on hand.

First up was a variation from Michael Dietsch of Serious Eats. Dietsch used Cocchi Americano in place of Lillet Blanc, which is now my default substitution, along with dry vermouth. My contribution: grapefruit bitters. The drink certainly qualifies as white – I’ve had martinis that aren’t as clear as this – and its crisp, cool taste is bolstered by the presence of grapefruit. But I longed for some additional bitterness.

More to my liking was the White Negroni credited to the New York restaurant Fatty ‘Cue. As in Dietsch’s drink, they use gin (favoring Plymouth), Cocchi Americano, and dry vermouth. They also throw in my old favorite, celery bitters, then push the result more toward the Negroni camp with the addition of the artichoke liqueur Cynar. (Fatty ‘Cue also garnishes the glass with a fennel frond, which is the kind of flash I leave to the professionals.) It’s more herbal than Dietsch’s cocktail but still possesses a bright, clean taste. This is the one I’ll make when I wonder what a White Negroni with Suze might be like.

The White Negroni I’ve Never Actually Had

Wayne Collins, London

2 oz. Plymouth gin
1 oz. Lillet Blanc
¾ oz. Suze

Stir. Strain. Garnish with a lemon twist.

The White Negroni, Variation #1

Michael Dietsch, Serious Eats

1 oz. gin
1 oz. Cocchi Americano
½ oz. dry vermouth
2 dashes grapefruit bitters

Stir. Strain. Garnish with a lemon twist.

The White Negroni, Fatty ‘Cue Edition

Fatty ‘Cue, New York

1 ½ oz. gin
¾ oz. Cocchi Americano
½ oz. dry vermouth
¼ oz. Cynar
2 dashes celery bitters

Stir. Strain. Garnish with a lemon twist, or a fennel frond if you have that kind of time.

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 Vesper

It’s not just that Ian Fleming stops Casino Royale dead to provide a drink recipe, but that the recipe is so specific.

“Three measures of Gordon’s, one of Vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel.”

Brand awareness is a Fleming trademark, the author deciding that the labels in the clothes also make the man. Cultural historian Jeet Heer observed that “Fleming’s use of brand names, often dismissed as snobbery, was inseparable from his larger strengths as a storyteller,” while author Larry Beinhart praised the device as “a wonderful and indispensable trick … to create the illusion of verisimilitude.” Fleming pioneered a literary gambit that Bret Easton Ellis took to its excessive conclusion. Daniel Craig reels off the recipe in the 2006 film, even though Kina Lillet changed its name (and its formula) twenty years earlier.

What about the schizophrenic martini that is the Vesper itself? I enter into evidence the fact that once the drink’s namesake meets her fate in the novel, 007 never knocks back another one. The Vesper may not be an original creation, with some speculating Fleming appropriated the recipe from an acquaintance. But novelists are allowed to dissemble. When it comes to cocktails Fleming reminds me of Ernest Hemingway, another famous tippler credited with deep knowledge simply because he had pronounced idiosyncrasies. When Bond orders a martini he requests it in a “deep champagne goblet,” for crying out loud. I never understood the point of mixing gin and vodka, although Fleming deserves credit for being ahead of the curve. He wrote Casino Royale in 1952; six years earlier vodka constituted less than 1 percent of all spirits consumed in the United States. Bartender and Fleming fan Murray Stenson told me, “People always remember ‘shaken, not stirred’ but they don’t realize how rare vodka was at the time Bond asked for it. Ordering vodka was part of what made him an anti-hero.”

I became intrigued by Fleming’s folly anew with the availability of Cocchi Americano, a white moscato aperitif made with an infusion of cinchona bark. It’s a closer approximation of the taste of Kina Lillet than the product’s successor Lillet Blanc, possessing the bitterness that would have been present when Fleming made the drink.

Bartenders will advise you to shake a Vesper, Fleming’s instructions be damned. James Bond prefers shaken cocktails because he wants them very cold. So do I. I shake my martinis. I still stir the Vesper, because I’m perverse that way.

Choice of gin is crucial. The vodka will dilute it so you want a sturdy one that won’t fold under questioning. In the Fleming spirit, I’ll name my spirit: Tanqueray. The Cocchi Americano does make a difference, providing a spiciness and snap Lillet Blanc does not. Given the choice I’ll always take a gin martini over the Vesper, but the addition of an ingredient closer to Fleming’s preference gives his signature cocktail real character.

I like making the Vesper for another reason. It’s fitting that the creator of the most famous espionage series of all time would popularize a cocktail that acts as the perfect stealth operative. Reverse the ratios of the two primary ingredients and you have a concoction that awakens vodka drinkers to the possibilities of gin. The cool spirit they favor predominates with the hint of juniper acting like a sleeper agent, doing its valuable work in the shadows.

The Vesper

Ian Fleming, probably

2 ¼ oz. gin
¾ oz. vodka
½ oz. Cocchi Americano

Stir. Strain. Garnish with a large thin slice of lemon peel. Do not consume in a cane chair with the seat removed.

Cocktail of the Week: The French Intervention

Yes, it’s my second consecutive tequila drink. Once I didn’t even like tequila. I’m expanding my comfort zone, trying new things. Stop inhibiting me!

This cocktail comes courtesy of Amy Stewart’s best-selling The Drunken Botanist: The Plants That Create The World’s Great Drinks. Her book is a fascinating exploration of the biology behind booze that features multiple recipes, including one for a cocktail that Stewart has called “a better tribute to the agave plant than a margarita is.” Both its name and its ingredients stem from a historical incident. I will now change one of those ingredients and wreck that symmetry completely.

The French Intervention refers to Napoleon III’s 1862 invasion of Mexico. Under President Benito Juárez, Mexico opted to stop paying its foreign creditors. Three of them – Spain, England and France – joined forces to make the debtor nation come across. But when the first two countries learned that France, hoping to forge a Catholic hegemony in the New World, had designs on taking all of Mexico, they stopped answering their phones and were all, like, What? Was that this weekend? We were at Jordan’s the whole time.

France eventually installed a Habsburg, Maximilian I, as emperor, because who better to rule Mexico than an Austrian? They’re two countries separated only by an ocean, a few other bodies of water, several mountain ranges, language, temperament, cuisine and culture. Maximilian’s reign lasted three years and ended with him losing Mexico and his head.

This global misadventure inspired numerous cocktails, including the Maximilian Affair and several drinks marching under the French Intervention banner. To honor its namesake, most variations have a base spirit from Mexico (tequila or mezcal) and a modifier from France such as elderflower liqueur. Stewart’s version incorporates Lillet Blanc.

Mine doesn’t. I have of late been substituting Cocchi Americano for Lillet in cocktails, and made no exception here even though it throws the narrative out of whack. Stewart at least prescribes a dash of green chartreuse, which is also French. And Cocchi Americano’s Italian origin also suits the tale, given that Pope Pius IX blessed Maximilian before he left for his ill-fated bid at monarchy. (One of Juárez’s first acts as President was to nationalize church property.) Later, when France was on the verge of abandoning Mexico, Maximilian’s wife Empress Carlota returned to Europe to plead their case and, paranoid, demanded to stay overnight in the Vatican, becoming the first woman to do so. Meaning that if anything, my take on this cocktail is more attuned to the subtleties of 19th century geopolitics.

The French Intervention buttresses Stewart’s belief that agave-based spirits play well in cocktails. The trace of chartreuse accentuates the tequila to salutary effect, with Cocchi Americano’s extra snap of cinchona a welcome addition. I wouldn’t rank it ahead of the margarita, but it’s still a drink both magnifico and formidable.

The French Intervention

Variation on a recipe by Amy Stewart

1 ½ oz. tequila (or mezcal)
¾ oz. Cocchi Americano (originally Lillet Blanc)
dash of green chartreuse

Stir. Strain. Garnish with a grapefruit twist.

Cocktail of the Week: The Corpse Reviver #2

In which a fire that had not lost its spark is nonetheless rekindled.

Tackling the obvious question first: what happened to the Corpse Reviver #1? It was hushed up by a covert government agency in the wake of an unpleasant incident at a suburban Pittsburgh shopping mall in 1978. Obviously.

In truth there’s an entire brood of Corpse Revivers, all part of an unruly genus of cocktails. Call them what you like: the bracer, the eye-opener, the hair of the dog. Drinks meant to get you up and out following a night of being down and dirty. Corpse Reviver #1 (now declassified thanks to my Freedom of Information Act request) calls for Cognac, apple brandy and sweet vermouth, and there are a host of other formulae. But #2 has become the standard, to the extent that the number is often omitted. In the Savoy Cocktail Book (1930), Harry Craddock famously warned that “four of them taken in swift succession will unrevive the corpse again.”

It’s a simple recipe, originally consisting of equal parts gin, Cointreau, lemon juice, and Lillet. Which brings us to our problem.

In 1986, Kina Lillet became Lillet Blanc. The new formulation of this French aperitif wine resulted in a product that was both less alcoholic and less bitter, the latter due in large part to the reduction of cinchona bark, a source of quinine. (This recalibration also necessitated a name change, Kina being a diminutive of quinquina.) It’s an all too common story in the cocktail kingdom, one I encountered firsthand while searching every arrondisement in Paris for a bottle of Amer Picon. When I finally scared up a bottle, I was told it was nothing compared to the old version; deep down, hardcore cocktail fanatics are like the eternally wistful Burt Lancaster in Atlantic City, saying the ocean was better in his day. Lillet Blanc was regularly used in place of its progenitor even though it tasted different, meaning that if you’ve been knocking back Vespers since Daniel Craig’s Casino Royale you have not experienced the cocktail Ian Fleming described.

Deliverance came from Italy in the form of Cocchi (pronounced co-key) Americano. This aperitivo, from the same people responsible for the Vermouth di Torino that has of late been elevating my Manhattans, reasonably approximates Kina Lillet. It’s as close as we’re going to get to recapturing lightning in a bottle. I’d always enjoyed a Corpse Reviver #2 made with Lillet Blanc. But substituting Cocchi Americano gives it a structure I’d never noticed it was lacking, the additional bitterness only augmenting the drink’s ebullience. It’s like meeting the cocktail again for the first time, and falling even harder for it.

This discovery will pay immediate dividends. The Corpse Reviver #2 is my go-to selection whenever I’m asked to play bartender at a summer party, to the extent that I even bought a mister. The strong citrus presence means it’s refreshing. Because it’s an equal parts drink you can prepare them by the pitcher, with one in the refrigerator in advance of your guests. When you have to make refills – and you will – everybody gets into the act, one partygoer juicing lemons while another prepares the glasses with absinthe (or Pernod). Try it yourself and tell me I’m wrong. The name may say Walking Dead, but for Mad Men season there’s nothing better.

The Corpse Reviver #2

¾ oz. gin
¾ oz. Cointreau
¾ oz. Cocchi Americano
¾ oz. lemon juice
dash of absinthe (or Pernod)

Shake. Strain into a glass rinsed or misted with absinthe (or Pernod). Garnish with a cherry.