A Bloody (Mary) Kind of Year

The inaugural effort

I’m not really a holiday person. Our sole tradition is one we came up with ourselves: The Big Boozy New Year’s Breakfast. Get up and out early for a meal, and there must be cocktails. Your first act of January 1 should be to treat yourself right, establishing the tone for the year ahead.

We couldn’t ring in 2021 by going out for breakfast, obviously, but we weren’t about to abandon our only tradition. So we made adjustments. We laid in a spread for New Year’s Day. Fresh bagels, cream cheese, smoked salmon, the works. All that remained were the cocktails. I had to fix a Bloody Mary or two.

Which, astoundingly, I had never done before. My default brunch cocktail—damn near everybody’s, really, although don’t sleep on the possibilities of the Blood and Sand as an eye-opener—and at no point had I even attempted to make one. When I’m in the mood for a Bloody Mary, I’m out and about, and consequently I let the professionals handle it. Not so in 2021.

Chalk up another modification to our tradition. This year, my first act of January 1 was to step just a little bit outside of my comfort zone. May that also help set the tone for the next twelve months.

As for the drink itself, I consulted experts before getting down to work. (In the interests of full disclosure, I did stage a trial run in the waning days of 2020 so I wouldn’t stagger into this project unprepared.) Everyone has their own preferences for the Bloody Mary; I opted for a variation on Jim Meehan’s excellent recipe from his Meehan’s Bartender Manual. I also rolled the cocktail, rather than building it in the glass or shaking it, which dilutes the tomato juice. To roll the drink, you assemble the ingredients in the shaker, which you then turn over twenty or so times.

The verdict? Rosemarie liked hers. I liked mine. And the year is off to a good start.

The Bloody Mary
apologies to Jim Meehan

4 oz. tomato juice
1 ½ oz. vodka
¼ oz. lemon juice
¼ oz. lime juice
¼ oz. Worcestershire sauce
½ tsp. horseradish
¼ tsp. celery salt
¼ tsp. freshly ground black pepper
¼ tsp. hot sauce

Combine ingredients. Roll in a shaker (see above). Strain over fresh ice into a tall chilled glass. Garnish with a celery stalk.

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 Moscow Mule

An anniversary is a time to step back and reappraise. To break with tradition. To venture into new terrain. To listen, finally, to all those requests and complaints.

That’s right. In this, the second year of Cocktail of the Week posts, I am at long last featuring a vodka drink. Stop sending me your emails.

Understand, I’m not one of these people who hates vodka. Like Kingsley Amis, who wrote in Everyday Drinking that the role of vodka “is to replace gin in established gin drinks for the benefit of those rather second-rate persons who don’t like the taste of gin, or indeed that of drink in general.” He said it, folks, I didn’t.

I have no strong feelings about vodka, which is why I seldom drink it. It brings nothing to the party in the terms of taste. (Do not start in about flavored vodkas, I beg of you. You do not want to go down that road with me.) When people ask me to suggest a vodka cocktail, I’ll usually opt for something like the Jasmine, which has a few other elements to do the heavy lifting.

There is one vodka cocktail that I enjoy, because it asks the spirit to provide the kick and lets the remaining ingredients, specifically one, shoulder the burden. That the drink was concocted by a major corporation solely to sell booze doesn’t bother me in the least.

In 1939, the food and beverage giant Heublein purchased the North American rights to Smirnoff vodka for next to nothing. This was at this insistence of company president John Martin and over the objections of Heublein’s board of directors. (Heublein may have scored with brands as varied as A1 Steak Sauce, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Grey Poupon, but they also sold a line of pre-made cocktails like Manhattans and sidecars in cans, so it’s not like the outfit had the Midas touch.) Vodka had always struggled in the U.S., and initially Heublein had difficulty marketing it as well. Ultimately they chose to play to the familiar by rebranding it “white whiskey” and in an ad campaign touted the fact that it had no taste or smell by saying Smirnoff left you breathless. Focus groups deemed this approach more subtle that the original slogan, “Ah, Screw It, Get Hammered At Lunch.”

Success was still some distance off in 1946 when Martin found himself in Los Angeles dining with Jack Morgan, proprietor of the Cock ‘n Bull, the faux-British pub to the stars on the Sunset Strip. (The bar lasted until 1987, making it one of the last of the ‘40s Hollywood hot spots to close its doors.) Martin was saddled with Communist hooch nobody wanted, while Morgan made a strong ginger beer few customers could stomach. What to do, what to do?

Their answer, of course, was to combine them. A buck or a mule is a category of cocktail made with a base spirit, ginger ale or beer, and citrus. Given the Cock ‘n Bull’s Tinseltown ties the vodka buck, rechristened the Moscow Mule, became a hit with movie folk and was consequently written up in fan magazines, which fueled its popularity nationwide. So if you ever wondered who to blame for the ascension of vodka in this country, there’s your answer: Hollywood liberals.

The Martin/Morgan origin story sounds too good to be true. Drink historian Eric Felten says credit for the drink’s creation actually belongs to Cock ‘n Bull bartender Wes Price. His inspiration, according to Felten? “I just wanted to clean out the basement.” Price also claims that the first Moscow Mule ever made was sold to film noir favorite Broderick Crawford, so I’m buying his version of events.

Whenever possible, the Moscow Mule is served in a small copper mug. Why, you may ask? This is my favorite part of the story: because Jack Morgan’s girlfriend had inherited a factory that made them, and she couldn’t unload the things. Why shouldn’t she get well along with Morgan and Martin? Many bars maintain this unnecessary tradition and here in Seattle of late, the mugs have been the cause of a crime wave. I would like my parole officer to note that one of them is not pictured.

Key to this drink is a potent ginger beer. In The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, David A. Embury pushes for Schweppes, an English brand. I’m honoring that request by making mine with Crabbie’s Alcoholic Ginger Beer, a U.K. product with a terrific sharp flavor and a punch of its own. Add a little lime and you have a perfect summer cooler.

The Moscow Mule

2 oz. vodka
4 – 6 oz. ginger beer
½ oz. lime juice

Pour lime juice over ice in a Collins glass or a small copper mug that you probably stole from a reputable bar, in which case you should just turn yourself in to the authorities. Add vodka. Top with ginger beer. Stir. Garnish with a lime wedge.