The St. Dominic's Preview

The Gumbo Pages is a site "dedicated to the preservation of new orleans culture." It's put together by Chuck Taggart, an ex-pat New Orleanian living in L.A. Not only is Chuck the man behind a great box set of New Orleans music, Doctors, Professors, Kings and Queens,
he's also quite knowledgeable in the area of booze. Here's one of Chuck's originals, The St. Dominic's Preview. He based it on a cocktail called The Preview. The story, according to Chuck's source, is that The Preview was Peter Lawford's favorite drink. I have no idea whether this is true. Those Rat Packers sho'nuff did love the booze though so who knows. I haven't tried The Preview yet but Chuck's take on it is terrific.

St. Dominic's Preview

2 ounces Tullamore Dew Irish whiskey
1/2 ounce Grand Marnier
2 dashes orange bitters
Few dashes Herbsaint, Pernod or other pastis
Orange peel

Shake a few dashes of pastis into a rocks (Old Fashioned / whiskey) glass, then swirl around to coat. Pour most of it out, leaving a little puddle of it in the bottom of the glass. Combine the whiskey, liqueur and bitters in a cocktail shaker with cracked ice, stir for no less than 30 seconds and strain into the coated glass. Twist the peel over the drink and garnish with the peel.

There aren't many cocktails using Irish whiskey but this is a very fine example. I had the Tullamore Dew on hand so I used it but I'm sure the drink would be just as good with Jameson's, Bushmill's, Tullamore Dew or John Powers. I didn't have an orange, though, so a lemon twist had to do. Fortunately it made for a reasonable substitute.

Another substitution was made possible by my pal Desmond who provided a bottle of La Fée Bohemian Absinth* for us to experiment with. It worked exceptionally well in its role in the St. Dominic's Preview. I wouldn't say that it was a huge improvement over what my $17 bottle of Herbsaint would have provided in its place but used in this way it was excellent. It's amazing, really, just how little absinthe or pastis is needed to be noticeable.

So how is the La Fée on its own? Um, hmmm, I'm not sure. I tried it straight and with water and found it "interesting". I certainly didn't love it but I guess I can't do much more than damn it with faint praise. This particular style is glass cleaner-blue and 140 proof. The color is disconcerting but the high proof is probably the main reason for my difficulty. To my surprise I didn't find the alcohol to be too much but the flavors were very strong. Adding water really opened it up. It was simply too concentrated at 140. I'm very interested in trying other absinthes, particularly the absinthes made by Ted Breaux of Jade Liquors.

Here's the recipe for The Preview if you'd like to give it a try:

The Preview

1-1/2 ounces gin.
1 ounce Cointreau.
1/4 teaspoon of Ricard, Pernod or Herbsaint.

Pour the Ricard (or Pernod or Herbsaint) into a chilled cocktail glass and swirl to coat the inside of the glass; shake out the excess. Place the rest of the ingredients in a cocktail shaker with cracked ice, shake and serve straight up in the coated glass, garnished with a long, curly twist of orange peel.

Merry Christmas everybody!




* There's no "e" in "absinthe" in the Czech Republic.

From the La Fée website:
La Fée Bohemian Absinth re-creates the traditional Bohemian drink that was produced in the 1920s, with subtle herbal undertones of fennel, mint and rather less aniseed than that absinthe produced in France at the end of the 19th Century. Bohemian tastes have always meant that less anise is used in the drink's production, and explains why Bohemian Absinth does not turn milky ('louche') when water is added.

Whereas the heavy aniseed flavour of La Fée Parisian Absinthe is often not suitable for use in cocktails, La Fée Bohemian Absinth has a refined subtlety, whose distinctive flavour is a mixologists dream.

If by whiskey...

Thanks to Martini Republic for the link to a 1952 speech by a young Mississippi lawmaker, Noah S. "Soggy" Sweat, Jr., on the subject of whether Mississippi should prohibit or legalize alcoholic beverages:

If when you say whiskey you mean the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, and despair, and shame and helplessness, and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it.

But;

If when you say whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman's step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life's great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm; to build highways and hospitals and schools, then certainly I am for it.

Well said. A toast to our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm!

Repeal Day

Repeal Day is here. The Volstead Act (aka Prohibition) was officially repealed seventy-three years ago today. "Designer, blogger and mixologist" Jeffrey Morganthaler suggests that we celebrate. Count me in.

Check out a couple old newsreels about the end of Prohibition: here and here. Thanks to the Museum of the American Cocktail's blog for the links.

So, what's the point?

A blog, by definition, is the work of any faceless doofus running his random scrawlings up a flagpole hoping someone will salute (...putting 'em out on the front porch hoping the cat licks 'em up, throwing 'em against the wall and hoping something sticks, etc. You get the picture.). So, telling you that I'm just gonna wing it from here on should really go without saying.

I plan to take a relatively serious approach on occasion but, really, how serious can one get when the subject is drinking, booze and the stuff you can make with booze? I hope to write the occasional essay on--um, hell, I dunno, lemme get back to you on that--but mostly I'll be posting drink recipes, insipid booze reviews, links to far better blogs and forum threads, maybe the occasional bar review and other crapola like that. I don't expect that anything here will change your life but, then again, if you've never had a Sazerac or a Corpse Reviver #2 or Fancy Gin Cocktail or if you wouldn't have found The Esquire Drinks Database or CocktailDB without my link, well, you may well find your life to be slightly improved after a visit.

I can honestly say that my quality of life has improved after exposure to the work of Dave Wondrich and Ted Haigh (respectively, author/Esquire 's dean of drink and author/co-founder of CocktailDB) and, Jack Lord, man, if you've never had a cocktail that pre-dates the Cosmopolitan you should do so leave work immediately--you are reading this at work, right?--and get your bad self to a decent liquor store to pick up a couple things you probably don't have at home.

Sure, you can clear your head with exercise or free your mind with yoga. Knock yourself out. Sometimes, though, only a crisp, clean 5-to-1 Martini made with Plymouth gin and garnished with a slice of lemon peel the size of a silver dollar will do. Hopefully, The Handy Snake can help you with just those times.

Here's how.

Another blogger going on and on about cocktails, drinking and booze is exactly what the world needs. That's what I'm telling myself anyway. If you found your way here via a link or a web search maybe you agree.

If you're like me you have dozens of cocktail-centric blogs bookmarked even though only a handful of the blogs update frequently enough or offer enough knowledge or insight to be worth your time. You also have several booze-centric online forums bookmarked but the activity at the forums ebbs and flows too so, if you’re like me, you get a little frustrated when you check in and there's nothing new (or if a post is something you already know or know is wrong or simply disagree with....). Not to mention that the discussions at a couple of those forums are almost always unsatisfying (though I'll admit some of the ignorance and lunacy can be entertaining).

If that sounds familiar I welcome you to The Handy Snake. I hope that at the very least you’ll find this nape of the woods/neck of the wape to be an agreeable stop-gap when Paul at Cocktail Chronicles or Rick at Kaiser Penguin or Darcy at The Art of Drink are between updates and things are slow at eGullet’s cocktail forum and MSN’s DrinkBoy forums. If I can provide more than a stop-gap, well, I’ll drink to that.

As for the rest of you, I can only assume that you’re an indulgent friend or family-member checking in out of kindness or a sense of obligation or maybe you’re a web-surfer who has lost his way while searching for the easiest way to fix a clogged drain. Regardless, I hope you’ll take a look around and that maybe you’ll find something of interest. If not, thanks for stopping by. You have my word that I will not put you on the spot by asking your opinion on my latest blog entry.

Nope, I understand completely that my interest in booze and cocktails is not for everyone. I even understand that the extent of my interest might strike even those similarly inclined to be somewhat obssessive. So, don't sweat it. You go on back to your daily life and feel free to shake your head at the thought of my ridiculously over-stuffed liquor cabinet and my ever-increasing collection of books on drink, drinking and the stuff what gets drunk. That's more than okay by me. On the off-chance, though, that you find yourself in the mood to see what's up in one man's world of drink, well, this is where you'll find me.

And, so, with no further ado, if you’ll be so kind as to join me in a cyber-toast to the launching of this silly enterprise, “Here’s how!”