Libations & Explorations

(Absinthe in Avignon) French Drinking Culture As my good friends will tell you, I enjoy a good drink!  Other than that time in Rotterdam which all parties involved agreed to never speak of again; I rarely drink to any serious level of intoxication. Just enough to relax and enjoy myself. I also genuinely enjoy the taste of certain alcohols (and I only consume drinks I like the taste of).  You will never see me having beer (aka, cat piss). The past two weeks of living in France has shown me how shockingly puritan America is when it comes to alcohol.  Yes, the drinking age is 18 in France (21 in America), and yes you can buy hard liquor in just about any shop you can think of (NOT happening in Pennsylvania); but it goes much deeper than that. In the mornings, in France, you will see people at their local cafes having an espresso or two to start the day.  You will also see people having a glass of wine or a beer. Indeed, even the local indoor market in Avignon has a bar ...

Negroni at the Hyatt Regency New Delhi, India When I initiate a fellow drinker into the magnificent world of the 'Negroni', I remind them that this cocktail is an acquired taste.  Like many things in life, the first will be awful, but by the third you will be hooked…and drunk. As a cocktail, the Negroni is disarmingly simple: one part gin, one part vermouth-rosso, and one part Campari.  Stir together with an orange wedge to be used as a garnish in a rocks glass.  Never shake. A very posh Negroni at the Park Hyatt Milan, Italy The Negroni is quintessentially Italian.  The tale goes that a descendent of General Pascal Olivier de Negroni, the count of Negroni, asked the bartender in Caffe Casoni in Florence to liven-up the 'Americano' cocktail by replacing the soda water with gin.  The bartender also replaced the Americano's garnish, a lime, with an orange wedge to differentiate the cocktail.   In early 2023 my good friend Doina and I had Negron...

      'Old Fashioned' Via Vecchia Restaurant Portland, Maine If there is one thing I truly enjoy, it’s a well-made cocktail! And there is one cocktail that, for me, stands above all others: the Old Fashioned.  If I was required to write about how many times I was drunk at airport bars on Old Fashioned’s…well, we would need a terabyte (whatever the hell a ‘terabyte’ is). The Old Fashioned is exactly that: an early version of the “cocktail”.  In the early 19th century, a cocktail was any mixture of spirits, bitters, sugar and water.  The Old Fashioned is claimed to have come about in 1890s Kentucky at the Pendennis Club.  Colonel James E. Pepper, a Bourbon distiller of some note, then took the recipe to the Waldorf Astoria in New York. Traditionally, the drink is made by mixing a small lump of sugar with a little water in a rocks glass, adding two dashes of Angostura bitters, and topping off with a measure of whisky.  An orange peal is usually used ...