My little Christmas cocktail party was all set – early December Saturday reserved, tons of alcohol procured, and a dozen homemade ingredients in the preparation process. But one winter morning I woke up with a horrible fever, and my holiday season was transformed into an fierce battle between my immune system and a hellspawn virus.… Read More Christmas Cocktails Came Late This Year
This week I’m reviewing Richard Elliott Friedman’s new history of the Exodus. While the mention of the Old Testament usually evokes strict moral codes and sober living, the document itself is choc-ful of booze-fueled fun/sin. For those too busy to read all 24 books, Wikipedia provides a great run down of alcohol’s role in scripture. So,… Read More Old Testament Cocktails
This week I’m reviewing Richard Snow’s riveting new history of the Battle of Hampton Roads, which got me in the mood to make up some old school naval cocktails. And you really can’t get more old school or naval than Grog, the first cocktail of the ocean seas! Grog, for those poor souls unitiated in Royal Navy/alcohol… Read More It’s a Grog Party!
This week I’m reviewing Robert Gaudi’s book “African Kaiser,” a marvelous little history of German’s forgotten African colonies during World War I. I’ve dabbled a bit in Germanic cocktail-ology previously but never explored imbibing during the Wilhemine Period. Unfortunately for me and all of Europe, Kaiser Wilhelm II–the last and dumbest Kaiser–was a bit of a teetotaler… Read More How to Drink Like the Kaiser
This week I’m reviewing “The Silk Roads” by Peter Frankopan, which recasts world history as an Asian-centric story rather than the European saga we are raised with. As I write this and think of the scale and breadth of Frankopan’s book, I’m a little embarrassed that I didn’t search the ends of the Earth (or the… Read More Cocktails at the Crossroads
“There cannot be not enough snacks, There can only be not enough vodka. There can be no silly jokes, There can only be not enough vodka. There can be no ugly women, There can only be not enough vodka. There cannot be too much vodka, There can only be not enough vodka.” This week I’m… Read More How to Drink Like a Tsar
This week I’m reviewing H.W. Brand’s biography of Ulysses S. Grant who, unfairly, is the US President most closely associated with booze. Figuring out what Grant actually drank, however, is a bit difficult. One clue comes from this famous, almost certainly apocryphal account: After the failure of his first experimental explorations around Vicksburg, a committee of… Read More Drinking Like Ulysses S. Grant
This week I’m reviewing Bill Beverly’s “Dodgers” a crime novel that begins in the embattled slums of Los Angeles. LA’s rougher neighborhoods haven’t generated many craft cocktails (at least that I could find), so I searched for noir-ish drinks that evoke visions of LA Confidential or Chinatown. The first drink I made was “The Brown Derby” which is named… Read More LA Dreaming and Drinking
This week I’m reviewing Alan Furst’s latest spy novel “A Hero of France,” so I decided to play with some French-themed cocktails (for the second time). The classic French 75 was one of the first cocktails I can remember drinking – as a military history geek, I was drawn to any drink that takes a fine piece… Read More Drinking 75s in Occupied Paris
This week I’m reviewing James Anderson’s debut novel “The Never-Open Desert Diner” a stark portrayal of life in the Utah desert. So, I went looking for cocktails that evoked that crimson, beautiful landscape that I was lucky enough to hike through over a decade ago. If you ever get the chance, go to Moab and… Read More Cocktails from the Badlands
Hello Cocktails! 