Ezra Glinter reckons that we have entered a “golden age” of cocktails not seen since the late 19th century:
As [Esquire drinking correspondent David] Wondrich argued to me, bars now have to stay ahead of their customers, as well as their competition. Basic cocktails aren’t more difficult to make than a good tuna fish sandwich, and obscure ingredients are no longer difficult to obtain. The last time I was at my favorite liquor store it had some sixty different types of gin, twenty-five of rye, and twenty-one of vermouth, not to mention all the vodka and bourbon and rum. … With a modest outlay you can create a cocktail den right in your own living room.
For me, that’s the best part of this great liquor renaissance. Events like [women’s bartending competition] Speed Rack are exciting, and getting a complicated drink at a fancy bar is a nice luxury, if you don’t mind shelling out the price of [a] meal for it. But figuring out the best proportions of vermouth-to-rye in a Manhattan, or a new secret ingredient for a Bloody Mary, or what sort of drinks you might make with a bottle of ginger liqueur—that’s the real fun. There isn’t a lot of social value involved (though plenty of cocktail enthusiasts claim otherwise) and the whole thing might be, as Samuel Johnson wrote of whiskey, just “the art of making poison pleasant.” But mixing drinks provides something other forms of liquor connoisseurship don’t—the opportunity to turn a drink into a creative act. In a golden age of liquor, why drink something boring?
Recent Dish on a new documentary, Hey Bartender, here.
The Dish 