Journal of No. 118

The LA Cocktail Examiner was kind enough to give me some of his library when he decided to hang up his spurs and muddler.

The PDT Cocktail Book is a handsome thing, written by the mind behind Please Don't Tell in NYC. THe first section of the book is about how to design and build a professional bar. Not something I'll need, but interesting to see the thought that goes into it. It moves on to the cocktail recipes, which I've hardly skimmed, actually. But I do like that he sources the drinks, roughly half to classic cocktail books from 1850-1940, and half to his contemporary mixologists of the 2000's. The hot dog section I find harder to swallow, so to speak [evidently PDT shares space with a hot dog joint, something like Varnish at Cole's.] Maybe if I were a NYC hot dog fancier, it'd be different, but these recipes didn't excite me at all. Finally, a nice primer on the different spirits and liqueurs and such, including the particular brands stocked at PDT.

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The Little Green Book of Absinthe by Owens & Nathan, with drink recipes by Herlong.
It provides a good, solid background on absinthe. Not encyclopedic, but pretty good for a 'little' book. A lot of the drink recipes, however, struck me as horrid. Maybe if I made 'em and tried 'em, I'd change my tune, but it seems unlikely. Not that they're all bad, but I had a strong feeling of "what is good is not original and what is original is not good."

An abortive $ club meeting was held at Copa d'Oro in Santa Monica. Since we had no quorum, we could not jump castlekevorah into the club, and I slipped my knurled truncheon into a coat pocket. But on the plus side, we got to enjoy the end of happy hour.
It's more a bar than a restaurant (complete with vestigial bouncer) but the ham and cheese panini was quite good and the Ward 8 was excellent, and the happy hour prices were phenomenal ($5 cocktail and $6 sandwich - Kev's PB&J was $4). Though the Ward 8 commemorates a political victory in Massachusetts (ahem), I prefer to think that it's related to one of my favorite books on lunatic asylums in the early 20th century, written by "Inmate, Ward 8".
Kev's Clover Club cocktail was tasty, but a little too heavy on the raspberry, which would probably float the Goth Gardener's boat.
The place has a great feel, but a little on the noisy and crowded side. Nevertheless, the lure of happy hour may bring me back from time to time. I do have a desire to test out their version of Charles Vexenat's Judgment Day.

The Liquid Muse's Cocktail Club held an absinthe tasting (and Poe Bicentennial Reading) at the Bar Keeper last night. Since I know the LA Cocktail Examiner, and have plied him with absinthe on occasion, and his wife doesn't care for absinthe, I got to go as his arm candy to this exclusive event. Given his backlog of Examiner articles, it'll be Christmas before we hear his version of events, so I will steal his thunder with my own recounting.
The Bar Keeper is a swinging place, with all the tools and paraphernalia of the trade: from shakers and flasks to absinthe fountains and vintage cocktail recipe books. The Keepers are aces for keeping the store open late and hosting a bunch of deadbeat hipsters cocktail cognoscenti. The event was also sponsored by Viridian Spirits, which reps Lucid and La Clandestine. Many thanks to them, as well.
I was hardly in the door before a White Christmas was handed to me. A very tasty concoction, and an excellent alternative to a Death in the Afternoon, if you have a hankering to get your sparkling wine in your absinthe or your absinthe in your sparkling wine.
Although the connection between Poe and absinthe is tentative at best, I'm a devotee of both and had no problem mixing them. Since I was present due to the good graces of The Liquid Muse and The Cocktail Examiner, I felt obliged to sing for my sipping. The Muse had suggested that attendees might wish to offer Poe readings, so I got to kick off the formal part of the event with The Conqueror Worm. It was a bit daunting to discover that mine was the only reading [until another gentleman arrived later in the evening and let The Lake lap against our ears.] In any event, despite one absinthe-laden cocktail and one slightly stage-frightened tell-tale heart, I managed a satisfactory reading.
Next, a fine presentation on the history, art, ritual and myth of absinthe, by an "Absinthe Category Specialist" formerly of Lucid. He demonstrated the different characters and louches of Lucid, La Clandestine, and (non-Viridian) St. George. He may not be associated with Lucid anymore, but he still seemed to have something of a bias against St. George, or possibly it's just the way marketing speak gets stuck in your brain. He dinged them for using star anise instead of green anise, which maybe inflames my own biases, since the kitchen sink aromatherapy product uses star anise. But what compounded matters was that he said something about star anise being an extract; perhaps St. George uses some kind of anise extract -- I wouldn't know, though it seems unlikely -- but star anise is a perfectly respectable spice. Oh, and he kept saying "a-NIECE" like he was French or something. Pfft.
I was surprised that the St. George louched a kind of murky yellow-brown. It was not appealing to the eye. I know from experience that sunlight (or age?) has quite a yellowing effect on the natural colors in absinthe, so maybe the bottle had been left in Death Valley for six months. The expert attributed some of the darker color to St. George's use of brandy. Some lilt in his voice suggested that brandy was somehow an unsuitable substance, somewhere between Thunderbird and Colt 45, but I can't for the life of me imagine Pernod Fils preferring Lucid's alcoholic base: sugar beet spirits.
Color aside, the taste of the St. George was really quite good; maybe a little heavy on mint, but a great and complex herbal taste. I had to ration myself to ensure the car would stay between the lines, so I didn't taste the other two, but I've had Lucid before: it's quite good, probably better than anything you can get in the States at an equivalent price. Judging solely by appearances, Lucid and La Clandestine both looked beautiful and louched very nicely.
But I did save room for the Phoebe Snow, which was a powerful strong cocktail like they made in the good old days. The cocktail's name, of course, commemorates anthracite coal. Not as tasty as the White Christmas, but perfect if you need the liquor to work quicker.

aaronjv & hagdirt were nice enough to get us the book Absinthe: Sip of Seduction.

It provides a fairly complete view of many different aspects of the green fairy, ranging from bios of the rich & famous who tippled it, to its manufacture, the advertising art, the accompanying paraphernalia (like uranium glass), and a listing of commercially available absinthes. I wish, however, that I could find a particular piece of art online, because it's pretty neat. It depicts Revelation 8:10-11 - "And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter."
So there is a big happy star falling to earth. Beside it are some Artemisia absinthium bushes, illustrated with enough care that they clearly resemble what we got in the back yard. And people are lying about drinking cups of poisoned water and dying. Lovely stuff. It's said to be from a British illuminated manuscript from ca. 1270.
Argh, further sleuthing suggests to me that it is probably from the Douce Apocalypse (MS Douce 180 at the Bod in Oxford). But I don't see that particular image online anywhere. Ah, well.
incidentally, in 1922 the Oxford University Press published a book on the manuscript, penned by one Montague Rhodes James.