I considered writing the Charlie Chaplin up for Raiders of the Lost Cocktail. I decided not to in the end though. Partly I wanted to write up a drink that combined Lillet with apricot brandy, and partly I was not sure if the Charlie Chaplin qualifies as being ‘lost’. I have occasionally seen the Charlie Chaplin on bar menus. Still, the name of the drink is rather old worldly, as is the use of sloe gin, so I won’t argue with anyone who wants to label it a lost drink.

The one bar where I have drunk a Charlie Chaplin was a little Japanese place in Shanghai. This time the bar in question was not Constellation, but rather the little bar inside the Garcon Chinois restaurant on Hengshan Rd. That bar is much smaller than Constellation, and does not have nearly the same range of spirits, but the cocktails used to be very carefully and expertly made by a Japanese woman who knew exactly what she was doing. (more…)

So the theme for this Mixology Monday, hosted at Jimmy’s Cocktail Hour is ‘variations’. For once I haven’t had to think about what to throw together. This month’s theme perfectly fits something I’ve been meaning to write about for a while now, namely a very straightforward and versatile variation of a Gin and Tonic. (more…)

Ernest Hemingway, endurance drinker, greets Fidel Castro, endurance orator

Auckland is suffering in the grip of a pressing lime shortage. Unrest has been quelled so far through the imposition of martial law (Batista will be smiling in his grave), but nobody knows how long the authorities can maintain even this crude semblance of order. OK, I may be exaggerating slightly. Everything is surprisingly normal considering that there have been no limes in the supermarkets since before Christmas. This means I can’t enjoy a Daiquiri despite the summery weather. The good thing though is that I’ve been meaning to write about the Daiquiri for a while, so with Daiquiris on my mind but none to be had I may as well get writing. (more…)

This one may be my favorite pisco cocktail. Dave Wondrich wrote it up on the Esquire website drinks data base (which seemed to disappear for a while but has now moved here). The Dulchin doesn’t have its own entry there; look for it under the Hop Toad, a lime and apricot brandy drink that is also pretty good.

The thing I really like about the Dulchin is its use of eau de vie, or dry fruit brandy. Eau de vie is fantastic stuff for mixing cocktails with. There aren’t nearly enough Eau de vie cocktails out there and the good ones deserve some attention. (more…)

I did a search on CocktailDB for pisco cocktails. Besides the well known pisco drinks, namely the pisco sour and the pisco punch, CocktailDB had just three other drinks to offer. CocktailDB is normally a good way to find a list of drinks using obscure ingredients, but when it comes to pisco it does not have much to offer.

The peculiar thing was that all three of these pisco drinks from CocktailDB also included Galliano. Very strange indeed. I am guessing that these three drinks all come from the same source, maybe a promotional cocktail booklet published for some South American market by Galliano, or perhaps they were winning entries in some competition or other. (more…)

The theme for this month’s Mixology Monday is Repeal Day, and Pre-prohibition drinks are thus in order. Pisco is flavor of the month at my place since I managed to pick up three different brands of the stuff. That makes the Pisco Punch the obvious choice for this month’s drink.

I mentioned Pisco Punch the last time I wrote here. The problem with Pisco Punch, and it is quite a problem, is that the original recipe seems to have been lost. Certain things about the drink are known with certainty though. (more…)

I’ve haven’t posted anything for the last couple of Mixology Mondays. My excuse in April was being on holiday and having no access to Champagne. It seems it isn’t a popular drink in the remoter parts of Western China. I didn’t have a very good excuse in May since I was already back in New Zealand by that stage. All I can say is that I still hadn’t got around to setting up a bar in my apartment and the idea of tequila drinks didn’t inspire me enough to make me rush out and go shopping.

This month my bar is more or less functional and the theme is cream, a theme which seems very doable. (more…)

I dropped into Trader Vic’s recently opened Shanghai restaurant last night for a Shanghai Expat (www.shanghaiexpat.com) hosted cocktail party. The service at Trader Vics is five star, the Polynesian décor takes you a world away from the grime and grind of Shanghai, and the food and drinks are not half bad. However, you can’t help thinking the cocktails could be better. The drinks are by no means bad, but when patronizing the joint that invented the Mai Tai it is depressing to drink a Mai Tai that is merely a shadow of what it could be. (more…)