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…)

I saw some kummel the other week. I had only drunk kummel once before (in the since disappeared Berlin restaurant on Mt Eden Rd. in Auckland) but its herbal caraway taste left a strong impression. Since getting into aquavit, also traditionally flavored with caraway, over Christmas I had been wanting to give kummel another try. So I bought a bottle with vague plans of finding an aquavit and kummel drink to use it in. (more…)

My excellent friend Nathan brought be three bottles of rye whiskey from the US yesterday – Wild Turkey, Old Overholt and Rittenhouse. I haven’t had too much of a chance to play around with them yet, but the Wild Turkey is excellent stuff, and while the Old Overholt and Rittenhouse are a little lacking in aftertaste they are still nice mixers that are distinctly different to bourbon.

The Wild Turkey makes an excellent Manhattan – dry and spicy with good depth of flavor. It really does taste totally different to a Manhattan made with a quality bourbon, though I must admit a Woodford Reserve Manhattan is also very good. The Old Overholt and Rittenhouse are nice enough in a Manhattan but they don’t have the backbone of the Wild Turkey. Old Overholt and Rittenhouse don’t taste too bad in an Old Fashioned, but would probably be best in drinks with juices and other ingredients – i.e. drinks where the whiskey isn’t doing all the work. Comparing them with Blantons Bourbon, Blantons still makes a far superior Old Fashioned and I’m not a big Blanton’s fan.

Right now I’m trying the Rittenhouse in a Capetown Cocktail (1 1/2 oz rye, 1 oz Dubonnet, 2 dashes Orange Curacao, 1 dash Angostura Bitters, stirred over ice and garnished with a lemon twist). The Rittenhouse works nicely in a drink like this. It is drier than bourbon would be, just a little spicy, and the bitter and herbal flavors of the Dubonnet help make up for its lack of finish.

I need to hurry up and make some more drinks with these rye whiskeys while my bar here in Shanghai is still intact. I’m planning to leave China soon which will mean saying good bye to my bar.

One interesting thing to note though is this. . . I remember seeing a recommendation to use Jameson Irish whiskey as a substitute for rye in a Manhattan. Since tasting some real rye I can see some logic behind this suggestion. I think I’d recommend Jameson over the usual Canadian whiskey substitution. Jameson is more astringent than sweet, but it does have a little of the spiciness of a true rye. It certainly has more character than the Canadian Club that bartenders tend to use for Manhattans.

P.S. I also tried a Wright Brothers Cocktail (1 oz rye, 1 oz port, 1/2 oz lemon juice, sugar syrup to taste, an egg white - shaken over ice). The rye taste didn’t really come through but it was not a bad refreshing drink.

This month’s Mixology Monday, kindly hosted at Jimmy’s Cocktail Hour, is all about whiskey. Note, simply whiskey, not necessarily whiskey cocktails. I should have lots to say about this month’s topic but somehow I don’t.

Of course there are many things I could cover. I could choose a favorite whiskey cocktail and write about that. I could write about my family’s ritual of drinking tea with whiskey in the morning on Christmas Day. I could write about a favorite whiskey, maybe Lagavulin or Laphroaig. (more…)

I have had a bad cold for the past few days. I was walking back home just now after a leisurely dinner with a book. The route home was more interesting than usual.

My dinnertime book was an excellent volume on Xinjiang history. I had got to the last few pages before the restaurant closed and I had to leave. So I was wandering home, unfinished book in hand, my head a dull haze of illness and sympathy for the unfortunate Uighurs.

As I passed the Big Bamboo I noticed a cluster of Chinese laborers working on some carpentry on the pavement. They had taken a break from their work and were pressed up against the glass of the pub watching the goings on inside. On account of the book I was not feeling very sympathetic towards Chinese in general, but still I could not help feeling sorry for this group. These guys who sawed up wood on the pavement in the dead of night, I doubted they had ever paid 40 Renminbi for 500ml of beer. But there they were, pressed up against the invisible glass, gazing into another world, and so far unnoticed by those within. In a moment one of the bar staff would probably appear and tell them to move away. The laborers would then make a self conscious retreat. Maybe later they would celebrate the end of their shift with a convenience store beer drunk on the sidewalk. It was a scene that would have moved Dickens from writers block to his more typical verbal diarrhea.

I wandered on my way, suddenly feeling strangely philosophical, though not so philosophical as not to be distracted by the shapely rear of a girl walking her own way home in the distance. I never did get to try and overtake her to check out her face though, because a moment later I was to be experience yet another thought-provoking Shanghai moment.

A short distance past the Big Bamboo there is a collection point for food waste. Guys come on bicycles and drop off plastic drums of greasy smelly food scraps, which are then picked up by blue trucks and taken elsewhere. Who knows what these greasy food scraps end up as? Pig feed? Cooking oil? Some questions, like the existence of God and the contents of convenience store BBQ pork buns, are probably best left unanswered; but I digress. As I approached this smelly and slippery section of the street, a blond western guy (yes, a real foreigner) coming from the opposite direction, slipped head-over-heels in the mess. His out of control leg shot a glorious arc of noxious smelling droplets up into the air, only to have them rain back down on the scene of the accident a second later. I thought he might have broken something but he seemed fine except for some very nasty stains on his clothes. He sprang up off the pavement almost as quickly as he had hit it, cursed a little and went on his way.

So why was this unfortunate guy’s pratfall so thought-provoking? First, lost as I was in philosophical thoughts about the wealth divide in China, his fall reminded me how close foreigners in Shanghai live to the muck of poverty. Relative wealth buys only the most imperfect protection. Putting the idea less philosophically: watch where you are walking – OK? At this point, I made sure to detour round the slick of food scraps. Second, I thought about how the laborers across the road, glued as they were to their cheerfully lit window-frame world of beer and pool, had totally missed the pratfall of the century. The entire entertaining spectacle had occurred behind them. These unfortunate guys, starved of any free entertainment, had completely missed the once in a lifetime sight of a ‘laowai’ (an entertaining species even at their most mundane) giving a regular Buster Keaton display. The pratfall had been the highlight of my day and I consider myself something of a sophisticate. If they had realized what they had missed I’m sure it would have killed them. I felt really sorry for them as I walked because I know they don’t get much fun. By this time I had completely circled the hazardous slick of food scraps and was struck by the third thought-provoking part of the whole incident. I suddenly realized that the girl with the attractive rear had totally vanished, making all further thoughts about her merits of her rear, and the exciting possibility that her comeliness could extend to her face, even more academic than numerous similar thoughts about other strange girls encountered in the street.

I began to feel the weight of my cold. I slogged the rest of the way home, reached my apartment, and took off my shoes. In a gesture the Uighurs may not have approved of I poured myself a whiskey as I settled down to finish my book. Before diving back into the book I paused to give a perfunctory toast to Uighurs, laborers who spy on bar patrons, and foreigners who slip in the street.

It was the craze of the day.

The Bunny Hug (click to listen) was a ragtime dance. It was one of a family of ‘lewd’ animal dances that were originally danced in bars and bordellos and spread from there to the dance halls frequented by the more polite portion of American society. Other such dances included the Grizzly Bear, the Camel Hop and the Turkey Trot. In its day the Bunny Hug was the cutting edge, the latest fad. It was loved and loathed, and swept across America and around the world even as cities passed ordinances banning it. On March 27, 1913, dance hall manager Ed Spence of Grants Pass, Oregon was reported to be “in serious condition from 11 knife wounds as a result of trying to enforce his taboo of the ‘Bunny Hug’, the ‘Turkey Trot’ and like terpsichorean confections.” Forgotten today, the Bunny Hug stirred passions in its time.

The Bunny Hug was part of the transition from the old to the modern. Like ragtime itself, the Bunny Hug filled an awkward gap between two different ages. Traditionalists abhorred it. Its fashion conscious champions quickly discarded it The craze of the day changed. Ignominiously, people hearing the words ‘bunny hug’ are now more likely think of a brand of diapers than anything else.

Fittingly enough, as the craze of the day the Bunny Hug had its name attached to a cocktail. You can resurrect the Bunny Hug by mixing equal parts whiskey, gin, and pastis, stirring over ice (or shaking) and straining into a cocktail glass. Any type of whiskey is OK, but given the strong flavors at work a blended Scotch probably brings a little more to the drink than a Bourbon does. To be authentic substitute absinthe for the pastis.

This mixture of whiskey, gin and aniseed probably divides drinkers as much as the dance it was named after divided society. Liking pastis is obviously a prerequisite for trying this drink. Even then the drink is raw, unconventional, and not for the faint hearted. Give it a chance though and you will find some interesting layers of taste to reflect upon. While this looks to be a drink thought up by someone in a hurry to get drunk and not much caring how they went about it, perhaps this lush has a sense of style? Certainly this is a drink you don’t easily get bored with. The pastis grabs the foreground, while the gin and whiskey fight a never quite resolved struggle for second place. The mixture is jarring in the extreme, yet somehow hangs together. Another nice thing about this drink is that virtually any bar can throw it together, and the concoction is robust enough that the only way to destroy it would be to light the thing on fire. It makes a handy drink to fall back on when in doubt but feeling brave.

In terms of cocktails, the Bunny Hug evokes another age, an age that predates almost everything drinkers now associate with the cocktail. The Bunny Hug predates vermouth atomizers, umbrella garnishes, Oreo cookie rimmed glassware, and snickered requests for Sex on the Beach. It caters to those expecting to be served straight liquor and not much else. Challenging and roughly stylish, combining the fire of whiskey, the abandonment of gin and the divisive funkiness of pastis, the Bunny Hug cocktail may really evoke the spirit of the dance it was named after.

The same cocktail is now probably better known, in so far as it is known at all, as the Earthquake. Perhaps some bartender recognized the mental barrier to walking into a bar and asking for an extra large Bunny Hug? The name Earthquake is less evocative though. Where the Earthquake suggests a potent concoction to be downed with nihilistic bravado, the Bunny Hug suggests a drink you might actually savor, if perhaps only during a quick break from the dance floor.

This site is dedicated to the spirit of the Bunny Hug. However dubious the Bunny Hug may have been, it never deserved to be quite so completely forgotten.