Barrel or Cask

Barrel or Cask 

A barrel or cask is a hollow cylindrical container with a bulging center, longer than it is wide. They are traditionally made of wooden staves and bound by wood or metal hoops.

Modern wooden barrels for wine-making are made of French common oak (Quercus robur) or white oak (Quercus petraea) or from American white oak (Quercus alba) and typically have standard sizes: "Bordeaux type" 225 liters (59 US gal; 49 imp gal), "Burgundy type" 228 liters (60 US gal; 50 imp gal) and "Cognac type" 300 liters (79 US gal; 66 imp gal). Modern barrels and casks can also be made of aluminum, stainless steel, and different types of plastic, such as HDPE.

Someone who makes barrels is called a "barrel maker" or cooper. Barrels are only one product of cooperage. Coopers also make buckets, vats, tubs, butter churns, hogsheads, firkins, kegs, kilderkins, tierces, rundlets, puncheons, pipes, tuns, butts, pins, troughs and breakers.

Barrels have a variety of uses, including storage of liquids such as water, oil, arrack, and sake. They are also employed to hold maturing beverages such as wine, cognac, armagnac, sherry, port, whiskey, and beer. Other commodities once stored in wooden casks include gunpowder, meat, fish, paint, honey, nails and tallow. Early casks were bound with wooden hoops and in the 19th century these were gradually replaced by metal hoops that were stronger, more durable and took up less space. The term barrel can also refer to roughly cylindrical containers or drums made of modern materials like plastic, steel or aluminium.

History

An Egyptian wall-painting in the tomb of Hesy-Ra, dating to 2600 BC, shows a wooden tub made of staves, bound together with wooden hoops, and used to measure corn. Another Egyptian tomb painting dating to 1900 BC shows a cooper and tubs made of staves in use at the grape harvest. Palm-wood casks were also reported in use in ancient Babylon. In Europe, buckets and casks dating to 200 BC have been found preserved in the mud of lake villages. A lake village near Glastonbury dating to the late Iron Age has yielded one complete tub and a number of wooden staves.

The Roman historian Pliny the Elder reports that cooperage in Europe originated with the Gauls in Alpine villages where they stored their beverages in wooden casks bound with hoops. Pliny identified three different types of coopers: ordinary coopers, wine cooper
s and coopers who made large casks. Large casks contain more and bigger staves and are correspondingly more difficulty to assemble. Roman coopers tended to be independent tradesmen, passing their skills on to their sons. The Greek geographer Strabo records wooden pithoi were lined with pitch to stop leakage and preserve the wine.

Beverage maturing

An "aging barrel" is used to age wine; distilled spirits such as whiskey, brandy, or rum; beer; Tabasco sauce; or (in smaller sizes) traditional balsamic vinegar. When a wine or spirit ages in a barrel, small amounts of oxygen are introduced as the barrel lets some air in (compare to micro oxygenation where oxygen is deliberately added). Oxygen enters a barrel when water or alcohol is lost due to evaporation, a portion known as the "angels' share". In an environment with 100% relative humidity, very little water evaporates and so most of the loss is alcohol, a useful trick if one has a wine with very high proof. Most beverages are topped up from other barrels to prevent significant oxidation, although others such as vin jaune and sherry are not.

Beverages aged in wooden barrels take on some of the compounds in the barrel, such as vanillin and wood tannin. The presence of these compounds depends on many factors, including the place of origin, how the staves were cut and dried, and the degree of "toast" applied during manufacture. Barrels used for aging are typically made of French or American oak, but chestnut and redwood are also used. Some Asian beverages (e.g., Japanese sake) use Japanese cedar, which imparts an unusual, minty-piney flavor. In Peru and Chile, a grape distillate named pisco is either aged in oak or in earthenware

Wine

Some wines are fermented "on barrel", as opposed to in a neutral container like steel or wine-grade HDPE (high-density polyethylene) tanks. Wine can also be fermented in large wooden tanks, which—when open to the atmosphere—are called "open-tops". Other wooden cooperage for storing wine or spirits range from smaller barriques to huge casks, with either elliptical or round heads.

The tastes yielded by French and American species of oak are slightly different, with French oak being subtler, while American oak gives stronger aromas.To retain the desired measure of oak influence, a winery will replace a certain percentage of its barrels every year, although this can vary from 5 to 100%. Some winemakers use "200% new oak", where the wine is put into new oak barrels twice during the aging process. Bulk wines are sometimes more cheaply flavored by soaking in oak chips or added commercial oak flavoring instead of being aged in a barrel because of the much lower cost.

Sherry 

Sherry is stored in 600-liter (130 imp gal; 160 US gal) casks made of North American oak, which is slightly more porous than French or Spanish oak. The casks, or butts, are filled five-sixths full, leaving "the space of two fists" empty at the top to allow flora to develop on top of the wine. Sherry is also commonly swapped between barrels of different ages, a process that is known as solera.

whiskies

Laws in several jurisdictions require that whiskey be aged in wooden barrels. The law in the United States requires that "straight whiskey" (with the exception of corn whiskey) must be stored for at least two years in new, charred oak containers.Other forms of whiskey aged in used barrels cannot be called "straight".

International laws require any whisky bearing the label "Scotch" to be distilled and matured in Scotland for a minimum of three years and one day in oak casks.

By Canadian law, Canadian whiskies must "be aged in small wood for not less than three years", and "small wood" is defined as a wood barrel not exceeding 700 liters (150 imp gal; 180 US gal) capacity.

Since the U.S. law requires the use of new barrels for several popular types of whiskey, which is not typically considered necessary elsewhere, whiskey made elsewhere is usually aged in used barrels that previously contained American whiskey (usually bourbon whiskey). The typical bourbon barrel is 53 US gallons (200 l; 44 imp gal) in size, which is thus the de facto standard whiskey barrel size worldwide. Some distillers transfer their whiskey into different barrels to "finish" or add qualities to the final product. These finishing barrels frequently aged a different spirit (such as rum) or wine. Other distillers, particularly those producing Scotch, often disassemble five used bourbon barrels and reassemble them into four casks with different barrel ends for aging Scotch, creating a type of cask referred to as a hogshead.

Brandy

Maturing is very important for a good brandy, which is typically aged in oak casks. The wood used for those barrels is selected because of its ability to transfer certain aromas to the spirit. Cognac is aged only in oak casks made from wood from the Forest of Tronçais and more often from the Limousin forests.

Tequila

Some types of tequila are aged in oak barrels to mellow its flavor. "Reposado" tequila is aged for up to one year, "Añejo" tequila is aged for up to three years, and "Extra Añejo" tequila is aged for at least three years. Like with other spirits, longer aging results in a more pronounced flavor.

Balsamic vinegar

Traditional balsamic vinegar is aged in a series of wooden barrels.

Tabasco sauce

Since its invention in 1868, the pepper mash used to make Tabasco sauce is aged for three years in previously used oak whiskey barrels.

Beers

Beers are sometimes aged in barrels which were previously used for maturing wines or spirits. This is most common in darker beers such as stout, which is sometimes aged in oak barrels identical to those used for whiskey. Whisky distiller Jameson notably purchases barrels used by Franciscan Well brewery for their Shandon Stout to produce a whisky branded as "Jameson Cask mates". Cask ale is aged in the barrel (usually steel) for a short time before serving. Extensive barrel aging is required of many sour beers.

Soft drinks

Vernors ginger ale is marketed as having a "barrel-aged" flavor, and the syrup used to produce the beverage was originally aged in oak barrels when first manufactured in the 19th century. Whether the syrup continues to be aged in oak is unclear.

Angels' share

"Angels' share" is a term for the portion (share) of a wine or distilled spirit's volume that is lost to evaporation during aging in oak barrels. The ambient humidity tends to affect the composition of this share. Drier conditions tend to make the barrels evaporate more water, strengthening the spirit. However, in higher humidity, more alcohol than water will evaporate, therefore reducing the alcoholic strength of the product. This alcoholic evaporate encourages the growth of a darkly colored fungus, the angels' share fungus, Baudoinia compniacensis, which tends to appear on the exterior surfaces of most things in the immediate area.

Barrel Vs Cask

Casks are like the middle children of the aged spirits world. They don’t have the upscale industrial aura of the shining beacons of the spirits world — the stills that produce the spirits. Nor have they the multi-sensory appeal of the finished whiskey.

But casks play a huge role in helping shape the final flavor profile of not only spirits aged in them, but wine and beer, too. They can impart flavors as wide-ranging as vanilla, coconut, and oak, and — when charred on the inside — help charcoal filter the spirits into smooth-sipping glory.

The first thing to know about “barrels” for spirits is that this term is not technically a catch-all for any vessel used to age spirits. Rather, a “barrel” is a specific term of art in the beverage industry referring to a 50–53 gallon (180–200 liter) cask, often made of white oak.

For the all-encompassing term for the vessel that you age spirits in, “cask” is the preferred nomenclature.

Kind of like how we learned in kindergarten that all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares, the same holds true here: all barrels are casks, but not all casks are barrels.

main types to know for the purposes of American whiskey are:

Gorda 

 185 gallons. Made from American oak. Their large size makes aging a long and arduous journey through the decades (less oak surface area coming into contact with the liquid), so these casks are perhaps best used to marry different whiskeys.

Port Pipe 

172 gallons. With European oak as their base, these cylindrical (dare we say “pipe-like”?) casks first age port and often reinvent themselves as second use barrels in Scotch distilleries. More recently, American craft distillers have taken a liking to them in helping expand American whiskey’s flavor horizons.

Sherry Butt

 126–132 gallons. For ages, Scotch (and some Irish whiskey) distillers have looked to ex-sherry casks to finish their distillates and create some damn fine Scotches: Glendronach 12, Glenfarclas 15, Aberlour 10. Finishing Scotch in sherry casks has become so popular that a cottage industry in Spain has sprung up to cooper these European oak, slender casks; age unmarketable sherry (i.e. low-grade) sherry in them for 3 years; then distill the sherry into Spanish brandy. (For a nice look at why Scotch boomed in the 20th century while Irish whiskey wilted.

Hogshead 

59–66 gallons. Made from ex-bourbon barrels, often repurposed. Used especially in Scotland, coopers make hogsheads by taking apart ex-bourbon barrels and reassembling them into slightly larger casks with new ends. The slightly larger size of the hogshead allows distillers to store more barrels per square foot in their rick houses. From whence did these porcine vessels derive their name, you may ask? From a 15th century English term “hogges head”, a unit of measurement at the time equivalent to 63 gallons.
American Standard Barrel — 50–53 gallons. Constructed from new American white oak or (less often) European oak, American Standard Barrels are the go-to cask used by the most well-known bourbon distillers like Four Roses and Heaven Hill. Craft distillers, on the other hand.

Quarter Cask 

13 gallons. Manufactured to precisely 1/4 the size of an American Standard Barrel, quarter casks provide distillers with a method by which to more quickly age distillates. Quarter casks are the same proportions as American Standard Barrels, but with 1/4 the amount of whiskey in each, the increased surface area of oak to liquid helps age whiskey more quickly. Notable proponents of the Quarter Cask include American craft distilling scion Tuthilltown with their Hudson Baby Bourbon, and esteemed Scotch producer Laphroaig.

Barracoon 

1 gallon. Roughly the size of the small oak ASW barrels you may have seen in local bars or available for purchase in our shop, the amount of wood in contact with such a small volume of liquid seriously fast-tracks the aging process. Not always optimally, either.

I'm sure all of this has you wondering what types of casks we'll be using. Well, for starters, we'll try a combination of quarter casks and American Standard Barrels. As we build up stocks, we'll move to mostly American Standard Barrels. That said, we'll also roll out some unique finishing methods in the not-so-very-distant future. We'll reveal those later, so be sure to stay connected with us by signing up for our email list or following us on social media.



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What Is a Cocktail

What Is a Cocktail? 

The official definition of a "cocktail," according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is "an iced drink of wine or distilled liquor mixed with flavoring ingredients." While that's a pretty broad definition, it reflects the modern practice of referring to almost any mixed drink as a cocktail.

The first published definition of a cocktail appeared in an editorial response in The Balance and Colombian Repository of 1806. It read: "Cocktail is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters." That's the accepted definition of ingredients used today when referring to the "ideal" cocktail.

The First Cocktails 

People have been mixing drinks for centuries, often to make an ingredient more palatable or to create medicinal elixirs. It wasn't until the 17th and 18th centuries that the precursors of the cocktail (e.g., slings, fizzes, toddies, and juleps) became popular enough to be recorded in the history books. Though it's unclear where, who, and what went into the creation of the original cocktail, it started out as a specific drink formula rather than a category of mixed drinks.

The first published reference to the cocktail appears in the Farmer's Cabinet (Amherst, New Hampshire, April 28, 1803). The spoof editorial tells of a "lounger" who, with an 11 a.m. hangover, "Drank a glass of cocktail - excellent for the head…" In his book, "Imbibe!," David Wondrich attributes the first known printed cocktail recipe to Captain J.E. Alexander in 1831. It called for brandy, gin, or rum in a mix of  a third of the spirit to two-thirds of the water; add bitters, and enrich with sugar and nutmeg…"

The formula for the original "cocktail" recipe lives on. The brandy cocktail, for instance, is a mix of brandy, orange curacao (the sweetener), and bitters, shaken with ice (the water). Since it's served most often with a lemon peel, it's technically a "fancy brandy cocktail." Replacing the base spirit creates other classics like the gin cocktail, rum cocktail, or whiskey cocktail. 

Origins of the Name "Cocktail" 

There are many stories behind the origin of the name "cocktail." As always, some are just myths or folklore, some are believable, and more than a few may have likely been exaggerated over the years by intoxicated bar patrons or imaginative bartenders. One may even be the truth. None the less, the stories are fascinating. 

• A famous story behind the cocktail name refers to a rooster's tail (or cock tail), which served as a Colonial drink garnish. There are no formal references in written recipes to such a garnish.

•  In James Fenimore Cooper's 1821 novel, "The Spy," the character "Betty Flanagan" invented the cocktail during the Revolution. "Betty" may have referred to a real-life innkeeper at Four Corners north of New York City by the name of Catherine "Kitty" Hustler. Betty took on another non-fiction face, that of Betsy Flanagan. Betsy was likely not a real woman, but the story says she was a tavern keeper who served French soldiers a drink in 1779 garnished with the tail feathers of her neighbor's rooster. Within this complicated mix of stories, it's generally assumed that Kitty inspired Betty and Betty inspired Betsy.

• The rooster theory is also said to have been influenced by the colors of mixed ingredients, which may resemble the colors of the cock's tail. Considering the colorful array of ingredients used in the modern bar, that might be a good tale today. At the time, however, drinks were visually bland.

• In 1936, the British publication, Bartender, published a decades-old story of English sailors who were served mixed drinks in Mexico. A cola de gallo (cock's tail)—a long plant root of similar shape to the bird's tail—were used to stir the drinks.

• One cocktail story refers to the leftovers of a cask of ale, called cock tailings. The cock tailings from various spirits would be mixed and sold as a lower-priced mixed beverage of (understandably) questionable integrity.

• Yet another unappetizing origin tells of a cock ale, a mash of ale mixed with whatever was available to feed fighting cocks.

• "Cocktail" may have derived from the French term for an egg cup, coquetel. One story that brought this reference to America speaks of Antoine Amedie Peychaud of New Orleans, who mixed his Peychaud Bitters into a stomach remedy served in a coquetel. Not all of Peychaud's customers could pronounce the word, and it became known as a cocktail. Due to conflicting dates, this story doesn't quite add up, however.

The word cocktail may be a distant derivation of the name for the Aztec goddess, Xochitl (SHO-cheetl, meaning "flower" in Nahuatl). Xochitl was also the name of a Mexican princess who served drinks to American soldiers. 

It was an 18th- and 19th-century custom to dock the tails of draft horses, which caused the tail to stick up like a cock's tail. As the story goes, a reader's letter to The Balance and Columbian Repository explains that when drunk, these cocktails made you "cock your tail" up in the same manner. 

Another horse tale supposes the influence of a breeder's term for a mix breed horse, or cock-tails. Both racing and drinking were popular among the majority of Americans at the time; the name may have transferred from mixed breeds to mixed drinks.
There's a quirky story of an American tavern keeper who stored alcohol in a ceramic, rooster-shaped container. When patrons wanted another round, they tapped the rooster's tail.

In George Bishop's 1965 book, "The Booze Reader: A Soggy Saga of Man in His Cups," he writes, "The word itself stems from the English cock-tail which, in the middle 1800s, referred to a woman of easy virtue who was desirable but impure…and applied to the newly acquired American habit of bastardizing good British Gin with foreign matter, including ice." Yes, ice was once a controversial topic in the bar!

The History of Cocktail 

·

· What is your earliest memory of a cocktail? Bloody Mary's on a winter afternoon at the local gymkhana, perhaps? Did you know the bloody Mary was created by an American bartender who had to move to Paris because of the Prohibition in the US with vodka made by a Russian fleeing the Bolshevik revolution? Cocktails have a long and colorful history, and many of the drinks we sip on today were created more than 100 years ago. Noted drinks historian and master distiller of Sipsmith gin (an artisan London gin), Jared Brown, says the cocktail may have originated in the 1200s when the European alchemist Arnaldus de Villa Nova refined the art of distillation and called the liquid obtained through it aqua vitae (water of life). Over the centuries, distillation underwent many further developments. And, as its use spread, the Irish (first) and then the Scots discovered usquebaugh (whisky), the French cognac and Armagnac, the Dutch and the English gin, and the Poles and the Russians voda (vodka). These modern spirits formed the base on which cocktails were built.

500-1800 (The cock’s tail)

Mixed drinks have been around since the 1500s — mulled wine, sack posset and toddy were being consumed then. But, the term ‘cocktail’ was not coined till later. There are many stories about its origins. One talks of a beautiful girl named Coctel who waited upon the king of Mexico and an American general at a peace treaty signing in the 1800s. One credits the word’s invention to Frenchman Antoine AmédéePeychaud, the creator of Peychaud’s Bitters, who would serve a concoction of the bitters and brandy as a remedy for a bad stomach in an eggcup, called a coquetier in French.

• The most popular story is about French soldiers helping Americans fight for independence in the 1770s. A barmaid named Betsy Flanagan served them drinks decorated with brightly-colored feathers from a rooster - from a cock’s tail.

• One of the first recorded appearances of the word cocktail in print was in a New York newspaper called the Balance & Columbia Repository, on May 13, 1806. A cocktail was described as “a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water and bitters — it is vulgarly called a bittered sling.” Drink historians and authors Jared Brown and Anistatia Miller found the word in a 1798 edition of a London newspaper called the Morning Post & Gazetteer. It appears in reference to a politician’s debt at a pub near Downing Street.

· 

• The Manhattan was the first cocktail to use vermouth

1800-1900 (America’s golden age)

In the early 1800s, sazerac (rye whiskey or cognac with absinthe and bitters) and brandy crusta (cognac, Grand Marnier and Maraschino) were created in New Orleans. In the 1850s, the whiskey sour appeared. Then, the first bottles of vermouth landed on American shores and a cocktail of rye whiskey and vermouth called the Manhattan appeared. Bartender and author of The Joy of Mixology, Gary Regan says the Manhattan was the very first cocktail to use vermouth. “From it were born the martinez and the martini.”

• Early American cocktails used mainly cognac, rum or American whiskey. The only white spirit used was gin. Vodka, now the base of many popular cocktails, was not in the picture yet. In 1862, the first ever book on bar tending, The Bartender’s Guide by Jerry Thomas, was published. Thomas, popularly known as The Professor, is often called the godfather of the American bar tending industry. His book had some of the earliest recipes for homemade bar syrups, bottled cocktails and jello shots. In 1882, Harry ‘The Dean’ Johnson, another important figure in the history of American bar tending, published the Bartender’s Manual. It contained the earliest known reference to the classic gin martini, stirred, not shaken.

• The 1800s were a golden era for cocktails in the USA. Bar tending was among the highest-paying professions. Thomas was one of the most influential people in San Francisco and, reportedly, earned more than the vice president. Bear in mind that bartenders then did not have access to ready made syrups or purees; everything was prepared from scratch. The drinks they created are still drunk today.

• Even the ice used in a cocktail was given a lot of attention then. In their two part encyclopedic discourse on spirits and cocktails, Spirituous Journey: A History of Drink, Brown and Miller tell us that in the 1830s, ice blocks were carved out of frozen lakes in Boston and shipped to America’s southern states and Cuba. This ice would eventually make it all the way to Calcutta, where the British would use it to chill their wines and beers. Tell your local bartender that the next time he behaves miserly with ice.

· 

• A protest march against Prohibition in Newark, in 1931

1900-1933 (Crossing the Atlantic)

The cocktail industry lost momentum when the Temperance Movement swept the United States in the early 1900s. It led to prohibition in the USA, which outlawed the sale, consumption, production and transportation of alcohol in the US, and lasted from1920 to 1933. Bootlegged alcohol became popular, and many distillers left the big cities to distil in forests or in Canada and then smuggle the alcohol back into the US. This gave rise to a phenomenon called rum running, which referred to the bootleggers trying to evade the excise officers. Many of America’s first NASCAR racers were rum runners during the prohibition.

• America’s famous bars were replaced by illegal ones, called speakeasies. While some bartenders found other careers, some migrated to Europe and took jobs in bars in big cities such as London and Paris. Very soon, American drinkers who couldn’t do without their old fashioned and martinis sought out these bars. Thus, London and Paris got their first ‘American bars’. Bars at glitzy hotels, such as the Savoy, in London, or the Ritz, in Paris, became a mecca of cocktails.

The Bloody Mary

In 1917, a vodka distiller named Vladimir Smirnov, fleeing the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, arrived in France. In 1920, he started producing and selling vodka in western Europe under the French spelling of his name, Smirnoff. A year later, a simple drink consisting of vodka and tomato juice caught the fancy of cocktail drinkers at a Paris bar named Harry’s New York Bar. Very soon, flavorings such as Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco were added to the recipe, and thus was born the bloody Mary, arguably the first vodka cocktail ever mixed.

James Bond made the martini popular 

1933-1990 (Vodka takes over the world)

Prohibition ended in 1933, but the second world war meant times remained tumultuous for the liquor industry in the US. It was only after it that vodka entered America. It had its work cut out to find footing in a country that guzzled copious amounts of beer, whiskey and rum. At the time, rum-based Polynesian Tiki cocktails, such as the mai tai and planter’s punch, were all the rage in North America.

• In the 1950s, some young Americans took to drinking vodka mixed with ginger ale, a drink called the Moscow mule. Then, in 1962, a certain British spy announced to movie goers on both sides of the Atlantic that he liked his martinis with vodka, shaken, not stirred, and vodka was the new favorite ingredient in cocktails. More cocktails have been fixed with vodka than any other spirit in the past two decades.

• Dale Degroff, aka King of Cocktail, invented the cosmopolitan

The Cosmopolitan

In 1979, a Swedish vodka brand called Absolut entered the US. Seven years later, it launched the world’s first flavoured vodka, Peppar, flavoured with pepper, and followed it with one flavoured with lemon (Citron). In 1990, famous New York bartender Toby Cechinni fixed a drink at his bar (Odeon) consisting of Absolut Citron, Cointreau, cranberry juice and lemon juice. Mixologist Dale Degroff, also known as King cocktail, made the same drink for pop diva Madonna at his bar in New York and added a flambéed orange peel to it. Thus was born the Cosmopolitan.

Martinis in the land of the Patiala Peg

In India, a new breed of professionally qualified bartenders has emerged and is experimenting with fresh ingredients, home made syrups, dainty garnishes and drinks that focus on a balance of flavors. Bars such as PCO, in New Delhi, Cocktails and Dreams, in Gurgaon, Blaq - A cocqtail affair in New delhi, Wink, Ellipsis and The Daily in Mumbai, have advertised fine cocktails as their unique selling point.

1990-2000 (Quantity over quality)

The emergence of bar chains, such as Thank God it’s Friday, in the early 1990s, somewhat corrupted the cocktail. Instead of finely crafted drinks served in sleek glassware, there were quickly put-together mixes served in crude pitchers. Customers got value for money, but the art of mixing drinks was nearly lost. 

Salvatore Calabrese created the breakfast martini

2000-2013 (The renaissance)

The past 13 years or so have seen the creation of modern classics, such as the breakfast martini (a gin martini with marmalade), invented by Salvatore Calabrese at the Library Bar in London, and the appearance of artisanal bars, such as the Milk & Honey in New York.

• Matthew Pomeroy, the global brand ambassador for Absolute Vodka, says the past 10 years has seen a rebirth of artisanal drinks. “A new focus on freshly-squeezed juices and fresh herbs has elevated the art of bar tending to a new level,” he says, “while the internet and reprints of old cocktail books allow modern bartenders to read and research the old classics.”

• Cocktails have come a long way since the first time they were mixed. They have helped the food and beverage industry to grow, created employment and, most importantly, have helped people bond. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to sip on my old fashioned while I read The Deans of Drinks, a book about two early 1900 bartenders Harry Johnson and Harry Craddock.

TALES OF THE COCKTAIL

Last July, I was in the city of jazz, New Orleans, presenting a seminar on India’s native brews at Tales of the Cocktail, an annual event that celebrates the craft of cocktail-making in a week of seminars, workshops, tasting events and competitions. Achievements in cocktail-making are recognized through scholarships and award ceremonies. And, of course, the event hosts some of the most sought-after cocktail parties on the planet. The first TOTC was held in September 2003, when a group of cocktail enthusiasts and industry veterans spent two days visiting New Orleans’s historic bars, one of which, the Napoleon House, opened in 1797. In 2012, the 10th edition of TOTC drew around 20,000 professionals and consumers from across the world.

The question of the cocktail

What actually is a cocktail? What does the word mean and where did it come from? I think that these are some valid questions, considering that I have enjoyed cocktail hours, menus and the drinks known universally as “cocktails” for many years.

The actual answer

It is now a well-known fact that the word “cocktail” was first defined in 1806 by The Balance and Colombian Repository of Hudson, New York as “a stimulating liquor composed of any kind of sugar, water and bitters, vulgarly called a bittered sling.” Most cocktail aficionados might recognize that formula from drinks such as the Old Fashioned and Sazerac. Some geeks out there might even be aware that before the invention of bitters, cocktails were known as “slings,” which comes from the German word “schlingen,” meaning to swallow quickly. The first time the word “cocktail” is recorded as being used in the U.S. was on April 28, 1803 in a publication called The Farmers’ Cabinet and in the UK there is a reference to the “cock-tail” even earlier in The Morning Post and Gazetteer in London, England on March 20, 1798. Could the cocktail be an English invention? The Punch was, after all. Not that any of this really matters, anyway, because the word cocktail has been misused for many years now. It is used as a header for the entire category of mixed alcoholic drinks, whether they are highballs, punches, fizzes or sours.

The old answer

The fact that we now have this knowledge about where the cocktail came from fascinates me. When I was bar tending many moons ago, the story of its origins was surrounded by mysticism and fables. I was told that the word came from New Orleans, where it was derived from the French word “coquetel,” an eggcup that was used for serving drinks. There was also a story of a drink being decorated by a cock’s tail and served in celebration to soldiers of the revolution by Betsy Flanagan. There was even a reference to drinks in Mexico being stirred with a “cola de gallo” (cock’s tail).

Today’s answer

Today, the word “cocktail” is used to describe the collective group of mixed alcoholic drinks that we see on bar menus around the world. There was a point when they were, even more incorrectly, called “Martini lists” (a Martini is in that is chilled and mixed with vermouth, with the optional addition of bitters. It is not anything that is served in a cocktail glass that many referred to as a Martini glass — this is something that may have gotten lost in translation during Prohibition). The hospitality industry has taken a giant leap forward in relearning knowledge on the subject over the past 10-15 years, and most professional and informed bartenders now understand a cocktail to be something made of spirit, water, sugar and bitters. My belief is that this knowledge is going to continue to grow until we are once defining drinks as Jerry Thomas did in 1862 in the first cocktail book ever written, How to Mix Drinks or The Bon Vivant’s Companion. In fact, some bars already do. Of course, as long as people make good quality drinks with great spirits and fresh ingredients, they are perfectly entitled to call them whatever they wish as far as I’m concerned. I must admit, however, that I am always impressed with some historical wisdom and understanding and the word “cocktail” just sounds better than anything else.

List of I.B.A. official  Classic cocktails 

The Unforgettable 

1. · Alexander
2. · Americano
3. · Angel Face
4. · Aviation
5. · Bacardi cocktail
6. · Between the Sheets
7. · Casino
8. · Clover Club
9. · Daiquiri
10. · Derby
11. · Dry Martini
12. · Gin Fizz
13. · John Collins
14. · Manhattan
15. · Mary Pickford
16. · Monkey Gland
17. · Negroni
18. · Old fashioned
19. · Paradise
20. · Planter's punch
21. · Porto flip
22. · Ramos Fizz
23. · Rusty Nail
24. · Sazerac
25. · Screwdriver
26. · Sidecar
27. · Stinger
28. · Tuxedo
29. · Whiskey Sour
30. · White Lady

Contemporary Classics

1. · Bellini
2. · Black Russian
3. · Bloody Mary
4. · Caipirinha
5. · Champagne cocktail
6. · Cosmopolitan
7. · Cuba Libre
8. · French Connection
9. · French 75
10. · Godfather
11. · Godmother
12. · Golden Dream
13. · Grasshopper
14. · Harvey Wallbanger
15. · Hemingway Special
16. · Horse's Neck
17. · Irish coffee
18. · Kir
19. · Long Island iced tea
20. · Mai Tai
21. · Margarita
22. · Mimosa
23. · Mint julep
24. · Mojito
25. · Moscow mule
26. · Piña colada
27. · Rose
28. · Sea Breeze
29. · Sex on the Beach
30. · Singapore Sling
31. · Tequila Sunrise

New Era Drinks 

1. · Barracuda
2. · Bramble
3. · B-52
4. · Dark 'n' Stormy
5. · Dirty Martini
6. · Espresso Martini
7. · French Martini
8. · Kamikaze
9. · Lemon drop
10. · Pisco Sour
11. · Russian Spring Punch
12. · Spritz Veneziano
13. · Tommy's Margarita
14. · Vampiro
15. · Vesper
16. · Yellow Bird

Vinod Gharti                                                               Follow me : Instagram as FLAIRBLAIR