Make It a Double Old-Fashioned

I am, as mentioned in earlier posts, a brown-liquor girl. While I can appreciate the clever dexterity of the modern mixologist, I tend to go for the unfussy but classy old school choices: the Manhattan and the Sazerac. When I wrote this to a friend, he (pun-ishingly) replied that I was an “Old-Fashioned” girl. Although he may have been talking about my choice in cocktails, I think the lower case version also applies.

That I like the classic cocktails perhaps says less about my palate (though I do like the caramel honey taste of whiskey, bourbon, and rye) than about my relationship to the world. Those drinks suggest something clubby, like the drawing rooms of English manor houses in Masterpiece Theater dramas where men retire to sip aged whiskies in front of a roaring fire flanked by two Scottish deerhounds. Part of the attraction, if I must be honest, is what attracted Charles Ryder to Brideshead. No, not Sebastian, but the whole social echelon to which I can never gain entry. I don’t really want entry (do I?) but I want the romanticized version of it, where comforts envelope you like a wreathing of sweet cigar smoke and where dinner is an enough of an occasion that one needs to dress for it. Sipping an amber-hued, cherry bejewelled Manhattan is like sipping that world but without all the racism, imperialism, classism, sexism and tubercular consumption that go with it.

Too, I think classic cocktails, white or brown, suggest a formality that, say, a Sex on the Beach or Cape Codder cannot muster. While I am not in the least formal, I would be lying if I said I didn’t like a good dose of propriety. Yes, I like rules and precision. I like manners and etiquette to the extent that they are intended to make everyone more comfortable. If I must be uncomfortable (e.g. not chew with my mouth open) so that someone else can enjoy his meal, then so be it. A little giving up of one’s personal interest for the greater good seems a fair trade to me. (I know this may seem a bit contradictory given what I said about my attraction to upper crust salons.) All of this is embodied in a classic cocktail. Its proportions are precise, the shape of the stemware specified, the expectations for its being imbibed genteel (i.e. sipped rather than slugged, chugged, or downed).

I think, though, what I'm really getting at is that I want the ritual that cocktails or the cocktail hour, at least in my imaginings, suggest. Not in the 1950s parodied form where ruggedly handsome dad has polished off four martinis in quick succession and perfectly coiffed and rouged mom is soused from the cooking sherry she keeps pouring herself. Rather I want to reintroduce a time of repose into our day, a time of transition where we go from the ravages of the day into the reflective sanctity of the evening. Rituals tether us to time and place and connect us to others. In these times of uncertainty, it is easy to feel unmoored. Here, in the ritual of preparing a cocktail—measuring the ounces into the shaker, pouring the mixture into the appropriately chilled and chosen glass, garnishing the sparkling drink with an edible—we come back to the present because a cocktail, unlike a beer or glass of wine, must be made not simply poured. (Were alcohol not verboten for Buddhists, I think preparing a cocktail would be the perfect Zen act and the Pousse Café the perfect Zen drink.) We then sit, our cocktail perched on its little napkin, bowls of nibbly things on the side tables, and we chat. As we sip our cocktail (note it is singular not plural), we relax into our bodies, we enjoy the camaraderie of friends, and note our appetites returning. In this way, a cocktail is neither a crutch used to get through the day nor the focus, just as lighting the candles or eating the challah on Shabbat is not the point of the ritual, though it is integral to the structure. In a way, drinking the thing is not the point. What matters is the intention, attention, and belief that at least some part of our day needs to be sacred. I choose to mark that part of the day with a Manhattan, a Sazerac, or an Old-Fashioned.

Now if I could only re-introduce Game Night and Sunday Night Dinner, I’d be a happy old-fashioned gal.