Bar Tending.pdf

TraderVic's
Bartender's
Guide Revised
Over 1000 recipes for the newest drinks
and most popular stand-bys, including 143
Trader Vic original exotic mixed drinks

T.V.B.G.
$ 7 . 9 5
TraderVic's
Bartender's
Guide Revised
For twenty-five years, professional
barkeeps and home mixologists alike
have found TRADER VIC'S BARTENDER'S
GUIDE an invaluable aid. Now, with
this revised edition, the popular res
taurateur has made his classic hand
book even more useful. All the newest
mixed-drink creations have b e e n
added, the passe concoctions have
been dropped, and many recipes have
been modernized and streamlined.
Here are all the classics — Martinis,
Manhattans, Gimlets. Daiquiris — 1 4 3
exotic Trader Vic specials, and some
1 , 0 0 0 more, including entire chapters
on punches, hot drinks, wine cups and
other specialties. There's even a collec
tion of tasty non-alcoholic drinks. The
all-new illustrations include a compre
hensive guide to glasses and other bar-
ware. And, of course, the book is filled
with the Trader's amusing anecdotes
and sensible advice about selecting,
preparing and enjoying drinks. In
short, the book is practical, entertain
ing, completely up-to-date—and likely
to remain a fixture on American bars
for the next twenty-five vears.

TRADER
VIC'S
BARTENDER'S
GUIDE,
REVISED

TRADER
VIC'S
BARTENDER'S
GUIDE,
REVISED
by Trader Vic
ILLUSTRATIONS
By Helen Ann deWerd
EDITED
By Shirley Sarvis
Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Garden City, New York

BOOKS BY TRADER VIC
The Menehunes
Trader Vic's Book of Food and Drink
Bartender's Guide
Trader Vic's Pacific Island Cookbook
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 72-76212
Copyright © 1947, 1972 by Victor Bergeron
All Rights Reserved
Printed in the United States of America

Dedicated to those merry souls
who make drinking a pleasure;
who achieve contentedness long before capacity; and
who, whenever they drink, prove able to carry it, enjoy
it, and remain ladies and gendemen

PREFACE x
There've been some changes made xiv
Another opening ode, dammit 4
The sour apple part of bartending, or the big dealers, phonies,
and con artists 8
People that bartenders don't like 14
Bartenders that customers don't like 20
About mixing drinks and about drinks in general 24
Liquor—what is it? 36
Liqueurs for bars 48
Let's be frank about wine 54
Aperitifs in bottles 64
Drinks, cocktails, etc. 66
Brandy 68
Gin 78
Liqueur and cordial 104
Miscellaneous 116
Pisco 130
Rum 140
Sloe gin 190
Southern Comfort 194
Tequila 198

viii Contents
Vodka 208
Wine 218
Whisky 228
After-dinner drinks 246
Daisies 262
Eggnogs and milk punches 268
Fizzes 280
Hot drinks 290
Juleps 314
Non-alcoholic drinks 322
Punches and coolers and punch bowls 330
Rickeys 386
Smashes and Mojitos 390
Sours 394
Swizzles 402
Wine cups 408
INDEX 418

There is always the thing called a preface in a book. I've
never known why it's really done. But every book has one, so
we've got one here.
This book is a take-off from my old Bartender's Guide.
The previous book gave a lot of common sense and commen
tary, and this revised bartender's guide will do the same.
Most bartender's guides can tell you—along with a few
pertinent remarks on mixing drinks, chilling and serving
wines, and a thousand or so recipes for drinks that no sane
person would ever drink—the signs of the zodiac, how to take
spots off your suits, remedies for curing hiccoughs and remov
ing warts, what hour the sun comes up, the rise and fall of the
tides, some after-dinner magic—and end up with a full chapter
on horse racing.
Just to make this book unique, I'm going to try to stick to
bartending.
The bar could be Trader Vic's or Joe Blow's or a bar in
anybody's home. This is intended mainly to be a guide for
professional bartenders. I have an idea, however, that more of
the bartending I talk about in this book will be done in the
home than anywhere else. So when you amateur mixologists
come to the chapters dedicated to the treatment of drunks
and the various and sundry methods of gypping bartenders
and innkeepers, you read them at your own risk.
Now if you're going to make drinks or if you're going to
run a bar, then there is stuff in here that you can use. Read it,

xii Preface
try to remember it, and try to follow it; and you won't go too
far off. I'm not God; I'm not perfect; I'm just trying to write a
modern book on modern drinks. I will include some of the
old favorite drinks, but not things that haven't been used
since 1890.

T h e r e ' v e b e e n
some changes
m a d e

This is a redo of my first Bartender's Guide which was
published some thirty years ago. There have been a lot of
changes made since then—not in the preparation of drinks—
but in the recipes, the likes and dislikes of people.
The manner of making drinks remains pretty much static,
and so do phonies and check dodgers and that sort of bar pe
riphery. But where the changes have taken place are in the
habits of the people, the recipes they like, the type of drinks
they'll make and they'll drink and they won't make and they
won't drink. So I've modernized this book to give you new
recipes and old-recipe changes to the best of my ability.
During roughly the last thirty-five to fifty years, there has
been a rash of cocktail inventing. Some of those inventions are
good, but some of them are terrible; I think that most of them
would blind you if you drank them. One of the biggest viola
tors of the worthy inventive process is some liquor company
who wants you to use its liquor; so it invents a lot of lousy
drinks that you can't drink, and puts them into a pamphlet;
ultimately those drinks get into some bartender's guide where
they really have no business to be.
Well, we here at Trader Vic's believe that you should
have in this book what you might really be able to use. So we
have tried to eliminate all the junk that you'll never use—the
phony recipes and the concoctions that are really gastronomi-
cal hotfoots.
In some particular bars, some recipes remain secret with

2 There've been some changes made
the bartender; he doesn't want to give them out. That is an
unfortunate situation. Because I don't think that any commer
cial bar gains anything by stealing recipes anyway. Anybody
can think up a recipe; that's the easiest thing to do. The hard
est thing to do is to sell it. We here at Trader Vic's are not
really afraid of somebody stealing our recipes. Fear over that
is a lot of bosh. We always feel that it's not so much the recipe
or the bartender that makes the drinks and brings you the
business, but how you sell those drinks, present them, and
what you stand for in the running of your business. So we have
opened up our Trader Vic files to you so that you can make
our special drinks if you wish.
Now, we are going to give you here the best way that we
have found to make each drink. For example, you can hear of
Hot Buttered Rums made with maple syrup, made with this
kind of syrup, made with that; really there is only one good
formula for a Hot Buttered Rum, and we give you that. Like
wise, there is one good formula for a Ramos Fizz, and we
give you that. In a few instances, we may give you a few vari
ations for your edification. But basically we are going to try
to give you the one good formula for doing a thing.
So here is a book of all the currently relevant recipes
that I have been able to gather throughout the country and
even throughout the world. They are all authentic. Read them
over first, then pick out the ones you would like to make or
you think you would like to enjoy drinking, and make those. I
hope you will enjoy them.

Another
o p e n i n g o d e ,
d a m m i t

In writing this revised bartender's guide, I've been going
over drinking formulas from nearly every source until I'm
blue in the face. And I find that in the world's drink literature
there's a lot of outdated stuff that you'll never use. There's just
no sense in publishing a lot of that nonsense stuff in this
book. Those old recipes would just fill up the book and take
up more pages. And you know that the more pages there are
in the book, the more you'll have to pay for it. So I can see no
reason to include any of those unnecessary recipes in this
book. I'm talking about such drinks as Cobblers, Crustas,
Fixes, Sangarees, Scaffas, and Shrubs. Once they were famous.
Today they are passe. These drinks are out of style; they have
been out of style for as long as I have been in the business,
and they were out of style fifty years before that. And you bar
tenders can forget them, too. If somebody comes in to you
and asks for a Sangaree, you can probably figure that he wants
to be a big dealer, and he has read about this thing in some
book. And if some lady asks for a Crusta, you say, "Lady, you
are just wonderful, I love you, but we don't make Crustas and
Scaffas and Shrubs." And if a sweet old man asks for a drink
that he tasted last in 1890, or if some dame gives you the
hustle on a drink she read about in the attic, you'll just have to
go it on your own; you won't find those formulas in this book.
Because I've cast out of this book those feeble old formulas
that you won't ever really need.
But one footnote:

6 Another opening ode, dammit
As I've said, I have eliminated Cobblers and Squashes
and Shrubs and such from this book because people don't
drink them much any more; they are out of date so far as their
actual consumption. But just recently I was in the grand
Grand Véfour restaurant in Paris; and there, scrolled in gold
lettering on the window, was the advertising that the restau
rant bar makes "sherry cobblers, lemon squashes, and English
shrubs." That restaurant has been in operation for two hun
dred years; and God only knows when that gold lettering was
done. But it goes to show that those old drinks are still remem
bered by many as fine old drinks of the past.

The sour apple
part off
bartending, or
the big dealers,
phonies,
and con artists

You know, I don't think that a con artist or a phony has
changed since the time of Cleopatra. They are about the
same today as they were a hundred years ago. I can tell for
sure that I haven't noticed any change in them for the last
forty years. They may have possibly gotten a little cleaner and
neater. But they're the same phonies that they always were;
and this is what you ought to look out for.
The methods employed by the public in gypping saloon
keepers are many and not too varied. Most bartenders have
experienced the following incidents in one form or another,
but quite often the offender has been so damn clever that the
victim wasn't sure whether he'd been on the receiving end of
a fast one or whether it was just a mistake. Nine times out of
ten it's no mistake, believe me, but the result of years of prac
tice. I'm talking now about the habitual check dodger.
Let's start with that pest of pests who, as far as liquor is
concerned, has a champagne appetite on a beer income. Like
the much-reviled Scotsman, he can drink any given amount.
His technique goes something as follows: He usually comes in
early before the bar is crowded and the bartender isn't too
busy to indulge in a little chitchat. He orders one or two
drinks and launches into a terrific discussion about nothing,
blowing a lot of conversational smoke up the bartender's
sleeve. A few more quickies are downed to the accompani
ment of a lot of fast patter until everyone within earshot is
swimming in conversation, then there's a quick glance at his
watch. He's late! With a hurried good-by, he dashes off at a

10 The sour apple part of bartending
mad sprint to keep a mythical appointment. If the bartender
is a hundred-dash man he might tackle him at the door. Other
wise, he's out on a limb and out about seven bucks for drinks.
Another phony to watch out for is the guy who operates
on a combination of sympathy, embarrassment, and confusion,
and his deal goes something like this: A drink is ordered and
prompdy paid for, and a crisp new dollar bill is tipped to the
bartender, who thinks to himself, "Now there's a swell guy."
The generous customer probably offers to buy the barkeep a
drink; and then proceeds to knock himself out. When he's
through he rises sedately from his stool, thanks the bartender
with elaborate courtesy, and walks out in drunken dignity. His
immaculate appearance, courteous manner, and generosity
put the bartender on the spot and he hesitates to embarrass
such an obviously high-class gentleman. The matter of pay
ment just slipped his mind, thinks the bartender, and what the
hell! The boss won't miss a few shots, so the phony gets by
with it and another bartender has been outfoxed. This is the
sweetest gyp of all because the victim feels that he's done his
boy-scout deed for the day by not mentioning the small bar
bill. Of course the gentleman will remember the incident and
return later to settle up. The hell he will!
Watch out for the stranger who uses his friends. The
friend is usually a respected patron, a customer to value. This
kind of chiseler comes in and orders several rounds of drinks
—generally just about as many as he wants—and when it comes
time to pay up there's a great display of going through pock
ets, wallets, and billfolds, but no dough. So the bartender is
called down to the end of the bar and in hushed tones given a
load of: "My name's Courtney. I'm a friend of Bill Aldecott.
You know him. He comes in here all the time. I find myself
embarrassed—must have left my money in another suit. You
understand, I don't want my guest to pay for these drinks as
this is a little business deal and it would embarrass me consid-

The sour apple part of bartending 11
erably. I'll be in tomorrow evening and settle up this little bar
bill. Here's my card."
No one wants to spoil a business deal and Courtney is a
friend of Bill Aldecott's; so an I O U goes in the damper say
ing that "A. J. Courtney owes $15.50 for drinks." After he
leaves it is noticed that the card is a personal one with no ad
dress or business connections mentioned; and at the end of a
year or whenever the I O U gets so sticky no one can read it,
it's thrown away. Besides, it makes the boss so darn mad
every time he sees it there with all the bum checks and other
chits that accumulate that everyone's glad to get rid of it.
Another phony you'll meet up with one of these days is
the fellow who comes in with a party and buys a round of
drinks. When you give him change for the ten-dollar bill he
gave you he declares that he gave you a twenty and makes a
hell of a stink about it. Of course you haven't time to balance
the cash to prove he's wrong, and if you give him too bad a
time you incur the wrath of the whole group. So to avoid a
riot, you let it slide but you know blamed well he's going to
brag about gypping you out of ten bucks when he gets outside.
You'll never see him again at any rate. And when the boss
balances the till in the morning, sure enough, you're out ten
bucks, unless you're one of those smart bartenders who makes
up shortages by throwing in those four-bit pieces that should
have been rung up before. The latter practice is a bad habit
because sometimes it gets difficult to tell your dough from
the boss's, and the bartender who is consistently over in his
cash is just as much of a risk as the one who's always short.
Someday the show-off will cross your path. Beware of
him, for he's going to give you a rugged fifteen minutes. In a
booming voice it's scotch for this one and imported brandy
for someone else, a Planter's Punch for the lady, and he'll
have a double Old Grand-Dad. Then comes the finale, "Give
me the change from the fifty-dollar bill I gave the other bar-

12 The sour apple part of bartending
tender. Well, it's in the cash register. What, you don't know
about it ! Man, are you kidding? I never heard of such a god
damn joint. Sure I gave it to him. What! I will not pay it. You
check your cash. You can't do it now? You're too busy! Well,
what am I supposed to do? That's not peanuts. Now wait a
minute, fellow, don't get sore. If you really think I didn't leave
the fifty, O.K., O.K.1 Tell you what, I'll pay this and when you
balance your cash tonight, if you're over fifty, let me know
and I'll drop around and pick it up." And you get that "Here's
my card" stuff again.
Of course he won't backwater until he sees that he's not
getting over and you're getting pretty hot under the collar,
but that takes a lot of talking. This bird drives a hard bargain
and he'll outtalk you if you're not smart to him.
You're bound to lock horns sooner or later with the chap
who does a lot of fancy drinking at the bar and then tells you
to put it on the dinner check. Later, when he gets his dinner
check from the waiter, he moans like hell, swears he paid the
bartender, and is so genuinely outraged that in the confusion
he sometimes squeezes out without paying at all.
The nicer the bar you work for, the more phonies you'll
meet because that's the circuit they play. And you get so you
can peg 'em the minute they walk through the door. It's the
flashy, too-well-dressed guy with the tooth-paste-ad smile and
big roll (tens and twenties wrapped around a flock of one-
dollar bills) to watch out for.

P e o p l e that
b a r t e n d e r s
don't like

About thirty-five years ago I was introduced to a new
profession, and since becoming a saloonkeeper it has been my
good fortune to see in action as well as be served by some of
the outstanding mixologists in the business, both here and
abroad. It has been fun most of the time, but now and then
the view from my side of the plank hasn't been rosy.
I've found that different people respond differently to a
Zombie, and everyone reacts differently to a steak than they
do to a Zombie. Whoever orders a second steak? But after a
second Zombie—and some folks even try a third—customers do
the most amazing things. Vice-presidents act like regular guys,
and regular guys act like vice-presidents, and guys who'd like
you to think they're vice-presidents act like, well, like guys
would act who'd like to be vice-presidents.
It's amusing at times to serve and observe individuals un
der the influence and watch their attitude toward then fellow
men. I've come to the conclusion that there are basic types
among drinkers, or customers to us, and they're easily recog
nized after a few short ones under belt or girdle, as the case
may be.
You can't miss the gal who gets chummy with every unat
tached male in the place. She is most likely a tramp and prob
ably soliciting. And you can't have it, fellows; you can't have it
for fifteen minutes. Other people who don't like that sort of
thing just won't come back to your place if they see her type.

16 People that bartenders don't like
She doesn't belong in your bar; so give her the bum's rush
when she first comes in; give her her money back.
All saloonkeepers should be wary of the sharp-looking,
well-dressed dame with a good figure and well-bred air. She's
a knockout, and every man in the place strains his neck to get
another gander at her. After confiding to you that she doesn't
usually like to go to bars alone, but yours is different—she
feels so much at ease—she becomes a regular patron at well-
spaced intervals. Eventually she becomes friendly. You're flat
tered and well on the road to a beautiful friendship, until one
evening she suggests that you go to her apartment with her to
see her trained canary. Right there, if you're married and your
business is solvent, let some other guy go with her because
you'll undoubtedly discover, if you take the trouble to check
it, that her trained canary is costing a couple of other gents a
few C notes a month.
There are the pests that come in pairs. These old blisters
start out with a lot of dignity and proceed to get absolutely
fried. They talk to everybody in the place, butt into private
groups, and get in everyone's hair, and when you try to get
them to go home no amount of coaxing or suggestions are of
any use. If you say it's time for the cop on the beat to come in
for his nightcap, they enthusiastically offer to buy him a drink.
If you tell them they've had enough to drink, they're indignant
and start a rumpus. I finally resorted to a bottle of seltzer wa
ter on a pair one evening. All the fight oozed out of them after
a few well-placed squirts, which made them look as bedrag
gled as a pair of wet hens.
No matter how carefully you watch, someone is bound to
get drunk and get out of line. Blackjacks, wooden mallets,
beer bottles, rubber hose filled with buckshot, brass knuckles
are all definitely no solution to the problem. A rousting
through the front door usually works, but there's a technique
for this treatment which should be learned and used at all

People that bartenders don't like 17
times. The recipient of the jostle should never be allowed to
get set but should be taken unawares and kept on the move
until he's out the front door. Once he grabs onto anything, gets
his feet set, or falls down, you have to tackle the problem from
another angle.
Sometimes you can bluff 'em. I remember one bellicose
gent of generous proportions who was giving us a bad time
one evening and who looked as though he'd be difficult to
bounce. One of my bartenders, Gene, and I looked the guy
over at a close range. I took a two-bit piece out of my pants
pocket and flipped it. "Heads I throw him out and tails you
do it," I said to Gene right in front of the obnoxious customer
but without looking at him. Before we could see whether
heads or tails turned up, the guy grabbed his hat and beat it.
Another ass who makes bartenders blow their corks is the
show-off who orders fancy drinks—just to impress his compan
ions—usually when the bar is crowded and the rush is on. I al
most lost one of my best men one night; it took three guys to
hold him when one such nitwit ordered an eight-color pousse
café. The bartender sweat bullets getting the damn thing
cooked up; spoiled the first two because he couldn't remember
which liqueurs were the heaviest (you get an order for one
of the fool things about once every five years), but he finally
sent it to the table with pride. It was beautiful, glowing with
color. And what did the guy do but display it to his friends
and then down it with one gulp like a straight shot! In case
there's anyone in the world who doesn't know how to drink a
pousse cafe, it should be sipped, one color at a time.
Another wiseacre who burns me to a crisp comes in with
a crowd and the idea seems to be that everyone buys a round
of drinks. But when this anti-hero feels that he can't hold out
much longer from parting with his cabbage, he asks loudly
and with a great show of good humor, "When does the house
buy a drink?" You're really not hurt, but he puts you on the

18 People that bartenders don't like
spot and your face gets red and you feel like shoving your bar
towel down his gullet. If the house doesn't buy a drink he
finally digs into his jeans for the next round, but you'll hear
about your joint being cheap the rest of the evening.
About the best answer I know is "We buy all our drinks
after closing time," and that usually shuts the beggars up com
pletely.

B a r t e n d e r s
that c u s t o m e r s
don't like

Bartenders come in for their share of panning too. The
sinning isn't all done on the paying side of the bar. While I
don't suggest that all bartenders observe the rigid rules of con
duct maintained by the great eastern hotels, where a bar
tender is supposed to speak only when spoken to and answer
questions civilly and briefly, period, he certainly shouldn't be
gabby or butt into customers' conversations.
There's no getting around it, the farther West you go,
the less formality you find. Society is not the sacred cow that
it is in the East; you see tails in public—and damn few of
those—only at opening nights at the opera, and people more
often don't "dress" than do. But East or West, there are certain
basic rules of conduct from which no bartender should devi
ate.
First, he should never, no matter how well he knows a
customer, point out a customer's drunken antics of the night
before or any previous occasion. It's ten to one any guy who
ties one on knows he's made an ass of himself, and he wishes
everyone would either forget it or have the good taste not to
mention it.
It's strictly not kosher to mention a customer's prior com
panions, particularly feminine ones, when he's with a group of
people unknown to the bartender. If a man wants to lead a
double life, it's his own business and he'll have trouble enough
without a bartender complicating matters. A man may have
reasons of his own for telling his companion that he attended

22 Bartenders that customers don't like
a lecture on "Anthropology and the Hereafter" last Thursday
night; and no bartender will endear himself to the fibbing cus
tomer by asking a few moments later, "How did you and Jack
Burns make out Thursday night? You two sure were lit up!"
And the corn flows on while the poor guy tries to crawl into
the woodwork.
The bartender who plays favorites with the boss's liquor
may be influencing people, but he's not making a helluva lot
of friends for the business. There are darn few people who
like to be slugged, even for free. I'm talking now about the
bartender who makes drinks for friends or followers extra
strong. After being knocked on their cans once or twice, such
favored ones are apt to remark, "We'd like to go to the Blind
Mouse, but Harry always makes our drinks so strong we can't
see. Guess we'll drop in at the Pink Rat."
Other faults of bartenders which make customers see red
—or drink elsewhere—are listening in on conversations and
joining in uninvited; gossiping about other customers; griping
about the boss, working hours, and pay; or discussing the
boss's private affairs.
Customers turn thumbs down on bartenders who work
their shifts unshaven, wear soiled jackets and spotted or wrin
kled neckties, have dirty hands or clean hands with fingernails
in mourning, need a haircut, and smoke while on duty. Cigar
smokers are particularly objectionable. You just about lose
your appetite for any mixed drink when you see the bartender
remove a well-chewed cigar from his mouth, lay it on the edge
of the counter, and dive into ice and lemons with unwashed
hands.
Bartenders with misplaced funny bones are a pain in the
neck too. A gag that was funny once palls when used on every
customer thereafter.
Bartenders that try to gyp customers aren't too hard to
find either—wrong ring-ups and shortchanging drunks. As old

Bartenders that customers don't like 23
as it is, the towel trick gets a play every now and then in the
lesser dives. In case you've never heard of it, the bartender
simply wipes up some of your loose change or currency as he
wipes up the bar and pockets it.
The towel trick isn't so apt to be pulled back East, where
drinks are paid for after they've been consumed. Out West it's
different, however.
Which brings me to one little point I'd like to clear up for
eastern bartenders: The next time a customer comes in and
planks his cabbage on the bar before he orders, you needn't
look down your nose or treat him as though he'd just dropped
from Mars. Chances are he's from out West, where the custom
dates back to the gold rush of '49. In those days, when nearly
every man was unshaven and probably needed a bath and a
change of clothes, you couldn't tell a bum from a millionaire;
so it was pay as you go. Before you could get a drink at any
saloon, you put your poke of dust or cash on the bar and or
dered up. It still goes out here and we think nothing of it. It's
commonplace to go into a crowded bar, every stool taken, and
see a little pile of currency or silver in front of every customer.
Even women have the habit.

About mixing
drinks a n d
a b o u t drinks
in g e n e r a l

There are a lot of books on drinks and thousands of drink
recipes, but not much information on how to mix a drink or
why to do it a certain way. Good ingredients are essential to a
good drink. But improper mixing can ruin the best liquor. So
this chapter is my two cents' worth about putting drinks to
gether.
ICE
Plenty of ice is the first requisite of good mixing. Ice is
commonly used in two sizes—shaved or crushed—and in cubes.
In stirred drinks, use plenty of ice; and it is my contention
that the ice should always be placed in the mixing glass,
shaker, or glass before adding the liquor. The receptacle has
that much more chance to chill, the liquids poured over ice
are off to a cold start, and the whole process of chilling the
drink is accomplished more quickly. A highball without
enough ice is a sickly mess, and a warm cocktail is revolting.
Use shaved ice for drinks to be sipped through a straw.
Use ice cubes for highballs and for cocktails served on the
rocks or in the old fashioned glass.
Now there has been a great change in ice in the last few
years. Years ago, we never used ice that was cubed already;
it just didn't exist. But today you find ice machines and bins
full of shaved ice. The goal with this ice is to keep it frozen
hard; in other words, keep "aged ice."

z6 About mixing drinks and drinks in general
If you don't, this cubed ice or shaved ice can lose a lot of
its temperature. Water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit.
Suppose your ice is just below 32 degrees but ready to melt.
When you use that ice in mixing drinks, it makes a watery
drink awfully fast. And anytime you put such ice into an elec
tric drink mixer, you are going to have a watery drink even
faster. If your ice is barely staying together by coldness, you
are simply not going to make good drinks.
So keep your ice cold. Keep it in a storage bin that is well
insulated or which has coils in it to keep it cold. Then, with
your aged ice, you'll get very little dilution in a drink. What
dilution you do get, you'll get slowly. And when a fellow gets
a Martini or a Scotch and Soda from you, hell, he'll still have
ice in the glass by the time he gets through drinking. The
same thing goes for a Margarita on the Rocks or any drink on
the rocks.
And in your home, this dry, hard frozen ice is just as
important in making good drinks. Don't take the ice cubes
out of your refrigerator three hours before you start to use
them; they are hardly cold enough as they are, straight from
your freezer.
The use of ice and liquor to cause glasses to frost thickly
on the outside—as for Juleps and Swizzles—hinges on using
plenty of liquor. Liquor with ice causes fast melting; and since
the created cold has to go somewhere, it goes to the outside of
the glass. (Whereas, if you have water with ice, the meltage
is slower, and the cold dissipates more slowly—too slowly to
frost a glass properly.)
MEASURING
Let me point out right now that fancy twirling of spoons,
flipping of glasses, and tossing bottles into the air are not
the earmarks of a good bartender. Such antics not only do not

About mixing drinks and drinks in general 27
produce good drinks, they slow any bartender down to a
walk. Any guy who goes through a lot of gymnastics behind
a bar is just putting on the flash. I've never seen one yet
that made good drinks or even made them fast.
I remember a little fellow who once worked for me. His
name was Joe and he was one of the best. No matter how
crowded the bar was or how many orders he had, he never
got nervous. He'd fill his glass with ice from a scoop, measure
every drink, pick up his spoon carefully, and just work along
easily with no lost motion. He made twice as many and
better drinks than the flash in the pan working in the next
position, trying to put on a show.
My best advice is to make every drink as though it were
to be the best you've ever made; and you can't do this if you
don't measure. Novice or professional: Measure your liquor.
You won't spoil any drinks, and your customers will always
know that they're getting what they pay for. No bartender
is so good that he can make consistenly good drinks without
measuring. That goes for all drinks; but it's especially true
of the Trader Vic special drinks and complicated drinks.
Whatever you do, measure all of your drinks carefully.
What bar measures mean;
Jigger
Teaspoon or barspoon
Dash (as of sugar syrup, orgeat,
grenadine, lemon juice)
Dash (as of bitters)
Scoop (of ice)
Usually 1 ounce
1/8ounce
1/4 ounce
1/8 teaspoon
About 1 cup

28 About mixing drinks and drinks in general
MIXING
When it comes to mixing: Some drinks are shaken with
ice for plenty of dilution, proper blending, or to dissolve
sugar; others are stirred with ice with a spoon. Don't change
the technique or you'll spoil the drinks.
When to shake and when to stir aren't much of a problem,
after all, when you consider the ingredients.
Most cocktails or drinks made up of clear liquors require
only stirring with ice to obtain the necessary dilution, chilling,
and blending (with the exception of a few drinks such as
Stingers and Manhattans). The resulting drink should be icy
cold and clear. To stir: Hold stirring spoon loosely between
thumb and forefinger, and spin by rolling the wrist.
Drinks made of fruit juice, eggs, cream, and sugar will
be cloudy anyway; and the proper blending of these difficult-
to-blend ingredients requires shaking. Professionally, shaking
is usually done in a shaker can with a mixing glass. Sometimes,
it is done in an electric drink mixer especially designed
for commercial bar use or in a regular blender. A commercial
electric drink mixer or a regular blender usually gives a
creamy-smooth result. The use of electric drink mixers is
varied and, in many cases, abused. I think that most cocktails
are best stirred or shaken by hand. Putting them in an
electric drink mixer often dilutes them to a sickly mess.
(There is a school of thought, which is generally correct
in my opinion, that sours should be shaken by hand. How
ever, an experienced bartender can make a good sour with
an electric drink mixer.) Electric drink mixers are indispensa
ble, however, for some punches; for some drinks which
contain fruit, milk, eggs, or cream; for fizzes; Daiquiris; a
few frappés, and drinks which require snow ice.
Commercial electric drink mixers are designed to be

sturdy enough to handle ice cubes, as well as shaved ice,
if necessary. Regular blenders are not designed to handle
large pieces of ice; you should use only shaved ice in
regular blenders; larger pieces of ice will eventually dam
age the blades. A home bartender equipped with only
a regular blender can, however, make most of the drinks
which call for the use of electric shaking with ice cubes:
Shake the ingredients with ice cubes by hand with a
shaker can with mixing glass (about a 20-ounce glass).
(You can use a double old fashioned glass in place of the
mixing glass.)
This is important in the mixing of drinks with an electric
drink mixer: A proper amount of ice and the proper way
that the drink is made have everything to do with its
acceptance by the customer. So be careful how much ice
you put in the mixer with the liquor and how long you let it
spin. You might put in so damn much ice that by the time
you're ready to pour the drink, it won't fit into the glass,
you have a lot left over, and the customer gets a thick
drink that is a sorry mess. Or you can spin it so long that the
ice is almost all gone before the customer starts drinking.
I think there is one mixer drink that especially has to
be made right. That is the Daiquiri. If you make Daiquiris
right, you can sell a lot of them. And you can make them
very nicely in your home, too. But it is very difficult to go
into most bars and get a good Daiquiri because the bartender
doesn't take the time to measure his ice and put in just the
right amount.
Go lightly on sugar and sugar syrup. Most drinks are
too sweet. Use granulated bar sugar unless recipe calls for
another kind of sugar; put sugar in first for shaken drinks.
Standard proportions for sugar syrup or simple syrup are
two parts sugar to one part water.
Here is how you add a liqueur float to a drink: Pour

liqueur into a spoon, and gendy slip liqueur from spoon onto
top of the drink.
SERVING
Once the drink is measured and mixed, it is ready to be
poured into a glass. In an individual bar the drinks will be
individual also, and individuality calls for a glamorous pack
age. Look around the next time you go to a grocery store
and see if it isn't the package that makes the first sale. The
contents must be good for the next sale, but initially it's the
package that sells the stuff. It's the same thing at a bar. It's
the package and the drink, not the decorations on the wall
or the bartender in a fancy coat that sells a drink.
Certain types of glassware are traditional for certain
drinks, and this is no accident. Take for instance a Martini or
Manhattan. These drinks are stirred with ice and strained
into a stemmed glass. The glass should be well chilled, and a
stemmed glass is used so that the heat of the hand will not
warm the drink before it is consumed. Stemmed glassware,
logically, is not required when ice is served in the drink itself.
Take a look at the photographs of basic bar glasses
with a guide listing to some of the drinks generally served in
each. The photos also identify glassware and serving con
tainers for special Trader Vic drinks.
When pouring all shaken cocktails: Use the bar strainer.
To assure even consistency when pouring several shaken or
blended drinks: Set glasses in a row on the bar, pour each
drink halfway, then reverse the direction to level drinks off.
To chill the glass for cocktails: Fill each glass with
cracked or shaved ice. Shake the ice out well before pouring.
To prepare a frosted glass (for some cocktails, juleps,
and fancy coolers): Store glass in refrigerator or bury in
shaved ice.

The sugar-frosted glass is a nice touch, is good-looking,
and starts a drink off with a pleasant bouquet of lemon or
orange. To prepare: Dampen the rim of the glass with a
lemon or orange slice, then dip it into powdered or bar sugar.
Once you've made a drink properly and poured it into
the right glass, you're still not ready to set it before your
thirsty customer. Not if you're a good bartender. How many
times have you gone into a bar for a cocktail only to have
the barkeep slap the thing together, throw in an olive or a
cherry, and slosh it toward you? To me, that's lousy, and the
boss is being gypped. That boss pays a bartender a salary as
good as the vice-president of the First National gets, and the
bartender doesn't need to act as if he's doing the boss a favor
by working there.
It takes but a second to make up an orange and cherry
on a toothpick or to spear an olive, place it gently in the
cocktail, and then carefully set it on a cocktail napkin before
a customer. That added courtesy keeps the cash register in
tune.
And keep your fingers off your drink glasses, bartenders.
You don't want fingerprints to shadow a nice drink.
INGREDIENTS
There has been an awfully lot of water flow under the
bridge since I wrote my first Bartender's Guide. At that time,
very few mixes—prepared, non-alcoholic flavoring agents-
were used. There was grenadine, orgeat syrup, and simple
syrup, and that was about it. But today, there are a great
number of mixes on the market intended for both home and
commercial use.
I originally held that is was better to make each in
dividual drink. But with the changes in time and bars, I have
changed my recommendations. Now I advise you to use

mixes. They're usually good, they're fast, and they're con
sistent. And you can use them nearly alone as flavoring
agents, along with a little grenadine, to make non-alcoholic
drinks or children's punches. (Such drinks can taste good;
they have no liquor in them, and they won't hurt you.)
Today, bartenders get a lot more pay than when I was
tending bar. When I was tending bar, the scale was ten or
twelve dollars a day up to as high as fifteen dollars. Now it is
well into thirty dollars. So today you can't afford to have a
dozen bartenders behind the bar making drinks; they can't
all earn their keep. So the use of mixes is a great timesaver
and thus a saver of excess bartenders. The same is true at
home.
Another advantage of mixes is that they can help to
stabilize your quality. You can get one man to make you a
drink from scratch, and he will give you one flavor; and
you can have the man next to him make the same drink
and he will give you a different flavor. But if you have a
mix, and every different bartender measures out an ounce
or half ounce of the mix, then every drink is going to be the
same—just as long as you use the same mix.
That is important: Always use the same brand of mix
for a drink. Mixes can vary from brand to brand as much or
more than tequila does; and tequila varies like a yo-yo.
The same call for consistency applies to rum or Bourbon
or gin or any other basic liquor for your bar (with the possible
exception of vodka, which doesn't vary significantly among
good brands). Always use the same brand that you're used
to using or that is specified for the particular drink.
In general, in this book, we are not going to specify
brands of liquors. In a few instances we will be specific
about rums—where we have found that to use other products
than the ones specified gets too complicated to get good
results.

About mixing drinks and drinks in general 3 3
This brings me to the subject of lemon and orange juice
in drinks. For the life of me, I can't see why any bar uses
anything but pure fresh or frozen lemon and orange juice.
There is absolutely no excuse for using artificial or ersatz
fruit juices of any kind. They make lousy Collinses and
worse Sours. You can buy good liquor and the best cordials
available, and then completely offset them by using artificial
fruit juices. Here at Trader Vic's, we use frozen orange juice
and frozen lemon juice. But we prepare it fresh every day.
(And we also have them specially blended for us so that
they will be consistent.) Thawing ahead is where the bugaboo
of quality occurs. So be sure, in using frozen products, that
you thaw and mix them freshly every day. Don't let your
bar boys thaw out enough for a week at a time. The same
holds true if you squeeze fresh juice; do it every day.
We use—and I advise you to use—only freshly squeezed
lime juice, squeezed fresh from the lime to the drink. Do not
use lime juice that comes in a bottle unless you're making a
Gimlet.
Mixing drinks and tending bar are a helluva lot of
fun. You meet some nice customers, and you have a lot of
nice guys working for you. Let me just give you a little
rundown on some of the bartender highlights of Trader Vic's
for the last thirty-five years.
One of the first guys we had was a fellow by the
name of Sullie. Sullie's forte was that he played the ukulele
and could sing. Well, we had a little bar; and when it
wasn't too busy, he played the ukulele and we both would
sing. I love to harmonize, and we had a helluva time.
Then came a little fellow by the name of Joe Peppers. I
guess he was born when meat was short, because he was a
little bit of a half-pint guy and just precious. Joe Peppers
knew how to make a Martini. At five o'clock, people would
come into our bar for Joe's Martinis—they wouldn't let me

3 4 About mixing drinks and drinks in general
make their Martinis. That didn't exactly hurt my feelings,
but it did make me feel badly—just because I was trying so
hard. But I certainly wasn't jealous of Joe, because, jeez, he
worked for me, and you can't be jealous of a guy who is
doing a better job for you than you can yourself—helping
your business to succeed. But Joe Peppers would do some
thing with a Martini—and damn it all, fellows, to this day, I
don't make a good Martini. Well, that's Joe's fault.
Later on, we had a guy who could mix drinks like
hallelujah holy toledo. This fellow was hot and a good friend
of mine before I went into the saloon business. His name
was Frank Pult. Well, Frank Pult could really mix a drink.
He didn't go through a lot of fuss; he just stood there,
efficientlymixed a drink, served it to the customer—and that
drink was properly made. He originated a lot of drinks. I
forget some of them now—it has been so damn long. But
Frank Pult was a good bartender. He made a drink as if
that drink was the most important thing in the world. (And
that's what I try to drill into all of our Trader Vic's people:
When a customer comes into our bar, he comes in there for
a good drink—not a sloppy drink or a half-made drink be
cause you are busy. He is entitled to the best.) Of course,
Frank and I had a lot of fun. I remember . . . Frank would
be down in the next position on the bar from me, and I
would say, "Frank, throw me some ice." And he would pick
up some ice cubes and throw them, one at a time, as fast
as I could catch them in a glass—bom-bom-bom. And then
I'd go ahead and make the drink. And then sometimes he
would say, "Trader, give me a piece of ice." And I would
throw a cube way up—we had a very high ceiling—and he
would catch it in the glass way down on the bar without
even breaking the glass. Or he would say, "Give me a beer."
And I would slide him a mugful of beer down the bar, the
mug would turn around, and end up with the handle ready

About mixing drinks and drinks in general 3 5
so that all Frank had to do was pick it up and give it to
the customer. Well, you know, that took a little practice.
We were horseplaying, of course; but the customer liked it,
and we had a lot of fun.
And then, of course, we graduated, and Trader Vic's
main offices moved over from Oakland to San Francisco.
Now we have a beverage director by the name of Bill Camp
bell. He is a little short stubby guy. He can tend bar and
mix drinks and see that everything is shipshape. Ah! That's
Bill Campbell. Oh, we would have a helluva time finding
a better man. Bill Campbell can organize a thing and that
thing is done right. While I am writing this book, Bill
Campbell is over in Munich, getting our Munich restaurant
started. And you can bet that when the Munich restaurant
opens, there will be in that bar all of the glasses, all of the
mixes, all of the spoons, all of the booze—everything there
to mix the drinks and make them properly. Bill Campbell
has that knack of perfect organization, and very few people
have that.

You've been drinking the stuff for years, but do you
know what it is? Do you know what gives different types
of liquor their individual taste? Rye, Bourbon, and corn
whisky; Irish, Canadian, and scotch whisky; and gin are all
distilled from the same type of ingredients, i.e., grains, but
what gives them such a different taste?
If you've read anything about the manufacture of scotch,
for instance, you've found pot stills, malted barley, fermenta
tion, distillations, and blending mentioned, but you probably
still didn't know what the hell it was all about. You'll find pot
stills mentioned in connection with certain rums, too, which
are distilled from sugar cane. And what about brandies,
which are distilled from fruit juices or wines?
I'm going to try to explain, without a lot of hifalutin
language, how various liquors are made and how so many
different flavors can spring from practically the same in
gredients. We might as well start with the home product.
AMERICAN WHISKY
There are three types of whisky made in the United
States; rye, Bourbon, and corn whisky. Bourbon, originally a
pure corn product and the first whisky to be made in this
country, got its name from Bourbon County in Kentucky. It
was one time the custom to name a whisky after the county
in which it was made, but because Bourbon County con-

38 Liquor-what is it?
tinued for many years to lead in the manufacture of whisky,
the term was eventually applied to all Kentucky whiskies.
Bourbon: As the old distillers became more experienced
in making whisky they found that the addition of some rye
to the corn in the mash increased the yield and improved the
flavor. Still later it was found that a little barley malt further
increased the yield. Nowadays Bourbon is made from a
mixture of about 51 per cent corn, and the rest rye, wheat,
oats, and barley.
Rye: Later, distillers began manufacturing whisky from
rye grain, either from pure rye or a large percentage of rye,
which was, and still is, called rye whisky. Rye, today, is
made from at least 51 per cent rye and the rest other grains.
Corn Whisky: This is made from corn with just enough
barley malt to aid in the conversion during fermentation.
The grains used in making whisky must first be ground
into meal and then cooked to a mash. The mash is then
mixed with water, stirred, and allowed to stand overnight,
during which time a small amount of lactic acid forms,
giving the mash its sour, acid characteristics. Then the mash
is brought to the boiling point, maintained there for a time,
and then the temperature is reduced. When the mixture has
cooled to about 150 degrees, the barley malt is added for the
purpose of liquefying the starch in the grain, reducing the
temperature further to about 140 degrees, and this is called
the malting or conversion point. This temperature is main
tained from fifteen minutes to an hour, during which time
the greater part of the starch is converted into sugar. The
mash is then ready for fermenting, which is accomplished by
"yeasting."
Yeasting is the process of adding a pure yeast, cultured
in the distillers' laboratory, to the prepared mash to induce
fermentation. Fermentation completes the breakdown of the
sugars and turns it into alcohol and carbonic acid gases.

Liquor—what is it? 3 9
Whisky is made by two methods—the sweet-mash method
and the sour-mash method. Under the sweet-mash method,
the fermentation is limited by federal statute to seventy-two
hours and not more than forty-five gallons of beer to each
bushel of grain. Under the sour-mash method the time for
fermentation must not exceed ninety-six hours and not more
than sixty gallons of beer are permitted per bushel of grain.
The sour-mash method produces a heavier whisky, richer in
flavor, but it takes longer to age.
After the required fermentation, the mash is ready to be
distilled. I'll not go into details here, as you must all know
the basis of distillation from your high school chemistry days.
But to refresh your minds: The fermented mass is put into a
still and heat is applied. The vapors are condensed and the
spirit and essence of whisky are the result. At this point,
under the sweet-mash method, the whisky is pale, raw-tasting,
and extremely unpalatable. Whisky made under the sour-
mash method, on the other hand, is not unpleasant at this
stage, but weak and sweet.
It is aging that makes good whisky. Here in this country,
it is customary to age whisky in charred oak casks. There a
chemical change takes place to change the color of the liquid,
and to mellow and age it. This process takes a minimum of
four years. A sour-mash whisky doesn't begin to mellow or
improve in flavor until after four years.
Whisky which is bottled in bond must conform to the
strictest federal government regulations. It must be distilled,
aged, and bottled under government supervision; it must be
at least four years old, from a single distillation, and 1 0 0
proof when bottled.
IMPORTED WHISKY
Of the three types of whisky imported to the United
States, scotch is by far the most popular.

40 Liquor—what is it?
The other two whiskies imported are Canadian whisky
and Irish whisky.
Scotch Whisky: Made from malted barley and aged in
sherry casks or plain oak casks, scotch whisky has a distinctive
flavor which has never been successfully imitated or made
elsewhere. This is due to several factors: The malted barley
itself, the practice of drying the malted barley over peat,
and the water used. The principal types of malt whisky are
Highland, Lowland, Campbeltown, and Islay, the latter being
one of the most outstanding and having the smokiest flavor.
Barley is steeped in water for two or three days, then
spread out to germinate for nearly two weeks. During germi
nation the starch reaches a point where it is convertible to
sugar just before the barley sprouts, so this growth is arrested
by smoking the grain for several days over peat and coke
fires. It is then crushed and mixed with hot water to form a
mash and fermented. After fermentation it is distilled. The
first distillation is redistilled, and from this come three "flows,"
the first and the last being redistilled with the first distillation
of the next batch. It is the second or middle flow of the
second distillation which is considered choice and is whisky.
Briefly, this is the way malt whisky has always been
made in Scotiand, but it is as variable as the crop of barley
each year from which it is made.
A blended scotch whisky may contain as high as 50
per cent malt whisky and may be made from several grains
and from twenty to twenty-five different malt whiskies. A
blender selects the malt whiskies to be used, usually including
some Islay, and vats them together for a couple of years.
After that time he mixes the blended malts with patent-still
grain whiskies selected, adds coloring, and vats the resulting
blend for six or eight months before bottling.
Irish Whisky: Fine whisky comes from Ireland, and it is

Liquor-what is it? 41
made the same way as scotch whisky except that it does not
have the smoky flavor.
Canadian Whisky: This is a distinctive product of
Canada. The taste of Canadian whisky is owing mainly to
lightness of body which keeps the flavor of rye or corn or
malted grain from dominating the bouquet. The young whisky
is apportioned to different types of cooperage, whence it
derives much of its flavor, and then it is blended at maturity.
It is manufactured in Canada in compliance with the laws of
the Dominion of Canada and contains no distilled spirits less
than two years old.
RUM
Because rums are distilled from sugar cane, molasses,
and the by-products of sugar manufacture, they are produced
in most tropical countries. While there are hundreds of
brands, there are only about a dozen types, each type of
rum being the product of a different tropical country or
group of islands. The type of rum usually takes its name
from its place of origin, and each has its own flavor, body,
and bouquet.
A few rums are made in one place and shipped else
where for aging and bottling. Such is the case of Martinique
rums, which are shipped to France for final export, and
with the London Dock Jamaicas, which are sent to England.
Most rums are made from sugar cane, the juice of which
is fermented, distilled, rectified, and aged in oak vats.
In the simplest terms, there are three main types of
rum: (1) light bodied, dry flavored rums, principally from
Puerto Rico; (2) heavy bodied, sweet flavored rums, principally
from Jamaica; and (3) the medium rums, neither very light
nor very heavy, principally from the Virgin Islands. More
specifically, Barbados rums: a fine brandy-type rum from

42 Liquor-what is it?
the Barbados Islands, best used in light punches, cocktails,
and Daiquiris. Having a clear flavor, it can be mixed in
any type drink without too much rum flavor, although it is
slightly heavier flavored than Cuban and Puerto Rican rums.
Cuban Rum: The rum from Cuba is distilled chiefly
from sugar-cane juice, with a resulting light sweet flavor.
By means of a fine yeast culture and careful distillation, a fine
rum is produced which is unequaled for mild-flavored cock
tails, or highballs with soda or plain water. Not available in
this country at this time.
Demerara Rum: Guiana (formerly British Guiana) is
the home of the Demeraras, which are similar in some respects
to dark Jamaicas. The Demeraras have, in addition to the
aromatic and pungent flavor of the Jamaicas, a dry burned
flavor; and they run higher in proof than others, often being
bottled at 160 proof.
Jamaica Rum: Both light and dark types of rum are
produced in Jamaica, and both are strong and pungent in
flavor. Four factors contribute to the individuality and char
acteristics of Jamaica rums, the combination of which can be
duplicated nowhere else: (1) Soil, climate, and water; ( 2 )
the use of the old pot still; ( 3 ) the ingredients of the wash
and its slow fermentation; (4) aging solely by time in white
oak casks.
By law, nothing except the products of sugar—molasses,
cane juice, and the by-products of sugar manufacture—may
be used in the production of Jamaica rums. Even the coloring
must be burned sugar or burned molasses.
Because of the outstanding flavor, Jamaica rums are
usually used in combination with milder flavored rums in
drinks and are favored by candy and pastry makers.
Martinique Rum: Made in the French West Indies,
Martinique rums are similar to Jamaica rums. They are heavy
in body, coffee colored, and often, although faintly, have the

Liquor-what is it? 4 3
dry burned flavor of the Demeraras. In many cases the rum
produced in Martinique is shipped to France, where it is
aged, and reshipped as French rum.
New England Rum: The rum industry in this country
dates back to colonial days, when trading ships taking
manufactured goods and sundry items to the Caribbean re
turned with sugar, tobacco, and molasses. The molasses was
distilled. Since most New Englanders were seafaring people,
they made the distillate into rum. Light in body and mild in
flavor, New England rum can be used in cocktails.
Puerto Rican Rum: The rum from Puerto Rico is distilled
in the same manner as that from Cuba. Light bodied and
sweet flavored, it is excellent for delicate drinks. Gold label
rums are relatively less dry and have more flavor than the
white label ones; but they are generally interchangeable in
drink making—except for individual preferences.
Virgin Islands Rum: Rum produced in the Virgin Islands
is individual, neither heavy nor light in body and having its
own peculiar molasses flavor. In general, it is not favored in
this country.
Haitian Rum: The little republic of Haiti produces a
delightful brandy-type rum. Rhum Sarthe is one of the finest;
it is a rum to be enjoyed in highballs or as a straight liqueur.
Habanero Rum: Mexico distills a very light-bodied, mild-
flavored type of rum which is aged in Spanish sherry casks.
One of the finest brands is Tenampa.
Philippine Islands Rum: It is difficult to get Philippine
rum nowadays. But it used to be a fine rum. The distillation
was light, similar to that of Puerto Rico, but the flavor was
distinctive, faintly reminiscent of vanilla beans and herbs.
Venezuelan Rum: This rum is similar to that produced
in Haiti or the Virgin Islands. It has no particular feature,
and there is no great demand for it in this country.

4 4 Liquor—what is it?
BRANDY
Brandy is distilled from the fermented juices of ripe
grapes or various fruits. The best brandies are usually a
blend of several types of brandy so that the result is a smooth,
full-flavored product. When used alone, the word brandy
implies a grape product. However, brandy may be made
from various fruits, and designated as peach brandy, apricot
brandy, apple brandy, etc. The finest of all brandies is Cognac.
Cognac: Cognac is distilled from grapes grown in the
Charente district in France, the principal city of which is
named Cognac. Only brandy from this section may be called
cognac. So it follows that while cognac is brandy, not all
brandy is cognac. The brandies from this section are aged in
oak barrels. Blends of different ages and characteristics are
blended skillfully to produce a fine product. Cognac is best
after twenty years' aging.
OTHER BRANDIES
Armagnac: Produced in Gers, south of Bordeaux, Arma-
gnac is often bottled straight. (Cognac is always blended.)
Armagnac matures rapidly and is fine up to about twenty years
of age. Sometimes it is even better than a cognac. But cognacs
can stand the greater aging because they do not become so
heavy.
Apple Brandy: Originally made in the province of
Normandy in France, where it is known as Calvados. Dis
tilled from apple cider, this brandy is aged in wood. In this
country it is known as Applejack.
California Grape Brandy: Usually distilled from mus
catel wine. Pleasant and fragrant.

Spanish Brandy: Made from sherry wine in the Jerez
district of Spain. Similar to cognac.
Greek Brandy: Outstanding in flavor, smooth and mellow.
Kirsch or Kirschwasser: A cherry brandy made in Switzer
land, France, and Germany. A distillation of the cherries
and pits, highly flavored, used in cocktails and cooking.
Fruit Brandies: Brandy may be made from the fermented
juices of many fruits. United States liquor laws require that
if sweetening is added, the product must be called a liqueur
and not a brandy.
GIN
Gin is a grain-mash distillate redistilled with such aromat-
ics as juniper berries, coriander seed, and angelica root; or a
rectified spirit may be flavored with essential oils. While
there are many types of gin, the most popular is dry gin for
cocktails.
Holland Gin: Gin was first made in Holland. There it
was and still is highly flavored and aromatic. The mash
from which it is distilled contains rye; and spices are added
during distillation. Because of its distinctive flavor Holland
gin is seldom used for cocktails. Often called schnapps.
Fruit-flavored Gin: Made in several flavors such as
orange and lemon, this type of gin is a grain-mash distillation
with fruit flavor added during the distilling process.
Old Tom Gin: A highly aromatic gin with sweetening
added. When using this gin, use less sugar in drinks.
Plymouth Gin: A combination of dry gin and Old Tom
gin. Slightly sweet.
Sloe Gin: Actually not a gin but a liqueur, sloe gin is
made from sloe berries or blackthorn plums. It is purplish red
and quite sweet.

46 Liquor—what is it?
PISCO
Pisco is a brandy distilled from Peruvian wine grapes.
If you've ever drunk a Peruvian table wine, you know that
the last thing you get in your mouth is a strange woody
flavor. That is the essential flavor of Pisco brandy. Because in
distilling that table wine into brandy, that distinctive flavor
goes into the brandy. The uniqueness of that flavor is mainly
due to the soil and climatic conditions of the Peruvian country
side.
The quality of various piscos varies a lot. Supposedly
the best comes from the Ica Valley near the post Pisco. Now
you wonder, what makes one pisco better than another?
When the pisco is a straight distilled brandy, it is a good one.
When the distillate is diluted with the addition of more
alcohol—to stretch the distilled product—it is not a good
pisco. You can make some fine drinks from good pisco.
TEQUILA
Tequila is the distillate of the agave plant. It is usually
marketed at 80 per cent proof.
When I first started to tend bar, tequila was a thing
nobody drank. Once in a while, I made a Margarita, but
very seldom. Only in the last few years, since people have
been going to Mexico, have they started to really drink
tequila here.
And it's a terrific drinking liquor. It tastes good; it makes
a lot of wonderful flavors in mixed drinks.
I strongly urge you to get a good brand of tequila to
make your drinks in the first place. There are some doggy
ones. Cuervo is a good one and Arandas is a good one, and
there are several others that are also good; in fact most of

the tequila that comes into the United States is good. I think
you will find that the poor tequilas are the ones that are
sold right at the border. God, they can taste like the inside of
a motorman's glove.
Make a tequila drink carefully, just as you would make
any other drink; and a tequila drink will be very well
accepted by your guests and the people at your bar. I think
that one of the nicest drinks I know how to make is a
Margarita on the Rocks; it is a classic.
VODKA
Vodka is a neutral spirit, usually distilled from grains
(seldom from potatoes, as is commonly thought), which have
been filtered through activated carbon to assure that any
taste that the spirits may still have, however slight, is re
moved. To be classified as vodka, the beverage cannot
have any aroma or taste. It is not aged, and it is colorless.
Vodka may be 80 per cent proof or 100 per cent proof in
this country.
So vodka lends itself to mixing with almost any other
liquid that a customer particularly likes—such as orange juice
to make a Screwdriver, tomato juice to make a Bloody Mary,
or dry vermouth to make a Vodka Martini.

Absinthe—formerly made in France but now banned, a
liqueur containing wormwood, a drug. Substitutes are Pernod
Veritas, Anis Herbsaint, and Spanish Ojen.
Advocaat—made in Holland from fresh egg yolks, sugar,
and brandy.
Amer Picon—a product of France; a bitter cordial.
Anisette—a. clear liqueur made from anise seed and
flavored with bitter almonds, coriander, etc.
Aquavit—a clear, potent liquor flavored with caraway
seeds from Scandinavian countries.
Arrack Punsch—flavored with Batavia arrack.
Benedictine—a liqueur made by the Benedictine monks;
a secret formula reputed to be a combination of herbs, spices,
and fine brandy.
Blackberry—flavored with blackberries.
Channelle—a spicy liqueur made from cinnamon and
other spices.
Chartreuse—a cordial made by an order of monks, the
Carthusian order. Formerly made in France, the order was
banned and moved to Spain, where the cordial is now made in
Tarragona. Comes in yellow and green, both being made of
many ingredients such as spices, herbs, roots, etc.
Cherry—flavored with wild black cherries.
Cointreau—a brandy of triple sec orange curaçao.
Cordial Médoc—made from orange curaçao, champagne
cognac, and claret from the Médoc district in France.

50 Liqueurs for bars
Crème d'Anana—a liqueur made from fresh pineapple,
brandy, and flavored with vanilla.
Crème de Banana-made from bananas and brandy.
Crème de Cacao—made from cocoa beans, spices, and
vanilla.
Crème de Cassis—made from black currants. A French
liqueur.
Crème de Celeri—made from celery and brandy.
Crème de Fine Champagne—a mixture of several cordials
blended with fine champagne cognac.
Crime de Fraises—flavored with strawberries.
Crime de Menthe—a peppermint liqueur made from
fresh mint and brandy. Comes in three colors—red, green,
and white.
Crime de Moka—made from coffee beans and brandy.
Crime de Noyaux—made from apricot and peach pits,
and having an almond flavor.
Crime de Recco—made from tea leaves, brandy, and
sugar.
Crime de Rose—a liqueur made from rose petals.
Crime de Vanille—a liqueur made from vanilla beans
and brandy.
Crime de Violette—a liqueur having the color and flavor
of violets.
Crime Yvette—similar to crème de violette.
Curaçao—liqueur made from the peels of the bitter
curaçao oranges grown in the West Indies, along with peels
of oranges, spices, rum, port wine, sugar, and brandy.
Drambuie—a liqueur made from old scotch, honey, herbs,
and spices. First made in 1745 in Scotland.
Elixir de Bacardi—a Cuban liqueur made principally from
rum.
Flora Alpina—an Italian liqueur made from alpine flower

Liqueurs for bars 51
or edelweiss plant, herbs, and spices. Comes in red, orange,
and yellow colors.
Forbidden Fruit—an American liqueur made from the
fruit of the shaddock (a type of grapefruit) and cognac.
Fraise—liqueur made from strawberries and brandy.
Framboise—liqueur made from raspberries and brandy.
Goldwasser—a liqueur containing tiny flakes of gold leaf,
made from spices, ripe figs, lemon peel, herbs, and brandy.
Grand Marnier—made from champagne cognac and
orange curaçao.
Kahlua—a Mexican coffee liqueur made from coffee
beans, cocoa beans, vanilla, and brandy.
Kirschwasser or Kirsch—a liqueur made from wild black
cherries, crushed cherry pits.
Kümmel—a clear, potent liqueur distilled from grain and
flavored with spices and caraway seeds.
Liqueur de Dessert—called Strega or Galliano, a liqueur
made in Italy from spices, vanilla, and brandy.
Liqueur Jaune—imitation yellow chartreuse.
Liqueur Verte—imitation green chartreuse.
Mandarine—a liqueur made from mandarin oranges and
brandy.
Maraschino—a liqueur made from marasca cherries and
crushed pits grown in the Dalmatia district on the west coast
of the Adriatic Sea.
Mazarine—an herb liqueur from Argentina, secret formula
of the Abbey of Montbenoit.
Mirabelle—a distillation of fermented yellow plums grown
in Alsace-Lorraine.
Monostique—imitation benedictine made in South Amer
ica.
Orgeat—flavoring syrup made from almonds.
Ouzo—Greek; flavored with anise seed.

52 Liqueurs for bars
Parfait Amour—sweet French liqueur made from lemons,
oranges, herbs, and brandy.
Passionola—a non-alcoholic syrup made from passion fruit.
Comes in three colors—red, green, and natural.
Peach—flavored with peaches.
Pernod—a United States product; carries flavor of star
anise.
Perry—a cider made from pears.
Prunelle—a liqueur made from prunes or a type of plum
called sloes, and brandy.
Quetsche—an unsweetened, colorless liqueur distilled
from fermented juice of prunes.
Quince Brandy—made from ripe quince, spices, and
brandy.
Rock 6- Rye—made from fruit juice, rock candy, and rye
whisky.
Sloe Gin—flavored with sloeberry.
Southern Comfort—a high-proof liqueur made in the
United States from a secret formula, reputed to have a
brandy and whisky base.
Throughout this book, we generally have no mention of
brand names nor anybody's reputation nor anybody's booze
in particular. But I've got the hots for this one liquor, Southern
Comfort; and, by golly, I think you should use it.
I'm talking to you fellows who have regular cocktail
bars and who like to make good drinks. You can specialize
in this one liquor and make fabulous drinks. And it is not an
expensive thing to do.
I have no personal interest in the Southern Comfort
company, I have no stock in it, and they don't know me
from Adam's off ox. But on my own I have sold a hell of a lot
of their stuff. I am a great fan of Southern Comfort, I've
found them a nice company, and I think that they make a
wonderful product.

Liqueurs for bars 5 3
I am not going to put into this book all the drinks that
you can make with Southern Comfort because that's goofy.
You can use Southern Comfort wherever you would ordinarily
use Bourbon or brandy, and in a very few cases, rum. Or
you can get all the special Southern Comfort recipes by
writing to the company or by asking your liquor dealer for
them.
Then, if you have little bars—or big bars—that aren't rum
slanted (as our Trader Vic bars are), I suggest that you make
up some special recipes with Southern Comfort. You can use
it in making drinks such as Collinses and Daisies and Sours;
and it always gives a wonderful flavor. I made, for instance,
what I called a Champagne Apricot. I froze whole peeled
apricots in ice-cube trays. For each drink, I put one apricot
in a champagne glass, put an ounce of Southern Comfort
over it, and filled the glass with champagne. I didn't stir it;
I didn't do a damn thing to it; and I had made a fabulous
drink.
(If you haven't any Southern Comfort in your bar, sub
stitute Benedictine.)
Swedish Punch—like arrack, but flavored with extracts
of tea, lemon, etc.
Triple Sec—white curaçao.
Van der Hum—a. liqueur made from spicy South African
plants and tangerine flavored.
Vieille Cure—made in France from a secret formula of
aromatic plants and herbs.

Let's b e frank
a b o u t w i n e

I am not going to begin to talk about European wines.
This is not because I don't like them but because this is a
bartender's guide for Americans. You can learn about Euro
pean wines elsewhere; there are plenty of references that
are a lot more competent to cover that subject than I am.
But I do know something about California wines—enough
to talk about them. So I will talk about them a little, and put
your mind at ease—if you've had some concerns along this line.
Now you must understand this. When I say, "I say this
and I say that," that is exactly what I mean. I am writing
only my opinion and I am not God and I can be wrong.
But this is the way I feel about California wines; these are
my thoughts; and you can believe them or not.
Two things you must remember about California wines:
(1) They must be aged longer than counterpart European
wines to be at their best, and ( 2 ) They can be treated a lot
rougher than European wines.
About aging: You must age the premium California white
wines at least two years after bottling to bring them to their
best, and you must age the more important reds for at least
three to four years. The white Bordeaux types—Sauvignon
Blanc and Dry Semillon—and the German types—Gerwurz-
traminer, Traminer, Johannisberg Riesling, Sylvaner, Green
Hungarian, Grey Riesling—will age a little faster than the
white Burgundy types—Pinot Chardonnay and Pinot Blanc.
Give the white Bordeaux types and the German types at

56 Let's be frank about wine
least two years of aging in the bottle. And put three to four
years of age onto the white Burgundy types to bring them
to their majority. The red Bordeaux type Cabernet Sauvignon
will need a minimum of three to four years of bottle aging
to get into its best bouquets, aromas, flavors. The red Bur
gundy type Pinot Noir should have at least three to five
years of botde aging. It is usually good to drink some of the
so-called less important reds in about two years after they
are marketed; they'll go to hell in eight or nine years. In this
category, include all Gamays and most Zinfandels.
About the resilience of California wines: I sent some
especially chosen premium California wines to a friend in
Texas. There the temperature goes up to 90 and down below
30. That wine has suffered those extremes; and yet that wine
has aged beautifully for the last three or four years.
I'm not recommending that you intentionally make it
so hard on your wines. But that example does tell something
about the soundness of the better California wines.
In order to give your wines their best chance—if you are
going to start a cellar of California wines—find the place in
your home where the temperature is as even as can be and
relatively cool. It could be a basement or a closet. There the
wines will prosper pretty well and not disintegrate before
their time.
Now let's start at the beginning and talk about California
vins ordinaires, the everyday table wines. You are not going
to drink fancy wines every day of the week unless you've
got a fortune or two fortunes; and even then, you'll most
likely want some ordinary table wines some of the time.
These ordinary California table wines are good, wholesome,
wonderful simple table wines—both in red and white. Their
labels are generic, as Burgundy or claret or mountain red or
chianti or rose or such for the reds, or chablis or sauterne or
rhine wine or mountain white or such for the whites. These

Let's be frank about wine 5 7
labels do not indicate the type of grape used in their making
because the wines are usually blends of various grapes from
various years from various vineyards. They turn out to be
most pleasant, good-drinking wines. Some of the makers of
these wines are Italian Swiss Colony, Petri, Gallo . . . I think
that these California wines are far superior to the French
vin ordinaire (which doesn't come to this country anyway
and which, in France, is drunk in unlabeled bottles).
Then we come to the medium level of California wines—
the great selection of California wines which are labeled by
grape variety but not by vintage year. These wines are
named for the grapes from which they are made (by law,
they have to be made up of at least 51 per cent of the label
grape). But the year of harvest of those grapes is not desig
nated—because the wine is most likely a blend of wines from
several years. Naturally, the better wine makers make the
better of these. But they are all good wholesome wines.
You might be able to age these non-vintage wines and
come out with wines almost as distinctive as when you age
the finest of California vintage-dated wines. But I wouldn't
take the chance. These might also turn out to be just four or
five or whatever years older and still not developed into
anything distinctive; they could still be just fine drinking
wines and nothing more. That, after all, is what they're really
meant to be.
If you are going to age wines and build a good cellar,
then buy good vintage wine made by a premium wine maker.
And that brings us to the top level of California wines.
The premium California wines are the wines which are
labeled by variety and by vintage and made by the finest
wine makers. These are the wines to buy for your cellar
and for non-everyday drinking. Examples of these are Beau-
lieu Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, Stony Hill's Pinot
Chardonnay, Louis M. Martini's Gerwürztraminer—when
labeled with vintage date.

Of course the problem here is that these wines are so
much in demand that they are hard to find. The people
who know and appreciate these wines buy them up quickly
and put them down in their cellars as soon as the wines
come out on the market; so it is not long until there is no
more available. For example, I think Stony Hill and Hanzell
wines are outstanding. But just try to buy them. The total
wine production of both vineyards wouldn't be more than
1000 or 1 2 0 0 cases a year. So unless you live in northern
California or have a special source of supply, you can't get
ahold of the wines. We are lucky at Trader Vic's; every year
we're given an allotment of some of these wines because we
are personal friends of the wine makers and because we feel
so strongly about the quality of their wines.
A little of this premium wine goes to the eastern market
and otherwise out of California. But let's face it: All of this
caliber of wine that is produced in California—every drop of
it—could be sold in California.
Now among the varietal wines, there are some that are
fine and some that are not so fine.
The wines of our state—I'm being honest—are the Caber
net Sauvignons. Pinot Noir and Pinot Chardonnay are the
two most difficult wines to make turn out well in our state.
The Pinot Chardonnay can come out fine if it is handled
with great skill by the winegrower and wine maker. But
forget about Pinot Noir if you hope to have a great, fine,
tremendous wine; drink Cabernet Sauvignon instead. The
great California Pinot Noir is not being made yet as far as I
can see. The Pinot Noirs taste all right, understand; but they
are not great; they lack nose.
Now here are some notes about what I think about some
specific brands.
Almaden is a large producer, but they also make some

darned fine wines. Some of their non-vintage white and reds
are delightful; and they are good to drink right now; and
that's what I would do with them. However, unlike most
non-vintage wines, some of Almaden's just might age very
well. So Almaden can stand some watching. They might con
tinue to develop even great quantities of fairly priced wines
which could age very well. Almaden makes a Gerwürztra-
miner which I think will probably take some age and come
out to be a beautiful wine. They are also making a Pinot
Chardonnay which I think will age some and not go far wrong.
Beaulieu Vineyards makes the ultimate in California
wines—their Cabernet Sauvignon. Beaulieu has the finest
Cabernet Sauvignon made. Buy as much of that anytime as
you can, put it away, and you're safe. Actually, you can bet
your boots that anything that Beaulieu puts its label on in
the reds is going to be pretty good. In the whites—maybe
fair.
Christian Brothers has a few cask wines that can be not
bad but not too good. You have to check them. It might
have some wines that you can age, maybe.
The same thing goes for Hanzell. It makes excellent
Pinot Chardonnays—just beautiful wines. They are expensive,
very expensive. They need aging. Of course you can drink a
recent bottling and have a fairly nice Pinot Chardonnay; but
if you put three years of age on a bottie, you have a terrific
wine.
Inglenook has some of its Cabernet Sauvignon labeled
by cask numbers. Those will age very well.
Charles Krug is making some fine wines. The Cabernet
Sauvignon is good. Any of the Krug wines will take some
aging well because they are good and sound.
You can say great things about Louis M. Martini wines.
Anybody can say, "Louis Martini is better than Beaulieu,"

or "Beaulieu is better than Louis Martini"; he's just blowing
his horn. That is just a matter of taste. Both firms have
taken a lot of time to make their wines. Louis Martini has
made a Mountain Zinfandel that is a beautiful thing, and
so is his Barbera. Louis Martini is an experimenter with
wine as well as a great vintner. Mainly, I mean to talk about
table wines, but I will take my hat off to Louis Martini for
his beautiful dessert wine, Moscato Amabile. You don't drink
too much of it. But it is fabulous—if you can get it.
Paul Masson turns out some non-vintage wine that is
nice for drinking the way it is now—very nice.
Robert Mondavi wines are new, untried yet. I would be
a little cautious; but Bob Mondavi will make some good
wines.
Stony Hill's Pinot Chardonnay is excellent. Nobody else
touches it—nobody. But you've got to put some aging years
on it before you drink it—at least three years. Buy each year
and build up your stock. Don't just buy five cases of Stony
Hill and wait three years and drink it. Buy it every year if
you can get it.
Wente Bros, should head the fist as far as white wines
are concerned. The firm is in the Livermore Valley. It has
been growing white wine grapes since the year one. The
family has been in the white wine business for ages. They
sincerely try 365 days a year to make good white wine and
they do.
I think that to compare California wines with French
wines is kind of silly. California and France have different
soils and climates. The two areas have different economies
(French labor is a lot cheaper than California labor, for
example). We have different wine-making experience (the
French have been making wines for hundreds of years, and
Californians have been at it for a little over thirty-five years).
The marketing systems are different (California wines are

Let's be frank about wine 61
usually distributed by a liquor dealer; he also handles scotch,
Bourbon, gin, and vodka; and he doesn't give a damn about
selling wine because he doesn't make much money at it and
because wine is a lot of trouble to handle properly. French
distributors in France make a special profession of aging,
handling, caring for, and marketing wines only).
I tell you, you can find some French wines in France
that are pretty bad. And then, of course, you can go to the
Burgundy country in La Tache or Richebourg and find wines
that are so exceptional that California Pinot Noirs won't
begin to match. However, with our top-run California
Cabernet Sauvignons, we can hold a good line with the
finest Bordeaux in France—with the exception of Château
Lafite, Chateau Mouton-Rothschild, and Château Margaux.
Now about wine with food:
I went to a small dinner party the other night at a small
and very swanky French restaurant in San Francisco. I was a
guest at the party, and my host said, "Vic, you know wine;
please order the wine." He handed me a thick wine list of
mostly expensive French wines. I said to the other guests,
"Now do you want to drink red wine or white wine?" One
said, "Well, I'm going to have lamb." Another said, "I'm
going to have beef." "Well," I said, "I'm going to eat fish; and
what, really, does what you're going to eat have to do with it
when you come right down to the nitty-gritty? What's the
difference? Do you mean that you're going to follow the old
tradition that you have to have certain kinds of wine with
certain kinds of meats?"
Now here we were at an informal dinner party just
among friends. And when I asked for their real answers to
my question, one said, without a moment of hesitation, "Gee,
I like white wine." Another said, "I like white wine." And it
so happens that I like white wine. So I ordered some Ger-
wurztraminer, a California wine; it cost five dollars a bottle.

It was nicely made; and it was just as good a white wine
for the kind of dinner that we were having as if we had
ordered the rarest white wine or red wine on the list and
paid a lot of money for it.
This is the point that I'm trying to drive home: Is it
important to drink a red wine because you're having roast
beef because it says to in the book and because some fellow
two hundred years ago said that you have to drink red wine
with red meat? Well, I think that if you like and enjoy
white wine, you should drink it. I think you should drink
what you want to drink with anything anytime of the day.
If you want to drink white wine with roast beef or red
wine with fish, have what you want. I personally don't like
red wine with fish because somehow or other, it usually
doesn't taste just right. But I do like white wine with roast
beef or lamb or pork or veal or chicken; and if I like it, I'm
going to drink it
I think that we Americans should start to realize that
we should eat and drink what we feel like drinking, and
not what someone else dictates—that is, if we know what we
truly like.
On the other hand, a lot of people try to be experts
and don't know how. For example: At that same party, my
dinner partner said to me, "My son is a wine connoisseur;
and he says that if you take the cork out of a bottle two
hours before you serve it, the wine gets much better." And
I said to her, "Just how old is your son?" "Twenty-six." "Well,"
I said, "my dear lady, your son hasn't eaten enough food nor
drunk enough wine to pass a judgment. Now if you really
want to find out for yourself, get a couple of bottles of your
favorite wine. Open one botde now, and in two hours, open
the other botde. Pour both of the wines out, taste, and then
judge. You have to be a real expert to tell the difference."
You and Joe Dokes and Peter, Paul, and John Smith will

never in your lives know the wee differences; you don't need
to be bothered with all the unnecessary fuss.
If you are an exceptional wine taster and know wine in
the great manner, then, of course, you can open the wine to
let it breathe, decant it, and go through the whole ritual
and rigmarole; and you may notice a difference. If you are
just a general appreciator of good food and good wine, you
may find that all this poppycock about what you must do is
really silly and an unnecessary custom for you.
My big point: Drink the wine you like with whatever
food you're having. And enjoy wine; don't get knotted up
over inappropriate old rules.

Now I want to say something about before-dinner
aperitifs of all sorts—such things as Campari, Dubonnet,
Lillet, Byrrh, St. Raphael, Amer Picon . . . The best way I
have found to enjoy them—except for Picon and possibly
Campari—is on the rocks with a twist of lemon peel; twirl
them around a little bit. To me, they are all delightful
drinks, very interesting, and they can take the place of a lot
of cocktails with heavy alcohol contents when you don't
want to drink much alcohol.
I find straight Campari and Amer Picon a litde bitter,
so you might want to add a little grenadine and soda to
these, then serve them on the rocks. Amer Picon is a drink
which has, unfortunately, never taken over in this country.
But try it this way; and you'll have found a really wonderful
drink. Put one ounce Amer Picon over ice cubes in a four-
ounce glass or an old fashioned glass, add a little grenadine
and three ounces of soda.

D r i n k s ,
c o c k t a i l s ,
e t c .

Cocktails are mostly little drinks made up from people's
screwy ideas of what tastes good or sounds better. They are
usually invented during the middle stages of a beautiful glow.
Among the hundreds of cocktails—some with the most
gosh-awful names and outlandish ingredients—comparatively
few have weathered the years so they are still ordered every
where. Outstanding among the surviving classics are Martinis,
Manhattans, Side Cars, Old Fashioneds, Gimlets, and Dai
quiris.
Most cocktails—whatever the name—are just slight varia
tions of a few good standard recipes. The inventor just
substitutes one flavoring for another, changes the proportions,
or adds a dash of this or a drop or two of that, and gives
the concoction another name. Many times, the head bartender
at one of the better joints will begin with a well-known
cocktail formula, add another exotic and pleasant ingredient,
make a few extra passes at it, and name it after a visiting
celebrity. There is much fanfare as the newly created drink
is presented to the honored guest, who drinks it with gusto
or ladylike appreciation, as the case may be. Chances are
that the drink catches on and becomes a specialty of the
house.
The following cocktail recipes are grouped according to
the basic liquor used. Sometimes, however, it is difficult to
determine a basic ingredient. So you can often find the drink
most readily by referring to it by name in the index.

AMERICAN BEAUTY COCKTAIL
1/2 ounce brandy
1/2 ounce French vermouth
1/2 ounce orange juice
1/2 ounce grenadine
Port wine
Shake brandy, vermouth, orange juice, and grenadine with
ice cubes. Strain into chilled cocktail glass. Add a float of
port wine.
BETWEEN T H E SHEETS
1/2 ounce brandy
1/2 ounce Cointreau
Vz ounce light Puerto Rican rum
Mix or shake well in commercial drink mixer or cocktail shaker
3/4 full of ice cubes. Strain into chilled champagne saucer. Add
a twist of lemon peel.
BOMBAY COCKTAIL
V/2 ounce French vermouth
1/2 ounce Italian vermouth
1 ounce brandy
1/4 ounce Pernod or Herbsaint
1/2 teaspoon curaçao
Stir well with ice cubes. Strain into 3-ounce cocktail glass.

70 Drinks, cocktails, etc.
BONNIE PRINCE CHARLES
1 ounce cognac
1/2 ounce Drambuie
Juice of 1/2 lime
Shake with ice cubes. Strain into chilled cocktail glass.
BRANDY AND SODA
2 ounces brandy
6 ounces club soda
Pour over 2 ice cubes in a 12-ounce chimney glass. Stir.
BRANDY CHAMPERELLE COCKTAIL
3/4 ounce cognac
3/4 ounce curaçao
3 drops Angostura bitters
Stir and serve in a small wine glass.
BRANDY COCKTAIL
2 ounces brandy
1/4 teaspoon sugar syrup
2 dashes bitters
Stir well with ice cubes. Strain into 3-ounce cocktail glass. Add
a twist of lemon peel.
BRANDY COLLINS
Substitute brandy for gin in Tom Collins.
BRANDY FANCY COCKTAIL
11/2
ounces brandy
2 dashes orange bitters
3 dashes maraschino liqueur
Stir with ice cubes. Strain into chilled cocktail glass.

BRANDY FLIP
1 egg
1 teaspoon bar sugar
11/2
ounces brandy
2 teaspoons fresh cream (optional)
Shake with ice cubes. Strain into 5-ounce flip glass. Dust with
grated nutmeg.
BRANDY GUMP COCKTAIL
11/2
ounces brandy
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Y2 teaspoon grenadine
Shake with ice cubes. Strain into 3-ounce cocktail glass.
BRANDY HIGHBALL
2 ounces brandy
Ginger ale or club soda
Pour brandy over 1 ice cube in an 8-ounce highball glass. Fill
with ginger ale or soda. Add a twist of lemon peel, if desired.
Stir gendy.
BRANDY TODDY
1/2 teaspoon bar sugar
2 teaspoons water
2 ounces brandy
Stir sugar with water to dissolve in old fashioned glass. Add
1 ice cube and brandy, and stir. Add a twist of lemon peel.
BRANDY VERMOUTH COCKTAIL
11/2
ounces brandy
1 dash Angostura bitters
Shake with cracked ice. Strain into chilled cocktail glass.

BUILDER-UPPER
Spiral-cut peel of 1 lemon
Juice of 1 lemon
1 ounce Benedictine
11/2
ounces cognac
Club soda
Place lemon peel in chimney glass. Add ice cubes, lemon juice,
Benedictine, and cognac. Stir. Fill glass with soda.
CARROL COCKTAIL
1 ounce brandy
Stir with cracked ice. Strain into chilled cocktail glass. Add
pickled walnut or onion.
CASTLE DIP COCKTAIL
3/4 ounce apple brandy
3/4 ounce white crème de menthe
3 dashes Pernod
Stir with cracked ice. Strain into chilled cocktail glass.
CHAMPS ELYSEES COCKTAIL
1 ounce cognac
l
A ounce green Chartreuse
1 teaspoon lemon juice

Drinks, cocktails, etc. 7 3
CLASSIC COCKTAIL
Juice of 1/4 lemon
1/4 ounce curaçao
1/4 ounce maraschino liqueur
1 ounce brandy
Shake with ice cubes. Strain into sugar-frosted chilled cock
tail glass.
COGNAC COCKTAIL
3/4 ounce cognac
3/4 ounce lemon juice
1 dash Cointreau
1 dash orange bitters
Stir with ice cubes. Strain into chilled cocktail glass. Add a
twist of lemon peel.
COGNAC HIGHBALL
2 ounces cognac
Pour cognac over 1 ice cube in a highball glass. Fill with gin
ger ale or soda. If desired, add a twist of lemon peel. Stir
gently.
CORPSE REVIVER—1
1 ounce cognac
1/2 ounce calvados or apple brandy

EAST INDIA COCKTAIL—1
11/2
ounces brandy
3 dashes maraschino liqueur
3 dashes Angostura bitters
1 teaspoon curaçao
1 teaspoon raspberry syrup
11/2
ounces brandy
1/4 ounce pineapple juice
VA ounce curacao
IV2 ounces brandy
V2 teaspoon pineapple juice
V2 teaspoon curacao
1 teaspoon Jamaica rum
1 dash bitters
Shake with ice cubes. Strain into chilled cocktail glass. Add a
twist of lemon peel, and add a cherry.
11/4
ounces French vermouth
11/4
ounces sweet sherry

HARVARD COCKTAIL
3/4 ounce brandy
1 dash sugar syrup
HORSE'S HIGHBALL
4 ounces brandy
2 dashes Pernod or Herbsaint
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon sugar syrup
1 egg
Club soda
Shake all ingredients except soda with ice cubes. Strain into
tall highball glass. Add ice cubes. Fill glass with soda. Dust
with grated nutmeg.
HORSE'S NECK
Spiral-cut lemon peel
2 ounces brandy
Ginger ale
Drop lemon peel into highball glass with end hanging over
edge of glass. Fill glass with ice cubes. Add brandy and bitters.
Fill glass with ginger ale.

Ichbien. What the hell is it? I don't know. Maybe you'll
like it.
ICHBIEN
11/2
ounces brandy
1/2 ounce curaçao
4 ounces fresh milk
1 egg yolk
Shake with ice cubes. Strain into tumbler. Dust with grated
nutmeg.
ITALIAN STINGER
1 ounce brandy
1/2 ounce Galliano
Pour brandy and Galliano into an old fashioned glass filled
with ice cubes. Stir well.
Drinks called Itchiban, Ichbien. What the hell?
ITCHIBAN
3 ounces brandy
1/2 teaspoon crème de cacao
1/2 teaspoon Benedictine
1 egg
Shake well with ice cubes. Strain into 12-ounce glass. Dust
with grated nutmeg.
J A N E T HOWARD COCKTAIL
11/2
ounces brandy
I teaspoon orgeat syrup
twist of lemon peel. Serve with ice-water chaser.

MOONRACKER COCKTAIL
1/2 ounce brandy
1/2 ounce Dubonnet
1/2 ounce peach brandy
1 dash Pernod
SOUTHERN CROSS COCKTAIL
1 ounce brandy
1 ounce Virgin Islands rum
Juice of 1/2 lime
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 dash curaçao
Carbonated water
Shake all ingredients except carbonated water with ice cubes.
Strain into chilled double cocktail glass. Add a squirt of car
bonated water.

Acacia Cocktail. Sounds like a lousy drink.
ACACIA COCKTAIL
1 ounce gin
1/2 ounce Benedictine
2 dashes kirschwasser
ALLEN COCKTAIL
1 ounce gin
V2 ounce maraschino liqueur
1 dash lemon juice
AMBER DREAM
1 ounce gin
1/2 teaspoon Chartreuse
Variation: Increase Chartreuse to ¥2 ounce.

8o Drinks, cocktails, etc.
AMSTERDAM COCKTAIL
1 ounce Holland gin
1/2 ounce orange juice
1/2 ounce cointreau
4 dashes orange bitters
ANTS IN THE PANTS COCKTAIL
1 ounce gin
1/2 ounce Grand Marnier
1 dash lemon juice
Shake with ice cubes. Strain into chilled cocktail glass. Add a
BEE'S KNEES
1 ounce gin
Juice of 1/4 lemon
1 teaspoon honey
Shake with shaved ice. Strain into chilled cocktail glass.
BERMUDA BOUQUET
11/2
ounces gin
1 ounce apricot brandy
1 teaspoon grenadine
1/2 teaspoon curaçao
Juice of 1/4 orange
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1 teaspoon bar sugar
Shake with ice cubes. Strain into 8-ounce highball glass.

BERMUDA COCKTAIL
13/4
ounces gin
3/4 ounce peach brandy
2 dashes grenadine
2 dashes orange juice
Shake with ice cubes. Strain into large chilled cocktail glass.
BERMUDA HIGHBALL
3/4 ounce gin
3/4 ounce brandy
3/4 ounce French vermouth
Pour gin, brandy, and vermouth over 1 ice cube in 8-ounce
highball glass. Fill with ginger ale or soda. Add a twist of
lemon peel, if desired, and stir.
BERMUDA ROSE COCKTAIL
2 ounces gin
3/4 ounce apricot brandy
2 dashes grenadine
BERMUDIAN COCKTAIL
1 ounce gin
1/2 ounce grenadine
1/2 ounce apricot brandy
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon bar sugar

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