Posts
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1: Introducing the Whiskey That Was America
Consider the strange fate of rye whiskey. From the
earliest days of the Republic to the onset of Prohibition, it was the American tipple.
From Miami to Seattle, if you stopped in a roadhouse and ordered a shot of
whiskey, rye was what the barkeep poured into your glass.
Yet by the 1950s, rye was perilously close to being forgotten. Where bourbon
emerged gloriously from the Great Depression, self-mythologized and available
from a constantly growing number of distilleries, only a handful of
bottom-shelf brands of rye survived... and some of those, it has to be said,
only at the benevolent toleration of a few bourbon distilleries.
Even in Washington, Pennsylvania, the birthplace of the
Whiskey Rebellion, rye was so forgotten that public schools taught that it was
taxation of corn whiskey that was behind the uprising.
The recent resurrection of rye whiskey is one of the few signs that the
twenty-first century may have something to offer civilization. So the
proprietors of The American Martini Institute and The American
Martini Laboratory propose to present the history of the Whiskey That
Was America here.
To help you get started, here is the recipe for the quintessential rye
cocktail:
Manhattan
3 ounces rye
1 ounce sweet vermouth
2 dashes cherry bitters
spiced cherry
directions: mix, chill and serve with a spiced cherry for garnish
Note that the AML uses cherries spiced in-house and not those dreadful candied things they sell in a jar. It makes a tremendous difference.
Next Wednesday: The Once and Future Rye, Part 2: Drinking Like A (Colonial) American
Above: A small fraction of the research materials employed by The American Martini Laboratory in this project.
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4 comments:
By a tasty coincidence, I finished an Improved Whiskey Cocktail not an hour before reading this.
Please, please tell me that the rye posts will, at some point, be collected in a beautifully bound and fantastically designed booklet from Dragonstairs Press.
Please?
That is the intention. It will almost certainly happen.
A word of caution: The last time Dragonstairs Press published an American Martini Institute chapbook, it sold out very fast. That was an edition of only 60, though. I'm urging Marianne to issue it in a larger edition, possibly of 100. But she's the proprietor here, and I'm just the content provider. I can only offer advice.
The recipe sounds delicious. Will attempt.
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