Jeffrey Morgenthaler

The thing about bartenders is that we’re all attention whores and egomaniacs and couldn’t care less about much else than ourselves. Sure, some of us will tell you that the craft of the cocktail is the most rewarding thing about being a bartender. Others will tell you that putting on a show and giving people an exciting experience is the best part about working behind a bar.

This is a steaming load of horse shit. The real reason we do what we do is because there’s nothing quite like having someone, four gin-and-tonics deep, sitting at your bar and telling you that you do your job better than anyone else in the whole world.

I mention all of this because I’ve received a lot of love this week by being featured in two – count ‘em, two! – interviews. The first was printed by my hometown paper, and the most recent was conducted by the lovely Natalie over at The Liquid Muse.

TLM: Describe your fantasy life…
JM: I’m the Professor from Gilligan’s Island… Oh wait, what?

Natalie was very kind in her write-up of me, and she’s got a really fantastic website, so check us both out!

I finally released a new cocktail menu that I’ve been working on since just before I left for Las Vegas. It’s not completely finished yet, but I really wanted to get something new out there, and it’s pretty close.

I’ve spent weeks testing and refining these drinks, and I think it’s my best menu yet. Stop in sometime and try one out, or make one at home. I promise I’ll have every one of these recipes up here soon.

Click here for a downloadable PDF of the menu.

Why is it that drinks these days have to taste like some sort of junk food in order to be understood by the average person? Take this little story:

We were at our local dive bar, playing some video golf and having a beer. The bartender, who had obviously been behind the stick for a whole six months, offered us a sample pair of the new shot he had been tirelessly working on all night,

“It’s called a Starburst, because it tastes just like a pink Starburst”

We glanced cautiously at one another and gulped down our pale pink shots. Sure enough, they tasted like pink Starburst candies. At least, I think they did. I haven’t been in a 7-Eleven in a long time, but I’m pretty certain it’s still as brightly-lit and full of miscreants, fake cheese and junk food as it was the last time I was there.

We thanked the barkeep, tipped appropriately, and continued our eighteen holes at Pebble Beach while we discussed the awkward taste in our mouths.

Why is it that cocktails these days have to relate back to junk food? Are we not smart enough to talk about flavors any more, or do drinks just not stand on their own merit any longer? Why, in order to impress a customer or be impressed as a customer, do cocktails have to “taste just like a…”?

Are there people in the world that interact with food like this? “You should try this beef roulade, it taste just like a Big Mac without the bun”

Can you imagine the uproar? Why is this not outrageous when applied to drinks? I gave a sample of Parfait Amour to someone tonight, and she spent a half hour trying to figure out what candy it reminded her of. This is a gorgeous liqueur made from Seville oranges, and she was trying to conjure up the taste of Necco wafers in her mind!

I don’t know. I’d be interested in hearing what you all think.

Our friend Darcy over at Art of the Drink adds to the “50 Signs…” madness with 50 Signs You Are a Bad Bartender, all but one of which I think is right on the money:

48. The solution to every problem is: just add bitters

What!? That’s not true?

And in the comments, someone sends us over to the eGullet forums for a great little thread, You Might Be a Cocktail Geek If…

…while on vacation you stop at random liquor store looking for “souvenirs”.

Oh shit. So busted.

It’s a slow Monday night and my barback, Nathan, is getting frustrated.

“Jesus, Jeff, when am I going to get to make some real drinks?!”

“In time, Nathan-san”, I reply, “In time.”

“You keep saying that, but all I’ve done for the past two months is make a bunch of old lady drinks! You make me make all of your Sidecars, Old Fashioneds, gin-and-tonics, and whiskey sours. I’m getting sick of this! When am I going to get to make some cool drinks?”

Nathan’s frustration is understandable. He’s a hard worker, and although I’ve had him take down every bottle from the shelf and wipe it three thousand times, I’ve only let him make these four drinks. Over and over again, I stand behind him and watch him pour. I make him measure, pour, and taste each drink while I discuss with him the aromas and flavor profiles of each.

“Okay, Nathan, you really want to learn something new? Show me gin and tonic.”

Sighing, he reaches for the bottle of gin.

“Wait. Instead of gin, use that bottle of Crown Royal back there. And instead of tonic, use Coke”

He carefully pours the ingredients into a highball glass. An ounce and a half of liquor, and three ounces of mixer.

“You just made a Crown and Coke that your frat brothers would be proud of.”

“Okay, that’s pretty cool, what else can I do?”

“Show me Sidecar, Nathan-san.”

He begins to prep his cocktail glass with sugar.

“Use salt. And garnish the glass with a lime instead of a lemon. And…”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Two parts brandy, one part orange liqueur, one part lemon juice. I know, I’ve done this a million times before.”

But Nathan looks at me sideways as I instruct him to substitute the brandy for the top-shelf silver tequila.

“And in place of lemon juice, use lime.”

He shakes his new concoction, strains it into a glass, and tastes it.

“Wow, what is this?”

“It’s a margarita, Nathan-san. One that you can mix in a big pitcher and serve on your back porch this summer.”

“Sweet, man, what else can I make?”

“Show me Old Fashioned.”

“Okay, what should I do differently this time?”

“Use a sprig of mint, a sugar cube, and a couple of lime wedges.”

He carefully muddles the ingredients in a glass and reaches for the bourbon.

“Wait! Use the silver rum.”

He adds the rum, ice, and tops the drink with soda water.

“You’ve just made a mojito, Nathan-san”

“Really?! I’ve had so many people ask me to make them one. Now I know! What else can I do?”

“Show me whiskey sour, but substitute rum for the whiskey, and lime juice for lemon.”

He carefully measures out two parts white rum, one part simple syrup and one part lime juice.

Tasting his new drink, he asks, “What is this?”

“It’s a daiquiri, Nathan-san. The way Hemmingway used to drink them.”

“Wow, really? I’ll bet I could muddle a bunch of fresh strawberries and make this for my girlfriend on our vacation next weekend!”

“Yes, you can.”

“Did you know that next weekend is my birthday?”

“You’re not getting a car, Nathan-san.”

You see younger bartenders doing this a lot. I even did it my first week or so, until someone told me to know it off. It was too hard to describe, so I had to take a picture. Here, it’s this:

Yeah. The filthy-bar-rag-in-the-back-pocket thing. It’s so gross it makes me want to puke all over the place when I think about that thing. Twirling around, spraying bar mess all over the bottles, rubbing up against the glassware, and drizzling down the backside of that bartender’s leg.

Soooo gross. I might get a lot of hate mail from The-Filthy-Bar-Rag-in-the-Back-Pocket-Bartenders-Association, but if I save just one person from this horrible habit, it’s worth it.

Sugar is a wonderful thing in the world of cocktails. Sugar and bitters are the barman’s equivalent of the chef’s salt and pepper. But just as novice chefs overuse these master spices, the novice bartender will manage to ruin a perfectly good cocktail.

Sugar can make a drink taste, well, more like itself. A mojito made without sugar will taste like a mess. Add a cube of sugar and suddenly the flavors show themselves, swirling about the different sections of the tongue like a symphony. Add too much sugar and the drink has become a syrupy-sweet Sno-Cone, where no flavors are discernible. At this point, the drink has been ruined and there’s nothing that can be done to revive it.

Sugar can be used in another way, and it’s here that you can really separate the amateurs from the professionals. It’s one thing that can make or break a bartender: the Sugared Rim.

Sugaring the rim of a glass is essentially a garnish. Just as a wedge of lime will be added to the rim of a glass for adjusting the tartness of the cocktail, the sugared rim is used as a way of adjusting the sweetness of the drink. In fact, a perfect rim is one that is only sugared halfway – it gives the imbiber an option.

This rule falls to shit when someone hands you a mixture of pineapple juice, vanilla schapps, raspberry vodka and cream – with a sugared rim.

• B-52 with a sugared rim? Dumb.
• Cadillac Margarita with a sugared rim? No way, José.
• Half-and-half Rose’s lime gin gimlet with a vanilla-bean infused sugar rim? I’m getting diabetes just thinking about it.

Now think of the Sidecar: tart, bracing and strong, it’s possibly the world’s perfect cocktail. The balance of sweet and sour is nearly perfect, but a lemon wedge perfectly balanced on a neatly sugared rim makes for the perfect set of accoutrements.

So the next time you’re about to shell out perfectly good money for a dessert drink with a sugared rim, ask yourself the question your bartender most likely failed to ponder: why am I doing this?

Although there are only three states on the West Coast of the United States, many people can only name California. Few people east of the Rocky Mountains can even pronounce Oregon (Or-uh-gun). Yet in the world of alcoholic beverages, bartending and mixology, Oregon is becoming a strong force, alongside such historical greats as New York, Louisiana, Kentucky and California. Here’s why.

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