A few weeks ago, I had the sad misfortune to be seated at a bar. Normally I find this sort of occasion to be pleasant, but it was clear that whoever was in charge of training this young man had done a very, very bad job. I watched as he grabbed a handful of limes | Read More

It’s the time of year for celebratory holiday cocktails; you know, the kind with champagne in them. All over the world, people just like you are gathering, shopping, brunching, and pouring crappy cocktails made with cheap sparkling wine down their throats.

This time of year can be really tough for a lot of people. I’m talking, of course, about those who have to listen to me go on and on about how much I love Eggnog. The topic starts sometime around Halloween, and goes on until just after New Year’s Day, when I’m usually so bloated | Read More

I will go on the record, in court, solemnly swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and state that I think Egg Nog is the most holy of all holiday beverages. I’ve been making my own for the past fifteen years, I’ve written about it extensively, and I’ve consumed | Read More

There’s a category of booze that you don’t hear much about, and while there are many well-known brands that inhabit the category, I suspect you don’t hear much about the genre as a whole because, well, it’s kind of hard to pin down. And that’s about all you can say about herbal liqueurs. Let’s face | Read More

My first bartending job, back in, ahem, 1996 was at a little neighborhood tavern in the college town of Eugene, Oregon. It was a dive bar before anyone used the term. Back then, they were just referred to as bars. If you wanted a fancy cocktail around that time, you had to take your chances | Read More

Let’s just get one thing straight: A Gin Gimlet is supposed to be made with Rose’s Lime Juice— that famed syrup made from water, high fructose corn syrup, lime juice, sodium metabisulfite, and artificial color. At least, that’s the way it used to be made, the way I first had it, back before using fresh | Read More

There aren’t as many spirits with quite the popular trajectory these days as mezcal. That smoky, spicy, wild parent of tequila, the original agave spirit in fact, has seen a major boom in recent years thanks in part to increased education, better harvesting and distillation practices, and more widespread distribution. But despite the fact that | Read More

Once again, fall is here. Almost overnight here in Oregon, the weather has turned crisp, the leaves have started falling from the trees and the wind has picked up and begun to cool down the state. Every so often, you’ll catch a whiff of a fireplace burning in the distance.

In the earliest part of the Nineteenth century, there was one drink – and one drink only – known as a cocktail. The Hudson, New York publication The Balance and Columbian Repository defined the drink in 1806 as “a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters”. There weren’t books full | Read More

I’ve taken a fair amount of flak over the past year or two for having the audacity to take some of the most reviled drinks in recent history and actually make them better. The Grasshopper. The Long Island Iced Tea. The Amaretto Sour. These relics from a time when the quality of a cocktail was | Read More

The Fizz is one of the most misunderstood drinks out there, in my book. To many it conjures up images of something along the lines of a French 75, with its pale yellow hue and refreshing peaks of ice. To others, a Fizz wouldn’t be a Fizz without a creamy head of egg white overflowing | Read More

I worked in a Latin American restaurant when the whole Mojito craze really set in. We were the first ones in the small college town of Eugene, Oregon that had a Mojito on the menu, and we were proud to be ahead of the national curve. For years, I made nearly a hundred Mojitos a | Read More

As bartenders, we try not to judge your drink order. Most of us are not of the snooty, wax-moustache and suspender sort, who look down on our customers like clerks at a record store that just sells vinyl. But the fact still remains that certain drinks are more appropriate at certain times of day, or | Read More