So recently I was in a bar, which shall remain nameless for its own defense, and I ordered one of the standard gin cocktails (think: the “martini” or the “Manhattan,” for example). To a mild degree of surprise, the bartender told me he didn’t know how to make it. While it was a pretty canonical drink, it’s no big deal, and bartenders do have hundreds of drinks to remember. So I passed it off and asked for a house special he’d recommend. The barkeep proceeded to offer some egregious sex act that would inspire only the harshest of prison rapists. And while I settled for a simple pint of beer, the whole exchange made me wonder: What the hell happened to cocktails?
If ever there were a “golden age,” of mixed drinks, this is not it. It may even be safe to say we’re at one of the lowest points in the several thousand-year history of drinking alcohol. For years, cocktail recipes were designed by taking otherwise abrasive alcohol and making it taste enjoyable in one way or another: something they often still do. There were also a great number of failed experiments. But popular cocktails were often the effort to perfectly balance different types of liquor and juices in such a way that the alcoholic taste was all but eliminated by chemistry (for example, “Long Island Iced Tea”), or somehow manipulated to form a tasty sensation despite its regular punch. The original cocktail was a simple drink, made with only bitters, water, sugar and liquor, but has since been modified to an incredible extent, evolving into thousands of mixed drinks made from hundreds of different brands of alcohol.
But recently, since our generation became drinkers (which, with this country’s screwed-up policy about all things intoxicating, happens when a demographic ‘generation’ turns the ripe age of 21), some of the most horrendous things have been done to the fine art of mixing alcohol.
While there are some worthwhile inventions in recent mixology, the focus of this column, admittedly, is on the problem with modern cocktails, and how easy it is to find complete bartending disasters becoming popular drinks simply because no one is ever expected to hold them in their mouths long enough to actually taste them. Most every major new drink is some kind of shooter or chugger – a drink you down as quickly as possible, which by any reasonable measure deserves no more recognition as an achievement of mixing alcohol than a tequila shot – or is some kind of liquor watered down with so much sugary syrup or citrusy mess that the drink bears more resemblance to Capri Sun packets than it does to the martini.
This could be as obvious as the names given to the modern concoctions, which often either are something so blatantly sexual it no longer is even humorous (take the “Red-Headed Slut,” the “Bangin’ Your Wife’s Girlfriend,” the “Blowjob,” or the “Pink Penis,” for example – all real drink names), or they sound like the name of something clearly out to kill you (the “Brain Hemorrhage,” the “Jagerbomb,” or the “Napalm Death”), or some combination of the two (the “Cum in a Hot Tub,” or the “Bloody Navel Screw,” also both real drinks, astoundingly). The names incite a kind of sensationalism, superficiality and lack of reason that seems characteristic of sixth graders who somehow get their hands on alcohol. While I agree the names can be entertaining, the truth is the name shouldn’t be the only thing remotely memorable about the drink. They suggest quite clearly that the drink is no longer able to carry its name, lacking in any significance as just a drink itself, and so must resort to the most outrageous, irreverent name possible simply to get itself onto the co-ed bar tab.
But today’s slaughtering of drinks seems to have a clear central element: that mixing drinks is no longer about enjoying alcohol but about simply getting wasted quickly (that was always the point of drinking, wasn’t it?), and then “getting laid.” It best explains the obvious sexual and destructive nature of the new drinks, and somewhere in the back of our heads exposes the modern day one-track mind that is the unforeseen consequence of the once-liberating sexual revolution.
And I plead only thus: Next time we find ourselves contemplating our options at the barstool, hopefully some part of us can admit, or at least try to remember, that sexuality and alcohol both can have more meaning and be more beautiful aspects of human interaction than a cocktail named the “Cum in Your Panties” would have us believe.
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