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- [00:09]
A
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. A new graphic book from writer and historian David Wondrich illustrates the origins of some of the world's most classic cocktails. It's titled the Comic Book History of the Cocktail. Five Centuries of Mixing Drinks and Carrying On. The book tells stories of the Roman cities that housed establishments run by wise cracking bartenders, the history of Cuba and its birth of the tropical cocktail, and explores the birth of American mixology in the 1850s. In it, Wondrich writes, like its subject, the history of the cocktail is a mixture stirred together from hefty slugs of stories of mixed drinks and of bars and bartenders spiked with some good stiff dashes of the history of distilled spirits. The comic book History of the Cocktail is out now. Dave Wondrit is also the author of Imbibe, the first cocktail book to win a James Beard Award. Dave, welcome back to all of it.
- [01:05]
B
Thank you so much, Allison. It's so great to be here.
- [01:07]
A
We're so glad to have you. Folks, do you have a rare spirit you'd like to get Dave's take on? Do you have a burning cocktail question? Our Phone number is 2124-3396-9221-2433 wnyc. You can call in, you can join us on air, or you can text that number as well. So you developed a reputation, shall we say, as one of the experts on cocktail culture. You're becoming one of the most respected experts of the past 20 years, I might say. How did you get the idea a graphic novel?
- [01:39]
B
Yeah, I'd always kind of, I keep a list of books I want to write. And there was a comic book on there, like about, like bartending and comics. But this one, they actually, the publisher, Ten Speed actually asked me if I were interested in doing it. And of course I was. I had just finished doing the Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails, a huge book that I was the editor in chief of. It took nine years, 1100 entries.
- [02:09]
A
Oh, I got a copy of it on my cart. I do.
- [02:12]
B
That is a big book.
- [02:13]
A
It's a big book.
- [02:14]
B
It's a big book. So I didn't really want to do anything like that. And so this seemed like the perfect chance to go into a different field and try to come at the whole history of the cocktail business from another direction.
- [02:30]
A
It's been interesting because it looks like a graphic novel. That's why people keep calling it a novel. But it's a book.
- [02:35]
B
It's history about it is they Wanted a really serious history.
- [02:40]
A
Yeah, they really, really did.
- [02:41]
B
You know, it's got footnotes, it's got all that kind of stuff, but at the same time, it's a graphic one. We get to bring people out of the shadows and show you their pictures. We get to have little skits and playlists of what's going on with the cocktail, who's, you know, it's getting invented, all this stuff. So it was really fun to be able to do that.
- [03:04]
A
How did you work with illustrator Dean Kotz?
- [03:07]
B
I planned out what I'd like to see on the page and sent it to him. And he drew like these beautiful pencil sketches, like really kind of quick, rough ones. And he'd send them back and I'd say, yeah, let's go with it. And then he'd pen them in. We didn't really change much. He's very good. He's a wonderful illustrator and has a really good firm line. I wanted people to look like themselves. I wanted it because for many of these people, this is the first time they've ever been pictured in a book.
- [03:42]
A
Oh, wow. Give me an example of someone. It's the first time ever been pictured in a book.
- [03:46]
B
Okay. Raymond Ching, who was a bartender who worked at the original Don the Beachcomber, the cafe that invented tiki drinks in the 1930s, and then that was in Los Angeles. He came to New York and was at a bar that basically hired him away and also called itself the Beachcomber, which was a bit of a low blow because there was no relation except Raymond Ching in New York made the Zombie the most popular drink of the day. He may have helped invent it over at the first on the Beachcombers, but in New York, he sold it to the point where they were selling them even at the New York World's Fair, like these huge tall drinks full of liquor.
- [04:38]
A
Drinks. Historian, author Dave Wondrich is my guest. He has a new book out called the Comic Book History of the Cocktail. He's here with me now to discuss. Listeners, do you have a rare spirit you'd like to get Dave's take on? Do you have a burning cocktail question? Our phone lines are open. 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC. We got Susan in Ridgewood, New Jersey. Hey, Susan. Excuse me. Hi, Susan. Thanks for calling, all of it.
- [05:03]
C
Hi. Sure. Thanks for having me. Yeah, so I have a question about the Old Fashioned. I was a bartender many years ago and was taught that you definitely muddle the fruit in an Old Fashioned, the cherry and the orange. And recently I was out to dinner and ordered an Old Fashioned, and the youngest bartender said he had never been taught to muddle the fruit, and I had not heard of that. I was wondering if the new, younger generation of bartenders are being taught not to muddle the fruit.
- [05:38]
B
Well, I think they are, because over the past couple decades, we've kind of gone back to the origins of some of these drinks. And originally the Old Fashioned didn't have any fruit muddled in it. All it was was an old Fashioned style. Cocktail. Bitters, sugar and booze on ice. Very, very simple. And during the 1930s, 1940s, the muddled fruit version came in. That was the novelty, and that was, you know, they're both perfectly legitimate. I used to do face offs with my dear friend and mentor, Dale DeGroff, kind of the dean of American bartenders, where he'd do the version he learned with the muddled fruit, and I'd do the original version, and we'd try to see who liked them better. He usually won, but not always, thank God.
- [06:29]
D
It's really interesting. I think that the mint julep is a good example of how the history is taught in this book. When you think about it starting in, what, 1770, it's sort of the son of a punch. And then how it developed over time.
- [06:45]
B
Yeah, it was a very different drink.
- [06:47]
D
Yeah. Explain to me what it was originally and then how it developed over time.
- [06:50]
B
Originally it was rum, mint, sugar and water. Then in the classic period and sort of the pre Civil War period, it was brandy, imported French brandy. It was a fancy drink. It was an expensive drink, and it was a good huge slug of liquor. About, you know, 3 ounces of brandy on very fine crushed ice with a little sugar and mint just lightly pressed in it. Then they'd float rum on top and stick a forest of mint on the top of the glass, and they'd cut the straws really short, so you had to get your nose in among the mint. And this was a real sort of rich product, person's drink. You know, it was not a country drink. This was a city club's drink, that kind of thing.
- [07:40]
D
And enslaved Americans were an important part.
- [07:42]
B
Of the mint, Julie. They were the masters of this drink. Enslaved and also free. Blacks of color, as they were called, were real innovators. They were some of the most famous American bartenders at the time. They were the people who really had control of, of how this drink was made.
- [08:06]
D
And then it's interesting in this section about mint juleps, as we're learning all about these people. You end with a Latina woman, Alba Huerta. She's an award winning mixologist from Houston mixing a drink. And you say it's one of the best out there.
- [08:20]
B
Oh, yeah. She has a bar julep. You know, she's the modern specialist in mint juleps and just a wonderful person and just a great bartender.
- [08:30]
D
I'm talking with drinks historian, author Dave Wondrich. He has a new book out called the Comic Book History of the Cocktail. We'll get to your calls after the break. This is all of it.
- [08:49]
A
You're listening to all of IT on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is Dave Wondrich. The name of his book is the Comic Book History of the Cocktail. Five Centuries of mixing drinks and carrying it on. It is like a, it's a graphic book describing the history of a cocktail. This is cracking me up. I have a text for you. It says, what mixed drink can spruce up a low shelf bourbon?
- [09:16]
B
Well, an old Fashioned is my go to, however you like it, with muddled fruit or without. That is a real quick fix.
- [09:25]
A
That one may be less.
- [09:26]
B
Or you can also mix it, to be perfectly honest, with Paul Newman lemonade.
- [09:32]
A
It's good with lemonade.
- [09:33]
B
Yeah. And then you've got an instant whiskey sour.
- [09:37]
A
This one says in New Orleans the French 75 is often made with cognac, but in New York it is made with gin. What gives? That's Mary from the Upper west side.
- [09:45]
B
It was originally a gin drink. It was basically a Tom Collins where you replace the soda water. You know, that was gin, lemon and sugar with soda water. You replaced the soda water with champagne. So it's a very dangerous drink. But some people said French, it should have cognac in it. And you know, my favorite version made by Chris Hannah in New Orleans is with cognac.
- [10:12]
A
This says, when I was a child, my mom often ordered an apricot sour. As an adult, I have tried many, many occasions to order one to no avail. Usually the bartenders don't know what it is. Less often they say they don't have the first key ingredient. What does your guest think?
- [10:28]
B
Well, apricot brandy, usually with sour mix. It's a drink from the 1970s. You can replace the sour mix with sugar and just a little bit because the apricot brandy is sweet and lemon juice. But the best version is made by Portland bartender Jeffrey Morgenthaler and he adds a big slug of high proof bourbon in there and that makes that kind of dries the drink out and balances it because otherwise it's a pretty sweet drink, but can be very tasty, even without the bourbon. But I gotta admit, I'm partial to the bourbon version.
- [11:07]
D
Let's talk about some more stories in your book because there are so many people that we can talk about. But I wanted to concentrate on Jerry Thomas. He made his way in New York. He had a fanciful life, shall we say. But he opened a bar in the corner of Waverly and Broadway and then he was a bartender at the Metropolitan Hotel. And he wrote a book you called a watershed in the history of the cocktail. What did this book contain?
- [11:32]
B
It's the first cocktail book. It has chapters on mixed drinks in the American style. You know, individual drinks mixed to order, made with ice. And that was our innovation is what we think of as a cocktail today is basically an American idea. And Jerry Thomas was the first to gather it between the covers of a book.
- [11:56]
D
He was also a bit of a character.
- [11:58]
B
He tended bar for a while with his matched pair of pet white rats on his shoulders that would frolic on his shoulders and climb up onto his bowler hat. He had a life size statue of him in the middle of his bar mixing drinks and caricatures by the famous Thomas Nast, one of the great American sort of engraving artists two stories high on the walls of his bar. Oh, and that bar had a shooting gallery also.
- [12:36]
D
Okay, how did you deal with prohibition in the book?
- [12:41]
B
There's a lot of mythology today that, you know, all the great drinks came out of prohibition and that's simply not true. So I kind of went out of my way to show how really poor most of the drinks were and how things were adulterated and the good ingredients just weren't there. And so I talked about that a lot.
- [13:02]
D
Are there any speakeasies in New York that you find authentic?
- [13:06]
B
Well, the best one closed a few years ago, unfortunately. That was Bill's gay 90s, which was an absolute time capsule of an 1890s bar. But it actually opened. It was the guy got money from his in law who owned the 21 Club to open a speakeasy, Bill Hardy. And he collected old time memorabilia and the whole building was just stuffed with things and it was a glorious place to drink.
- [13:37]
D
As I was reading the book. There were a lot of women in your book?
- [13:40]
B
Well, a lot of women were mixing drinks.
- [13:43]
D
Truly.
- [13:43]
B
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We don't hear about them as much in part because it really wasn't as many as the men, but there were still plenty. And in some periods There were a lot at the very beginning, even before the cocktail itself. The cocktail descends from punch, the original mixed drink based on distilled spirits. And punch was mostly an English drink. And in England, it was the women who mixed the drinks. So they. They mixed all the punch.
- [14:18]
D
Got a couple more questions for you here. A friend of mine adds St Germain elderberry to his Manhattans. Is that a sacrilege? Will from Harlem?
- [14:28]
B
You know, I don't think there you can really get to sacrilege in mixing drinks. I mean, it might be a little eccentric, but it's not going to hurt it unless there's, you know, it's two parts St. Germain and one part Manhattan or something like that. But a little splash of almost anything can go into a Manhattan and make it interesting.
- [14:51]
D
You have three New York City variations on the Manhattan in this book. What is the difference?
- [15:00]
B
The vermouth gets replaced with, like, an aperitivo or something like Dubonnet. You know, French.
- [15:07]
D
That's the Bedford. Yes.
- [15:08]
B
Yeah, that's the Bedford, invented by the great Del Pedro, who has Tooker Alley Bar now in Washington Heights. And then there's the Red Hook in Prospect Heights. Yeah, there's the Red Hook with Amaro in it. There's another one with Amaro in it. You know, it's easy to make, to spin out variations on these things, and if you have good knowledge of your ingredients, you can make things that are really tasty.
- [15:43]
A
This question says, what sort of drink do you save for special occasions?
- [15:49]
B
French 75s. I'll crack open some real champagne for that and I'll make the cognac version.
- [15:59]
A
Someone else wanted to know, how did you decide which cocktails. Cocktail moments to include? I mean, that's a dude on the COVID right?
- [16:07]
B
Thanks. Yeah, it is the dude on the COVID because, you know, the White Russian, he's the poster boy for. And that's an important 70s drink. So mostly the cocktails and the people kind of dictated themselves because I put in almost everybody I know in some of these chapters because.
- [16:28]
A
Oh, like, who else?
- [16:29]
B
There's so many bartenders in the past that we just don't know about. You know, in the early days, very few names came down to us. For the early days, I put in everybody. Then later I had to be a little more choosy. And for the modern cocktail revolution, I couldn't put in very many people because it would drown out the rest of the book.
- [16:55]
A
Who did you want to make sure you got into the book?
- [16:57]
B
Well, Dale DeGroff, because he was my personal Mentor and really important. I wanted to make sure to get people like Ada Coleman at the Savoy bar and John Dabney in Richmond, Virginia, who made mint juleps for the Prince of Wales and made so much money in tips on his bartending that he was able to purchase his and his wife's freedom. So, you know, in a very bad time. So I wanted to. I wanted people like that Jerry Thomas, of course, he's the only bartender who got his own chapter, but he kind of needed one just because he was so larger than life.
- [17:38]
A
And there's an international element to the book.
- [17:40]
D
You talk a lot about Cuba.
- [17:42]
B
I talk a lot about Cuba.
- [17:43]
D
What's important to know about Cuba?
- [17:44]
B
Cuba was where American mixology met tropical ingredients. And the Cubans were very good at mixing drinks and made very seductive bars. And they still do. And so that was an important place. It kind of road tested the principles behind how we mix drinks and proved that they could work in other contexts. I also talk about Paris a lot, which was the big city for Americans. It had an American sector back before the First World War, and there were a lot of American bars in Paris.
- [18:22]
D
A lot of people talk about how 1990s, it was a resurgence of the cocktail. Do you think there was a resurgence initially?
- [18:31]
B
I do. Things had gotten kind of bad in terms of using artificial ingredients and not really balancing drinks, just making really simple drinks. And we'd lost some of the deliciousness that was in these drinks. There were a lot of very kind of bland drinks that didn't. They were still fun to drink because you were out with your friends. And if you still drink Long Island Iced teas, all I could say is God bless you. Drink what you like. This book isn't here to say you're a bad person, but it's here to show you some of the alternatives.
- [19:13]
D
How would you describe cocktail culture right now?
- [19:17]
B
Right now, it's kind of transitioning. It's starting to recover from the effects of lockdown and pandemic, which drove a lot of experienced bartenders out of the business. An experienced bartender. Bartender can work in many other different kinds of jobs. It's a job for somebody who can process information fast and has a good memory and can deal with people. So you're quite hireable, as it turned out. And so a lot of these people went off to other jobs. And the people who came in now are starting to reconnect with the traditions of the bar and get serious about the career aspects of it. So they're starting to educate themselves. There's some very good cocktail books coming out and things like that.
- [20:07]
D
The name of the book is the comic book History of the Five Centuries of Mixing Drinks and Carrying On. It is by Dave Wondritz. Thank you for coming in.
- [20:16]
B
Oh, thank you so much, Alison. Such a pleasure.
- [20:19]
D
And that is all of it for today. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening and I appreciate you and I will meet you back here next time.
- [20:28]
E
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