COCKTAIL HOUR
I remember my very first time, drinking a cocktail, out in public, on my twenty-first birthday. It was at a restaurant just down the hill from my very first apartment. It was also my very first time drinking a Negroni. This old guy, hair in a ponytail, in this beautifully decorated, classy restaurant, mixed it for me. Ever since that restaurant has since then disappeared, I can still remember my first cocktail. What I’ve learned over the years is that, even though this was my first drink as a legal adult, nobody knows quite how to make a Negroni the way he did.
Too many people plop in too much campari.
Ever since that night, though, I found this part of me that loves concocting mixological potions like that one. My father started me on perfecting the classics. You know, The Manhattan, The Dry Martini, such as those. He’s always been a huge Bourbon Manhattan connoisseur, and I didn’t stop perfecting the recipe until he said, “Yes. This, this is good.”
I began mixing cocktails at his house, right after my first real drink. It became our thing. Every single cocktail I made, he took a sip of, critiqued it, and offered his ideas.
Now, I’m not a bartender, and I probably never will be, but making drinks at home by learning from various cookbooks, is my favorite type of learning. There’s just something about dissecting recipes, and figuring it out on my own.
The most fascinating parts of the craft, to me, is learning how to mix each bit of alchemy perfectly — everything from shaking to stirring to ice to serving glass.
My dad has taught me a lot, as well as the times where, he’s very annoying, and asks a bartender to mix him a drink of his own concoction. Bartenders hate that. They want to make their own recipes. It’s their bar. My dad, however? Sometimes, sometimes he has his own ideas. I find it embarrassing, but also kind of hilarious that he’d be so ballsy.
I will always love how my father is both my movie buddy and my drinking buddy. He and I hate getting drunk. Tipsy? Yes. Drunk? No. He and I hate getting drunk, but a good cocktail is always in order.
The recipes in this segment are of my own creation. Sometimes, they’ll be classics. Other times, they’ll be things I pulled out of my butt. Hopefully, as I continue to learn how to craft perfect cocktails, I will get better and better at being an alchemist and creating mixological beauties. There is no glass ceiling on talent, and there is no glass ceiling on how much I love this craft.
