Born in the 1970s, I look
back fondly at the '80s in many respects as they were some of the glory days of
my childhood...music from Guns n Roses, Van Halen, and Metallica, the rise of
Michael Jordan and the Bulls, 'Da Coach' and the last (tears still flow) Bears Super Bowl
championship in '85, and the simple, relatively carefree days of being a
kid and teenager. At the same time, reflecting on this decade in terms of
its contributions to the world of mixology makes me...well, sad. At my young age, I clearly didn't spend time
pondering the cocktails of the time, but now that I have, I'm glad to say I
feel I missed very little, if anything. Nevertheless, enter this month's Mixology Monday theme of Retro Redemption by Jacob Grier over
at Liquidity Preference, and I was forced to dance with the devil.
As described by Jacob:
Contemporary cocktail enthusiasts take pride in resurrecting forgotten cocktails of the past — unless “the past” refers to the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s. We sometimes refer to these decades as the Dark Ages of Mixology, eras not yet recovered from the violence Prohibition and a World War inflicted on American cocktail culture. The classic Martini, a flavorful blend of gin and vermouth, had morphed into a glass of cold, diluted vodka. Other drinks were just too sweet, too fruity, too big, too silly. But still, it wasn’t all bad. People ordered these drinks for a reason. Despite the now annual “burial” of a disfavored drink at Tales of the Cocktail, not all of them deserve to die. Perhaps, as they said of the Six Million Dollar Man, we can rebuild them. We have the technology. So the theme of this month’s Mixology Monday is Retro Redemption! Your task is to revive a drink from mixology’s lost decades. Perhaps you feel one of these drinks has a bad rap; tell us why it deserves another shot. Or maybe the original concoction just needs a little help from contemporary ingredients and techniques to make it in the big leagues. If so, tell us how to update it...
