Sorry, but I couldn’t resist. I’m proud to let folks know that I’ve joined Google, leading ecosystem engagement as a Director in the Product Management team working on one of the most complicated (and some would say) controversial projects happening in digital advertising today.
I’ve long been focused on just how much data floats along aside the digital ads ecosystem, and just how important that data is to the companies with relationships to our visitors as well as to those users themselves.
The Privacy Sandbox seeks to create a more private open internet, while still providing targeted advertising tools that help keep the open internet free.
The first ‘historic’ cocktail I made when I began this journey into the world of mixology at the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown. Created back in the early 1900s, the drink has fallen a little out of favor owing to a very floral-forward taste profile. Some suggest dropping the Creme de Violette down to a barspoon.
Yield: 1 drink
Aviation
Created in 1916.
Prep Time5 minutes
Total Time5 minutes
Ingredients
2 oz. London Dry gin - or experiment with 'New World' gin of your choice
.25 oz. Creme de Violette
.25 oz. Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur
.25 oz. fresh-squeezed lemon juice
Garnish: Maraschino cherry
Lemon twist
Instructions
Place ingredients in shaking tin
Fill with ice, shake for 15 seconds until outside of tin is frosty.
Double-strain into chilled coupe glass.
Use a barspoon to lower a Luxardo cherry into bottom of glass
Express lemon twist over the top to release it's oils then discard.
Oh boy is this one a revelation – and possibly my favorite cocktail of all time. This is a bona fide gateway drug to introduce anyone to bourbon and amari. It’s an equal-parts cocktail, essentially a riff on the Last Word. It features Amaro Nonino Quintessentia, an Italian amaro with a grappa base, and notes of botanicals, alpine herbs, and orange peel. In a pinch, Amaro Montenegro is a good substitute.
Although the drink seems like it came out of the heyday of pre-Prohibition bar culture, it was actually invented in 2008 by award-winning bartender Sam Ross (who also created the Penicillin). The drink first appeared on the opening menu of The Violet Hour in Chicago, a bar where Ross was consulting. It was so popular in Chicago that he brought it back to his bar Milk & Honey in New York City and the rest is history.
The M.I.A. hit Paper Plane was the inspiration for the name, and the drink was garnished with a tiny paper airplane. Ross recommends a higher-proof bourbon and warns not to overshake the drink; it’s easy to over dilute.
You can also try substituting grapefruit juice for lemon to make the Esprit d’Escalier or replace bourbon with tequila for the Avion de Papel.
Yield: 1 drink
Paper Plane
Prep Time5 minutes
Total Time5 minutes
Ingredients
3/4 oz. Bourbon (barrel-proof preferred)
3/4 oz. Aperol
3/4 oz. Amaro Nonino
3/4 oz. lemon juice
Instructions
Combine all ingredients in shaker
Shake 15 seconds to combine & dilute.
Double strain into chilled coupe.
Notes
Created by legendary bartender Sam Ross from NYC's now-defunct Milk and Honey.
Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina got it right: “Happy families are all alike;” and I’ll add “so are cocktails, at least until a global pandemic takes hold.” Therein lies the inspiration for this journey through the world of spirits and their myriad concoctions. After the lockdown began in March 2020, it took me a few months to realize that a daily cocktail might be an interesting way of distraction.
Mind you, I think I’d had the same few bottles on hand for years: a bottle of bourbon, another of rye, a nasty coconut rum, some vodka, a few tequilas from when Amy and I took a trip to Mexico’s Isla Mujeres before we were married along with 4 bottles of Kahlua. I have no idea why so many. I’d been introduced to the Aviation at some point, and thought I’d start there.
So I tracked down a bottle of Creme de Violette – there’s a long history to that liqueur I’ll save for another entry – as well as Luxardo maraschino cherry liqueur. After that, I needed to find more things to create. That led to picking up one modern cocktail book, then another and another. Pretty soon I’m Instagramming my way to a really nice collection of cocktail recipes and a few of my own musings about most of them.
Here in mid-January 2021, as the world continues to do that crazy thing we’ve been dealing with for almost a year (pandemic, civil unrest, attempted insurrection, the (blessed) election of Joe Biden & Kamal Harris, as well as Georgia turning blue in not one but TWO elections) I’ve made about 150 unique drinks. This blog will be an attempt at documenting these and letting my friends track their favorites down – something Instagram and Facebook don’t really facilitate all that well.
I hope you’ll join me on this journey. There is so much more to the cocktail than I ever realized. Let’s go!
