History

Just prior to prohibition, a great little booklet was put out by The Wine and Spirit Bulletin called Beverages De Luxe. It is a collection of articles, and recipes, written by owners of distilleries and others in the business. Some of the contributors include George Brown (Brown & Foreman) and A.M. Hanauer (Hamburger Distillery, Pittsburgh, PA) among many others. Hanauer wrote… [Continue]

Tasting history is one of the more enjoyable aspects of classic cocktails, however many of those original ingredients have been lost to time. Abbott's bitters is one of those ingredients, and without it we really don't know how the original Manhattan tasted. Sure, there are those rare vintage bottles of Abbott's bitters floating around on eBay, but those bottles are at least 70 years… [Continue]

It's one of those often repeated debates that goes nowhere: Why didn't prohibition work? Both sides of the debate ante up and hences forth argue ad nauseum. So with the help of Google's Ngram Viewer I'm going to provide a simple, visual explanation of human nature and why prohibition failed. If this doesn't explain it, nothing will.

Google's Ngram… [Continue]