Pink Gin ain't for bitches, bitches.

Isaac and I aren't dead. He's busy working as sommelier/bar manager with a hot new DC restaurant (shhh ... to open Memorial Day weeked) and I'm preparing for my annual Chesapeake sailing trip.

To hold you over, below is a little piece I included on my upcoming five-day sailing trip website (which Isaac has to miss because of the aforementioned restaurant opening).


You can be certain I'll be packing a bottle of Angostora Bitters to go with Jason's bottle of London Dry for our sail across the Chesapeake. It's a tradition that goes back hundreds of years. My point, simply put, from wikipedia:

"Pink Gin is a cocktail made fashionable in the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century, consisting of jenever and a dash of 'pink' (Angostura bitters, a dark red extract of gentian and spices, known from the 1820s at Angostura in Venezuela but now made in Trinidad and Tobago).

Pink gin is a typically English way of enjoying gin. It was made popular worldwide by members of the Royal Navy, where it rose to prominence because the Angostura bitters were a cure for seasickness.

Imports to Australia of pre mixed pink gin has soared in past decades due to the overwhelming demand in fine spirits."

Bucket-like Proportions

A modern dilemma for a modern drinker: you order your favorite alcoholic beverage and what clinks in front of you is a monstrous bucket-like abomination that offends all your senses. You sit on your stool, stumped with disappointment.

But isn't more better?

Contemplating this thing in your face, you wonder if aliens may have escorted this beverage from the heavens (or hell--whatevs).

Are you alone? No. You're among the many cocktail connoisseurs who're perplexed every day by this modern enigma: the oversized "cocktail bucket".

But how did this happen? And how do we deal with it? Was it the late '90s trend of oversized cocktails meant to get Sex-in-the-City types wasted? That's the cliché answer. Can we lay it on the doorstep of T.G.I. Fridays' margaritas? Or is it just the result of mixology-hungry people like me?

While it's true that people are more likely to believe a simple lie than a complex truth, let me start and end with the former.

Modern bartenders are doing their jobs; people want to get drunk, so that's what the alco-slingers give them. But that's pitiful. People in our camp want more. We want a freezing cold cocktail in small proportions, craftfully made, that doesn't taste like dishwater when it hits our lips. But the gigantic-cocktail-servers are out to destory us.

So how do we fight? Rule of thumb: if over 6 ounces, common sense it trounces. Ok, that's a horrible rhyme, but you see what I'm saying ...