The Spirits #114: The Eastern Sour

~ Remixing the Classics ~ The Trouble with OJ ~ Appeal ~ Good Taste, Bad Taste ~

🍸If you like THE SPIRITS, please consider upgrading to the paid version. Not only will gain access to the many Cabinet posts including the exhaustive 🐿️AMARETTO SPECIAL🐿️ from earlier (CW: Screaming Orgasms); you will help with the general upkeep of this virtual bar and ensure that it can remain open for all. A subscription also makes an excellent Christmas present for friends, lovers, maiden aunts, etc - so do share far and wide with anyone you think might like this sort of thing. 🍸

~ THE EASTERN SOUR ~

50ml bourbon (or rye)
25ml lemon juice
25ml orange juice
15ml orgeat
~5ml sugar syrup to taste
One egg white (optional)

Freeze a cocktail glass. Now put everything in the shaker, add copious ice and agitate enthusiastically. If you’ve opted for egg-white you’ll need to do a double-strain - strain out the cocktail, remove the ice from the shaker, and shake dry in order to fluff up the egg white. Now, strain into your frozen glass and garnish as outlandishly as you dare.

Some Eastern Sour notes:

1. The Eastern Sour is Victor Bergstrom’s take on a Whiskey Sour - and an ever-present at Trader Vic’s Tiki restaurants from the 1950s onwards. The original specs were an incredibly juicy 60ml bourbon, 75ml orange juice, 22.5ml lemon juice, and 7.5ml each of orgeat and sugar syrup. Trader Vic served his down in an old-fashioned glass full of crushed ice and squeezed orange and lemon shells.

2. If you have any kind of bartenderly intuition, you will realise Trader Vic’s spec will make for an eccentric sour. That’s WAY too much orange juice, Vic! Orange juice is pleasant on its own but underwhelming in cocktails, lacking the requisite tartness, sweetness, assertiveness and/or bitterness to stand up to spirits. Indeed, Leando Monriva (aka the Educated Barfly) seemed faintly appalled on sampling the original. “Not very nuanced; not my favourite”, was his verdict.

3. Still, I decided to reviit the Eastern Sour for two reasons. One, I have been exhaustively research almond-flavoured sours in recent weks and I felt I should bring the task to completion. And two, my eye was caught by an article on the excellent Punch: In Search of the Ultimate Whiskey Sour. The winning entry from 17 recipes came from Dan Sabo and it was: 60ml Rittenhouse Rye, 30ml lemon juice, 15ml 2:1 sugar syrup, an egg white - and surprise, surprise, 15ml orange juice. “The orange juice brought a subtle roundness and buoyancy to the flavor of the drink, as well a tiny boost of extra sweetness,” was the judges’ verdict. So maybe the the orange juice isn’t such a bad idea after all. All things in moderation.

4. Thus I decided to hybridise the two drinks drinks. Clearly, the problem with the Eastern Sour was too much orange and not enough lemon. Once rebalanced to something closer to the Sabo ratio, everything worked in perfect harmony. The orange brings brightness as opposed to blandness, the egg white improves both appearance and texture, and the orgeat is detectable, delectable and by no means objectable.

5. As for the receptacle: this is much better served up than down, I feel, especially if you use the egg white. Melting ice plus orange juice runs the risk of a too-weak cocktail. So, that’s the improved Eastern Sour. Moral: never take a classic at face value. Some of them just need a little tweaking.

6. Trader Vic also offered a Munich Sour in his Bavarian branch. That one had a brandy base. And a London Sour in his London branch with, hilariously, a Scotch base. London being the capital of Scotland.

7. Either use a decent bought orgeat; or make your own.

8. That’s Debbie Harry in the picture. The album is Plastic Letters. I think it’s my mum’s. Don’t tell her.

Now that we have our bearings, here is a compass-themed playlist.

---

🖊️I am Richard Godwin.
🧋My instructions for sugar syrup, ice, grenadine, orgeat, etc are here.
🧑‍🏫 My 10 RULES FOR MAKING COCKTAILS are here.
⚗️ My bottle recommendations are here.
📃 The full A-Z recipe archive is here. 
➡️ Please find a round up of organisations helping Ukrainians here.

🏥 And here is a list of trusted charities who are helping people in Gaza. I have given to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund. Please consider helping if you can; my hunch is that money probably does more good than outrage. There are 800,000 children in Gaza. According to UNICEF, 420 children have been killed or injured each day since the Israeli siege began, with one child killed every 10 minutes. The deliberate targeting of innocent children by Hamas and the IDF (as much as they claim it is simply unavoidable) is to me an incomprehensible evil.

---

CABINET POSTS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

🌿Green Chartreuse
🍒 Maraschino
🍑 Apricot Brandy
🍫 Crème de Cacao
🌷Cynar
🏝️ Falernum
🌵 Mezcal
🐂 Sherry
🧡 Aperol
🍌 Crème de Banane
🐻 Kümmel
🕊️ Bénédictine
🦅Fernet-Branca
❄️Brancamenta
🐿️Amaretto

Coming soon: Suze

---

PLAYLIST

I felt it was time for a new playlist, North, South, East, West

What do we all think of the new Beatles song btw? George thought it was “fucking rubbish” apparently. Bit maudlin for me. Wish it had 1969 Paul drumming on it too as opposed to 2023 Ringo. But still. The embers still glow when that chorus comes in.

PLEASE NOTE: This playlist updates weekly (or thereabouts). Follow/like and you will have an ever-replenishing list of interestingly curated songs to put on when you like. I keep an archive list of all songs featured so far here.

---

WHAT I’VE BEEN WRITING

I interviewed Marina Abramović - what a woman! “The freedom we had in the Seventies… we could never have done half of art history now because of political correctness. It completely f***ed up us. It took the freedom of the artist away. You can’t even tell dirty jokes now. I really think this is ridiculous. Take care? No, have guts! Be warrior! Take risk! Fail! Come back, do again! But just live your life. These restrictions have to be thrown away.’ (ES Magazine)

I also reviewed Nathalie Olah’s book, Bad Taste, which I found interesting as far as it went - which wasn’t that far. Talking of taste, I must get my Guardian byline changed, that one is awful. (Guardian)

And I wrote some words about Ron DeSantis’s fake shoes scandal and whether a modern politician really needs to worry about being short. “Trump initially struggled [to find a nickname] for Ron DeSantis, his least serious and therefore most serious rival to the 2024 Republican presidential candidacy. Ron DiSanctimonious was funny but lacked the tang of truth, DiSantis generally making a show of being morally inferior to others.” (Independent)

WHAT I’VE BEEN READING

Nearly finished The Brothers Karamazov.

---

NEXT WEEK: A 15,000-word essay on the Brothers Karamazov. Not really. A cocktail of some sort. Maybe a Dirty Martini actually.