The Spirits #126: The Knickerbocker

Plus: The chimpanzees reach towards the sublime

~ THE KNICKERBOCKER ~

50ml dark rum
25ml orange liqueur
15ml lime juice
10ml sugar syrup (2:1)
Strawberries/raspberries (see note)
Pineapple (optional)

I’d prepare the glass first. Layer pieces of strawberry (or raspberry) and pineapple and a spent lime shell in a fancy glass among crushed/shaved ice. Now place this vessel in the freezer while you perform the following procedure: add the rum to the shaker along with the orange liqueur, lime juice, sugar syrup and a few bits of spare fruit. Add a couple of cubes of ice and give it a good old whip shake. Then fine strain the hallowed contents into the prepared glass, stir, add a little more crushed ice and enjoy your life.

Some Knickerbocker notes:

1) The Knickerbocker is about as old as these drinks get, dating back to at least 1843. It was featured on what is generally regarded as the FIRST FANCY DRINKS MENU KNOWN TO MAN - at Boston’s Oyster Saloon. According to my Wondrich, the menu also included such creations as the Fiscal Agent, the Wormwood Floater, the Tippe na Pecco and eleven kinds of Julep. Sadly the precise composition of these magic potions has not come down to us. This particular Knickerbocker recipe comes via Jerry Thomas instead, who lists it among the Fancy Drinks of his Bartenders Guide of 1862. It is one of only a handful of drinks of this era to use lime as opposed to lemon though whether this was a feature of the 1843 Knickerbocker, who can say?

2) Whatever form it took, a drink called the Knickerbocker seems to have enjoyed widespread fame in the mid-19th century before fading with the arrival of your classic Daiquiris, White Ladies, etc. But David Wondrich identifies in its combination of dark rum, crushed ice, multiple sweetnesses and the spent lime garnish a harbinger of the Tiki movement. It took a good deal of will power not to add a dash each of absinthe and Angostura, a slapped mint posy and a hefty grating of nutmeg.

3) Raspberries would be better than strawberries; the Jerry Thomas recipe calls for raspberry syrup (which I tend to make fresh, w/ raspberries plus sugar syrup). Only, I somehow bought strawberries by mistake. In such circumstances, I generally think you should simply the best sub you have.

4) Not sure about the glassware, to be honest. The sheer weight of the drink threatened to capsize the vessel; I fancy a hurricane glass would be more the thing. Still, I kind of like the way it resembles a photo from one of your mum’s 1970s cookbooks - something with a name like: Oh No! More Knickerbockers.

🖊️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.

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SOMETIMES you win the email jackpot. It’s a lottery, that thing, which is clearly the reason we keep being sucked back in. Most of the time, my email is all RICHARD: you STILL haven’t reviewed those vacuum cleaner bags you ordered the other day or mail outs from dubious comment outlets with headlines like: Exclusive: The world’s problems are not in fact caused by billionaires hoarding all the wealth and power - but transgender Palestinian Taylor Swift fans. Or sometimes: You just lost 13 subscribers on Substack.

But a few weeks ago it was: “Hi Richard, do you want to interview the universally admired primatologist and environmental campaigner Dr Jane Goodall about her life’s work?” Yes. Yes I did. And I did.

I’ve come to the simple conclusion recently that the best things about being a journalist are that you get to a) write and b) meet interesting people. And not only that, you get to interrogate those interesting people, asking them questions that you would never ask someone close to you, questions like: How do you feel about dying? And: What scares you? And: How about octopuses? But also: What’s your favourite whiskey? Jane Goodall drinks a shot a day for her voice and it’s usually Johnny Walker Black but she’s not too fussy as long as it’s not too peaty.

Still, before our encounter, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I thoroughly enjoyed the research process, including watching the wonderful documentary Jane on Disney+ which gives you (a slightly sweetened version of) the basic story of how she set out to Tanzania at 26 with dreams of Dr Doolittle and a mission to get to know the local chimpanzees. Only, Goodall is 90 now. She has been interviewed millions of times. She is Lego-set famous, Little People Big Dreams famous - and there is often an inverted relationship between how famous a person is and how rewarding a conversation with them might be. I can’t say that I really got much Robert de Niro out of, say, Robert De Niro; the Dalai Lama did not slip me the secret of transcendence; and the less said about my meeting with Dame Joan Collins the better. Likewise when you genuinely admire a person - and Goodall’s environmental work is truly admirable - that’s not necessarily a good dynamic either. I once disclosed to Bjork that I had a poster of her on my teenage bedroom wall and it did not make our encounter any less awkward.

Only - I felt like this one went well. Love. War. Science. Leonardo di Caprio. Whisky. Ghosts. The Afterlife. Hope. It helped that Goodall hates having her picture taken (her first husband was a photographer…) and thus seemed relieved to get to the talking bit. I also employed the high-risk strategy of asking her immediately how two chimpanzees would say hello and once we had done a bit of grunting and nuzzling well, it all flowed quite naturally. We should preen one another more, is my feeling. Afterwards, I reflected that she has spent many years trying to communicate across the species barrier - so an interviewer, well, that’s not so hard. I found her pin-sharp, present, funny and, well, deeply human.

Her life’s work, I suppose, has really been to show how animals are not nearly so unlike us as we once thought. She was the first person to document chimpanzes using tools and doing many of the things we once considered exclusively human, including exercising deep empathy. At first, she said, she revered the chimpanzees as being like us but better. Then she witnessed a terrifying years-long chimp civil war - childhood friends, murdering and torturing each other - which was all the more terrifying because it showed how deep-rooted our own violent impulses are.

But the reason I found the conversation so uplifting was that, in the end, she was full of hope that we could transcend these impulses. At one point I asked her if she thought chimpanzees were, in fact, categorically different from us and she said yes because humans have language and with it, the ability to conceptualise the world and ourselves - and change both, if need be.

She describes a site in Gombe, an 80-foot waterfall, that the chimpanzees occasionally visit. “It's beautiful. There are vines growing down the side. It's been carved out over the aeons. As the water tumbles down, it hits with a roar and there's always a wind as the air is displaced. It's a magical place.” 

When the chimps visit, they perform what she calls a “waterfall dance”, which involves the males wading into the water (something that they rarely do) and throwing rocks around. “It's very spectacular. They may do it for 10 minutes, usually in a group. And then they’ll sit, watching the water.” 

She detects in these moments a form of awe in the chimpanzees. “‘What is this stuff that's always coming and it's always going but it's always here? The sun, the stars, what are they? What do they mean?’ Once we have words, we can turn this feeling into something like an early animistic religion. But with the chimps, it's tied within themselves. They can't discuss it.” 

I can’t get that out of my head. The chimpanzees, by the waterfall, reaching towards the sublime - but not quite being able to grasp it. We might not be able to grasp it either - not quite - but sometimes, fleetingly, I think we can touch it.

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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

NEXT TIME: Pisco… honestly I’m not far off finishing this opus! Suggestions for future bottles always welcome.

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THE PLAYLIST

DID you know Knickerbocker - one of the great words in the English language - was originally simply slang for a New Yorker? Diedrich Knickerbocker was the pen-name of the 19th century US historian W. Irving, author of an 1807 History of New York. In England of course, it means “fancy knickers” i.e. ladies underwear.

Anyway I have revised and updated my NYC list from not-so-long-ago for the purpose. Although suggestions for underwear songs are welcome in the comments.

NB: This playlist (ideally) updates with fresh songs each week, rather in the manner of Spotify’s ‘Discover Weekly’ list. But this is personally curated by me. Save/download and you should have a fresh supply of cool music in perpetuity. I store all the archive lists in one long megaplaylists, which you can find here.

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WHAT I’VE BEEN WRITING

That interview again (Daily Mail)

WHAT I’VE BEEN READING

Three years ago, as the pandemic was loosening its grip on the world, and as I started to recover from the aftereffects of a botched childhood circumcision that had returned to haunt me in middle age, I rediscovered the bottomless pleasure of a cold dry Martini.

It would be remiss of me not to share Gary Shteyengart’s Martini quest around New York City. I’m actually saving this one for when I have a Martini in hand - but I just know it’s going to be good from the opening line which Johanna just quoted to me aloud from the sofa. (New Yorker)

Jimi Famurewa’s review of Lita in Marylebone… “outrageously elevated, unapologetically big ticket and decidedly special occasion”. Reader: I was his plus one. (ES)

I had a few hours to spare in Holborn before my train the other day. So I went into a bookshop, picked a book almost at random and headed to one of my favourite London pubs: The Seven Stars on Carey Street. The book? Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. I was hooting into my Guinness. I’d somehow never read Vonnegut… but… he’s… really funny, isn’t he? I’m aware that most fans made this discovery in adolescence but really - a few periodisms aside, I was surprised by how damn modern his comic sensibility is, reminded me of Sam Lipsyte, George Saunders, Patricia Lockwood, etc. Although it took me a while to work out who he really reminded me of: i.e. P. G. Wodehouse. Entirely different worlds - Edwardian English country houses; Cold War-era Caribbean island - but in both you have an endearingly open-to-the-world narrator; you have a mad cast of characters each with their own agenda; and in both, the real drama lies not so much in the farcial happenings but in the language itself.

“Ilium has a very interesting history, you know.”
”That’s very interesting.”

I now want to re-read and annotate and figure it all out.

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SHOPPING LIST

I’m glad I reinstated this shopping list. I may regret the choice when it comes around next week and I realise I’ve no lemons, but damn: this is the tiny rivet that keeps this son-of-a-bitch on the road. Anyway next week you should get in brandy, light rum, orange liqueur and lemons. 🛏️