The Spirits #32: The Corpse Reviver No.2

~ Absinthe Mist ~ Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread ~ Monkey Tennis ~

ENJOYING THE SPIRITS? Please consider becoming a subscriber so I can maintain some standards around here…

---

~ THE CORPSE REVIVER No.2 ~

Dash of absinthe
20ml gin
20ml Lillet Blanc (see note…)
20ml orange liqueur
20ml lemon juice

Rinse a cocktail glass with absinthe - I mean, pour in a few dashes of the stuff and roll it around so the glass is coated. Now place that glass in the freezer while you prepare a few snacks, etc. Meanwhile, place the gin, Lillet, orange liqueur and lemon in the shaker with a bunch of ice and shake. Fine-strain into the absinthe rinsed glass. No garnish required.

1) Lillet Blanc is a charming, fresh-faced, eminently marriageable French apéritif wine that’s simply oozing bright lemony loveliness. Use it if you can. But I reckon you can sub the 20ml Lillet for, say, 15ml French vermouth and 5ml sugar syrup and no one will be any much the wiser. You can also use a sweet white vermouth, for example Dolin Blanc, Mancino Ambrato or Cocchi Americano.

2) I finished a bottle of La Fée absinthe that dates back to 2012 making this.

GOOD AFTERNOON! Some MUSIC… and oooh. Lovely stuff.

---

Hi, I’m Richard, I’m a British journalist for various places with a sideline in cocktails. You will find instructions for making sugar syrup, grenadine, orgeat, ice, etc here and my 10 RULES FOR MAKING COCKTAILS here. I have also assembled some recommendations for a starter cabinet here - these are the bottles we’ll be basing our drinks on, just a handful to start! - and this here is the full archive of drinks that we’ve covered so far. Do please share the Spirits with all of your most interesting friends and feel free to say “hello” on  Instagram or Twitter. (Those please note: I don’t understand how to reply to Instagram stories). Also scroll to the bottom for what to get in for next week! 👇

---

IT’S hard to tell precisely what a Corpse Reviver is, exactly, as the various numbered recipes that have come down have so little in common. What we do know is that, like Bosom Carressers, Moustache Twisters, Eye-Openers, Stomach Revivers and Bottom Fondlers, Corpse Revivers were foremost among the American “sensation” drinks of the 19th century. As with modern American innovations such as pink slime or Chupa Chups Melon Cream soda, not all Englanders were too impressed. As Henry Porter and George Edwin Roberts wrote in Cups and Their Customs (1863): “[We] express our gratification at the poor success which "Pick-me-ups," "Corpse-revivers," "Chain-lightning," and the like have had in this country.” And yet here we are.

The Corpse Reviver No.1 (apple brandy, brandy, Italian vermouth) was still going strong in the 1920s, when the author of the Savoy Cocktail Book, Harry Craddock prescribed it “to be taken before 11am”. (He is pictured interring a cocktail shaker within the walls of the Savoy’s American Bar). But it’s the No.2 that is the more celebrated Reviver, as well as being one of Craddock’s most enduring creations. Erik Lorincz once let slip that he had poured a Corpse Reviver No.2 over Craddock's actual grave to see if it did the trick. At the time of writing, it hasn't. For the living, however, the lemon juice purifies, the liqueur adds a sherbety sweetness and the Lillet Blanc makes it feel all sophisticated. The absinthe (which you must not overdo) floats above the drink like a wistful phrase in a Ravel piano sonata. It is at once delicate and incredibly powerful. As Craddock warned: "Four of these will swiftly unrevive the corpse again."

You will find it a happy formula too - similar to the fabled Last Word in its four-part structure: one part spirit, one part citrus, one part sweet liqueur, one part aromatic herbal thing. The latter thing might be vermouth, Lillet or maybe sherry… It might equally be a herbal liqueur or an amaro (like Aperol or Campari or whatever). And note the way the absinthe functions a bit like Angostura bitters here, adding just a touch of aroma. Three variants you might want to try: The Corpse Reviver No.3, which uses yellow Chartreuse in place of the orange liqueur. The Corpse Reviver No.4, which uses tequila in place of the gin. And, most especially, the Corpse Reviver No. Blue, which uses blue curacao in place of the orange liqueur. It was invented by the NZ bartender Jacob Briar in 2007, as he felt the “cocktail Taliban” was starting to take this whole thing a bit too seriously.

🍸🍸🍸🍸🍸🍸🍸🍸🍸

As of Monday, here in the UK, we can drink in actual bars - an enormous step up from outside drinking (i.e. shivering under awnings as the May rain drums around). This is a landmark moment, I feel. I began this newsletter last Autumn in a haze of nostalgia for bars, their atmosphere and lore, promise and possibility. Making these cocktails and sharing these recipes each week has been a sincere joy - but it has also brought home to me that the cocktails themselves aren’t the half of it. A solo Wednesday evening kitchen Corpse Reviver is no bad thing; but it’s not much compared to being out there in the World. I for one cannot wait to sidle up to the nearest cocktail counter and order, ooh, bartender’s choice. And I urge you to do the same - and leave a nice fat tip, too.

With this in mind: I’m going to have a week off in order to do some rethinking and repointing, make some headway with a couple of other projects, probably steep a few things in rum. So I’ll see most of you in a couple of week’s time. Paid subscribers: look out for treats in the interim.

---

PLAYLIST

It is Nobel laureate and whiskey magnate Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday on the 24th May. He’s a Gemini. I would hate to let this occasion go unmarked. I mean, aside from everything else, he is a pioneer of the themed playlist and, also, my wife happens to be named after my favourite song of his . So here are some Dylan cuts that don’t get enough love in my opinion. Happy Birthday Bob!

The whole world’s a bottle
A life’s but a dram
When the bottle gets empty
It sure ain’t worth a damn

(Moonshiner)

THIS PLAYLIST UPDATES AUTOMATICALLY EACH WEEK. Here is an ongoing archive of past songs.

---

WHAT I’M READING

“Thanks for thinking of us for your pitched essay on incest pornography. Unfortunately, we’re going to pass on it at this time.” Journalists confess to the most embarrassing pitches they’ve ever sent (The Fence)

On the violence in Israel (New Yorker)

Lola Seaton on Labour’s woes (New Statesman)

From a couple of week’s back: here’s David Sexton being enjoyably withering about two new Bob Dylan books (Sunday Times)

Disclaimer: I haven’t read this essay about having sex with octopuses on LSD yet… but just as soon as I have finished this, I’m going to jump in! (n+1)

David Coggins’ newsletter the Contender always makes me smile. Here he is on dressing and travel (The Contender)

Aaaand if you like bitchy media stuff, Helen Lewis wrote this enjoyable piece about how Substack has become (for “extremely online people” at least) an excellent way for journalists to monetise their pettiest squabbles. Clearly I am doing it wrong! “In a recent newsletter, Charlie Warzel, formerly of The New York Times, posted a graph of his paid-subscriber numbers after [Glenn] Greenwald dissed him. It was all up, up, up. Warzel’s annual income jumped by $14,000 that day, he told me, although these “rage subscriptions” made him feel dirty. “There’s a lot of people who subscribed to me as a ‘fuck you’ to Glenn Greenwald. Is that worth $65 a year?” (The Atlantic)

---

SHOPPING LIST

Dark rum (ideally overproof 😏), cinnamon sticks, sugar, (white) grapefruit juice, lime juice, Angostura bitters, absinthe/pastis.

🧟