The Spirits #4: The Rose

~ Barman! Deux Roses ~ Redcurrant Shortages ~ Nothing but Flowers ~ Crossmodal Perception ~ Selected Memories from the Haunted Ballroom

~ ROSE ~

50ml French vermouth
25ml gin (or kirsch)
10ml groseille syrup (see below)
Dash rosewater

Place all the ingredients in your mixing vessel.. Add plenty of ice and stir for 10 or more seconds. Strain into a cold cocktail glass and garnish with a cocktail cherry - or get creative with something floral. (NB: if you can’t be arsed making the syrup below, it may be substituted for grenadine, raspberry cordial, cherry liqueur - or anything suitably sweet and ‘pink’.).

Some music… oh hang on, you’ll be wondering how to make:

Groseille Syrup
Place about 100g redcurrants in a saucepan with around 50ml water and squish them with a muddler (or wooden spoon) to extract as much juice/flavour as possible. Gently heat. Pour in 100g sugar and stir until it is completely dissolved. Remove from heat and strain through a sieve into a jar. You might need to do a bit of scraping. The syrup should keep for a few weeks in the fridge (it will jellify). You can also use it in an Artist’s Special, as a substitute for grenadine/raspberry syrup in similarly old-timey cocktails, or as children’s squash. Almost any soft red fruit will work in place of redcurrants too.

🌹

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SAY I have some sort of time machine-slash-teleportation device. Say you can put a coin in the slot and it will take you to the city and decade of your choosing. You’re going: where? Don’t mess this up!

If you said “PARIS” and “the 20s”… well, I did prime you with that picture above. Popular destination. And no, not this ‘20s, the pandemicky ones, the Emily in Paris ones. I mean the 1920s, les Années Folles, as the licentious decade that followed the Armistice was known, when Paris was the acme of modernity, refuge of dissidents, cradle of the avant-garde… and probably a whole lot less fun if you didn’t have millions of francs. But if you did, you could walk into literally any bar, catch up on all the gossip from Gertrude Stein and Zelda Fitzgerald, join in a game of babyfoot with Stravinsky, Matisse and Hemingway - and marvel at Josephine Baker sitting atop Cole Porter’s collapsible piano in nothing but a pink flamingo feather. Diaghilev, Chanel, Man Ray, Le Corbusier, Ravel, Picasso, Kiki were all there sparkling and flickering too… and the candelabra from Beauty and the Beast would be there to freshen your drink. Or so the movies have led me to believe.

Oh and the cocktails were good too. “Speed of movement, of rhythm, of innovation and pleasure, was the spirit of the age,” writes the historian/bartender Franck Audoux in his delightful book French Moderne: Cocktails From The 1920s And 1930s - a crisp distillation of a headlong era. Audoux (who runs the exceedingly chic Cravan in the 16th Arrondissement) has truffled through old menus and pamphlets, brochures and books to turn up recipes such as the Volstead Act (named after the Republican who pushed through Prohibition and sent all those thirsty Americans Paris-wards) and the Six Cylindres (created in honour of the Citroën C6, which was introduced in 1928). It’s a fresh addition to any cocktail library, particularly as so much of what you read about the era comes via American sources. (“Why is it just Americans who dissipate?" asks Nicole in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night, which set between Paris and the Riviera. “There were so many answers to this question that Dick decided to leave it in the air…”)

Still - given how storied this era is; given how much classic cocktail lore comes from the period; given how many enduring recipes were formulated in Paris, it is surprising that the French cocktail of the era should be all-but forgotten. I mean the Rose.

For it was this invention - not the Sidecar or French 75 or anything else - that was “the most popular French cocktail of the inter-war period,” as Audoux insists over Facebook Messenger. It was invented by the barman Johnny Mita at the Hôtel Chatham and it prompted a veritable mania, helped along by the promotions of the great French liqueur houses, cocktail competitions, and bartenders who each put their own spin on it. Audoux sends me an untranslatable “joke” from the era which rests on the homophony of “cirrhose” (liver disease) and “six Roses” (say it in a French accent). And he also directs me to the 1937 film, Café de Paris, which offers a wonderful glimpse of the hospitality of the era. Fast-forward to 4:06 and you’ll come upon this piece of dialogue:

“Moi, j’ai soif!”
"Moi aussi j’ai soif!”
"Barman! Deux Roses”

But the curious thing is: I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Rose on a 21st century cocktail menu. Not in France - not anywhere. It has all but vanished. Other “lost” cocktails have enjoyed 21st century revivals: the Aviation, the Last Word, the Twentieth Century. But the Rose remains perdu. A forgotten movie star, a faded photograph, a fleeting sensation.

🥀

I would hazard that there are two main reasons for this. Actually three. 1) is the photograph used in the Rose Wikipedia entry. 2) is that a principle ingredient is kirsch (dry cherry brandy) which is not an ingredient most bars or homes stock these days. And 3) is that it’s just hard to work out what the essence of the Rose is since all of the recipes vary so wildly. Mita’s original formula was 50ml French vermouth, 30ml kirsch and 10ml (sweet) cherry brandy. In his ABC of Mixing Cocktails (1923), Harry MacElhone (who ran the famous New York Bar at 5 rue Daunou) switched the cherry brandy for groseille (redcurrant) syrup. In the Savoy Cocktail Book (1930) there are four recipes for the Rose, three of which involve gin. Audoux sends me a couple more, which call for Cherry-Rocher, a defunct brand of cherry liqueur.

Still, if you look a little closer at the Rose’s DNA, you’ll notice that they are variations on a theme. Most of them major on dry vermouth (which makes the Rose fairly light and wine-y, as cocktails go). They all have some transparent spirit in them, classically kirsch but sometimes gin too (and in one variant listed by Audoux, La Vie en Rose, tequila, highly avant-garde for the era). Plus they all contain some “pinking” agent or other, whether that’s redcurrant or raspberry syrup, grenadine, or cherry brandy/liqueur. So, we’re talking a sort of reverse Pink Martini.

All this is my excuse for presenting you with my own spin on the Rose above. It’s not authentic - but it is delicious, it’s achievable with the basic cabinet, and who knows, maybe it will help the cause of the Rose. Rosewater seems to me a fitting addition. And the groseille syrup - a classic French cocktail ingredient - is worth a try too. Redcurrants have a lovely garden-y tartness and they also go a little jelly-ish in syrup, which lends the cocktail a distinct texture. With the rosewater, it’s a little like drinking Turkish Delight.

“Afterwards, he just sat, happy to live in the past.” (Tender Is the Night again…). “The drink made past happy things contemporary with the present, as if they were still going on, contemporary even with the future as if they were about to happen again.”

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PLAYLIST

Nothing but flowers this week baby! Roses, tulips, carnations, hyacinths, poppies, moon flowers, African violets. Please noteL I have worked extremely hard to avoid overlap with the Bob Dylan Theme Time Radio Hour ‘Flowers’ episode.

CW: chanson

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OFFER!

Online alcohol shop The Drop Store is giving readers of the Spirits a discount. Head HERE, have a mooch and if you add thespirits10 (i.e. lowercase!) in the promo code you will get 10% off at checkout.

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ASK RICHARD

The renowned psychologist Jo Wong wants to know:

I watched a thing on TV this week that featured the American Bar at the Savoy. Their cocktails are 15-20 quid a pop! Are they really any ‘better’ than a decent classic made anywhere else? Or is this a case of crossmodal perception, i.e., the atmosphere/environment making you feel the drink tastes different?

It’s true that you can make a passable Martini at home for ooh, £1.50. If you use the most expensive gin and vermouth money can buy: £4? But think about it this way. How much would it cost you to replicate the furnishings, the barware, the exquisite movements of the bartenders, the peculiar ambiance and history of the Savoy’s American Bar in your living room? At least a six-figure sum? Not to mention: a 116 years. (The American Bar is the oldest continually-serving cocktail bar in London). What I mean is, it is about more than the drink itself. Even if you experience it one single time, you will have a benchmark, a memory, a story, a mood… which you don’t tend to get from, say, a £15 pizza. I personally like the American Bar best in mid-afternoon, when it’s quiet and you can sit up the bar. There’s a vintage Savoy Cocktail Book behind the bar - sometimes, they let you use it as a menu.

BREAKING: Jo also sent me THIS update from her local supermarket. 🤦‍♂️

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WHAT I’M READING

LOTS of stuff about our TERRIBLE government. Please consider donating to Fare Share, which is helping to fight food poverty amid the pandemic.

Here’s a (melancholy) slideshow of bars in 2020s Paris, before and after the 10pm curfew. (Guardian).

A not-very-good literary hatchet job did the rounds earlier week. This (Michael Hoffman on Stefan Zweig) is how to do a hatchet job. "One feels the irritable rise of boredom halfway through it, and the sense that he doesn’t mean it". That was his freaking suicide note. (LRB)

I enjoyed Emma Jacobs playing fantasy dinner party - and specifying the Savoy’s Harry Craddock as bartender. Who would be at yours? (FT).

The history of the onion sandwich! (And more: “Beard first wooed his longtime lover by making him a poached, deboned calf’s head, starting with the meat and tongue of the tête de veau, saving the brains for a second course….”) (NYT).

What happens when a six-hour avant-garde artistic experiment becomes a viral craze on TikTok? (NPR). The artist in question being The Caretaker, whose jazz-age hauntings you might enjoy too. (Bandcamp).

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SHOPPING LIST

Next week, you’re going to need bourbon/rye, lemon, sugar syrup, maybe an egg, and a bottle of red wine. 🍋🥃🍷