Gary Regan > Quotes

“I pleaded with Norman to use my first name, and he always agreed to do so: “Okay, Mister Regan, I’ll remember in the future,” he’d say with a wicked grin on his face. Eventually Norman explained that he had a reputation for remembering all his customers’ names, and that if he had to learn first names as well as surnames, his workload would be doubled, so I backed down.

All would have been well with this had I not introduced Norman to Roy Finamore, who was the editor of the first edition of this book, some six months later; Mister Finamore joined the ranks of thousands addicted to Norman’s wit and his cocktailian skills. A few months thereafter I was informed that Norman had taken to using Roy’s first name at the bar, and I was livid. This called for action. I made the pilgrimage to Norman’s bar. “I hear that Roy Finamore is a regular here now.” “That’s right, Mister Regan, he’s here three or four times a week.” “And what do you call him, Norman?” “I call him Roy.” “And why is that, Norman?” He leaned over the bar until our noses almost met. “Just to piss you off.”

It had taken Norman months to set up this one glorious moment. In my opinion, I was looking into the eyes of Manhattan’s best bartender.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“[T]he vast majority of drinks called for in any bar are simple Highballs such as Scotch and Soda, as well as Martinis, Manhattans, Margaritas, and other perennial favorites that are quite easy to master. Every bar also has its idiosyncratic cocktails, such as house specialties or weird potions peculiar to that one particular joint. Most bartenders will tell you that it’s seldom necessary to know how to make more than a couple dozen drinks in any one bar.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“Enhanced Sours call for a spirit, citrus juice, a sweetening agent of any kind, plus vermouth or any other aromatized or fortified wine.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“Dr. Siegert stayed on in Angostura (renamed Ciudad Bolívar in 1846) to study native botanicals and determine if they could be used medicinally. By 1824, he had developed a tonic known as amargos aromáticos, which he marketed commercially. Now called Angostura bitters, the product is made in Trinidad, and is the best-known cocktail ingredient of its kind in the world.

The Angostura company claims that the product gained worldwide renown when, shortly after its creation, it became a staple of ships’ provisions; it was used to treat seasickness, fever, and scurvy. The recipe for this potion, though, remains a well-guarded secret.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“The majority of the drinks popular at the turn of the nineteenth century were, by and large, sweeter than they would become over the next twenty years. Something else happened, though, in the last decades of the 1800s. Something momentous. Something that left us with a range of drinks that must now be considered the capos of the cocktail family: Vermouth became popular among the cocktailian bartenders of America.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“Most people enjoy being put into the role of adviser, and often they will take care of the situation for you by departing with their friend. A phrase that has helped me on countless occasions is, “I need your help,” and you might want to think about using it yourself next time you’re trying to convince someone to act a certain way. Asking for help seems to disarm people, and the majority of folks become putty in your hand when you ask them for help.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“Certain dives on New York City’s Bowery offered as much as you could drink from a rubber hose connected to a liquor barrel until you had to stop to take a breath; this would set you back a mere three cents. For two cents more, however, certain places would provide a shot of whiskey and a woman to go with it.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“[A]s a generalization, drinks containing eggs; fruit juices; cream liqueurs, such as Baileys; or dairy products (cream, half-and-half, or milk) should be shaken, while clear drinks, such as the classic Martini or Manhattan, are usually stirred.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“At some point close to the year 1800, somebody created the world’s first cocktail.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“Violence was not uncommon in nineteenth-century bars. Customers at the Tiger Saloon in Eureka, Nevada, bore witness to a knife fight between “Hog-Eyed” Mary Irwin and “Bulldog” Kate Miller, and the owner of a joint in lower Manhattan, Gallus Mag, not only bit the ears off customers who got out of control but she also kept the trophies in jars of alcohol on display behind the bar.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“By the time the 1940s arrived, Americans had been introduced to the Bloody Mary. Vodka was being made in the States, though not many people knew much about it until around the middle of the decade, when Jack Morgan, the owner of the Cock and Bull Tavern in Los Angeles and an executive from the company that was making Smirnoff vodka, got together to create the Moscow Mule. Vodka would never look back.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“Caper berries also make good Martini garnishes, and I’ve even seen regular capers added to the drink, but the most common “other” Martini garnish is the pearl onion, again packed in brine, which turns the Martini into a Gibson.

The only real rule of thumb when using any of these berry-type garnishes is that an odd number of them must always be used: One olive is standard, three are acceptable, but two are verboten. This, I believe, comes from an old superstition, but I can’t find a good reference to it. The same rule, incidentally, applies to coffee beans when added to a glass of sambuca.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“The serious bartenders of the 1800s gave us the mixed-drink bases with which cocktailians still work today. The masters of the craft during the first century of cocktails formulated sours and the majority of other categorized drinks, and they learned to use liqueurs and other sweetening agents as substitutes for simple syrup. These barkeeps understood the importance of bitters, and they knew that balance was the key to any well-constructed drink.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“Simple Sours contain a base liquor, citrus juice, and a nonalcoholic sweetening agent, such as simple syrup, grenadine, or orgeat syrup.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“Of course, Americans did travel to Europe during Prohibition, and Craddock’s bar at the Savoy was a popular destination for them. While it’s more than likely that some new drinks created in Europe made their way back to the States during this time, one new creation stayed at home in Paris until the bars of America legally reopened their doors. That drink was a significant one. The Bloody Mary was first made in the 1920s by French bartender Fernand “Pete” Petiot, who first married vodka and tomato juice behind the stick at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“Ten cocktails are contained in the recipe section of Thomas’s 1862 book, and all of them contain bitters. Indeed, it would be decades before anyone dared give the name cocktail to a drink made without this ingredient.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“As far as I was concerned, Sex on the Beach was a Highball comprising vodka, peach schnapps, orange juice, and cranberry juice. It’s a fairly simple affair, and in its heyday it’s possible that it was ordered more for its name than for the quality of the mixture. But I found recipes from bartenders nationwide who were using melon liqueur, raspberry liqueur, and even scotch in their rendition of this drink.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“My belief is that it didn’t take too very long for the marketing mavens in the big drinks companies to recognize that bartenders are their best brand ambassadors, and since these companies tend to have deep pockets, they quickly started putting their money where it worked best for everyone concerned. They launched competitions with fabulous prizes, flew bartenders around the world to strut their stuff in all manner of exotic locations, and hired bartenders as educators and as marketers. In my opinion, without the support of the liquor industry, the craft cocktail revolution might well have died early.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“The American bartender of the ‘Gay Nineties’ was an institution. His fame spread to the four corners of the globe, and visitors to our shores from the continent bowed before his skill in concocting tempting mixtures of ‘liquid lightening.’ He was and still is in a class by himself. We may go to Europe for our chefs, but Europe comes to us for its bartenders,” wrote W. C. Whitfield in his 1939 book Just Cocktails.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“On May 13, 1806, the Balance and Columbian Repository of Hudson, New York, answered a reader’s query as to the nature of a cocktail: “Cocktail is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters—it is vulgarly called a bittered sling.” The cocktail had been born, it had been defined, and yet it couldn’t have been very well known by the general populace, or the newspaper wouldn’t have considered it a fit topic for elucidation.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“One practice that faded from fashion about a hundred years ago is the custom of topping drinks, especially those made with crushed ice, with mounds of berries and small slices of other fruits, such as strawberries and bananas. In the days when these drinks were served at first-class bars, the customers were provided with short spoons with which to eat the fruit—it’s a practice I’d love to see return to the barrooms of America.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“Colonel William F. Cody, otherwise known as “Buffalo Bill,” was also a regular at the old Waldorf Astoria, and he was well known for never refusing a drink on another man’s tab—when asked, he would say, “Sir, you speak the language of my tribe.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“Craddock is also credited with saying that the best way to drink a cocktail is “quickly, while it’s laughing at you!”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“[T]wo drinks from the nineteenth century that did stand the test of time emanated from this side of the Atlantic: the Sazerac and the Ramos Gin Fizz are both New Orleans creations.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“Embury was the first true cocktailian of the modern age, and he took time to analyze the components of a cocktail, breaking them down into a base (usually a spirit, it must be at least 50 percent of the drink); a modifying, smoothing, or aromatizing agent, such as vermouth, bitters, fruit juice, sugar, cream, or eggs; and “additional special flavoring and coloring ingredients,” which he defined as liqueurs and nonalcoholic fruit syrups.

Embury taught us that the Ramos Gin Fizz must be shaken for at least five minutes in order to achieve the proper silky consistency, suggested that Peychaud’s bitters be used in the Rob Roy, and noted that “for cocktails, such as the Side Car, a three-star cognac is entirely adequate, although a ten-year-old cognac will produce a better drink.”

In the second edition of his book, Embury mentioned that he had been criticized for omitting two drinks from his original work: the Bloody Mary, which he described as “strictly vile,” and the Moscow Mule, as “merely mediocre.”

On the subject of Martinis, he explained that although most cocktail books call for the drink to be made with one-third to one-half vermouth, “quite recently, in violent protest of this wishy-washy type of cocktail, there has sprung up the vermouth-rinse method of making Martinis.” He describes a drink made from chilled gin in a cocktail glass coated in vermouth. Embury didn’t approve of either version, and went on to say that a ratio of seven parts gin to one part vermouth was his personal favorite.

While Embury was taking his drinking seriously, many Americans were quaffing Martinis by the pitcher, and Playboy magazine commissioned cocktail maven Thomas Mario and, later, Emanuel Greenberg to deliver cocktail news to a nation of people who drank for fun, and did it on a regular basis. Esquire magazine issued its Handbook for Hosts as early as 1949, detailing drinks such as the Sloe Gin Fizz, the Pan American, the “I Died Game, Boys” Mixture, and the Ginsicle—gin with fruit juice or simple syrup poured over chipped ice in a champagne glass. A cartoon in the book depicts a frustrated bartender mopping his fevered brow and exclaiming, “She ordered it because it had a cute name.”

The world of cocktails was tilting slightly on its axis, and liquor companies lobbied long and hard to get into the act. In the fifties, Southern Comfort convinced us to make Comfort Manhattans and Comfort Old-Fashioneds by issuing a booklet: How to Make the 32 Most Popular Drinks.

By the seventies, when the Comfort Manhattan had become the Improved Manhattan, they were bringing us Happy Hour Mixology Plus a Primer of Happy Hour Astrology, presumably so we would have something to talk about at bars: “Oh, you’re a Virgo—discriminating, keenly analytical, exacting, and often a perfectionist. Wanna drink?”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“[A]ccording to Hell’s Best Friend, by Jan Holden, if you were unfortunate enough to order a Manhattan at the Humboldt in Grays Harbor, Washington, the owner, Fred Hewett (who apparently didn’t much care for anyone who drank cocktails), would pour a mixture of whiskey, gin, rum, brandy, aquavit, and bitters into a beer mug, top it up with beer, and stir it with his finger before handing it to you.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“[H]e cannot be drunken or dirty; the slightest dubiousness is quick to exile him to the police force, journalism, the oyster boats or some other Siberia of the broken.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“Sidney E. Klein, a union organizer in Manhattan during the twenties, says that cocktails just weren’t the point when bibbers of the time went out on the town, and that most people just wanted the “straight stuff.” Although this doesn’t mean that Martinis weren’t made and Manhattans left the face of the earth, it certainly wasn’t a period when bartenders could be very creative.

The new drinks that did appear during this era were mostly fashioned in Europe, where at least a few American bartenders fled to pursue their careers.

Harry Craddock was one such man. He started work as a bartender at the Savoy Hotel, London, in 1925, and compiled The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930), in which he admonished bartenders, “Shake the shaker as hard as you can: don’t just rock it: you are trying to wake it up, not send it to sleep!” Craddock is also credited with saying that the best way to drink a cocktail is “quickly, while it’s laughing at you!”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“The purpose of grouping these drinks together, though, is not merely for the sake of giving them somewhere to hang their hats. In many cases, listing these drinks and their ingredients one under the other—as you will see in the various charts beginning on this page—makes whole strings of drinks far easier to memorize. Once you know the formula for, say, New Orleans Sours, the family in which you’ll find the Margarita and the Sidecar, you will understand that the Kamikaze is just a vodka-based Margarita and that the Cosmopolitan, using citrus vodka as a base, follows the same formula, with just a little cranberry juice thrown in for color.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition

“Dale DeGroff took over the bar at New York’s legendary Rainbow Room in 1987, and a star was born. DeGroff brought us classics such as The Ritz—cognac, Cointreau, maraschino, lemon juice, and champagne—and the Fitzgerald: gin, lemon juice, simple syrup, and Angostura bitters. He worked tirelessly for his well-earned reputation as the consummate craft bartender. His perfectionism caught the eye of the media, and eventually thousands of bartenders would hold Dale up as a shining example of how to tend bar in the classic mode. Now he is probably the best-known American cocktailian of our time.”
― Gary Regan, The Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft, Revised & Updated Edition