Fraters Libertas

the sensation your hopeful taste buds have been anticipating

To research my post on martinis last week I pulled a book off the shelf behind my bar called the Official Mixer's Manual . It was originally published in 1934 and I found the publisher's introduction fascinating. Keep in mind that this is an intro to what is essentially a cocktail recipe book. Today it would be so dumbed down to the reading level of the intended audience that it would be meaningless. But it was written at a time when it was assumed that readers could not only understand it, but that they would appreciate it as well. The sentences are lengthy and chock full of descriptive phrases and ten-dollar words. Ninety percent of the writers for the Minneapolis Star Tribune could not craft such a piece today, and even if they did an editor would slice and dice it until it was unrecognizable. Enjoy this glimpse of what is an increasingly lost art.

It has seemed to us that since the return of legal liquor, there has been a very genuine and widely felt need for a standard book on drinks, a book that could be relied on in any bibulous contingency both by the ambitious amateur and by the seasoned professional bartender. It is not only that once again good liquor is available, but also various ingredients that have been merely myth and legend to the younger generation of celebrants, such as Chartreuse or Amer Picon, have returned to the enjoyment of that respect and appreciation that was formerly accorded them by an unshackled public.

It is trite, but it is nonetheless accurate, to say that conditions have changed greatly in the last fifteen years. Good roads and good automobiles have made us almost a nomadic people. The evening frequently finds us two hundred or more miles from where we woke up in the morning. Nevertheless, although in the stay-at-home era a Bacardi cocktail was a Barcadi cocktail whether you drank it in Schenectady or Memphis, we have, under the pressure of circumstance and the necessity for make-shift and compromise, lost that much-to-be-desired homogeneity.

This book is published, therefore, in the hope that it will contribute at least a little to the standardization of drinks and to the promotion of that happy state of affairs where, when you order your favorite cocktail, you will get exactly the sensation your hopeful taste buds have been anticipating, no matter what corner of this bright and beautiful land you happen to be inhabiting. We consider ourselves extremely fortunate in having secured for this purpose the services of Patrick Gavin Duffy, one of the most colorful figures and celebrated bartenders of the halcyon days. In conclusion, we can only say that, as a devout gesture to a glorious tradition, we submit the Official Mixer's Manual to all bartenders of America, both experienced and experimental; and hope that they will join with us in drinking a Patrick Gavin Duffy Punch in honor of the distinguished author.

After the publisher's introduction the honorable Mr. Duffy has a forward with some advice that today's generation of bartenders would do well to heed:

Bartending is an old and honorable trade. It is not a profession and I have no sympathy with those who try to make it anything but what it was. The idea of calling a bartender a professor or mixologist is nonsense.

In the many years that I have tended bar, I have learned a few lessons that may be of some benefit to bartenders of the near future. The barkeeper should be neatly shaved, and his hands and nails should be immaculately clean. A good bartender wears a fresh white linen coat, and I personally fancy a carnation. I hope, in the better bars, to see the old tradition of the trade revived. At the Ashland House, for instance, where I had charge twelve years, four barmen in spotless white, wearing carnations in their lapels, were ranged in their appointed stations behind the long, highly-polished bar. When a customer approached, a little napkin of Irish linen was placed on the counter in front of him. A gleaming glass, suitable for the drink he ordered, was set before him, and the bartender than rapidly mixed the drink.

I cannot too much deplore the custom, which has become prevalent of late of free and general conversation between bartenders and patrons. The bartender should answer civilly and briefly every reasonable question that is put to him, but he should not enter into protracted conversation with the customers. Mr. Brockway, the proprietor of the Ashland House had one of the most distinguished bars of the old days, and he was in the habit of discharging immediately any barkeeper whom he found indulging in unnecessary conversation across the counter.

Amen to that brother. One of the truly sad things about the closing of local brewpub Sherlock's Home last year was losing the quality staff of bartenders who served there for many a year. They wore white shirts and bow ties and were consummate professionals unlike so many of their bartending brethren these days.