Do you know a Tom Collins?

How to stock a home bar, a brief history of gin, and three boozy beverages to experiment with.

Hi there!  Welcome to the first issue of Quarantine Cocktail Club, by Anna Callahan.  This edition will give you a little bit of everything, from how to stock a home bar, to the gin craze that plagued 18th-century England, and of course, here by popular demand, a dispatch from my dad. As promised, I’ve included three tried-and-tested recipes for you to experiment with this weekend. Issue #1 ended up being gin themed, so I hope you’re a fan. Let’s dive right in.

How to Stock a Home Bar

A strategically stocked bar cart is essential for expanding your mixology expertise.  Note that I used the word strategic – not expensive or expansive.  If you’re quarantined in your parents’ house, not quite of age yet, or simply (understandably) aren’t interested in balling out on alcohol, your home bar will probably need to consist of a small but reliable variety of ingredients, at least to begin with.  But with a few decent quality liquors along with standard household ingredients and maybe a liqueur or two, you can cover a lot of ground.  Here are some tips to stocking up, whether you’re starting from scratch or adding to an existing selection. 

ALCOHOL.  Start with the basics – you can make a lot of drinks with only two or three types.   If you’re a traditionalist, go with vodka, gin, and whiskey (bourbon or rye – Irish and Scotch whiskeys are less versatile).  If you’re a Distrito Happy Hour devotee, try vodka, tequila, and white rum.  Personally, I’d rather drink a negroni than a pina colada, but I also love a spicy marg every once in a while to keep things interesting.  If I were starting from scratch, I’d choose vodka, gin, bourbon, and tequila or mezcal.  

LIQUEURS.  I know that many of you are probably Aperol Spritz fans...I am here to tell you that you shouldn’t be, and I’m making it my personal mission to convert you.  Biases aside, if you’re interested in adding an alcoholic liqueur to your home bar, Campari is a much more versatile and exciting choice.  With Aperol you can make a spritz and a few other niche concoctions, but with Campari, you can make negronis, americanos, milano-torinos, boulevardiers...the world is your oyster.  Not to mention you can use some of it in Melissa Clark’s iconic Campari Olive Oil Cake that literally transports you to the Amalfi Coast with one bite.  

BITTERS & GARNISHES.  Both of these components are critical in very different ways. A dash of bitters has the ability to tie together a drink that would otherwise taste like an amateur mess, whereas a creative garnish adds visual appeal that tricks people into thinking that you know what you’re doing.  If possible, try to keep your fridge stocked with limes, oranges, lemons, and grapefruits (listed in order of importance).  Berries are an occasional nice touch, but far less essential.  In terms of bitters, I’d do some research and figure out if the recipes you’re interested in making tend to ask for Angostura or Orange Bitters more, and make your choice accordingly.  Bitters are cheap when purchased in small bottles, last forever, and can be ordered on Amazon so you can’t really go wrong. 

MIXERS. To start, you really only need club soda or seltzer. If you’re a G&T devotee, add tonic water to your list. If you like Moscow mules, add ginger beer.

TOOLS.  In terms of equipment, you don’t need much.  It’s convenient to have a spread of high tech bartending tools, but you can make do perfectly fine with a mason jar with a screw-on lid as a shaker, a 1.5-oz shot glass (make sure you measure the capacity first to double-check) or even a measuring cup as a jigger, a small french rolling pin as a muddler, and perhaps a small household strainer.  

And that’s it!  Okay, well, that’s actually kind of a lot, especially if you’re starting from scratch.  If you want to start small, you can just pick a few of your favorite drink recipes, purchase the ingredients, and build from there.  Here’s a graphic I made that might help you determine your “cocktail type” and choose how to stock your home bar accordingly:

Tag yourself, I’m a Maximalist (is anyone surprised?). Now that that’s taken care of, let's get acquainted with some of the key players in the cocktail world…

Meet the Cast: Gin

Meet the Cast is a recurring segment in which I’ll share interesting stories about the liquors we consume often, yet know so little about. 

This week, we’re talking about gin, perhaps the alcohol with the most storied and fascinating past.  At one point, gin caused the near-destruction of 18th-century British society in a craze comparable to the American crack epidemic of the 1980s.  Gin is an acetic, woody alcohol created from the distillation of juniper berries, which is less of a berry and more of a hard bluish seed cone of a scrubby-looking evergreen tree.  Juniper berries were originally used in a Dutch spirit called ‘genever’ as early as the 16th century, but the first recorded instance of the word ‘gin’ was in a book published in England in 1917.  Rumor has it that the Brits were always too drunk to use the original Dutch name, so they shortened it, and that’s where gin got its name.  

At the dawn of the 18th century, British King William of Orange (hellooo AP European History!) heavily taxed French wine and cognac at the same time that he passed The Corn Laws, which slashed taxes on domestic spirit production.  As a result, everyone and their mother started a gin distillery as a side hustle, leading to a lot of gin of suspect quality floating around impoverished cities.  And by suspect, I don’t just mean a little off.  Turpentine, sulphuric acid, and even sawdust were frequently added to distillations as “flavor enhancers”.  Some frequent pub-goers reported blindness, insanity, and even death from gin consumption.  The poor were driven to drink by the hopeless lack of social mobility of 18th-century society while the elites leisurely sipped stylish cocktails and watched underclass society unravel.  It took a tragic accident for Parliament to take action. In 1750, a London woman in a gin-induced mental breakdown killed her own child and sold his clothes to purchase alcohol, and the story sent the city whirling. In 1751, Parliament passed The Gin Act, which increased taxes and outlawed the unregulated production of the spirit.

These engravings by William Hogarth compared orderly, productive Beer Street with chaotic Gin Lane and were circulated to increase public support of The Gin Act.

Another fun gin fact is how our old friend the gin and tonic made its entrance into the cocktail world.  During the 19th century, the Brits routinely deployed their navy to the then-colony of India, which had a high risk of malaria.  By 1820, medical professionals had discovered that quinine could effectively prevent and treat malaria, but the drug, a liquid extracted from tree bark, was revoltingly bitter and difficult for even navy sailors to palate.  That is, until Schweppes developed tonic water, in which quinine is a key component.  On these long voyages around Africa, British sailors spent a lot of their free time drinking, and preferred gin over beer because the latter tended to spoil in warmer temperatures.  And as you might guess, limes were also staples on board these ships to ward off scurvy.  So there you have it – tonic water to prevent malaria, limes to prevent scurvy, and gin to prevent...well, sadness I guess, were all present on these naval ships, so sailors experimented with mixing them all together.  Behold, the birth of the G&T – a cure for all 19th-century ailments. 

Dad Dispatch: Sinkdrinker

Dad Dispatch is a recurring segment by my father, a retired magazine editor who wrote about wines and spirits for GQ. When I ask him mixology-related questions, the answers are typically followed by long stories from “the golden age of magazines,” so I figured I’d share them.

My first introduction to gin was by my Aunt Helen when I was about 10. In those days, even I knew that cocktails were for social occasions with friends and family, particularly on hot summer days but that drinking alone, in the winter no less, was somehow...not proper. Especially for ladies. This was in the 1950s.

“Auntie,” as I was raised to call her, was a determinedly independent woman who, like my father, was orphaned by the time she was 12, put herself through nursing school in the Great Depression and by the 1950s was the administrator (COO) of a major regional hospital in Dover, NH. She never married.

She bought a new convertible every year (one memorable year it was red), had a number suitors but loved her nephew best and spoiled him rotten. When I visited her at her apartment for a sleepover, there was always a wrapped gift, extra helpings of ice cream, and — on special occasions — a banana cream pie.

After work, she would pour herself an ample shot of straight gin that she would sip as she prepared our dinner. And I would tease her with a sing-song refrain: “Aunt-tees Drink-ing, Aunt-ies Drink-ing...”

“No, I’m not,” she would always correct me with exaggerated mortification. “I’m sipping and standing at the sink. I’m a ‘sinkdrinker’ and that’s different.” 

“Sinkdrinker” was a joke we shared repeatedly, including, to her delight, the last time I visited her in the hospital when she was 79.

Cocktails of the Week

In each issue, I’ll include two to three cocktail recipes that cover a range of complexity and ingredients in hopes that you’ll be able to make at least one of them.  You can save these recipe cards to your camera roll for easy reference. And if you do follow any of these recipes, I’d love to see them! You can text me or DM photos to @quarantinecocktailclub_ on Instagram.

Well, I know what my first question is.  Who is Tom Collins, and how did his drink become nearly as ubiquitous as the G&T?  It turns out the backstory is a really, really, really stupid and outdated Victorian-era joke.  Basically, if you were out at the pub and wanted to prank your drunk friend, you’d very solemnly approach them and say “Hey, do you know a Tom Collins? Apparently he’s been talking shit about you, just thought you should know.” If you were convincing enough, your drunk friend would start going around to everyone in the bar trying to find this fictional shit-talker until he’d pick a fight with someone.  And that’s the whole joke.  But apparently it KILLED in the 1870s.  People thought it was so funny that songs and newspaper articles were written about this fictional Tom Collins.  Naming a drink after the joke, however, was the genius marketing move by some unknown bartender.  Sick of all of the drunk men stumbling in asking if anyone knew a Tom Collins, the bartender could slap a gin and soda down on the table and say, “Yeah, he’s right here,” and then charge the drunk guy for it.  The recipe above is a riff off of the classic Tom Collins recipe – the original doesn’t include lime juice or strawberries, and suffice to say, this version is much more appetizing.

The Negroni has got to be the hottest comeback cocktail out there.  According to my mother, these have not been the most fashionable beverage choice until relatively recently.  They’re a fantastic choice – classic, balanced, and definitely more impressive and obscure than whatever the frat boy you’re on a date with will ask for. The drink reportedly originated at a bar in Florence called Caffe Casoni in 1919.  Legend has it that a Count named Camillo Negroni asked the bartender, Forsco Scarselli, to add a kick to his go-to cocktail, the Americano.  Scarselli replaced the soda water with gin and added an orange garnish, and the drink took off.  Before long, everyone was coming into the bar for a ‘Negroni.’

If you’re thinking, “what a weird name, I’ve definitely never heard of it,” that would be because it’s a Callahan original.  The Champagne Cocktail Remix is basically a combination between a classic Champagne Cocktail (hence the cringeworthy denomination) and a Kir Royale, which is champagne with a bit of Chambord or crème de cassis dropped to the bottom of the glass (both delicious, by the way).  I initially tested this without crème de cassis and it was good, so don’t fret if you don’t have any on hand. To make your own brown simple syrup, here’s a super-quick recipe:

That’s all for this week! I hope you enjoyed our first issue. If you did, share QCC with your friends and give us a follow on Instagram so you don’t miss anything. Lastly, I’d love to hear any feedback you have about ways I can make Issue #2 even more engaging and informative, so if you have any ideas, please let me know by filling out this form.

Cheers!

Anna