Post #396735 by Cammo on Sat, Jul 26, 2008 2:44 PM

UPDATE!

Vermouth is a type of WINE! So 'Cocktails' in fact include wine drinks! They have to.

And - I've gone over my old copy of David Embury's "The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks" and remembered why it's the last book I consult on any matter concerning drinks. It constantly contradicts itself, dismisses the Zombie as an advertising fraud, touts the Dry Martini as the greatest cocktail ever concieved, and then heaps condescending repugnance on Vodka, because it is a cheap flavorless grain alcohol. (Just like the Martini's gin, which is basically a flavored grain alcohol.)

The book is great for three reasons, though - one, he tries (without success) to reduce drinks to their basic components and group them into families. Second, he unknowingly shows us exactly what the public thought of cocktails in 1948. (the book's original publishing date)

**And third, he again unknowingly opens up a gigantic question and poses perhaps the most earth-shattering insight into the history of making mixed drinks, perhaps the biggest most breathtaking insight of all time, an idea that literally shakes the very foundations of bartending and how we think and conceive of the very act of DRINKING ITSELF, such an enormous idea that I can't bring myself to look at it directly, it's so scary huge. And Tiki Drinks are at the very core of this idea, because simply stated, in the long history of all drink mixing . . .

Tiki drinks may be the ONLY TRUE COCKTAILS.**