Boozehound (4 page)

After finishing our ice water, we went up to his office, where his wife Sue had laid out our morning tasting on white paper. That day, we were to taste three cognacs from Martell: Cordon Bleu ($85); XO ($129); and Creation Grand Extra ($299). Pacult only tastes in the morning, usually beginning around 8:30, and will never taste more than eight spirits in a session. He uses a spittoon and rarely swallows. This surprised me—up until that point, spitting had run completely counter to my own tasting strategies.

As he opened a template for his next issue of
Spirits Journal
on the computer, he said, “It would be the easiest thing in the world to become a complete lush. But I’m remarkably abstemious. It’s crucial to our industry, because spirits are already more negatively viewed. At the drop of a hat, temperance and Prohibition could all be back again. In America, things can tip just like that.”

We sat together in desk chairs in front of the computer and went through his methodology. First, appearance. We held our glasses up to the light. “Now, this to me is a burnished orange. Topaz,” Pacult said of the Cordon Bleu. “This has impeccable purity.” Pacult writes his newsletters as he tastes, and he said these immediate reactions generally stand as his reviews. For Cordon Bleu, he typed, “topaz” and “impeccable purity.”

Next, he held up the XO. “Oh my, is that sediment?” He frowned. “Oh, my, my, my. That’s a shame. I love Martell, but it is what it is.” He typed, “Pretty chestnut color is marred somewhat by floating debris.” Pacult was similarly crestfallen at a bit of sediment in the Creation Grand Extra. Only upon a third inspection could I see a speck of sediment. “Look,” he said, “no one would ever notice this except for a maniac like me.”

Smell came next, the sense that Pacult insisted is the most important in experiencing spirits. We started again with the Cordon Bleu. “Mmm. First whiff gives me nuts,” he said. “Next, I smell dried flowers, almost like in a yearbook.” He typed, “Sophisticated scent, mature.”

We smelled the XO and Pacult said he got “pears, grapes, and an oily, buttery scent” on this first whiff. And then “cherries, dried strawberry, white chocolate, and prunes.” He typed, “Mature yet owns the promise of youthfulness.”

By now, I was playing along, and said that I was smelling dates. “Dates!” Pacult shouted and typed, “My friend Jason who’s tasting with me says ‘dates.’ ”

Finally, we got to actually tasting the three cognacs. Pacult took the glass of Cordon Bleu, sipped, rolled it around in his mouth a little, and spit. I took a sip and swallowed. He rubbed his hands together, moaning in ecstasy. “Sexy, sexy stuff. I have to say, I would bathe in Cordon Bleu if I could afford it.” He typed, “Slow, languid … with a prune/raisin flavor that’s silky and rich.”

Next was the XO. “This spirit is a little prickly,” he said. “I like that. This is not Mountain Dew. This is supposed to have a little kickback.” He took another sip, rolled it on his tongue, and spit. “It’s never hot, though. Or even the slightest bit rough.” He typed, “Round, luxurious, and slightly coffeelike in its bittersweet approach at midpalate.”

He looked up from the computer and began swirling the third glass. “I think I like the Cordon Bleu better. But jeez, what are we talking about here?”

Finally, we tasted the Creation Grand Extra. After I took my swallow, I ventured a meek opinion, in the form of a question. “Do I taste bitter chocolate here?”

“Yes,” Pacult answered. “You know, I taste, like … a cocoa pod.” He typed, “Concludes extended, but dry and cocoa bean–like. Superbly satisfying at every step.”

As Pacult saved the newsletter file and started cleaning up, he told me that the Cordon Bleu would receive five stars, and that the XO and Creation Grand Extra would receive four or five stars, even with the offending sediment. How was he so immediately sure, I wanted to know. It’s just one man’s opinion, he said. Of course, this man estimates he’s tasted more than twenty thousand spirits over his career. “I don’t think I really hit my stride as a taster until about fifteen years into this, tasting every day,” he said. “The only reason I can do this at all is that I’ve built up a library of impressions. Fifteen years of data is in my head. Anyone can do this, provided you’re willing to put in the time.”

After the tasting, we sat out on the patio while I drank another glass of ice water, then I bid him adieu. I wasn’t exactly drunk—I’d been very careful, since I had several hours’ drive home. But I was really hungry. The only thing I could find on the way to the highway was a McDonald’s, and so I followed my expensive cognac tasting with a five-piece Chicken Select with barbecue sauce and a large fries. As I ate inside my car, in the parking lot, I did the math on how much catching up I’d have to do before I’d be able to duplicate Paul Pacult’s memory library of twenty thousand spirits. I am nowhere near an abstemious person, and so I shuddered to imagine that I actually might die before I even came close to drinking twenty thousand spirits.

No, no, no, I thought. I’d have to find a different way of going about this. It’s all fine and well that Pacult can confidently make a split-second distinction between a four-star spirit and five-star spirit. But what does it mean to most people that a spirit is “prickly” or “silky and rich” or that it tastes of “Danish and black raisins”? If I tell people that a cognac is “mature yet owns the promise of youthfulness,” will they now understand what I mean? Do
I
understand what that means? No, this was no way to change people’s hearts and minds and introduce them to the wide world of flavors. This was too much like the language of wine, and so many critics had already ruined the enjoyment of wine. I wasn’t going to be an accomplice in that sort of thing when it came to spirits.

No, I needed to go out into the world and taste. I needed to continue the journey that began so long ago in my parents’ kitchen pantry.

A Round of Drinks:
Old-Time Tastes

It seems patently unfair—rude, in fact—to have started talking about booze without actually fixing any drinks. So allow me to break this narrative for a moment, step behind the bar, and offer you, dear reader, both a cocktail and a few thoughts. If you’re going to make it through two hundred–plus pages with me, you’ll probably be needing a few more cocktails. Consider these chapter-ending interludes as sort of like big, boozy endnotes. (And if you happen to need a bit more cocktail-making advice, on anything from stocking your bar to glassware to the proper way to garnish with a citrus peel twist, be sure to turn to the
appendix
.)

Since the Stinger is the first real cocktail I ever enjoyed, with that dapper gentleman in the hotel bar, it is the first drink I will pour. Years after that day, I learned that the Stinger is traditionally served straight up and not on the rocks. This means, of course, that my mentor was wrong. But no matter. I still take my Stinger on ice.

Sometimes, I’ll even add a dash of absinthe to the mix. I mean, now that I’ve spent my sixty dollars on a bottle (and realized that Toulouse-Lautrec and I do not share the same taste in spirits), I’ve looked for ways to utilize it. Anyway, with a dash of absinthe it’s called a Stinger Royale. That’s how Reginald Vanderbilt liked his, which is probably why the Stinger has always been considered a high-society drink.

A 1923 profile of Vanderbilt (quoted by historian David Wondrich in his entertaining book
Imbibe!
) describes the Stinger as “a short drink with a long reach, a subtle blending of ardent nectars, a boon to friendship, a dispeller of care.” I would add that the Stinger, with or without absinthe, is the perfect drink for after dinner, after lunch, or after breakfast. It always amazes me how much I like this drink, because it uses one of the most cloying and loathed liqueurs in the bar: crème de menthe (always white, never the yucky green stuff). The cognac, however, is key.

STINGER ROYALE

Serves 1

2 ounces cognac

½ ounce white crème de menthe

1 dash absinthe

Lemon peel twist, for garnish

Fill a shaker two-thirds full with ice. Add the cognac, crème de menthe, and absinthe. Shake well, then strain into either a chilled cocktail glass (if you like being correct) or into an old-fashioned glass with 3 or 4 ice cubes (if you like a nicer drink). Garnish with the lemon peel twist.

Cognac remains a mystery to most, even though it had its run of popularity in the mid-2000s, driven primarily by hip-hop culture. Remember Busta Rhymes’s “Pass the Courvoisier”? Remember cognac being referred to as ’
Nyak
? Remember Crunk Juice, that blend of cognac and energy drinks like Red Bull that rappers like Lil Jon were always raving about? (I don’t blame you if you tried to forget about Crunk Juice.)

Even during cognac’s pop cultural moment, most people still couldn’t tell you what it was. Quite simply, it’s a brandy produced in the Cognac, France, Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC) following a three-hundred-year-old tradition that calls for at least 90 percent Ugni Blanc, Folle Blanche, or Colombard wine grapes to be distilled in copper pots. So, what’s an AOC? It’s a designation that ensures a wine or spirit (or certain other foodstuffs) adheres to quality standards in agricultural and production processes, but most importantly has its origin in a specific geographic area. Basically, a brandy produced outside the cognac AOC, or by a different method, cannot be called cognac.

Most cognacs are created by blending numerous vintages and ages. The alphabet stew of cognac classifications—VS, VSOP, XO—seems confusing, but trust me, it really isn’t. VS means “very special,” with the youngest eau-de-vie in the blend no less than two years old. VSOP means “very superior old pale,” with the youngest eau-de-vie at least four years old. XO means “extra old,” with the youngest eau-de-vie at least six years old. Yes, the really good stuff can be prohibitively priced. Most of the cognac sold in the United States is either VS or VSOP. A decent VSOP will set you back forty to fifty dollars—and this is what I’d recommend in a Stinger.

I’d also recommend a VSOP cognac in another old-school drink, the Sazerac, created in Antoine Peychaud’s pharmacy in early-nineteenth-century New Orleans. The Sazerac (named after a then-popular brand of cognac) may actually be the origin of the word
cocktail
—Peychaud served it in an egg cup called a
coquetier
, and legend has it that a mispronunciation of this word stuck. It is also now the official drink of New Orleans, made so by a vote of the Louisiana legislature in June 2008. These days, most people use rye whiskey in a Sazerac, but I like the original nineteenth-century version, with cognac. And, of course, always use Peychaud’s bitters.

SAZERAC

Serves 1

1 sugar cube

3 dashes Peychaud’s bitters

1½ ounces cognac or rye whiskey

¼ ounce absinthe

Lemon peel twist, for garnish

Take two old-fashioned glasses. Pack one with ice to chill it. Combine the sugar cube and bitters in the other, with a splash of water; muddle until the sugar dissolves. Add the cognac and an ice cube or two; stir to mix well.

Discard the ice from the packed old-fashioned glass; add the absinthe and swirl just to coat the chilled glass, pouring out any that remains. Strain the cognac mixture into the chilled glass. Twist the lemon peel over the drink, rub it around the rim of the glass, then use it as a garnish.

Finally, perhaps my favorite use of cognac and absinthe—as well as a spirit called Dubonnet—is in the Phoebe Snow, named after one of the most famous advertising mascots of the twentieth century. Phoebe Snow was a fictional woman in flowing white who extolled the virtues of the “clean” anthracite rail travel on the Lackawanna Railroad: “Says Phoebe Snow/about to go/upon a trip to Buffalo/‘My gown stays white/from morn til night/upon the Road of Anthracite.’ ” Why someone named this particular drink—which is brownish red—after Phoebe Snow is anyone’s guess. With its French ingredients, perhaps it’s what one bartender imagined a sophisticated lady, dressed in white, would sip in a dining car on the Lackawanna Railroad.

PHOEBE SNOW

Serves 1

1½ ounces cognac

1½ ounces Dubonnet