That Magical Cedilla, How Easily It’s Erased

Long before we knew what cocktails were, or knew how to construct them in our own house, we had a bottle of curaçao. I think it was blue curaçao. Before we moved I drank it just to get rid of it. It tasted orange.

I only realized tonight that the very strange thing is how idiotic we once were about cocktails. Jen said it was because we were young and had stupid money to spend on cocktails in actual places, but that doesn’t make sense to me: we knew literally fucking nothing about drinking cocktails, and looking back, it’s unclear we ever drank cocktails at home. What the fuck? And I’m talking, like, 2009 or 2010 or something, not like 1976.

Part of doing cocktails at home is to subvert the mixologistic paradigm of the “lounge”; it’s ridiculous to pay 12, 15, 18 dollars for one lousy drink. The other part is to understand what you don’t actually know; there’s nothing artistic about mixing one ounce, one ounce, one ounce of this or that. That shouldn’t require a premium. Some of this other shit you encounter is different: house-tinctured tinctures mixed in single batches is labor intensive; of course I’ll bite. Which is to say, mixing your own drinks makes you a better consumer. Embrace it. “Now go start your own cocktail lounge.”

Jen was tasked with drink research, in preparation for doing our taxes. She found the Honeymoon Cocktail in the PDT book (page 143). It was good, if lemony. The base was apple brandy (Applejack), followed by equal parts orange curaçao, Bénédictine and lemon juice. It’s a vintage recipe, from 1916. We used some off brand Grand Marnier knockoff instead of curaçao.