About Good Drinks
"To those who enjoy the snug club rooms, that they may learn the art of preparing for themselves what is good."
—Tom Bullock
Remember when drinks were made from good, natural ingredients? Yeah, me neither. In fact, I remember at age six, pig-tailed and bell-bottomed, staring at the label of my beloved, and for these purposes, un-named popular soda and asking my mom what "benzaldehyde" was. Laughing, she said "I have no idea," in that tone of voice that parents use when they think you're so cute for asking where God comes from. Then she took a big swig of her own soda.
Yes, mine was a youth filled lots of love, happiness, and artificial flavoring. Those were the days! You couldn't swing a cat in the grocery store without hitting something loaded with high fructose corn syrup. As I grew older, my label reading habits never waned. But I still never found out what benzaldehyde was and eventually, just decided the only safe thing to drink was water.
Fast forward to my college years. Whoohoo! Par-TAY! Finally I am so grown up drinking things like margaritas. But some of my old questions started coming up again. Why is this so sweet? Why does it seem to glow in the dark? I didn't understand why mixed drinks couldn't be made with just real juice instead of those cloyingly sweet mixers.
Now fast forward again, it's me in NYC. I'm partying cuz it's 1999. A friend introduced me to Milk & Honey, where a bartender named Sasha was making cocktails with whole hand-crafted ingredients. And before you could say "simple syrup" a whole movement took over.
Call it health conscious, call it mixology, at its heart it's a shared interest in getting back to basics and creating balance. Just like Tom Bullock made for his patrons 100 years ago, we're finally back to making good drinks from good ingredients. Because margaritas aren't supposed to glow in the dark.
