The School of Sophisticated Drinking: Interview
In the lead up to the season of indulgence, we travel to Berlin to take in new book The School of Sophisticated Drinking, a cultural and historical background to seven spirits, and to get some expert mixology tips.
“What do you like? Whisky? Champagne? Gin?”
We climb the U-Bahn steps, up onto a chilly Potsdamer Straße. Then, with jackets held tight and heads tucked in around frosted breath, stride past shops and theatres. Right past the inconspicuous Victoria Bar actually, where we are supposed to be, before looping back round and into this esteemed den of drinking.
The Victoria is Berlin's premier cocktail bar, trailblazing since 2001 when the city had a sparse cocktail culture. The slosh and rattle of alcohol shaken with ice stands out amongst the general burr of a well-oiled bar team as we're invited over to sit down with the bar owners, and welcoming hosts, Kerstin Ehmer and Stefan Weber. Their table is set with four glasses and a carafe of sparkling water. This does not bode well, at all. Then we are asked, “So what do you like?”
We've gone all gonzo and are dropping in on the bar in an attempt to replace dry words and flat images with something a little more… fluid. Ehmer and her friend Beate Hindermann (currently mixing, shaking and pouring behind the bar) have just seen their book, The School of Sophisticated Drinking, translated into English. Taken in part from a lecture series they conduct on Sundays in the back of the bar, it is an intoxicating social and cultural history of seven spirits. You can probably guess which they are, but for the avoidance of doubt, the magnificent seven are brandy, whisky, gin, vodka, rum and tequila. Oh, and champagne somehow slips in to fill the line-up.
For professional purposes only, to loosen lips and allow conversation to flow, we reluctantly agree to drinks. “This is a Highball,” says Victoria co-founder Stefan, explaining the long drinks placed before us. “A mix of bourbon, sherry, very little lemon juice and then filled up with soda water… that traditional mix of whisky and sherry, it goes very well.”
The history of alcohol
Suitably lubricated, we get down to brass tacks. The book. “If people ask me what the book is about,” starts Stefan, “one of my standard answers is that it’s about how alcohol changed the world, in a good way or a bad way. And how people changed the world in a good way or a bad way. And the effects of alcohol on those people.”
You see, booze has kept the world spinning throughout the centuries. You can learn just how through the many historical revelations laid out in the book. From the 16th century onwards it kept Russian state purses full and healthy, with around a third of the ruling household involved in the industry. Vodka, however, had less salubrious effects on the country’s population; a legacy evident in the drinking culture to this day (and for true lush literature, look beyond Bukowski, Hemingway and Lowry to Russian author Venedikt Yerofeyev and his spirit-soaked novel Moscow to the End of the Line).
“There were taxes on alcohol,” says Kerstin, “it was a government drug given to people… they forbade private distilling. It was like cows they were milking from these taxes… the Tsars made their people alcoholics, purposely in large parts.” Gorbachev’s 1980s anti-alcohol measures formed a hole that home distillation worked to fill. Eau de cologne, brake fluid and sugar soon starting to vanish from kitchens and garages. “Even in the US,” adds Kerstin, “you had this temperance movement, these very religious pilgrims and you have as a contradiction people looking for the classical freedom in America, the wild west, the free west.” It’s a battle still being fought to this day.
Stefan Weber (r) waxes lyrical about booze; The Skinny, definitely sober, listens on
Prohibition of alcohol seems to cause more damage than the demon drink ever could. An attempt to boil-wash America's morals throughout the 20s and 30s instead created the ideal conditions for organized crime, allowing groups to germinate and grow from petty gangs to empires which still exist today. Of course, it failed to curtail the drinkers. “Buñuel said that he had never been drinking so excessively as in the States during prohibition,” Kerstin offers. And of course the man who mixed the first legal Martini after those 13 dry years was none other than President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Anyway, time for another.
In an earlier email to Kerstin we’d unashamedly informed that brandy is our tipple. So, when Stefan offers a Sidecar, we're embarrassed to say it’s a first. “What the Martini is for gin, the Sidecar is for brandy,” he informs, having his team expertly serve up this blend of cognac and orange liqueur. Who are we to challenge? Our intrepid photographer has some wondrous mix of gin and Earl Gray tea, frothed with champagne, we think. It’s kinda hazy. Although this is a modern recipe, Stefan himself remains a traditionalist.
He says: “[It is the] same as in kitchens, ja? If you go for nouvelle cuisine you can get something that you don’t recognise anymore. Maybe it’s fantastic, but maybe you go to another five-star restaurant and they make it traditionalist style.” And while cocktails are moving in mysterious ways, including even into powdered form, Kerstin says, "It’s all variations of the same thing. Even if you have brand new cocktails, even a lot of the herbal stuff… it’s still in the old formula of the recipe. So if you have rosemary and honey, it’s still the sweetening part of a classical drink.”
The purpose of cocktails
There’s no denying the purpose of cocktails has changed through the ages, moving on from their 19th century origins when sugar or bitters were used to disguise shoddy booze. Kerstin explains: “Cocktails became a way not to make bad alcohol drinkable but to combine good alcohols with other good alcohols to create new aspects, to give it more complexity, or make it more refreshing, or make it easier to drink.”
And the fortunes and characters of each individual spirit have also wavered over the years. Clean, clear and refined gin was once the ruin of many a mother, with an annual UK per capita consumption of 1 gallon in the 1700s. This led in 1729 to The Gin Act, a legislative restriction on ‘Madame Geneva’ in a vain attempt to put an end to a squalid period known as the Gin Craze. The Craze's nadir was the 1734 case of Judith Defour, who strangled her daughter to sell her clothes for gin, a tale to put any ‘what the f*** did I do last night?’ anxiety into perspective. It took centuries to rebuild gin’s reputation as a noble spirit, embodied by 1930’s martini fiend Dorothy Parker and her vicious circle. Until recently, Cognac had no such issues with being viewed as refined, yet when Snoop Dogg dropped his gin and juice to declare "cognac is the drink that's drank by G's", its high-brow image was tarnished in some eyes. A suitably chastening sales boost followed the endorsement.
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Then Frederic Rouzaud, managing director of champagne giant Cristal's parent company Louis Roederer, told The Economist that he had issues surrounding his brand's popularity amongst the hip-hop community. "We can't forbid people from buying it," said Rouzaud; "I'm sure Dom Pérignon or Krug would be delighted to have their business.” Jay-Z – author of the line "sip the Cris’ and get pissy-pissy" – called Rouzaud's response "off-handed and patronizing," and pointed out that hip-hop was effectively providing Cristal with a big chunk of free PR. Hova then imposed a boycott on the luxury brand, and moved his endorsement and not-inconsiderable custom to rival Armand de Brignac.
And while we cannot all afford to tip back the best champagne or swig on the finest ‘yak this Christmas, there are some ideal recipes to light up festive gatherings (in the case of the Blue Blazer, possibly literally). We recommend you seek them out in the appendices of School of Sophisticated Drinking, or, instead, to consider the plight of the professional mixologist. Stefan tells us, as the glasses are drained to fuel a glow in our cheeks: “In the 1980’s they said home taping is killing music, then they said home fucking is killing prostitution. I tell you, home drinking is killing barmen!” Yet, selflessly, he still offers up these handy recipes for success:
Victoria Bar, Berlin's cocktail recipes
Pick Me Up
Ingredients:
1 oz cognac (‘yak)
3 dashes grenadine
3 dashes angostura
1/3 oz lemon juice
2 ½ oz champagne (or prosecco)
Technique:
Pour all ingredients except the champagne into an ice-filled shaker and shake well for 10 seconds. Strain into a champagne flute and carefully top up with champagne.
Blue Blazer
Ingredients:
2 oz overproofed whisky
1/3 oz simple syrup
3 to 5 oz boiling water
Technique:
Pour the whisky and simple syrup into one heat-proof mug with a handle and the boiling water into another. Carefully ignite the whisky and pour it into the hot water. Then pour the flaming whisky-water mixture into the empty mug and repeat the procedure, pouring the liquid back and forth with ever increasing arcs. If there are problems with the flames, reduce the amount of water.
The School of Sophisticated Drinking is out now, published by Greystone Books, RRP £12.99