This past summer, I spent most of my free time watching one of the best shows on TV from the past 5 years: Mad Men. I couldn’t wait to come back home after a long day of “work” (my job is pretty sweet), sit down and relax with a drink in hand and Don Draper on the screen.

When you watch Mad Men, it’s really hard to miss the fact that every character on the show excessively smokes and drinks which kind of makes you want to do the same. The show has arguably been responsible in part for a recent resurgence in classic and old-timey cocktails.

Everyone remembers the scene where Don is making his “Old Fashioned” cocktail, taking the time to muddle his cherry and orange along with a sugar cube and a drop of bitters. But why and how these great “classic” cocktails find their way into our lives in the 30s and how did they change with the years to come? That was precisely the reason we invited Erik Lombardo, a master bartender (if you call him a mixologist he will correct you on the spot) from Tryst (formerly Le Bar Lyonnais) to host a pre-prohibition era class at COOK and answer all of our (my) questions.

Erik runs a bar program once a week on Wednesdays at Tryst. There, he focuses on different cocktails every week. Erik’s passion is classic cocktails so he was really eager to show us how they should really be made and the rights and wrongs of how to enjoy them.

My favorites of the night were the “Martinez”, the long lost father of the “Martini”. There are a few distinct differences between the two, The Martinez is made out of:
2 oz gin
¾ oz sweet vermouth
¼ oz maraschino liqueur
dash orange bitters
Lemon twist

Its pretty amazing how it mutated and dropped the bitters, maraschino, vermouth and in a lot of cases the gin as well to create the martini. Erik says no one knows the true origin of the Martinez and there are a few different story’s flouting around.
Then Erik did a spin on one of my favorite drinks the “FIZZ” and yes with a raw egg. Erik made a “montmorency Fizz” that has a sour cherry shrub instead of just simple syrup and the best part is you down it as a shot. The shrub is basically pickled cherries in vinegar which is what people used to do back in the day when they had a surplus of cherries after a harvest.

Montmorency Fizz:

• 2 oz Gin
• ¾ oz sour cheery shrub
• ¾ oz lemon juice
• 1 egg white

Then Erik gave us a little history lessen on the “Daiquiri”, I know what you think… that’s a girl’s drink that no man would ever find himself ordering. But the original “La Floridita Daiquiri” is a drink that shouldn’t be messed with unless you mean business!

Born in Cuba, the official homeland of rum, the Daiquiri was invented by a bartender who was asked to surprise a costumer with his specialty drink so he made him this:
2oz Rum
½oz sugar syrup
¼oz maraschino
3/4oz lime juice

Its a great summer drink that no man should be ashamed of.

The crown jewel of the night for me was by far the all mighty “Old Fashioned”!!! but not the one Don Draper enjoys on the small screen, apparently the a real “Old Fashioned” doesn’t contain any thing but:
2oz whiskey Rye
1 sugar cube
Angostura bitters
and an orange twist

The cherry and a slice of orange muddled into the drink is something that was added during Prohibition when the alcohol that was available tasted so bad that you had to mix it with all kinds of stuff. Erik swears by this drink and showed us the superiority of the original version over the “Don Draper” version and from now on it is definitely my favorite drink for the time being.

So thank you Erik for the comprehensive “drunk history” lesson and for only making all these amazing STRONG drinks in a 2.5oz versions so we could all find our way home from class.