Signature cocktails at home: the new 'delivery' that came with the pandemic
Adriana Chía, the rising star of the Spanish cocktail
«This is the end of my life in art.
I'm drinking Red Needle, a drink I invented in Needles, California, with tequila and blueberries, lemon and ice. ”
Leonard Cohen
wrote it down
in his
1978
book of fragments
Death of a Lady's Man
, when three summers had passed, This was 45 years ago, since the Canadian troubadour was passing through that city of Mojave.
From his hat he had taken out a sharp cocktail that, later, he would rescue during the recording sessions
n of his apocalyptic album
The Future
.
Those who have tried it say that Red Needle is not as sweet as a Cosmo, but it is almost more dangerous. Cohen, who was not resisted by the muses of liquid art, was not the only figure to sponsor an alcoholic mixture.
I commented on it
Ginés Pérez Navarro
in
Impressions of a bartender
: «If the new client is caught by the cocktail nets and decides to continue in the initiatory process, they will go from consuming drinks
prèt a porter
to those of the custom cocktail ». Although the gallery of these illustrious people is not exactly of novices, rather of born drinkers.
Celebrities from other artistic disciplines, some established dipsomaniacs, others naturally creative, whose names found a place in the already illustrious genealogy of combinatorics.
We will elegantly ignore Don Perico Chicote and the no less great Constante, who invented almost everything and were undisputed stars of their time. If it is already risky to attribute paternity to according to which famous cocktails, the nebula becomes more dense when the famous are from meat and bone.
He
bluesman
John lee hooker
, to continue with the musical tear, he could be behind the first Boilermaker, more a coarse sum of bourbon and beer separately than a sophisticated glass.
To this tavern cocktail without shaking he sang in
One bourbon, one scotch, one beer.
Others were the environments of
Alberto Eduard
or, that Prince of Wales famous for
playboy
and dissolute that before inheriting the Empire upon the death of his mother, Queen Victoria, he had time to patent his own cocktail, actually a Manhattan to which he asked to add a
splash
champagne, something very late nineteenth century.
What also gave Eduardo VII time was to have a
affair
with Lady Randolph Churchill, the mother of the future political animal and the identical beast as a whiskey raker.
I have a great distrust of men who do not smoke or taste a glass of alcohol.
They must be terribly vicious
Julio Ramón Ribeyro
Precisely to
Jennie jerome
As she was advertised as single in American high society where she worked as a whirlwind, there are those who still owe her the existence of the combination of rosso vermouth, rye whiskey and maraschino cherry: her majesty the Manhattan.
Although without consistent evidence of authorship.
The circle of the aristocrat cocktail would close like this, although we could add the very
Alfonso XIII
Although its mix of gin -or champagne, as it is read- plus Dubonnet and a splash of angostura, dubbed Alfonso simply, was the work of its head bartender during his exile in Monte-Carlo. Very fond of this French aperitif, and at Alfonsino drink, it was also the Queen Mother.
And so is his daughter Isabel, whose own version with ice they call Zaza. Without leaving the gin, that champion of excesses who was
Errol flynn
prepared two measures of a White Lady -the
bartender
Harry Craddock was inspired by platinum blonde Zelda Fitzgerald - but without egg white, a cleaner, more tangy, and more muscular rendition served in a martini glass.
He called him ... Errol Flynn.
Of cinema were the drinks of
Buñuel
, more than demanding amateur.
In his peculiar way of officiating the dry martini, perfuming the ice with Noilly Prat, the director of
Viridiana
he bequeathed his Buñueloni for posterity.
"This is a plagiarism of the famous Negroni," he wrote in
My last breath
, "But instead of mixing Campari with gin and sweet Cinzano, I put Carpano." The one who did not leave surrealism even to fantasize about drinks was precisely
Dali
, even if he was not a practitioner.
The man who as a child wanted to be Bonaparte - he had a fixation with excess but also with Napoleon brand yerba mate - published in his autobiography
Secret Life
recipes for a couple of cocktails,
Casanova and Gala Cocktail
, more content and interesting for an aperitif than his other gastronomic ravings. A very different chapter from that of so many writers, showered with the glass as soon as their hand was free.
From the maqroll of
Alvaro Mutis
, bourbon cocktail, Carpano and red vermouth in honor of his well-known character, the black charro from
Roberto Bolaño
, a simple slug of tequila, Coca-Cola and lime juice that appears in
Killer whores.
Hemingway
he expertly tuned his favorite drinks, although neither Papa Doble - without sugar due to hemochromatosis, but with an additional serving of rum - nor the rest of the renovation of the daiquiri world would have been possible without Constante Ribalaigua from El Floridita.
His Vermouth Panache, two parts French to one Italian, more bitter and lemon zest, kept the novelist ecstatic during the marlin fishing.
More recent are the fictional creations of the Arabist Alberto Gómez Font.
In Tangerine Cocktails, his alter ego and bartender at the Hotel el-Minzah, the same prepares a Crew Punch that shakes a Cabo Spartel of whiskey, dates and mint in a silver shaker. And let's remember that Leonard Cohen was a poet above all, like this that for his life and work he had to toast with a Red Needle on September 21, when he would have turned 86.
"I have a great distrust for men who do not smoke or taste a glass of alcohol," said the Lima storyteller Julio Ramón Ribeyro.
They must be terribly vicious.
To continue reading for free
Sign inSign up
Or
subscribe to Premium
and you will have access to all the web content of El Mundo
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more