I have written before about the names of cocktails and the delicacy therein. If you switch gin to vodka, so they say, you have a
Kangaroo rather than a
Vodka Martini. Or if Brandy is substituted for Rye, a Manhattan is a
Harvard, not a
Brandy Manhattan.
But there is an issue here with the categorizing and naming of cocktails. I can only attempt to strike a balance between the "partisans" on either side of this issue, which reflects a common issue with language in general. The central issue here is with the attempts by some purists to create taxonomies for mixed drinks, a subject as nebulous and unmanageable as any other subject that is beholden to human imagination.
Case(s) in point:
I recently suggested in an on-line forum that I love a Manhattan that uses
Fernet Branca, a kind of Italian digestive bitters, rather than a traditional cocktail bitters like Angostura. I was promptly rebuked by
Drinkboy, an ardent cocktail formalist, who felt that such a drink would require a different name. "I always say," he wrote in defense of his idea "that if someone ordered a Manhattan and you served that, would it seem off [or a surprise] to them?" Today's entry isn't so much to debate that statement, but a lot of questions arise out of his arguments.
For one thing, his denying that a Manhattan made with Fernet Branca is in fact a Manhattan stems from a separation some have created between digestive bitters and cocktail bitters. See, cocktail bitters are "non-potable" and come in small bottles and are used in only trace amounts, whereas
digestive bitters like Fernet Branca (or Campari, or other amaros) are more easily tasted and come in larger bottles. (My own bottle was ten ounces, but I can disregard that for these purposes; the classification must stand!)
So something as minute as this separation of two classes of bitters that may influence a whole two drops of a drink can change it from "one Manhattan with Fernet Branca, please" to "rye, vermouth, and Fernet Branca, or insert/invent-name-here, please." Obviously, cocktail naming is a sensitive system. But does it stand up to any scrutiny?
In the nineteenth century, bitters were more commonly used as medicines, and their inclusion in drinks is what actually spawned the name "cocktail." The cocktail was a variation on an earlier form of mixed drink called a "sling," which was a spirit, a sweetening agent, and water. The addition of bitters created a new genre, so now one could order a Gin Sling or a Gin Cocktail. One could also order a Gin Fizz, a Gin Sour, a Rum Collins, a Whiskey Rickey, a Brandy Julep, and so on. Each of these genres mixed the named spirit with requisite ingredients of their own, some very similar in nature, like a sour and a collins, for instance.
Some of these drinks became partitioned themselves. For example, the Sazerac whiskey cocktail and the Old Fashioned whiskey cocktail are both quite traditional; they include whiskey, bitters, ice, and water. It is only the method and the proprietary brands of their ingredients that may sub-specialize the whiskey cocktail species here.
In fact, nineteenth-century cocktails generally used whatever proprietary bitters any given saloon made. If you visited Joe Blow's Saloon in 1895 and ordered a Manhattan, you would get a drink made with whiskey, vermouth, and Joe Blow's house bitters, not necessarily Angostura or Abbott's or some other national brand. So a great variety of bitters were acceptable to the cocktail taxonomists of the century that saw the cocktail's creation. But not the twenty-first century? Now a whole new name is necessary with such a substitution?
One could argue further that, even if a switch in what bitters you use is insufficient for reclassification, switching the spirit is. After all, the spirit is the dominant element of most any mixed drink. And you can't put vodka in a Martini or it isn't a Martini, so rename that chocolatini right now, Miss Yuppie!
Once again, the purists inadvertently create a double-standard. Some time in the nineteenth century, the Sazerac cocktail's main ingredient changed. What originally called for simple syrup, Peychaud's bitters, and Sazerac
Brandy started using
rye whiskey instead. But the name didn't change! OMG No purists must have been around to hound whoever proposed that travesty.
Well, if either the spirit or the bitters can change without bothering the purist, what about the garnish? Because a Martini is a Gibson when an onion replaces an olive, right? What about when a lemon zest replaces the olive? It turns out that switching back and forth between lemon zest and olive doesn't rile the formalist like the cocktail onion does. I wonder what about an onion makes it so special in comparison to the other two garnishes that it's inclusion warrants renaming the drink.
I will admit that it can be very frustrating for the formalist to see people say that their favorite Martini contains mango-flavored vodka, Kahlua, espresso, sugar, a cherry, some iced cream, maybe some sushi, and whatever the hell else you can imagine. I certainly don't think a Martini contains vodka. But the word "martini" itself is simply following in the footsteps of the word "cocktail" which once meant one specific style of mixed drink but has became an umbrella term, synonymous with "mixed drink." Blame gentrification. Blame suburbanites who want to be classy and thus transform classy drinks (eg,
coffee or a
Martini)into candy so they can be seen drinking them without the ardor of actually doing so.
But you can't stem the tide of language change. Whether you hate street slang's influence on English, or the internet's, or commercialism in our case, the language moves on, and it never makes much sense wherever it happens to be anyway. Standing around bemoaning its change and insisting we return to the "good old days" doesn't accomplish much beyond looking like an old fart. How much power does a name have anyway? Whether you call it a vodka Martini or a Kangaroo, you're still drinking the same drink. Isn't that right,
Mr. Shakespeare?
