Happy Mardi Gras! Prends soin de toi!

It's Mardi Gras, a perfect time to take a look at some of New Orleans's contributions to the drinking life. The contributions have been many and mighty. For the sake of space and time — because we have some masquerading to do — let's look at three traditional drinks, all arising from iconic New Orleans establishments.

We'll begin with one of the most famous cocktails from New Orleans: the Hurricane, which now has unfortunate connotations to its name that run as deep as Lake Pontchartrain. The drink is basically a rum punch — a very strong rum punch. The legend goes something like this: whiskey was in scarce supply and rum was everywhere a New Orleanian could see. So drinks were created to take care of this terrible overabundance of rum. It must have been a pretty poor tasting rum. There is a lot of fruit juice involved with the Hurricane.

Pat O'Brien's, a touristy Bourbon Street bar, takes credit for creating the Hurricane but pushes its powdered mix to make it. Here is an alternative recipe from the Gumbo Pages.

The Hurricane

1.5 oz. light rum
1.5 oz. dark rum
1 oz. orange juice
1 oz. fresh lime juice (NOT Rose's or RealLime)
1/4 cup passion fruit juice, or 1 tablespoon passion fruit syrup
1 tsp. superfine sugar
1 tsp. grenadine
Cherries with stems and orange slices to garnish
Ice cubes

In a cocktail shaker, mix the rum, passion fruit juice or syrup, the other juices, and the sugar until the sugar is dissolved. Add the grenadine and stir to combine, then add ice and shake. Half-fill a hurricane glass with ice, then strain drink into glass; add ice to fill. Garnish with orange slice and cherries.

The Sazerac Cocktail is one of the oldest of all cocktails, sometimes mistakenly called the oldest. Developed by Antoine Peychaud, a Creole immigrant who ran a pharmacy on Royal Street in the French Quarter, the drink began as a brandy cocktail, named for a famous coffee house on Exchange Street in the 1850s. Eventually a star was born. Or at least a very good rye. Sazerac Company acquired Peychaud's Bitters and began marketing liquors. Rye became the base for the cocktail. Sazerac Rye became the go-to rye for the drink for which it's named.

The Sazerac has more rarefied ingredients than you find in the Hurricane. Some advance planning is needed. The following recipe is based upon Ted Haigh's excellent adventure: Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails.

The Sazerac

1 tsp. absinthe or pastis (Herbesaint, Pernod, or Ricard)
1 tsp. simple syrup (or more to taste)
3 to 4 dashes Peychaud's Bitters
3 oz. of rye whiskey or bourbon

Chill an old-fashioned glass. Coat the inside of the glass with the absinthe or pastis, leaving a slight puddle in the glass bottom. Add the simple syrup and the bitters. In a separate mixing glass, combine the whiskey and the simple syrup with ice and stir. Strain the contents of the mixing glass into the old-fashioned glass. Twist a strip of lemon peel over the surface of the drink and place in drink.

A couple of notes here on preparing to make this drink: you may find Peychaud's Bitters hard to come by. If it's not available in your local liquor store, you'll have better luck ordering it online.

Commercial distillation of absinthe was illegal up until 2007 due to its high alcohol level. It is becoming easier and easier to find; this your local liquor store may stock.

Finally, simple syrup. Easy for me to say, you say. But don't be afraid to do a little home cooking to prepare for your cocktail hour. It is as simple as it promises: one part sugar to one part water, shaken in a bottle until the sugar dissolves. Sealed and refrigerated, simple syrup will keep for up to six months.

Finally, and because we here in New York are expecting yet another snowfall, let's try a Milk Punch, a drink that that warms the heart. It's a cold weather drink that Brennan's on Royal Streetlays claim to inventing. Perfect for a snowfall, and perfect for beginning a Mardi Gras with a truly Fat Tuesday flair.

Brandy Milk Punch

2 oz. brandy or bourbon
1 cup whole milk
1 tsp. superfine sugar
3 ice cubes
Cracked ice
Nutmeg

In a cocktail shaker, combine the brandy, milk, and sugar with three ice cubes and shake until frothy, about one minute. Strain into a double-old fashioned glass with cracked ice. Sprinkle with nutmeg and serve.

It's a "clear the calendar, don't answer any email" kind of drink. But you weren't going to do anything anyway. It's Mardi Gras.

Happy Hour in Antarctica.

Breaking news in the liquor circle is usually confined to surprise taste test results. It is hardly considered big news, although the Taiwanese Scotch beating the Scots at their own game certainly garnered a few headlines. Today's announcement was better news for Scottish scotch lovers and big news for the whiskey world. Several crates of scotch whiskey and brandy, believed to be from the unfinished Antarctic expedition of Irish explorer Ernest Shackleton, were excavated mostly intact after one hundred plus years on ice, in ice.

As reported in the BBC and the RTE today, five crates of alcohol were raised today by the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust. The Trust had known about and expected to find two crates of whiskey but actually found three. They also dug up two unanticipated crates of brandy. Always a pleasant surprise.

The crates were buried under what had been Shackleton's Antarctic hut in 1908, during his two-year expedition to reach the South Pole. The expedition ran out of supplies and had to pull up one hundred miles short of their designation. The whiskey and brandy were left behind in an attempt to move the team more quickly. The expedition ultimately failed, but Shackleton didn't lose a single man in the harrowing experience, and it was the furthest south any explorer had reached at that point. It was an accomplishment even without the whiskey to toast with. Shackleton was knighted for his efforts upon his return.

The excitement now is over the contents of the bottle rather than the shiny medal on Shackleton's jacket. The original recipe for the Mackinlay's whiskey in the crates no longer exists, so here is a chance for analysis and possible reproduction. This is the joy of the "opening a door into history," as Richard Paterson, the master blender of whiskey company Whyte and Mackay, explains it. Think of it as a paleontologist uncovering a dinosaur fossil. It is a good day at the office.

The two brandy crates, "a real bonus" as designated by Al Fastier of the NZAT, were labeled respectively Chas Mackinlay & Co. and The Hunter Valley Distillery Limited, Allandale. But it's the scotch, the scotch, that is "gift from the heavens for scotch lovers," declares Mr. Paterson.

Shackleton once said that if it weren't for strength of will, he "would make a first class drunkard." Now there may be some first class whiskeys that require a mighty strength of will to pass by.

(Photos from the New Zealand Antarctic Trust)

Two for the Road and Don't Get Lost...

For this week's column, I'd like to incorporate the new season of Lost,because frankly, I can't think of anything else. Like all of geekdom (and a few cool people too), I am gathering my wits, turning away fromBattlestar Galactica reruns, and preparing for tonight's season premier of Lost. But it's not enough just to sit back and be pleasantly perplexed at the infinite jest of this series.

The question is: can I get a cocktail column out it? Isn't everyone writing a piece on Lost and the magical J.J. Abrams/Damon Lindeloff/Carlton Cuse trio? Won't everyone be happy with just a couple of Dharma beers tonight at the season kick-off?

M

I'd like to think not, but how can this work? It's not as if everyone is walking the island like they are in a Noel Coward play, tossing a cocktail shaker until the outside is nice and frosty! Except…we're forgetting about someone very important. Someone whose presence, or lack thereof, will hopefully be explained this coming season: Doctor Christian Shephard. It's in his large footsteps that his son, main character Jack Shephard, learned some of his hard-drinking ways.

So we'll time travel back to Season Two's "Two for the Road," the episode where poor Ana Lucia meets up with Papa Shephard back in Australia. As the fates would have it, they bump into each other chasing down a few in the airport bar. Ana orders a tequila and tonic. Not much to comment on there, except for the necessity of a fresh lime in such a choice. I do think that the fact that she drinks it without ice speaks volumes about Ana Lucia and her anti-social behavior. It will ultimately prove to be her undoing.

What was Doc Shep drinking? I hear from Lost World that it was bourbon.

Although he was probably downing a couple of quick Scotches, let me suggest… wait for it… it's perfect… The Blood and Sand! Though it was named for the 1922 Rudolf Valentino movie about bullfighting, I can't think of two more superb words to describe the feeling of Lost — blood and the sand of that infernal island.

In keeping with Doc Shephard's Scotch, the Blood and Sand is one of few Scotch cocktails. More well known are, of course, the Rusty Nail (Scotch and Drambuie) and the Rob Roy (a Manhattan made with Scotch rather than rye). The Blood and Sand is more tasty than either of those and perfect for a cocktail party. And is there any better reason to have a cocktail party than the beginning of the end for Lost?

The Blood and Sand:

1 oz. Scotch
1 oz. orange juice
3/4 oz. Cherry Heering
3/4 oz. sweet vermouth

Shake in an iced cocktail shaker, and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a cherry.

Enjoy. To paraphrase a favorite character, Hurley: maybe if we get drunk enough, we'll remember where we know each other from.

p.s. as always, this blog encourages responsible drinking! Not Christian Shephard drinking.

The Brooklyn Hills Are Alive with Alpine Liqueur

Recently I put on my new modified Dunhill Saturday Night Survival Belt and trekked through the DUMBO area of Brooklyn. Over treacherous cobblestones and old railroad tracks — treacherous

when you are wearing heels — we made our way through the picturesque neighborhoods that make up Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. We passed dangerous bands of emos and hordes of hipsters in search of the ubiquitous St. Germain elderflower liqueur.

Like many aspects of Brooklyn as Scenester Heaven, all the bars try to be different, and they are all different alike and together. Right now, the trendy liqueur is St. Germain elderflower liqueur. Three bars all within flask of each other offered the same variation on the St. Germain cocktail.

A product of France, St. Germain is made from handpicked wild elderflower blossoms. By the Von Trapp family themselves? It has a distinctive floral flavor and has proven wildly popular. Perhaps more for the stylish bottle than for anything truly remarkable it brings to the bar top. But that remains to be seen.

First stop: the wonderful Water Street and its St. Royale: Chandon Champagne and St. Germain, garnished with a cherry and a sugar rim. Bartender Joe was quite pleased with my drink order since it was he, himself, who concocted the cocktail. This news was impressive until the end of the evening when I realized that all the bartenders, Joes or otherwise, were throwing some St. Germain in a sparkling or white wine. Water Street's was made somewhat distinctive by the sugar rim, but it comes off as a sweet cocktail despite its low sugar content, and the sugar rim is redundant.

Water Street could be serving nothing but PBRs (wait, they are! Pabst Blue Ribbon being the beer du jour in the borough), and they would still be deserving of frequent visits. In a genius marketing move, Water Street is the first Brooklyn restaurant lounge to offer on site babysitting during dinner hours. Catering to the stroller set is brilliant. I'm sure you've heard by now that Brooklyn is full of young families not even counting Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard's.

On to reBar around the corner. A beautiful space with elegant ironwork throughout, reBar was lively and anticipating even more activity with some poor soul's surprise birthday party. The flannel shirts behind the bar - as elegant as the surroundings are, this is still Brooklyn - were friendly and efficient and served up their version of the St. Germain cocktail: white wine, St. Germain, club soda with a lemon twist.

Last stop was Superfine, an outstanding spot down Front Street with mix-matched decor, an orange felt pool table, and an 'organic to the neighborhood' warehouse feel to the space. The owners of Superfine are longtime residents of DUMBO - from before the developers came in and kicked out all the small industries in the area to make room for residential condos. Before Superfine, they were proprietors of Between the Bridges, a legendary burger joint. Superfine's St. Germain cocktail was a variation on Water Street's: Prosecco, an Italian sparkling wine and St. Germain with a lemon twist.

There are many more bars to visit in the neighborhood but I had my fill of elderflowers. I hear the apple brandy sidecar is quite good. I will be back with flannel and flask.

Survival Belt Photo: Valerio Mazzanotti

The Atholl Brose

No road trip for this column. I am hard pressed to think of a bar, no matter how well-stocked, that could make me an Atholl Brose. If you know of one, fair reader, please alert me. Perhaps St. Andrews in New York City?

The Atholl Brose, a Scottish oatmeal broth named after the first Earl of Atholl, is a perfect recourse for when it is 34 degrees in Orlando, as it is while I write this. It's colder here in New York, of course, but 34 in Florida just sounds and feels colder than 34 in New York. At two degrees above freezing, icy margaritas aren't an option. Drinks in January need to be warming, but egg nog season is over, even if the neighbor's Christmas decorations are still lit. Atholl Brose is a lethal oatmeal/whiskey combination that has served Scottish warriors since the sixteenth century, making it very vintage indeed.

Not technically a cocktail because it predates such a concept, the Atholl Brose has a glorious history of highland warfare and warm hearths. According to legend, the Earl of Atholl in Scotland used it to win a tribal war in 1475. Supposedly he filled a well with the stuff. The rebelling army drank it and became too inebriated to continue with the raping and pillaging. I believe the inebriation part. It is a strong drink. I don't quite hold with the idea of filling up a water well with oatmeal and no one noticing. The water in the Atholl wells must have been very dense indeed, except… wait! The Gaelic word for water is uisce, which is mispronounced in English as "whiskey." I now can picture the enemy army saying, "Whiskey! Whiskey! Whiskey!" and clutching their throats, and the Scottish host, nodding his head and offering more... water, water, water. But it's not. Wink, wink, Scottish wink.

The earliest recorded history has Queen Victoria drinking Atholl Brose on her visits to Perthshire, Scotland, where the Atholl Earls serve their alcoholic oatmeal broth. Here is a traditional recipe for Atholl Brose, attributed to the Royal Scots Fusiliers from André Simon's 1948 A Concise Encyclopædia of Gastronomy: Section VII, Wines and Spirits. It must be started the night before.

Steep 1/2 cup of oatmeal (preferably Scottish, but use anything but instant!) in 1 1/2 cups of cold water overnight.

The next day, strain the liquid from the oatmeal. The recipe calls for muslin. You can use ordinary cheesecloth found in a well-stocked supermarket. You'll have 1/2 cup of oatmeal water — the broth.

Pour 3 1/2 oz. of this liquid into a large rocks glass.
Add 3 1/2 oz. of whiskey. The recipe calls for Scotch, but you might want to use a blended and save the Scotch for sipping.

Add:
2 1/2 oz of cream
1/2 oz of honey

Mixing with a silver spoon is recommended.

I found an alternate, non-alcoholic recipe on the Hamlyns Oats site that, with a little tweak, lends itself to a variation on the Atholl Brose. Hamlyns claims that it is a "warming and relaxing drink, but at the same time stimulating." Anything that is relaxing and stimulating at the same time, without alcohol, is well worth a try. But imagine how much better it could be with a little whiskey thrown in.

3/4 cup water
2 tsp. Hamlyns Scottish Oatmeal
1/2 tsp. brown sugar
1/2 tsp. lemon juice
1/4 tsp. ground ginger

Put the oatmeal, sugar, and ginger into a mug or small jug. Mix with a tablespoon of cold water taken from the 3/4 cup. Add the lemon juice. Boil the water and add to the mixture, stirring well until all is blended. The amounts of ginger and sugar may be varied according to taste.

To make this into a true Atholl Brose, add 2 oz. of whiskey. Use blended whiskey — save the malt for sipping.

Grain drinks are also very popular in Latin America, discrediting my cold climate/warm drinks insta-theory. Here is a variation on the Mexican Oatmeal Drink, originally posted by Chicana Peach. With some comparison testing, I found that a gold rum works better than bourbon with this sweet drink, and it smells divine in the preparation, something that occurs rarely in mixology. Again, this is best begun the night before.

1 cup Quaker old-fashioned oats soaked overnight in a cup
1 cinnamon stick broken in two or 1 tbsp. ground cinnamon
3 cups water
2 cups skim milk
2 tbsp. honey
2 tbsp. sugar
2 oz. Barbancourt Rhum

Soak the oatmeal overnight, or for at least six hours or so. Once that is done, place it in a medium pot and add the water and broken cinnamon stick. Simmer over medium heat for 10 minutes. Next, add the milk and honey and cook on medium-low heat for 30 minutes. Finally, add the sugar and cook for 5 more minutes. You will know it's done as the consistency will thicken some and it will be a little creamy. Use more water or milk for a thinner consistency.

This was the sweetest of the three oatmeal concoctions. The original Atholl Brose was the creamiest and quite delicious, a perfect alternative to egg nog for the holidays. I will remind you in eleven months' time.

If you get discouraged with any of these worthy experiments — as I did with the Hamlyn Oats attempt below; notice the oatmeal collected at the bottom! — you can always try a new-fangled Oatmeal Cookie Drink. Layer 1 oz. Grand Marnier, 1 oz. butterscotch schnapps, and 1 oz. Irish Cream. However, you are probably better off just eating the cookie.

Mar sin leibh an dràsda — Ta ta for now!

The Red Snapper: Facing the Music

Chances are, if you had a drink on New Year's Day, that is if you didn't give up drinking as a New Year's resolution, you had a Red Snapper. "But I had a Bloody Mary," you may respond. "Free! With my brunch!"

Same drink, classier name.

The Bloody Mary could be named for the Queen of England, Elizabeth I's older sister, who had a brief and violent reign. It could be named for the Bucket of Blood Club in Chicago -a tavern on the west side of town. Apparently a bucket of blood would be mopped up at the end of an active night. Yum.

The name of the drink, the origins of the drink, the proper ingredients of the drink, all these are as hazy as things might have been at midnight on December 31st, but one thing is crystal clear. These spicy tomato/vodka combos are a most useful tool for the morning after.

Notice the ratio of vodka to tomato juice. It is one to one rather than the one to three ratio of vodka to mix that you might find in a typical restaurant brunch drink today. I tried Petiot's Bloody Mary Martini with some degree of success with the brunch crowd who do not like tomato juice. Shaken, strained, and poured.

From Harry's in Paris, Fernand Petiot went on to bartend at the St. Regis Hotel in New York City, in the celebrated Old King Cole Room, where they still call vodka and spiced tomato juice a Red Snapper.

In one of the first stops in my international tour of Red Snappers, I stopped at the Mill Street Brew Pub, part of Toronto's historic Distillery District - a highly recommended trip for the year 2010. The Distillery District, a Canadian National Historical Site, is the largest and best preserved collection of Victorian Industrial Architecture in North America, according to its website. Buildings that once housed the largest distillery in the British Empire now host the making of Hollywood movies. In the 1850s, there was rye and rum in the neighborhood. Now there is the filming of blockbusters, Hairspray and X-Men among other A-list movies having been filmed there.

The brewpub restaurant offered some excellent beers made on location but also had a Caesar on the brunch menu that needed to be sampled. The Caesar is a variation on the Bloody Mary which uses Clamato juice. This is a much more popular drink in Canada than in the U.S. I don't know what the connection between Julius Caesar and clams are, but the clam broth and tomato juice in Clamato is not as noxious a combination as you, you American you, might think. Note the heavy celery salt on the rim and the olive as a garnish. If there was a clam harmed in the making of this drink, it went unnoticed in the stockade of celery salt.

In traveling from Toronto to Buffalo, mixologically crossing over the border, I tried to emulate theTrattoria Aroma's Buffalo Chicken Wing Bloody Mary. In doing so, I also crossed over the border into Bloody Mary craziness - oh how Francios Petiot would have hated this.

Tomato juice has loads of vitamins that your body craves after a lively night and also has the fructose that helps your body metabolize the alcohol from the night before more quickly. Plus that little bit of alcohol in the Bloody Ma...umm....Red Snapper helps with a reintroduction of ethanol alcohol into your blood stream, diverting your enzymes from their work of torturing you to death with headaches, nausea, and general feelings of worthlessness. Or at least, this is what science says.

Sometime in the 1930s, New Yorker George Jessel combined vodka with tomato juice at a time when vodka was a novelty, and no one else knew quite what to do with it. Thank heavens, George did. Then, Fernand Petiot, bartender at Harry's New York Bar in Paris, took the tomato juice and vodka and went a step further:

“I initiated the Bloody Mary of today,” Petiot claimed in the July 1964 New Yorker. “Jessel said he created it, but it was really nothing but vodka and tomato juice when I took it over. I cover the bottom of the shaker with four large dashes of salt, two dashes of black pepper, two dashes of cayenne pepper, and a layer of Worcestershire sauce; I then add a dash of lemon juice and some cracked ice, put in two ounces of vodka and two ounces of thick tomato juice, shake, strain, and pour. "

Buffalo Chicken Wing Bloody Mary

2 parts vodka

6 parts V8 juice

4 dashes of worchestershire

4 dashes of Frank's Hot Sauce

Blue Cheese crumbles to taste

celery salt to taste

Red snapper purists couldn't stand the thought of chewy hunks of horseradish in a Bloody Mary. I don't know what they would have thought of crumbles of blue cheese, but it probably wouldn't be kindly thoughts.

Finally, I stopped at that Arts and Crafts wonder - the Roycroft Inn in East Aurora, New York. The Roycroft is an American National Landmark, a 1905 campus for the arts based upon the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright and Gustav Stickley. It is a beautiful building and atmosphere - perfect for a vintage cocktail.

There I had a Bloody Mary built as well as its surroundings. At first glance, all the drink looks to contain is tomato juice. It was even suspiciously free of Worcestershire. But the drink had good proportion, modest in profile, but tangy to taste - no excess of horseradish or celery salt floating senselessly through the cocktail. Fernand Petiot would have been pleased.

The Bloody Mary is a common cocktail. There is even a tinge of the blue collar to it. Avowed beer drinkers will admit to a cocktail if it is a morning Bloody Mary. Does it even deserve a discussion? After all, champagne mimosas or bellinis are much more fashionable for endless Sunday brunches. But admit it. After a long night of over-imbibing on "brown liquor" cocktails, a mimosa is just not going to make a dent in that bourbon fog. If cocktail time is somewhere between noon and 3 p.m., seasoned tomato juice with a good vodka is peerless.

Encore du Champagne!

Margo: Encore du champagne, Waiter: More champagne, Miss Channing? Margo: That’s what I said, bub!

In 1944's Meet Me in St. Louis, Judy Garland famously encouraged us to "have a merry little Christmas." The original draft of the song also told us to "pop that champagne cork" because this time next year, heaven forbid, "we might all be living in New York." And seeing as recent news headlines designated New Yorkers to be the unhappiest people in all fifty states, that is indeed a reason to drink.

The lovely old sentiment in "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" has a perfect wistfulness for the holiday season, with anticipation for the fun to come and nostalgia for times past, but at the time, it was too sad for some. In final versions of the song, in an attempt to cheer things up a bit, songwriter Hugh Martin reluctantly changed some of the lyrics. The lines "Let your heart be light / Next year all our troubles will be out of sight" attempted to jolly things up. The amended song grew to be one of the most popular in the Christmas canon. And perhaps it can be said that "Have yourself a merry little Christmas / It could be your last" is a line only a New Yorker could love.

So do pop that champagne cork to jolly things up — for Christmas and for New Year's! If you are having a New Year's party, champagne is expected, of course, but try some champagne cocktails to gladden and invigorate your party. Turn to those "happy golden days of yore" for ideas on how to enliven familiar champagne concepts!

New Year's. It can be amateur night, but oh, the champagne. A good champagne makes all that counting down, kissing strangers, up way past my bedtime, all worth it. Champagne, a perfect drink to celebrate what's past, what's present, what's future.

The Champagne Cocktail

The first champagne cocktail we'll discuss is the Champagne Cocktail. This drink couldn't be easier, but your New Year's guests don't need to know this. In a champagne flute, place one sugar cube and four dashes of Angostura bitters. Fill with champagne. Garnish with a lemon twist.

I took the Champagne Cocktail for a test drive at one of my favorite theatre hangouts, Angus McIndoe's in New York City. Across the street from The Phantom of the Opera at the Majestic and next door to the St. James Theatre, there are plenty of theatre types there for celebrity sightings, at least for a theatre geek like myself. Best sighting? Matthew Broderick with his small son in tow. No one approached him for an autograph. Angus McIndoe's is a home away from home.

The Champagne Cocktail has a beautiful rosy hue and has a built-in hangover remedy. I've always been a proponent of bitters for the morning after. The morning after — I'll think about that tomorrow.

Another easy champagne cocktail to try for a different take on a New Year's party is the French 75. A more sophisticated take on the theme, the French 75 is named for a World War I gun. The innovator supposedly didn't get enough kick out of champagne. Sometimes, the recipe calls for cognac instead of gin, but I find that the lighter flavor of the gin sits well with the champagne.

The French 75

2 oz. gin
1 oz. fresh lemon juice
2 tsp. superfine sugar
champagne

Shake the first three ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker until frost develops on the outside of the shaker.

Strain into a champagne flute and top with champagne. Stir gently and garnish with a lemon spiral and a cherry. Like the gun it was named for, the drink kicks with remarkable accuracy.

If you have time after Christmas, visit your local Williams Sonoma store. On the 27th and 28th of December, they are offering demonstrations in mixing cocktails. Call your local store for more information. Any good ideas, please share with the rest of us! And remember, "from now on, we'll have to muddle through somehow. Have yourself a merry little Christmas" — and a merry, grand New Year's.

No good times like the olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who were dear to us
Will be near to us no more.
But at least we all will be together
If the Lord allows
From now on, we'll have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.