Back in the 1980s, vitamin C was touted as a wonder drug and everybody was loading up as much as they could. Then studies revealed that chewable vitamin C tablets were about as tooth-damaging as crystal meth, and they disappeared from drug store shelves.

Fast-forward a couple decades. Sensodyne and other toothpastes for sensitive teeth are starting to dominate the toothpaste aisles. Why do people’s teeth hurt, and what does this have to do with bartending?

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We were on our way to Newark with a chatty driver, and the inevitable question came up: “So, what do you do?” We explained that we are drinks historians, writers, and work in distilleries. Yes, we really drink for a living. Seriously. Bad hangovers? No. Then the driver asked, “What’s your secret? I’m a whisky drinker, and I get the worst hangovers every time I drink.” It’s simple: a large glass of water between each drink. He stared at me in the rearview mirror long enough that I ...

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A while back we wrote about a curious shaker-like set of metal cups on display in London's Victoria and Albert Museum. It appeared to be a 16th century shaker, popular in Germany at that time. We recently discovered that this doppelfassbecher (double-barrel beaker) design also became popular in England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. We have even seen a number of them for sale, though they've been selling for a lot more than a humble drinks historian could possibly afford. For example, check out this beauty currently available for about the same the price of a ten-year-old VW Jetta:

Running into my old friends Wayne Collins and Dave Wondrich is always a good time. There was an added bonus the other night—they were mixing with the new Bols Genever. It's a recreation of a long-lost classic product from the original 1820 recipe book (if you think you can decipher the formula from my photo, I'll send you a high-res version). 

The most important words of the night came when Dave said he'd tried using it where recipes called for gin and it never tasted right. Then he tried using it in place of whiskey, and it worked perfectly. Out here in Ealing, we've been mixing Manhattans with Bokma 5-year for quite some time but never really thought about why it worked until Dave said he'd hit on it, too. Genever's production—malted grain, pot stills—has a lot more in common with whiskey than gin. 

I always loved new make and white dog, the unaged spirit that becomes whisk(e)y after a long rest in a barrel. But it never occurred to me that genever is basically new make flavored with juniper. 

Here's Bols master distiller Piet van Leijenhorst, looking like a proud father:

I was searching through eBay.fr for a bar spoon. I decided to try the French word for spoon cuillere. This turned up thousands of listings. Most were boring. Some were interesting (the cuillere glacons ice spoons that appear to predate Kentucky Fried Chicken's spork). And one was astonishing: the cuillere medicament. This 17th or 18th Century French apothecary spoon looked so much like a modern bar spoon I thought it was mis-listed at first.

Then in a reprint of the 1898 Farrow and Jackson catalogue (Thanks Jeff M.!), I found a page offering a choice of a regular bar spoon, or a French mazagran spoon. Mazagran normally refers to coffee-related sundries (cups, spoons) in French, and the name comes from a coffee town in Algeria. But this former apothecary spoon, in service as a coffee spoon according to its name, was being sold to British bartenders as a bar spoon. 

The origins of the bar spoon? Perhaps.

 John Glaser caused a bit of uproar among the whisky anoraks* when he made Orangerie, a combination of first rate whisky and orange. So we won't tell them that he's made another batch. And it is good. We've been drinking it with a splash of the water we brought back from Islay. We even made toddies with it (40ml Compass Box Orangerie, 100ml boiling water, manuka honey, and lemon to taste) .

I thought about opening this blog with some statement about its purpose. But the purpose is pretty obvious. There's so much we've encountered along the way that might not merit an article or a book, but is still interesting. For example, I saw this at an exhibition called The Art of Drinking at the Victoria and Albert museum last year.