To me, one of the main weaknesses of the timeline I drafted is that it fails to address the wellsprings and emergence of today’s mainstream contemporary mixology.
To be fair, it’s a squirrelly one.
heavily influenced by culinary fashions, “gourmet thinking”, and high concept
overwrought, often under-refined and under-delicious (meh/ pointless or whacky-for-the-sake-of-concept)
generally pretty expensive
cocktails as proprietary and principal product line alongside the appetizers, main courses, and desserts
Instagram-ready (look at this whacky drink!)
too many ingredients and/or too many weird ingredients, and/or too many infused/modified/home-made ingredients
ephemeral; difficult-to-impossible to replicate (although in most cases, nobody would even think to try)
ubiquitous
By its definition, there are no famous representative examples to point at.
As far as I know, we haven’t even gotten to naming this stuff. The closest nominee I’ve heard yet was from Jeff Berry: “stunt drink”.
The draft timeline, above, is now an exhibit on the Cocktail Kingdom Library web site. While it’s undoubtedly rife with imperfections, I think it’s pretty effective, and I can refine it in the future.
First of all, I would like to tell you that the work you did with the comparison table and the timeline is amazing. Thank you for dedicating your time to this topic that we are so passionate about and for sharing that work with us.
Now my question is related to Grog. I see it frequently in cocktail books in its cold version, its hot version and even in tiki versions so I would like to know what is your opinion about it.
Can it be considered a separate cocktail category, and if not, which of the above categories would it fall into?
Thank you very much and greetings to the whole community.
I think this would be my take on grog, with some help from Wayne Curtis’ bit in the Oxford Companion:
Originally, grog was just watered-down rum. The word emerged in a particular circumstance: within the British Navy. Outside that context, it developed a life of its own as another word for alcoholic drink, along the lines of hooch and booze. As Wayne put it, Donn Beach appropriated it in the 1930s and 1940s for various punches on the menu at his Don the Beachcomber’s.
So, my point of view would be that no, a “grog” is not a category, it’s just a word for an alcoholic drink that carries some convenient naval/seafaring associations.