Noticed this a bit late, but we’re still in 2019 and this is the 100th Anniversary of the publication of Julian Anderson’s cocktail book, the second cocktail book published by an African American. For decades, Anderson reined at the bar of the Montana Club in Helena, MT, which still stands and seems to be open to the public.
Here’s some background on Anderson:
https://www.distinctlymontana.com/julian-alexander
And here’s his book in PDF form, courtesy of EUVS:
I’m unfamiliar with this volume. So the Montana Club Cocktail is a Martini of the early sort (Old Tom and sweet vermouth)?
Apparently, in 1919 Helena, it was just the thing. Or maybe, by then, it was just what they’d been doing for years?
This book is a fine reminder that we really don’t know what else is out there. So many cocktail books were published and distributed locally, without attracting the attention of the national press or indeed anyone outside the profession. When EUVS put this up I had never heard of it, or Anderson. But then again, when I bought my first copy of Hugo Ensslin’s book, which was quite influential, I had never heard of it or him, either.
I recently tried the “Montana Cocktail” from Harry Johnson and it’s sensational, though using Boker’s as Harry commands is likely a big part of its success. I don’t see any such recipe in “Julian’s Recipes” though, so I’m wondering where it came from. I also wondered if it might have switched names with the adjacent “Thorn Cocktail,” given so many sloe recipes’ names allude to the sloe’s British name of “blackthorn.”
I would expect that the Montana was named in response to the recent statehood and the news of the wealth it was… yielding… rather than being a drink from Montana.
Unclear where the sloe gin fits in.
