La Grande Histoire des Cocktails avec David Wondrich
David Wondrich, légende de l'histoire du cocktail, est l'invité du DistilCast ! Pour ouvrir cette nouvelle saison, on a embarqué à bord du premier chai flottant au monde, la Barge 166 de Maison…
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La Grande Histoire des Cocktails avec David Wondrich
David Wondrich, légende de l'histoire du cocktail, est l'invité du DistilCast !
Pour ouvrir cette nouvelle saison, on a embarqué à bord du premier chai flottant au monde, la Barge 166 de Maison Ferrand, aux portes de Paris, en compagnie de l'auteur d'Imbibe! et de Punch, à l'occasion du lancement de son dernier ouvrage, La Grande Histoire des cocktails en bande dessinée (Dunod Graphic), traduit par François Monti.
Au programme de cet échange de près de 90 minutes :
- La véritable origine (un peu gênante) du mot "cocktail", et ce qu'un cheval vient faire là-dedans
- Pourquoi on ne peut pas faire confiance à l'IA pour écrire l'histoire
- L'article qui a divisé la communauté bar mondiale
- La naissance du Ferrand Cognac 1840 et du Dry Curaçao de Maison Ferrand
- Le nom (censuré) du rhum O.F.T.D. et l'histoire qui se cache derrière
- Le film Cocktail avec Tom Cruise et son impact sur le métier de bartender
- Le Paris de 1850, parmi les quatre meilleures villes du monde pour boire un cocktail
- Le cocktail que Marilyn Monroe détestait
- Un plaidoyer pour le retour des classiques et de l'hospitalité derrière le bar
Bref, un épisode qui devrait ravir tous les bartenders, passionnés de mixologie et curieux de l'histoire des spiritueux !
⚓ LIENS UTILES
- 📖 Le livre : La Grande Histoire des cocktails en bande dessinée, de David Wondrich et Dean Kotz, traduction de François Monti (Dunod Graphic) : https://www.dunod.com/vie-pratique/grande-histoire-cocktails-en-bande-dessinee
- 🛳 La Barge 166 de Maison Ferrand, où vous pouvez faire vieillir votre propre fût de cognac Ferrand ou de rhum Planteray : https://maisonferrand.com/home/barge-166/ et https://barge166.com/fr/
L'ABUS D'ALCOOL EST DANGEREUX POUR LA SANTÉ, À CONSOMMER AVEC MODÉRATION.
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:03 David Wondrich, légende de l'histoire du cocktail
00:03:18 À bord de la Barge 166, le premier chai flottant au monde
00:04:43 Cognac 1840, Dry Curaçao, Planteray Pineapple : quand l'histoire devient une bouteille
00:09:41 "Oh F..., That's Delicious" : l'histoire derrière le nom O.F.T.D.
00:11:15 Un cocktail classique a-t-il encore le goût d'antan ?
00:13:35 Le peach brandy, l'eau-de-vie de luxe que réclamait La Fayette
00:16:48 Des microfilms à Gallica : comment on enquête sur l'histoire du cocktail
00:21:58 L'IA ? "60% de faits, 40% de conneries"
00:23:45 Gingembre et cheval : la vraie origine du mot "cocktail" ?
00:26:15 Punch : une 2e édition avec 6 nouvelles recettes
00:27:42 Donner un visage aux pionniers du bar : les coulisses de la BD
00:31:09 Du Lo-Fi Lush Hour sur Twitter à la bande dessinée
00:36:44 1850 : Paris dans le top 4 mondial du cocktail
00:39:23 Traduire l'argot du bar : le travail avec François Monti
00:42:35 Mais qui est Ed, le barman borgne du livre ?
00:45:25 Punch à 500 € : pourquoi ce livre s'arrache
00:48:28 Le cocktail que Marilyn Monroe détestait
00:51:13 Cocktail (1988) : Tom Cruise a-t-il abîmé l'image du barman ?
00:58:45 Années 70, Internet, Pornstar Martini : comment le bar s'est réinventé
01:05:00 Retour aux classiques : la leçon du Daiquiri
01:07:54 Retour sur l'article qui a divisé la communauté bar mondiale
01:12:02 Jazz in Jazz, Long Island Bar : les temples du classique
01:13:26 Les étapes pour devenir un grand bartender
01:16:07 La génération post-Covid et sa soif de savoir
01:18:51 L'hospitalité, premier ingrédient du bar
01:22:12 Le mot de la fin
01:25:26 David Wondrich de retour en France en février pour des masterclassesWEBVTT
00:00:09.900 --> 00:00:19.700
<v Frédéric Roginska>Hi everyone and welcome to the DistilCast for a brand new season and yes, you heard it right, this first episode is in English and for a good reason.
00:00:20.800 --> 00:00:26.100
<v Frédéric Roginska>So anyway, let me just have a few words in French for the people that
00:00:26.400 --> 00:00:26.800
<v David Wondrich>Of course.
00:00:26.900 --> 00:00:28.100
<v Frédéric Roginska>Might be scared right now.
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<v Frédéric Roginska>Bien sûr.
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<v Frédéric Roginska>Donc, petite parenthèse, un petit aparté.
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<v Frédéric Roginska>Effectivement, cet épisode sera en anglais.
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<v Frédéric Roginska>Donc, voilà.
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<v Frédéric Roginska>Si vous avez vérifié trois fois que vous étiez bien sur le bon podcast, c'est bien le Distilcast.
00:00:39.200 --> 00:00:41.600
<v Frédéric Roginska>Je vous rassure, ça n'a pas bougé.
00:00:41.800 --> 00:00:43.500
<v Frédéric Roginska>On fera toujours en français pour la suite.
00:00:43.500 --> 00:00:46.100
<v Frédéric Roginska>Donc, soyez rassurés, ça ne change pas.
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<v Frédéric Roginska>Mais là, on a un invité exceptionnel pour ce premier épisode.
00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:56.800
<v Frédéric Roginska>Et dans tous les cas, si vous n'êtes pas à l'aise avec l'anglais, rassurez-vous, on met des sous-titres sur la version qui est sur YouTube.
00:00:57.000 --> 00:00:59.900
<v Frédéric Roginska>Donc, n'hésitez pas à regarder cette version.
00:01:01.400 --> 00:01:02.800
<v Frédéric Roginska>Right, so back in English.
00:01:03.700 --> 00:01:07.800
<v Frédéric Roginska>So today, our guest is David Wondrich, cocktail historian.
00:01:07.900 --> 00:01:09.000
<v Frédéric Roginska>Hello, welcome David.
00:01:09.400 --> 00:01:10.100
<v David Wondrich>Thank you so much.
00:01:10.500 --> 00:01:11.600
<v David Wondrich>I'm very glad to be here.
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<v Frédéric Roginska>And we're glad to have you.
00:01:14.300 --> 00:01:20.200
<v Frédéric Roginska>So you're the author of Imbibe, the first cocktail book to ever win the James Beard Award.
00:01:20.700 --> 00:01:29.800
<v Frédéric Roginska>You're also the author of Punch and the editor-in-chief of the Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails, which is a huge, I believe,
00:01:29.800 --> 00:01:37.300
<v Frédéric Roginska>nine years work with thousands of entries and more than 150 contributors.
00:01:37.300 --> 00:01:37.800
<v Frédéric Roginska>Am I right?
00:01:38.000 --> 00:01:38.700
<v David Wondrich>Exactly so.
00:01:39.500 --> 00:01:40.200
<v David Wondrich>That was a lot.
00:01:40.700 --> 00:01:42.300
<v Frédéric Roginska>That was, I believe so.
00:01:42.900 --> 00:01:57.700
<v Frédéric Roginska>And so most recently you released the comic book, History of the Cocktail, which was this year's winner at the Spirited Awards in the Best New Book on Drink Culture, History or Spirit.
00:01:57.800 --> 00:01:59.000
<v Frédéric Roginska>So congratulations for that.
00:01:59.100 --> 00:01:59.800
<v David Wondrich>Thank you so much.
00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:04.400
<v Frédéric Roginska>And also you had yourself an award at the same Spirited Awards.
00:02:06.100 --> 00:02:06.500
<v David Wondrich>I did.
00:02:06.800 --> 00:02:07.300
<v Chris Jumentier>Ellen David.
00:02:07.600 --> 00:02:08.000
<v Chris Jumentier>Ellen David.
00:02:08.100 --> 00:02:09.199
<v Chris Jumentier>Ellen David, Lifetime Achievement.
00:02:09.300 --> 00:02:10.400
<v Chris Jumentier>So congratulations for that, too.
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<v David Wondrich>Thank you.
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<v David Wondrich>No, it was a very good Tales of the Cocktail for me.
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<v Frédéric Roginska>So yeah, you wrote this book most recently and it was translated in French, published in French and translated by François Monti, which is not a detail.
00:02:29.100 --> 00:02:32.100
<v Frédéric Roginska>So maybe we'll talk about it as well in the episode.
00:02:32.400 --> 00:02:39.000
<v Frédéric Roginska>And so it's called La Grande Histoire des Cocktails en Bande Dessinée in French and it's published at Dunod Graphic.
00:02:40.900 --> 00:02:49.200
<v Frédéric Roginska>And so that's why we have the chance to have you here in France, because you're on a kind of little tour right now to promote the book.
00:02:49.300 --> 00:02:51.600
<v Frédéric Roginska>And you will also be back next year for this.
00:02:51.800 --> 00:02:52.100
<v David Wondrich>I will.
00:02:52.900 --> 00:02:56.300
<v Frédéric Roginska>So obviously, we will take full advantage of this.
00:02:57.500 --> 00:03:09.200
<v Frédéric Roginska>And so we will talk about the book, obviously, but also about your work as a historian and to have maybe a broader view of how you see the bar today and the cocktail.
00:03:09.400 --> 00:03:09.800
<v David Wondrich>Excellent.
00:03:10.600 --> 00:03:12.800
<v Frédéric Roginska>And I believe you know a lot about that.
00:03:15.300 --> 00:03:16.300
<v David Wondrich>Pieces here and there.
00:03:18.700 --> 00:03:28.500
<v Frédéric Roginska>So also, maybe a first word, we are not in a random studio today because we are on barge 166 by Maison Ferrand.
00:03:29.900 --> 00:03:39.000
<v Frédéric Roginska>And right now underneath our feet, there are actually hundreds of casks of plantary rum, of Ferrand Cognac that are aging in small casks.
00:03:39.600 --> 00:03:42.900
<v Frédéric Roginska>So maybe we can have a few words about this.
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<v Frédéric Roginska>It was conceived and designed by Alexandre Gabriel, which is, I believe, a long friend of yours.
00:03:50.900 --> 00:03:52.700
<v David Wondrich>Old friend of mine at this point, yes.
00:03:53.400 --> 00:04:01.100
<v Frédéric Roginska>And so for those who are not familiar with that place we are, it's the first floating cellar in the world.
00:04:01.600 --> 00:04:05.100
<v Frédéric Roginska>And obviously there is no other place like that in France.
00:04:05.900 --> 00:04:07.800
<v Frédéric Roginska>So we're very happy to be here.
00:04:08.200 --> 00:04:16.399
<v Frédéric Roginska>And so a huge, obviously, thank you to Barge 166 and Maison Ferrand to have us here today.
00:04:17.100 --> 00:04:23.700
<v David Wondrich>It's not only an aging cellar, it's also a lovely tasting room with windows on the Seine.
00:04:23.800 --> 00:04:34.100
<v David Wondrich>And it's very Claude Monet right now, looking out at the water, at the green water of the Seine.
00:04:34.100 --> 00:04:34.900
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah, that's a good season.
00:04:35.300 --> 00:04:36.600
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah, beautiful.
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<v David Wondrich>Absolutely beautiful.
00:04:37.800 --> 00:04:38.300
<v David Wondrich>Look at it.
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<v David Wondrich>So this is a wonderful place to sit and have a talk.
00:04:43.300 --> 00:04:53.700
<v Frédéric Roginska>Yeah, and well, so the transition is very easy for this because you've been working on several stuff with Alexandre Gabriel on product development.
00:04:54.100 --> 00:04:57.300
<v David Wondrich>Over the years, we've done several things together.
00:04:59.100 --> 00:05:06.400
<v David Wondrich>We started with the 1840 cognac, where I helped him with tasting and explained.
00:05:08.200 --> 00:05:16.500
<v David Wondrich>One of the things that I've been very lucky with is knowing curious distillers.
00:05:17.000 --> 00:05:20.100
<v David Wondrich>And I've been able to persuade a number of them to...
00:05:21.800 --> 00:05:33.100
<v David Wondrich>Not really do new products, but to use their knowledge to make history come alive, to bring back some of the high quality, interesting products of the past.
00:05:33.900 --> 00:05:40.500
<v David Wondrich>And one of the things we needed was a good cocktail cognac, something with a little more presence in a cocktail than a VS.
00:05:41.200 --> 00:05:47.900
<v David Wondrich>And that was the 1840 project because Alexander obviously knew his cognac history.
00:05:48.000 --> 00:05:56.800
<v David Wondrich>And he said, well, yes, the old three-star cognacs used to be a little richer than the very clean VS style.
00:05:57.200 --> 00:05:59.500
<v David Wondrich>And so we...
00:06:00.000 --> 00:06:14.400
<v David Wondrich>Tasted a bunch of things and that's what we did, very old bottles of cognac and there was an 1840 Pinot Castillon that was quite wonderful and that's what he was able to blend a very,
00:06:14.500 --> 00:06:17.600
<v David Wondrich>very close resemblance to.
00:06:18.200 --> 00:06:19.900
<v David Wondrich>So that was very cool.
00:06:20.100 --> 00:06:20.800
<v David Wondrich>We did that.
00:06:21.900 --> 00:06:33.800
<v David Wondrich>And for on dry orange Corso, I had been playing around with home distilling, and I had made, according to a 19th century recipe, an orange Corso.
00:06:34.300 --> 00:06:43.900
<v David Wondrich>Very badly, but I was able to bring a little for him to taste, and he said, okay, you know, this is a little rough, but I see what you're going for here.
00:06:44.100 --> 00:06:45.800
<v David Wondrich>We can easily do something like that.
00:06:45.900 --> 00:06:52.400
<v Chris Jumentier>He had the idea, he had the expertise to do it, and to distill fruits, because he knows and he had the expertise to do it.
00:06:52.600 --> 00:06:54.400
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, he already had an orange liqueur.
00:06:54.500 --> 00:06:57.900
<v David Wondrich>It was just a little smoother and a little less rich.
00:06:58.400 --> 00:07:01.400
<v David Wondrich>And this was more of a 19th century style.
00:07:01.500 --> 00:07:07.000
<v David Wondrich>And it's wonderful in cocktails because it almost disappears into the cocktail.
00:07:07.400 --> 00:07:09.200
<v David Wondrich>It doesn't give a heavy orange flavor.
00:07:09.200 --> 00:07:12.700
<v David Wondrich>It just makes the cocktail richer and more complex.
00:07:13.300 --> 00:07:15.200
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, so that was fun.
00:07:15.900 --> 00:07:28.400
<v David Wondrich>And then I worked on the pirate crew that did the OFTD rum, 69% alcohol, but still pretty tasty and flavorful,
00:07:30.400 --> 00:07:32.000
<v David Wondrich>and a few other projects as well.
00:07:32.500 --> 00:07:34.500
<v Frédéric Roginska>Yeah, the Plantare Pineapple.
00:07:34.600 --> 00:07:35.600
<v Frédéric Roginska>Oh, yes, of course.
00:07:35.800 --> 00:07:45.600
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, that was something I'd been trying to get somebody to make, and finally Alexander was crazy enough to do it, and it turned out to be quite successful.
00:07:46.800 --> 00:07:51.700
<v David Wondrich>In fact, I knew it would be successful because I went in at Tales of the Cocktail.
00:07:52.900 --> 00:07:58.800
<v David Wondrich>The year it was launched, it was as a special one-off for the Tales of the Cocktail apprentices.
00:07:59.400 --> 00:08:01.200
<v David Wondrich>That was the test market, basically.
00:08:01.600 --> 00:08:06.400
<v David Wondrich>And I took it into the kitchen where they were batching up all the drinks for the seminars.
00:08:06.800 --> 00:08:12.400
<v David Wondrich>And Brian Miller, a very large pirate of a man, took the bottle and...
00:08:13.000 --> 00:08:15.100
<v David Wondrich>Started drinking and didn't stop.
00:08:17.800 --> 00:08:21.000
<v David Wondrich>He drank about a quarter of the bottle at once.
00:08:21.200 --> 00:08:22.500
<v David Wondrich>And I said, okay, this works.
00:08:25.100 --> 00:08:26.000
<v Frédéric Roginska>A little disclaimer.
00:08:27.200 --> 00:08:28.000
<v David Wondrich>Don't try this at home.
00:08:28.600 --> 00:08:29.300
<v David Wondrich>Unless you're Brian Miller.
00:08:29.400 --> 00:08:31.200
<v David Wondrich>Drink responsibly, by the way.
00:08:31.700 --> 00:08:33.100
<v Chris Jumentier>Little disclaimer, drink responsibly.
00:08:33.400 --> 00:08:34.700
<v Chris Jumentier>L'ABUS D'ALCOOL EST DANGEREUX POUR LA SANTÉ.
00:08:34.799 --> 00:08:35.700
<v Chris Jumentier>À CONSOMMER AVEC MODÉRATION.
00:08:36.799 --> 00:08:37.299
<v Frédéric Roginska>Exactly.
00:08:38.100 --> 00:08:40.900
<v Frédéric Roginska>So you did something very interesting.
00:08:40.900 --> 00:08:43.799
<v Frédéric Roginska>Is that as a historian and researcher,
00:08:44.600 --> 00:08:50.400
<v Frédéric Roginska>your research ended up in real bottles that we can all try today.
00:08:50.700 --> 00:08:53.200
<v Frédéric Roginska>And maybe I have two questions about that.
00:08:54.900 --> 00:09:01.500
<v Frédéric Roginska>For instance, in the Dry Curaçao, I read that you did like 50 tastings before.
00:09:02.600 --> 00:09:07.000
<v Frédéric Roginska>How do you decide that the 50 seconds is the good one?
00:09:08.000 --> 00:09:16.300
<v David Wondrich>Well, Alexander would send me packages of samples, and I'd taste my way through them very carefully, and then I'd send feedback.
00:09:16.400 --> 00:09:20.400
<v David Wondrich>And finally, the samples were becoming more and more alike, which is a good sign.
00:09:20.500 --> 00:09:22.900
<v David Wondrich>It's like, we're very close here.
00:09:23.000 --> 00:09:26.400
<v David Wondrich>And then it was just, you know, let's go with this one.
00:09:26.700 --> 00:09:31.700
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah, because as well, you know, for OFTD, it's your part, you know, the sevens, sevens people, you know.
00:09:32.100 --> 00:09:39.300
<v Chris Jumentier>And as well, because it's a special product, it's not like something that we like daily, you know, use maybe, you know, in some cultures.
00:09:39.300 --> 00:09:41.600
<v Chris Jumentier>So it's very special with lots of characters.
00:09:41.700 --> 00:09:45.000
<v Chris Jumentier>But I heard about something about what does OFTD mean?
00:09:45.300 --> 00:09:49.800
<v David Wondrich>Well, if I can say it, it means, oh, fuck, that's delicious.
00:09:50.800 --> 00:09:52.300
<v Chris Jumentier>But how does it come?
00:09:52.600 --> 00:10:07.200
<v David Wondrich>Well, it came, we'd been tasting all day and finally came up with the idea of adding a little bit of pot still Barbados rum that we'd tasted earlier on our tour of the cellars.
00:10:07.600 --> 00:10:11.600
<v David Wondrich>And I said, you know, what if we got a little bit of that to put in?
00:10:11.700 --> 00:10:16.000
<v David Wondrich>Because we had the flavor close, but the texture was wrong.
00:10:16.500 --> 00:10:18.700
<v David Wondrich>And we had hit a dead end.
00:10:18.800 --> 00:10:20.300
<v David Wondrich>Nobody was agreeing on anything.
00:10:20.900 --> 00:10:26.500
<v David Wondrich>And finally, we tried that, and it brought everything into focus.
00:10:27.200 --> 00:10:32.600
<v David Wondrich>And that was when I said, oh, fuck, that's delicious.
00:10:32.700 --> 00:10:41.200
<v David Wondrich>So it was partly out of relief that finally we got something because we'd been doing this for hours and been a little frustrated.
00:10:41.800 --> 00:10:43.000
<v Chris Jumentier>Je me demande comment ça va être traduit.
00:10:43.300 --> 00:10:45.500
<v Chris Jumentier>I don't know how it's going to be translated by YouTube.
00:10:45.500 --> 00:10:46.700
<v Chris Jumentier>Oh, fuck, that's delicious.
00:10:46.900 --> 00:10:47.600
<v Chris Jumentier>I will do it in French.
00:10:48.000 --> 00:10:49.700
<v Chris Jumentier>Oh, putain, qu'est-ce que c'est bon.
00:10:50.000 --> 00:10:51.600
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah, that's about right.
00:10:51.800 --> 00:10:53.100
<v David Wondrich>Bref, bip, bip.
00:10:53.900 --> 00:10:54.200
<v Chris Jumentier>C'est fait.
00:10:56.600 --> 00:10:59.600
<v David Wondrich>But yeah, that finally worked out.
00:11:00.000 --> 00:11:00.200
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah.
00:11:01.300 --> 00:11:04.200
<v Frédéric Roginska>And when...
00:11:05.600 --> 00:11:06.500
<v Chris Jumentier>J'ai tué ton feed.
00:11:08.100 --> 00:11:09.500
<v Chris Jumentier>I killed the feed of Fred.
00:11:11.100 --> 00:11:13.800
<v Chris Jumentier>I destroyed the organization of the interview, as usual.
00:11:14.200 --> 00:11:14.600
<v Frédéric Roginska>No, no, no.
00:11:14.700 --> 00:11:28.600
<v Frédéric Roginska>It's just we often maybe talk backward about cocktails and, okay, but we're doing classic recipes, but with today's products.
00:11:29.100 --> 00:11:33.400
<v Frédéric Roginska>So does it taste the way it tastes at the time?
00:11:33.600 --> 00:11:37.900
<v Frédéric Roginska>And I know that your work is exactly thinking about that.
00:11:40.400 --> 00:11:47.500
<v David Wondrich>I think compared to 20 years ago or 25 years ago, we've been able to get much closer.
00:11:48.300 --> 00:11:50.500
<v David Wondrich>We have much richer products available.
00:11:50.900 --> 00:11:55.700
<v David Wondrich>The 1960s, 70s, and 1980s saw products get very thin.
00:11:56.300 --> 00:11:58.400
<v David Wondrich>The taste got very thin.
00:11:58.600 --> 00:11:59.800
<v David Wondrich>You know, they got...
00:12:01.500 --> 00:12:11.800
<v David Wondrich>Smooth out and lightened and people were not buying things for flavor and we've we've managed to to
00:12:12.300 --> 00:12:26.500
<v David Wondrich>rebuild with the craft distilling movement has been has been big on that and people like Alexander and there are a few others who are saying well you know some of these older spirits or some of the way they used to make things
00:12:28.400 --> 00:12:38.600
<v David Wondrich>were very helpful when you come to mix it because it's the spirit still has flavor that comes through it doesn't disappear into the mix yeah and we've we've
00:12:39.300 --> 00:12:47.200
<v David Wondrich>managed to recover some of that not ever not all of it and some of it it turns out is almost too much of I
00:12:48.500 --> 00:12:55.400
<v David Wondrich>Rye whiskey, for instance, American rye whiskey, used to be a very funky spirit.
00:12:56.800 --> 00:13:04.100
<v David Wondrich>I've tasted a number of pre-prohibition examples, and it's hard to mix with.
00:13:04.300 --> 00:13:10.300
<v Chris Jumentier>And you explain as well in the book about how they made it by themselves, rye, and how they mix it and hide it.
00:13:10.400 --> 00:13:10.700
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah, yeah.
00:13:10.900 --> 00:13:11.700
<v Chris Jumentier>Kind of copy and paste.
00:13:12.000 --> 00:13:15.700
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, we have little sort of one-page...
00:13:17.400 --> 00:13:24.200
<v David Wondrich>We call, we say in English, you know, a thumbnail sketch of how the various spirits that go into cocktails are made.
00:13:24.500 --> 00:13:28.600
<v David Wondrich>Because you can't really understand cocktails unless you understand the ingredients.
00:13:29.100 --> 00:13:30.800
<v David Wondrich>That's almost the most important thing.
00:13:31.300 --> 00:13:33.700
<v David Wondrich>That's more important even than the proportions.
00:13:35.300 --> 00:13:37.400
<v Frédéric Roginska>And I have another question.
00:13:37.500 --> 00:13:42.500
<v Frédéric Roginska>So you've been working on that Ferrand Cognac, on the dry curacao, the rums.
00:13:42.900 --> 00:13:51.000
<v Frédéric Roginska>Is there any other lost spirit that you would like to work on in the future?
00:13:51.100 --> 00:13:52.900
<v Frédéric Roginska>And maybe with Alexandre, obviously.
00:13:53.200 --> 00:13:53.800
<v David Wondrich>Well, I've been...
00:13:56.600 --> 00:14:11.400
<v David Wondrich>Advising some small American distillers on peach brandy from peaches distilled like a cognac, not sweetened liqueur with the peaches and the pits, the nuts,
00:14:11.600 --> 00:14:11.900
<v David Wondrich>les noix.
00:14:16.400 --> 00:14:21.800
<v David Wondrich>A few people have made it on a very small scale, so it's very expensive and hard to find.
00:14:22.200 --> 00:14:23.700
<v David Wondrich>And it's barrel-aged.
00:14:23.800 --> 00:14:26.500
<v David Wondrich>But this was the American luxury spirit.
00:14:26.900 --> 00:14:33.300
<v David Wondrich>It was the most expensive domestic spirit in America from the 1700s until the...
00:14:34.500 --> 00:14:48.600
<v David Wondrich>Middle of the 1800s after which it starts to disappear because it was too uneconomical to make it cost too much to make it was handmade maybe just it was handmade and you had to do it when the peaches were ripe you couldn't transport them
00:14:48.800 --> 00:14:58.500
<v David Wondrich>okay so you needed the the sad and and the the the horrible part it's good that it went away because the only way to make it economically was if you had slave labor
00:14:58.800 --> 00:15:02.400
<v Chris Jumentier>And just to be produced, you know, like as base for cocktails?
00:15:03.000 --> 00:15:07.600
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, it was used in cocktails, and it was also aged like an old cognac.
00:15:08.200 --> 00:15:11.100
<v David Wondrich>They'd be 6, 8, 10, 10, 10 years old.
00:15:11.100 --> 00:15:17.700
<v David Wondrich>And it was when the Marquis de La Fayette went back to France after the American Revolution.
00:15:18.000 --> 00:15:26.200
<v David Wondrich>The one thing that he wanted, two things that he wrote to his friends from America, Virginia ham and barrels of peach brandy.
00:15:28.100 --> 00:15:33.600
<v Chris Jumentier>Maybe we always just spoil the next upcoming spirits in Maison Ferrand.
00:15:36.100 --> 00:15:42.300
<v David Wondrich>Now Alexander will plant peach orchards all over the hills of Cognac.
00:15:42.600 --> 00:15:46.400
<v Chris Jumentier>Next step, after Geneva, after L'AIA, after all this stuff.
00:15:47.000 --> 00:15:48.500
<v David Wondrich>Exactly, exactly.
00:15:48.800 --> 00:15:50.700
<v Chris Jumentier>You know the famous Charente peach?
00:15:51.300 --> 00:15:51.700
<v Chris Jumentier>Not yet?
00:15:53.000 --> 00:15:53.500
<v David Wondrich>We will see.
00:15:53.800 --> 00:15:54.300
<v David Wondrich>That's right.
00:15:54.700 --> 00:15:56.400
<v David Wondrich>But it's truly delicious.
00:15:56.600 --> 00:15:56.700
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah.
00:15:57.300 --> 00:16:01.500
<v David Wondrich>And it mixes very well with ramen, with cognac.
00:16:01.500 --> 00:16:03.500
<v David Wondrich>You can make fantastic punches.
00:16:03.600 --> 00:16:06.600
<v David Wondrich>And it's a lovely spirit.
00:16:06.700 --> 00:16:10.700
<v David Wondrich>And I would really like to see that come back on a more commercial scale.
00:16:12.600 --> 00:16:15.400
<v David Wondrich>There's a couple people making just little test batches.
00:16:15.600 --> 00:16:16.600
<v Chris Jumentier>More affordable as well.
00:16:16.600 --> 00:16:20.400
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, more affordable, made on a larger scale so the price could go down.
00:16:21.400 --> 00:16:30.700
<v Frédéric Roginska>Okay, well, you just said before about the Stiggins Fancy that you found in Alexandre someone crazy enough to try it, so maybe.
00:16:31.000 --> 00:16:32.800
<v David Wondrich>Maybe, exactly, exactly.
00:16:33.100 --> 00:16:33.500
<v Frédéric Roginska>Why not?
00:16:33.600 --> 00:16:36.500
<v Frédéric Roginska>And I know he will be watching this episode, so...
00:16:36.700 --> 00:16:36.800
<v David Wondrich>Yeah.
00:16:37.900 --> 00:16:40.700
<v David Wondrich>Well, he knows how I feel about peach brandy.
00:16:42.100 --> 00:16:43.200
<v David Wondrich>It's truly delicious.
00:16:43.300 --> 00:16:44.700
<v Chris Jumentier>It's just a question of time.
00:16:45.100 --> 00:16:45.200
<v David Wondrich>Yeah.
00:16:45.600 --> 00:16:45.900
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, yeah.
00:16:48.200 --> 00:16:53.200
<v Frédéric Roginska>Maybe now we can talk more broadly about your work as a historian.
00:16:53.400 --> 00:16:54.200
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, absolutely.
00:16:54.300 --> 00:17:02.900
<v Frédéric Roginska>And when you begin, you had access in paper documents, mostly archives, stuff like that.
00:17:03.300 --> 00:17:14.800
<v Frédéric Roginska>And I was wondering how your work is evolving with all the new technologies right now, the access maybe to some information or...
00:17:15.500 --> 00:17:17.500
<v David Wondrich>Well, I'll be honest.
00:17:18.200 --> 00:17:26.500
<v David Wondrich>When I started, it was at the very beginning of newspaper databases and Google Books.
00:17:27.000 --> 00:17:30.000
<v David Wondrich>And I could not have done what I did without it.
00:17:30.000 --> 00:17:35.700
<v David Wondrich>Because the problem with cocktail history is it was never written down originally.
00:17:36.100 --> 00:17:37.500
<v David Wondrich>It was not important enough.
00:17:37.900 --> 00:17:40.000
<v David Wondrich>It was just little things that people did.
00:17:40.500 --> 00:17:45.300
<v David Wondrich>And only eventually did journalists start paying attention to it.
00:17:45.900 --> 00:17:52.800
<v David Wondrich>The first big article on the bartender's work and recipes comes only in 1873.
00:17:53.200 --> 00:17:54.100
<v David Wondrich>That's very late.
00:17:55.300 --> 00:18:02.400
<v David Wondrich>And before that, it was only talked about very, very rarely and not in much detail.
00:18:02.900 --> 00:18:07.900
<v David Wondrich>And the problem is even this stuff was never collected.
00:18:08.000 --> 00:18:08.800
<v David Wondrich>And so...
00:18:10.200 --> 00:18:18.400
<v David Wondrich>To find it on old newspapers in paper or microfilm, you have to read them basically in real time.
00:18:18.500 --> 00:18:24.400
<v David Wondrich>So you can get through three or four issues of a newspaper in a day.
00:18:24.900 --> 00:18:29.000
<v David Wondrich>That's three or four days worth out of years, out of many, many newspapers.
00:18:29.300 --> 00:18:31.400
<v David Wondrich>Because you have to, these aren't headlines.
00:18:32.300 --> 00:18:34.700
<v David Wondrich>We have just discovered the martini cocktail.
00:18:35.600 --> 00:18:36.600
<v David Wondrich>And type this big.
00:18:36.800 --> 00:18:44.100
<v David Wondrich>It's always a brief mention on page eight down at the bottom next to the advertisements.
00:18:45.700 --> 00:18:49.600
<v David Wondrich>Because that's where they put the stuff they need to fill up the empty spots.
00:18:49.600 --> 00:18:50.000
<v David Wondrich>The rest.
00:18:50.200 --> 00:18:52.400
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, so it's a miscellaneous item.
00:18:52.400 --> 00:18:56.000
<v David Wondrich>And without computer help, it's...
00:18:56.900 --> 00:19:01.000
<v David Wondrich>Almost impossible to do this at any scale.
00:19:01.400 --> 00:19:09.300
<v David Wondrich>You can do, I have a couple academic books from the pre-computer era that wrote about bars and bartending,
00:19:09.400 --> 00:19:18.300
<v David Wondrich>and one guy looked through one year's worth of newspapers from one city and one year's from another, and that was as much as he could do.
00:19:18.700 --> 00:19:25.100
<v David Wondrich>One year out of, you know, hundreds of years of this stuff, out of two cities, out of all the cities in America.
00:19:25.600 --> 00:19:29.300
<v David Wondrich>So it really, I was very lucky.
00:19:29.700 --> 00:19:32.600
<v David Wondrich>I was just in the right place and I had...
00:19:34.300 --> 00:19:35.600
<v David Wondrich>Pretty good research skills.
00:19:35.700 --> 00:19:49.600
<v David Wondrich>I have an advanced university degree, a PhD doctorate in literature, but I had focused on literary history mostly, so I knew how to do the research.
00:19:50.100 --> 00:20:03.500
<v David Wondrich>And these computer tools were not perfect, and they're still not perfect, but I was there right when they started, and I was able to find so much stuff that if I hadn't found it, somebody else would have.
00:20:03.800 --> 00:20:07.000
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, you couldn't find it otherwise, and I happened to be there first.
00:20:07.200 --> 00:20:10.700
<v Chris Jumentier>But as well, because bartenders, you know, and experts, they didn't took notes as well.
00:20:10.700 --> 00:20:12.800
<v Chris Jumentier>They didn't wrote books, for example, in France.
00:20:13.200 --> 00:20:18.300
<v Chris Jumentier>Of course, we have, you know, all the Frank Myers, for example, you know, used to, well, done for the reads.
00:20:18.300 --> 00:20:20.100
<v Chris Jumentier>Of course, you know, the Harry Johnson's books.
00:20:20.900 --> 00:20:21.400
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah, of course.
00:20:21.800 --> 00:20:23.400
<v Chris Jumentier>And all the other ones, you know, through Europe.
00:20:24.100 --> 00:20:26.100
<v Chris Jumentier>But we don't have a lot of proof.
00:20:26.200 --> 00:20:28.100
<v Chris Jumentier>We don't have a lot of articles, especially.
00:20:29.000 --> 00:20:30.800
<v Chris Jumentier>So pretty hard.
00:20:31.400 --> 00:20:32.000
<v Chris Jumentier>It's pretty hard.
00:20:32.100 --> 00:20:35.000
<v Chris Jumentier>To find and to build, you know, this type, you know, of research.
00:20:35.200 --> 00:20:35.400
<v Chris Jumentier>I mean.
00:20:35.700 --> 00:20:46.300
<v David Wondrich>Well, I will say if, you know, Gallica, the Bibliothèque Nationale has an excellent website.
00:20:46.500 --> 00:20:46.600
<v David Wondrich>Yeah.
00:20:46.900 --> 00:20:50.600
<v David Wondrich>And they have the full archive of the...
00:20:51.800 --> 00:20:57.600
<v David Wondrich>Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune, the famous, that became the International Herald Tribune.
00:20:57.900 --> 00:21:06.200
<v David Wondrich>But this wrote a lot about bars in Paris and wrote numerous articles on cocktails and bartenders.
00:21:06.600 --> 00:21:12.400
<v David Wondrich>And because it was an American newspaper and it had American interests, which were cocktails.
00:21:12.500 --> 00:21:12.600
<v David Wondrich>Yeah.
00:21:13.500 --> 00:21:17.800
<v David Wondrich>But, and you can look it all up on Gallica for free.
00:21:18.400 --> 00:21:22.700
<v David Wondrich>And it's, I'm giving away one of my best sources.
00:21:26.200 --> 00:21:26.800
<v Chris Jumentier>That's a tips.
00:21:27.300 --> 00:21:27.500
<v Chris Jumentier>Yes.
00:21:27.700 --> 00:21:28.000
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah.
00:21:28.000 --> 00:21:29.000
<v David Wondrich>And you can search it.
00:21:29.200 --> 00:21:40.700
<v David Wondrich>You know, you can find all kinds of articles about, for instance, Chiro Capozzi, who ran Chiro's and founded the Chiro's, what became the Chiro's empire of bars.
00:21:40.700 --> 00:21:46.100
<v David Wondrich>And these were instrumental in European cocktail.
00:21:46.600 --> 00:21:48.700
<v David Wondrich>They transformed the European cocktail scene.
00:21:49.400 --> 00:21:52.400
<v David Wondrich>And so there's stuff like that that you can find.
00:21:53.300 --> 00:21:56.500
<v Frédéric Roginska>So you're citing a very respected source.
00:21:58.500 --> 00:22:03.000
<v Frédéric Roginska>What would be your stance with the evolution of now all the computer tools?
00:22:03.400 --> 00:22:15.800
<v Frédéric Roginska>What would be your stance on AI now and what kind of degree of proof you would need to take something for okay?
00:22:16.200 --> 00:22:19.000
<v David Wondrich>The problem with AI is you can never trust it.
00:22:19.000 --> 00:22:20.600
<v David Wondrich>It always adds.
00:22:21.600 --> 00:22:24.700
<v David Wondrich>Something of itself because it's, you know, it's a prediction machine.
00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:28.800
<v David Wondrich>Most people who start the sentence this way will finish it that way.
00:22:28.900 --> 00:22:36.100
<v David Wondrich>And so they, they add to that and that slowly pulls you and then very quickly pulls you away from what actually happened.
00:22:36.400 --> 00:22:37.500
<v David Wondrich>But it sounds right.
00:22:37.700 --> 00:22:43.000
<v David Wondrich>You read it and it's, you know, because it's what people say, it's based on what people say.
00:22:43.100 --> 00:22:48.300
<v David Wondrich>So it sounds correct, but, uh, so you have to check every fact and why bother?
00:22:49.700 --> 00:22:52.600
<v David Wondrich>It's better to just do the fact checking yourself.
00:22:52.700 --> 00:22:59.500
<v David Wondrich>And the stories it tells are often wrong.
00:22:59.900 --> 00:23:00.800
<v David Wondrich>They sound good, though.
00:23:01.600 --> 00:23:07.000
<v David Wondrich>But I see so much AI stuff that mixes.
00:23:07.000 --> 00:23:11.200
<v David Wondrich>It's about 60% fact and 40% just total bullshit.
00:23:12.000 --> 00:23:15.200
<v David Wondrich>And we can...
00:23:17.200 --> 00:23:19.300
<v David Wondrich>Humans are great at making our own mistakes.
00:23:19.500 --> 00:23:22.000
<v David Wondrich>We don't need a machine to make mistakes for us.
00:23:22.600 --> 00:23:23.000
<v David Wondrich>You know?
00:23:23.800 --> 00:23:26.800
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah, and you wrote it perfectly in your book.
00:23:26.900 --> 00:23:29.000
<v Chris Jumentier>You say, we may, we could.
00:23:29.200 --> 00:23:38.700
<v Chris Jumentier>So sometimes we don't have the proof, but crossing the different information that we have from the different sources, it could happen between this date and this date.
00:23:38.800 --> 00:23:40.400
<v Chris Jumentier>It could be this person and this person.
00:23:40.900 --> 00:23:42.500
<v Chris Jumentier>It's like the legitimacy of the world.
00:23:43.000 --> 00:23:45.500
<v Chris Jumentier>Where does the name cocktails come from and so on?
00:23:45.600 --> 00:23:47.600
<v Chris Jumentier>I just heard, you know, the podcast of François Monti.
00:23:47.800 --> 00:23:48.100
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, yeah.
00:23:49.300 --> 00:23:51.400
<v Chris Jumentier>He did a podcast, you know, with the Belgium team as well.
00:23:51.400 --> 00:23:53.500
<v Chris Jumentier>And he talked about something about, you know, the cocktail.
00:23:53.500 --> 00:23:54.500
<v Frédéric Roginska>Parental disclaimer.
00:23:54.700 --> 00:23:56.000
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah, parental disclaimer.
00:23:56.100 --> 00:24:02.600
<v Chris Jumentier>I won't say it, you know, but he explained something that I was like, I never heard that before.
00:24:03.200 --> 00:24:06.000
<v Chris Jumentier>Explaining about the origin of the world cocktail.
00:24:06.600 --> 00:24:16.100
<v Chris Jumentier>And talking about a piece of ginger that has been put inside a part of a horse, a live horse, of course.
00:24:17.000 --> 00:24:23.700
<v Chris Jumentier>And the way it gives some energy to the horse, it brings the tails up from the horse.
00:24:23.800 --> 00:24:27.800
<v Chris Jumentier>It makes me think, make us think about a cocktail.
00:24:28.700 --> 00:24:32.300
<v Chris Jumentier>And I never heard that before, but that was a crazy story.
00:24:32.300 --> 00:24:39.100
<v David Wondrich>Well, you know, Francois just translated the Grand Histoire des Cocktails, and that was originally my research.
00:24:39.800 --> 00:24:43.000
<v David Wondrich>It was this explanation, and I didn't believe it at first either.
00:24:43.700 --> 00:24:55.000
<v David Wondrich>But I was able to, I spent a long time looking through British newspapers and found descriptions of this practice and found that it was called cocktail
00:24:55.400 --> 00:25:02.500
<v David Wondrich>and found other things that made me realize that this is by far the most plausible explanation.
00:25:02.700 --> 00:25:10.600
<v David Wondrich>We may never know exactly, but that's the one that seemed, that fits the known evidence the best.
00:25:11.500 --> 00:25:17.700
<v Chris Jumentier>So we will talk and we will maybe spoil some part of the book sometimes, but we will try not to do it as much.
00:25:17.700 --> 00:25:25.400
<v Chris Jumentier>But there will be lots of details like this, which even we are working in the industry since years now, so 25, 27 years now.
00:25:25.700 --> 00:25:36.400
<v Chris Jumentier>And it's really, really, it's great for us still to learn, still to discover, or still even, you know, to say, oh, okay, I think, I thought I was right.
00:25:36.800 --> 00:25:42.300
<v Chris Jumentier>I thought I knew something about, you know, any things about, you know, the history of cocktail, but I was wrong.
00:25:42.700 --> 00:25:43.300
<v Chris Jumentier>And that's the proof.
00:25:43.300 --> 00:25:45.200
<v David Wondrich>Well, I learn that every day.
00:25:45.700 --> 00:25:49.000
<v David Wondrich>You know, you always have to be willing to correct.
00:25:49.200 --> 00:26:00.600
<v David Wondrich>If you see some of my explanations over the years, how they've evolved, you know, and I always say, you know, well, I believe that this is true because I do and it fits the evidence I have.
00:26:00.800 --> 00:26:07.100
<v David Wondrich>But then you get new evidence and only a fool refuses to change their explanation.
00:26:07.600 --> 00:26:08.500
<v Chris Jumentier>Until the next proof.
00:26:08.800 --> 00:26:08.900
<v David Wondrich>Yeah.
00:26:09.300 --> 00:26:09.400
<v David Wondrich>Yeah.
00:26:10.100 --> 00:26:10.300
<v David Wondrich>Yeah.
00:26:10.300 --> 00:26:12.200
<v David Wondrich>And then and then it changes again sometimes.
00:26:12.500 --> 00:26:13.200
<v Frédéric Roginska>As of today.
00:26:14.400 --> 00:26:15.300
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, exactly.
00:26:15.400 --> 00:26:22.000
<v David Wondrich>I mean, for instance, I just finished a second edition of my punch book.
00:26:22.600 --> 00:26:28.900
<v David Wondrich>And there's one punch that I have a great history in the first edition that's completely wrong.
00:26:30.300 --> 00:26:35.700
<v David Wondrich>And I finally found the actual origins of this punch.
00:26:36.000 --> 00:26:39.800
<v David Wondrich>And then I was able to prove that that was also fictional.
00:26:40.700 --> 00:26:41.300
<v Chris Jumentier>That's good news.
00:26:41.700 --> 00:26:41.900
<v David Wondrich>Yeah.
00:26:42.800 --> 00:26:49.500
<v David Wondrich>But so there's stuff like that, that, you know, you want it to be true, but if it's not true, it's not true.
00:26:49.500 --> 00:26:52.000
<v David Wondrich>And that's, you have to accept that, you know.
00:26:52.300 --> 00:26:56.300
<v Chris Jumentier>Keep in mind, everybody, that we're going to have a new edition of the Next Year.
00:26:57.100 --> 00:27:00.100
<v David Wondrich>Next year with six new punches in it.
00:27:02.200 --> 00:27:09.600
<v David Wondrich>A back quick reference recipes for everything so you don't have to do the math every time.
00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:10.200
<v Chris Jumentier>Great.
00:27:10.300 --> 00:27:16.700
<v David Wondrich>Which, you know, I made so many punches since that book, which I talk about.
00:27:16.700 --> 00:27:21.400
<v David Wondrich>I've made punch all over the world and like hundreds and hundreds of times since that book came out.
00:27:21.800 --> 00:27:26.100
<v David Wondrich>And I did learn something about the practicalities of it.
00:27:26.200 --> 00:27:31.500
<v David Wondrich>So I put, I rewrote parts of it to reflect better ways of doing things.
00:27:32.100 --> 00:27:39.400
<v David Wondrich>And so there's a lot of new material in it and new history stuff.
00:27:40.300 --> 00:27:40.900
<v Chris Jumentier>Look forward.
00:27:41.200 --> 00:27:41.400
<v David Wondrich>Yeah.
00:27:42.100 --> 00:27:54.900
<v Frédéric Roginska>So regarding the comic book that came out now, so this time you worked with graphic stuff.
00:27:55.400 --> 00:28:01.600
<v Frédéric Roginska>And so yesterday at Aris Bar, you explained that you kind of brought some...
00:28:06.500 --> 00:28:09.100
<v Frédéric Roginska>Lay off maybe to the end code.
00:28:09.800 --> 00:28:10.000
<v David Wondrich>Yeah.
00:28:10.300 --> 00:28:14.900
<v Frédéric Roginska>So he could imagine how it looked like or...
00:28:15.100 --> 00:28:15.600
<v David Wondrich>Exactly.
00:28:15.900 --> 00:28:26.300
<v Frédéric Roginska>You had to make research about obviously the history, but also, oh, now that we will show to people how it looks, we need to make research about how people dressed, how people...
00:28:27.200 --> 00:28:27.700
<v Frédéric Roginska>Behaving.
00:28:28.000 --> 00:28:29.400
<v Frédéric Roginska>So how was that work?
00:28:29.800 --> 00:28:33.300
<v David Wondrich>It was a lot more work than I expected.
00:28:35.500 --> 00:28:36.000
<v David Wondrich>Oh, well.
00:28:36.300 --> 00:28:45.000
<v David Wondrich>But I had Dean Kotz, a wonderful illustrator who's very good, just representing the world in drawing.
00:28:45.300 --> 00:28:49.000
<v David Wondrich>He's very skilled at drawing, and that was very helpful.
00:28:49.500 --> 00:28:51.200
<v David Wondrich>That's what I wanted.
00:28:51.200 --> 00:28:55.200
<v David Wondrich>I wanted some, but I didn't want kind of a manga-style illustration.
00:28:55.300 --> 00:28:58.000
<v David Wondrich>I like that stuff on its own, but...
00:28:59.800 --> 00:29:09.600
<v David Wondrich>I realized we're showing pictures of some of these people who have never had a picture, you know, and let's represent, let's try to represent them as human beings like us.
00:29:09.700 --> 00:29:12.800
<v David Wondrich>Let's not make it all these, you know, kind of comic book characters.
00:29:13.500 --> 00:29:16.400
<v David Wondrich>Let's try to, let's try to make them come alive.
00:29:17.300 --> 00:29:22.500
<v David Wondrich>And obviously we don't have photos for most of the early bartenders.
00:29:24.100 --> 00:29:29.300
<v David Wondrich>Often we don't even have a description, but at least we could say, this is what people wore back then.
00:29:29.300 --> 00:29:40.800
<v David Wondrich>And this is, and we can, we wanted to give people somebody, to give these people some kind of reality, you know, some kind of humanity, because they're so,
00:29:41.200 --> 00:29:45.500
<v David Wondrich>they're such foggy figures because we have so few details about their lives.
00:29:45.900 --> 00:29:58.500
<v David Wondrich>So if we're going to put it in a book, let's, let's make them look, you know, like people like us, you know, and, and, and, and, and make them, make them come alive because I think we owe it to them.
00:29:58.600 --> 00:30:04.000
<v David Wondrich>They were the pioneers of the profession, of the art of the cocktail.
00:30:04.100 --> 00:30:06.700
<v David Wondrich>And I think it's...
00:30:08.500 --> 00:30:12.700
<v David Wondrich>It would be nice if they came back to life a little bit.
00:30:12.700 --> 00:30:15.700
<v David Wondrich>So we had pictures of them or something.
00:30:16.700 --> 00:30:20.500
<v David Wondrich>Maybe not an accurate picture, but at least it's an image you can hold in your head.
00:30:21.300 --> 00:30:28.000
<v David Wondrich>It makes them a little more vivid than if it's just, yeah, this guy was a middle-sized black man.
00:30:28.600 --> 00:30:30.100
<v David Wondrich>Okay, that doesn't help very much.
00:30:30.500 --> 00:30:42.800
<v David Wondrich>If you're talking about Cato Alexander, one of the first famous American bartenders, and if you say, well, Cato Alexander, okay, middle-sized black man, let's get some features there, and there he is.
00:30:42.800 --> 00:30:43.300
<v David Wondrich>There's Cato.
00:30:43.900 --> 00:30:46.400
<v David Wondrich>And at least it's something.
00:30:48.500 --> 00:30:57.000
<v Frédéric Roginska>And it echoes actually what you said right before about how history is a living thing.
00:30:57.300 --> 00:30:57.400
<v David Wondrich>Yeah.
00:30:57.700 --> 00:31:02.800
<v Frédéric Roginska>Maybe in a few years you will picture it differently than today.
00:31:05.100 --> 00:31:08.200
<v David Wondrich>I hope so, because that means we have more information, you know?
00:31:08.700 --> 00:31:12.800
<v Frédéric Roginska>And I have another question about that comic book.
00:31:13.000 --> 00:31:18.900
<v Frédéric Roginska>So you came from working on a very big piece, which was the Oxford.
00:31:19.000 --> 00:31:19.200
<v David Wondrich>Yeah.
00:31:20.000 --> 00:31:21.200
<v Frédéric Roginska>800 pages.
00:31:21.600 --> 00:31:30.900
<v Frédéric Roginska>How come you switch from that kind of work to making something smaller with pictures, well, drawings?
00:31:31.300 --> 00:31:38.400
<v Frédéric Roginska>And how do you decide what will not make it to this book?
00:31:38.700 --> 00:31:40.900
<v David Wondrich>Oh, that's a hard question.
00:31:41.700 --> 00:31:45.000
<v David Wondrich>But I'll take it in two parts.
00:31:47.700 --> 00:31:59.000
<v David Wondrich>This book grew out of a COVID lockdown project of mine, which was called Du Lo-Fi Lush Hour on the old Twitter when Twitter was fun and not overrun by Nazis.
00:32:00.500 --> 00:32:01.900
<v Chris Jumentier>When Twitter was fun, my friend.
00:32:01.900 --> 00:32:02.200
<v David Wondrich>Yeah.
00:32:04.100 --> 00:32:08.800
<v David Wondrich>And that was when the world went into everybody stay home.
00:32:08.900 --> 00:32:21.000
<v David Wondrich>And so every night I did a live Twitter making a classic cocktail with photos and showing like all the, I have a house full of booze, which most people didn't.
00:32:21.400 --> 00:32:30.900
<v David Wondrich>So I could say one of these gins use, you know, or if you've got them and I, everything I thought would work in it, I would line up and photograph.
00:32:31.000 --> 00:32:39.100
<v David Wondrich>And, and I cursed a lot and made a million typos because I was typing it up very fast so that it was a live conversation.
00:32:39.200 --> 00:32:45.400
<v David Wondrich>And then people joined in and this was, this was very popular, but I try and a lot of the people who would
00:32:46.800 --> 00:32:51.800
<v David Wondrich>who had been regulars on this, which I did for 75 days straight, and then I had to stop.
00:32:52.700 --> 00:32:56.000
<v David Wondrich>But the regular said, you should turn this into a book.
00:32:56.300 --> 00:33:02.600
<v David Wondrich>But it turns out it was too soon, and nobody wanted a book about COVID, you know, COVID era cocktails.
00:33:02.700 --> 00:33:06.600
<v David Wondrich>So, but one of the publishers said, well, that's interesting.
00:33:06.600 --> 00:33:14.600
<v David Wondrich>I think it's too soon, but would you be interested in doing a comic book history of the cocktail as part of our series, the comic book story of this and that?
00:33:15.100 --> 00:33:22.900
<v David Wondrich>They have beer, they have all these books, and they're very good, very seriously historical books that are also illustrated.
00:33:23.800 --> 00:33:26.500
<v David Wondrich>So they're more graphic novel than comic book.
00:33:26.800 --> 00:33:29.000
<v David Wondrich>They're many more words.
00:33:29.500 --> 00:33:34.400
<v David Wondrich>But at the same time, I jumped at the opportunity to do this.
00:33:34.700 --> 00:33:40.100
<v David Wondrich>I'd thought about doing something with comics for a long time because partly they're parts of the...
00:33:41.100 --> 00:33:45.100
<v David Wondrich>Audience that are hard to reach unless you can reach them graphically.
00:33:45.500 --> 00:33:51.200
<v David Wondrich>They're not interested in reading dense books with huge blocks of text, which are my other books.
00:33:52.500 --> 00:33:55.600
<v Chris Jumentier>Sorry, it's just because, you know, I got, as well, you know, the imbibe.
00:33:55.600 --> 00:33:57.500
<v Chris Jumentier>And so I'm just comparing.
00:33:58.000 --> 00:33:59.600
<v Chris Jumentier>There is some photos as well in imbibe.
00:33:59.800 --> 00:34:02.000
<v Chris Jumentier>It hasn't been translated.
00:34:03.100 --> 00:34:06.300
<v David Wondrich>It's been translated into Italian, Russian, and German so far.
00:34:06.400 --> 00:34:06.800
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah, that's right.
00:34:07.100 --> 00:34:09.699
<v Chris Jumentier>That's why you asked us if we speak Italian before.
00:34:10.699 --> 00:34:11.900
<v Chris Jumentier>In fact, yes, it is.
00:34:12.000 --> 00:34:17.000
<v Chris Jumentier>But yeah, I'm a big comic reader as well, as well, you know, books, classic one.
00:34:17.300 --> 00:34:29.199
<v Chris Jumentier>For me, if I have to compare and to explain it to people, it's more kind of roman photo than just a traditional, you know, bande dessinée, as we said, as David wrote there.
00:34:29.300 --> 00:34:34.900
<v Chris Jumentier>It's more about something which is more text, of course, to read than in a traditional book.
00:34:35.300 --> 00:34:42.199
<v Chris Jumentier>And hopefully, instead, you couldn't explain in only 170 pages.
00:34:42.199 --> 00:34:43.900
<v Chris Jumentier>No, you need the pictures, you know.
00:34:44.100 --> 00:34:46.199
<v Chris Jumentier>You need a few pictures, but you need text as well.
00:34:46.300 --> 00:34:51.199
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, you need text as well because my publisher said, you know, I want this to be a real history.
00:34:51.199 --> 00:34:52.000
<v David Wondrich>We have footnotes.
00:34:52.400 --> 00:34:55.400
<v David Wondrich>We don't want, you know, we don't want to skip over.
00:34:55.500 --> 00:35:02.800
<v David Wondrich>Like we want it to be a useful, accurate history of the cocktail, but in a graphic form.
00:35:03.300 --> 00:35:12.300
<v Chris Jumentier>And in your DNA, I think, you know, that, for example, in manga, it's like more 80% of draw and 20% of text.
00:35:12.600 --> 00:35:13.900
<v Chris Jumentier>If that, yeah, if that.
00:35:14.000 --> 00:35:15.900
<v Chris Jumentier>Maximum is 10% and 90%.
00:35:16.600 --> 00:35:20.700
<v Chris Jumentier>So for me, it's more a matter of, I think it's kind of half and half.
00:35:21.100 --> 00:35:26.900
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, I mean, with manga, you know, there you're telling a story and it's a connected story.
00:35:27.100 --> 00:35:27.700
<v David Wondrich>This is...
00:35:29.300 --> 00:35:30.600
<v David Wondrich>We're going all over the world.
00:35:30.900 --> 00:35:34.600
<v David Wondrich>We're jumping from, you know, here's what was happening at the same time in Cuba.
00:35:34.800 --> 00:35:37.500
<v David Wondrich>It's not all one storyline.
00:35:37.600 --> 00:35:43.400
<v David Wondrich>And it's a long history with a lot of detail in it.
00:35:43.400 --> 00:35:46.200
<v David Wondrich>And you can't really do it just in pictures.
00:35:47.800 --> 00:35:52.100
<v David Wondrich>Each chapter could be a 160-page manga book.
00:35:52.500 --> 00:35:53.700
<v David Wondrich>You know, you could do it.
00:35:54.000 --> 00:35:58.100
<v David Wondrich>But you can't tell the whole story in 160 pages.
00:35:58.300 --> 00:36:03.300
<v Chris Jumentier>Maybe it's the next project, you know, as much as one piece, you know, about cocktail.
00:36:03.400 --> 00:36:04.300
<v Chris Jumentier>One cocktail, maybe.
00:36:05.600 --> 00:36:06.300
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, I would.
00:36:07.200 --> 00:36:14.000
<v David Wondrich>I would come up with, you know, that way I would do like a composite character and have them tell the story, you know, the story through their life.
00:36:14.100 --> 00:36:15.000
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, exactly.
00:36:15.300 --> 00:36:21.300
<v David Wondrich>But this was, you know, trying to be like a real history of the cocktail.
00:36:21.300 --> 00:36:30.800
<v David Wondrich>There hasn't been a comprehensive, detailed, accurate history of the cocktail since William Grimes wrote one in...
00:36:32.500 --> 00:36:39.100
<v David Wondrich>1993 with a second edition in 2000 or 2001.
00:36:39.700 --> 00:36:43.200
<v David Wondrich>So that was a long time ago, and we've found a lot of stuff since.
00:36:43.800 --> 00:36:48.700
<v David Wondrich>And I wanted to include, and for this, it's a global history is the thing.
00:36:48.800 --> 00:37:01.800
<v David Wondrich>We spend a lot of time talking about France, for instance, and the developments here, because France was always the beachhead for this weird American style of mixing drinks.
00:37:02.700 --> 00:37:06.400
<v David Wondrich>Which the Americans had stolen from everybody else and just added ice to.
00:37:07.200 --> 00:37:09.200
<v David Wondrich>But still, ice was important.
00:37:09.700 --> 00:37:13.100
<v David Wondrich>And it was most...
00:37:14.100 --> 00:37:15.100
<v David Wondrich>Paris was...
00:37:17.200 --> 00:37:29.100
<v David Wondrich>The, you know, probably I would say the top in 1850, the top four cities in the world to get a cocktail would be New York, New Orleans, San Francisco and Paris, you know.
00:37:30.600 --> 00:37:31.000
<v Chris Jumentier>Thank you.
00:37:31.400 --> 00:37:33.800
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, because Paris was very interested in it.
00:37:33.800 --> 00:37:35.600
<v David Wondrich>And also there were a lot of Americans here.
00:37:35.700 --> 00:37:35.800
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah.
00:37:36.800 --> 00:37:39.800
<v David Wondrich>Americans loved France, you know, and many Americans still do.
00:37:40.100 --> 00:37:41.700
<v Chris Jumentier>And they opened bars as well in France.
00:37:41.800 --> 00:37:42.300
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, they did.
00:37:42.800 --> 00:37:46.200
<v David Wondrich>And then French people started opening those bars.
00:37:46.300 --> 00:37:46.800
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, of course.
00:37:47.300 --> 00:37:47.600
<v David Wondrich>Afterwards.
00:37:47.800 --> 00:37:48.500
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, afterwards.
00:37:48.500 --> 00:37:49.700
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, they said, oh, we could do this.
00:37:50.300 --> 00:37:50.800
<v David Wondrich>And they could.
00:37:50.900 --> 00:37:51.300
<v Chris Jumentier>Looks great.
00:37:51.400 --> 00:37:52.200
<v Chris Jumentier>Let's get in paste.
00:37:52.400 --> 00:37:53.000
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:37:53.200 --> 00:37:55.600
<v David Wondrich>Let's start doing this.
00:37:55.600 --> 00:37:59.200
<v David Wondrich>Then you get, you know, people like Frank Meyer, who was Austrian at the Ritz.
00:38:02.200 --> 00:38:06.100
<v David Wondrich>Giovannino, Johnny Mita, who was Italian at the Chatham Bar.
00:38:06.500 --> 00:38:10.200
<v David Wondrich>You know, these were like major world bartenders.
00:38:12.000 --> 00:38:12.300
<v Chris Jumentier>That's true.
00:38:12.400 --> 00:38:15.000
<v Chris Jumentier>For example, you know, the Harris Bar opened, you know, by American people.
00:38:15.100 --> 00:38:16.700
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, but with French bartenders also.
00:38:17.500 --> 00:38:22.400
<v Chris Jumentier>For example, it used to be, you know, the Rosebud as well, you know, in the market, which is a really, really old one.
00:38:22.600 --> 00:38:31.900
<v Chris Jumentier>Bar Le Forum as well, opened, you know, early in 1930, which has been by, you know, funny Italian migrants as well.
00:38:33.000 --> 00:38:34.700
<v David Wondrich>And then there was, you know, Henry's Bar.
00:38:34.800 --> 00:38:36.100
<v David Wondrich>Henry Tepé was German.
00:38:36.500 --> 00:38:42.000
<v David Wondrich>He'd spent one afternoon in America when he got off his ship and walked around and then got back on.
00:38:42.100 --> 00:38:44.300
<v David Wondrich>So he didn't learn anything from Americans, really.
00:38:44.700 --> 00:38:45.800
<v David Wondrich>He learned in Europe.
00:38:45.900 --> 00:38:51.200
<v David Wondrich>But Henry's Bar was enormously popular around the corner from Harry's Bar.
00:38:52.100 --> 00:38:55.200
<v David Wondrich>There was the Chatham, which was down the street from Harry's Bar.
00:38:55.300 --> 00:39:05.800
<v David Wondrich>There was a small neighborhood of, we have a map in the comic book history of where all the American, the top American bars were in Paris, and they were in the American quarter.
00:39:06.100 --> 00:39:09.900
<v David Wondrich>There was an American neighborhood, which there were so many Americans over here.
00:39:11.000 --> 00:39:12.800
<v Chris Jumentier>In one of the worst quarters in Paris.
00:39:13.200 --> 00:39:13.300
<v Frédéric Roginska>Yeah.
00:39:13.700 --> 00:39:14.000
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, yeah.
00:39:15.200 --> 00:39:16.600
<v David Wondrich>The Grand Boulevard in Upper...
00:39:17.200 --> 00:39:18.700
<v David Wondrich>You know, nobody goes there.
00:39:18.800 --> 00:39:19.600
<v David Wondrich>No, terrible.
00:39:23.500 --> 00:39:26.600
<v Frédéric Roginska>Maybe we can talk about the work with François Monti.
00:39:27.300 --> 00:39:28.100
<v David Wondrich>Oh, absolutely.
00:39:28.300 --> 00:39:38.500
<v Frédéric Roginska>Because we have, I believe, we are very lucky that we have your work, but also probably the input of François Monti in it.
00:39:38.800 --> 00:39:42.300
<v Frédéric Roginska>So I was wondering, how did you work together?
00:39:43.000 --> 00:39:44.900
<v Frédéric Roginska>Were there some...
00:39:47.000 --> 00:39:54.300
<v Frédéric Roginska>Examples where you might have different interpretation of how to translate something or...
00:39:54.900 --> 00:39:59.100
<v David Wondrich>Well, fortunately, François Monti is an excellent translator.
00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:06.600
<v David Wondrich>And in fact, we owe this project to François because he put me in touch with Duneau.
00:40:07.300 --> 00:40:17.700
<v David Wondrich>And one of the conditions I said is if you can get François to be the translator, because this takes a special kind of translator who can...
00:40:18.900 --> 00:40:24.200
<v David Wondrich>Who knows English very well, because this isn't technical language.
00:40:24.200 --> 00:40:33.500
<v David Wondrich>In the American edition of the book, there's a lot of slang and cocktail talk and technical terms having to do with the cocktail, but it's not like business English.
00:40:33.600 --> 00:40:37.900
<v David Wondrich>It's a little more complicated than that.
00:40:38.000 --> 00:40:51.600
<v David Wondrich>And so we needed somebody who could do that, but somebody who also knew the cocktail world to get the right equivalents for things, to get the right, to make the bartenders sound like bartenders, you know,
00:40:52.100 --> 00:40:58.500
<v David Wondrich>and the sporting individuals sound like customers.
00:40:59.400 --> 00:41:03.100
<v David Wondrich>So we really needed somebody who could do that, and that was François.
00:41:03.600 --> 00:41:05.300
<v David Wondrich>You know, he's uniquely positioned.
00:41:07.300 --> 00:41:19.000
<v David Wondrich>He is a translator, but he's also a cocktail historian in his own right, and a very good one, and a very renowned and appreciated one, justly.
00:41:19.700 --> 00:41:27.200
<v David Wondrich>And so I felt very lucky that we were able to get him to do this, and that really made the book possible.
00:41:29.500 --> 00:41:43.800
<v David Wondrich>He sent me if he had any questions and you know a few times I got these long lists of questions but they weren't that long because he mostly could figure it out, but there's some things are a little weird and We went over it my
00:41:45.200 --> 00:41:52.900
<v David Wondrich>I can understand, I can read French quite well, and so I was able to say, maybe not that word, that word, you know.
00:41:53.700 --> 00:41:56.500
<v David Wondrich>Like, of these two translations, I think this one is closer.
00:41:57.000 --> 00:42:00.500
<v David Wondrich>I was able to evaluate it, so that was helpful.
00:42:01.800 --> 00:42:06.200
<v Chris Jumentier>Especially in France, when you have for one word in English, you have like tons of words in French.
00:42:06.200 --> 00:42:06.900
<v Chris Jumentier>Oh, of course.
00:42:07.000 --> 00:42:07.800
<v Chris Jumentier>So it's a nightmare.
00:42:08.300 --> 00:42:14.900
<v David Wondrich>And I also understood, you know, some places you had to trim because you have to, you know, to make it fit.
00:42:14.900 --> 00:42:19.100
<v David Wondrich>Because this wasn't being drawn to fit the French text.
00:42:19.300 --> 00:42:20.400
<v David Wondrich>It's the other way around.
00:42:20.800 --> 00:42:22.800
<v David Wondrich>And there was only so much room.
00:42:24.200 --> 00:42:29.000
<v David Wondrich>But it worked out very well, and I think he did a fantastic job.
00:42:29.600 --> 00:42:32.300
<v Chris Jumentier>And French people love and know François Monti.
00:42:32.800 --> 00:42:32.900
<v David Wondrich>Yeah.
00:42:35.400 --> 00:42:38.900
<v Frédéric Roginska>I know you had a question about who is at the bartender.
00:42:38.900 --> 00:42:39.200
<v Frédéric Roginska>Oh, yeah.
00:42:39.600 --> 00:42:40.400
<v Chris Jumentier>So I read your book.
00:42:41.400 --> 00:42:41.600
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah.
00:42:42.000 --> 00:42:46.900
<v Chris Jumentier>And I would like to know, I can maybe show to the people who is...
00:42:48.800 --> 00:42:49.800
<v Chris Jumentier>Ed the bartender.
00:42:50.800 --> 00:42:51.700
<v Chris Jumentier>Does he exist?
00:42:52.200 --> 00:42:54.800
<v Chris Jumentier>I will show to people on the camera if they can see.
00:42:55.300 --> 00:42:57.100
<v Chris Jumentier>The head is this guy.
00:42:57.700 --> 00:43:04.900
<v David Wondrich>Well, in fact, the eye patch and the bald head come from a...
00:43:07.700 --> 00:43:12.600
<v David Wondrich>Cartoon on an old cocktail menu from the Bahamas during Prohibition.
00:43:13.100 --> 00:43:18.200
<v David Wondrich>And it's got this guy, the old bartender standing behind the bar, looks like that.
00:43:18.200 --> 00:43:23.100
<v David Wondrich>And I used it as my internet, my Twitter avatar for forever.
00:43:23.700 --> 00:43:31.400
<v David Wondrich>But the way he talks and everything is based on many old bartenders I know,
00:43:31.500 --> 00:43:42.900
<v David Wondrich>and particularly a couple that I knew from Brooklyn and New York City from back in the 80s, 70s, 80s, 90s.
00:43:43.500 --> 00:43:48.000
<v David Wondrich>So I used to hang out at what we call old man bars.
00:43:50.400 --> 00:44:05.400
<v David Wondrich>Cheap, poor bars full of old guys sitting and drinking cheap whiskey and martinis and, you know, not fancy martinis, just all gin or all vodka up.
00:44:06.700 --> 00:44:20.300
<v Chris Jumentier>For those who didn't read the book yet, or are going to be, Ed is a recurring character who comes all along your book and showing and explaining some recipes.
00:44:21.000 --> 00:44:28.800
<v Chris Jumentier>The one linked with the part of the book, their own, and explaining some recipes.
00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:36.900
<v David Wondrich>I came up with a pair of bartenders, one American, one English, or English Caribbean.
00:44:38.600 --> 00:44:42.600
<v David Wondrich>And she does the European recipes, he does the American recipes.
00:44:43.100 --> 00:44:44.700
<v David Wondrich>And I just wanted to...
00:44:47.400 --> 00:44:52.600
<v David Wondrich>Walk people quickly through how to make the cocktails without making it too boring.
00:44:52.700 --> 00:44:58.500
<v David Wondrich>And it's a way of doing step-by-step where you...
00:44:59.000 --> 00:45:00.100
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah, you have all the block of...
00:45:00.200 --> 00:45:02.800
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, and you're at the bar, basically, and there they are.
00:45:02.800 --> 00:45:03.900
<v David Wondrich>They're showing you how to do it.
00:45:04.300 --> 00:45:06.300
<v Chris Jumentier>You still have the hospitality, but inside the book.
00:45:06.400 --> 00:45:07.000
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah, yeah.
00:45:07.700 --> 00:45:20.700
<v David Wondrich>And that was based on the old, the, the, the old lo-fi lush hour from that was directly descended from what I used to do for on, on, on Twitter during pandemic.
00:45:20.800 --> 00:45:23.000
<v David Wondrich>So I managed to sneak it in a little bit.
00:45:25.300 --> 00:45:33.000
<v Chris Jumentier>As well, when you publish a book a few years later, it becomes something rare that people attempt and speculate on.
00:45:33.800 --> 00:45:39.400
<v Chris Jumentier>For example, I do some research, much like certain well-known Jerry Thomas works and stuff like that.
00:45:40.400 --> 00:45:43.900
<v Chris Jumentier>Do you expect some kind of inflation will happen with this book?
00:45:45.000 --> 00:45:49.900
<v Chris Jumentier>That's a question because I try not to buy more about the Punch edition in France.
00:45:50.300 --> 00:45:54.900
<v Chris Jumentier>And we found some book from your edition.
00:45:56.400 --> 00:46:08.100
<v Chris Jumentier>Which were 350 euros per book, and as well, you know, another one, which were like 500 euros.
00:46:08.400 --> 00:46:09.800
<v Chris Jumentier>But we couldn't find it anymore.
00:46:10.300 --> 00:46:11.500
<v Chris Jumentier>Do you still publish it?
00:46:11.800 --> 00:46:20.400
<v David Wondrich>The weird thing with Punch was it went out of print, and immediately the prices started going up because people have been starting to look at Punch again.
00:46:21.000 --> 00:46:33.100
<v David Wondrich>You know, the beverage, because it's part of what I think I seem to see happening in the bar world is we're trying to get back to simplicity and hospitality and
00:46:33.900 --> 00:46:38.800
<v David Wondrich>communal experiences because everybody's so isolated online.
00:46:38.800 --> 00:46:43.900
<v David Wondrich>Let's try to, you know, make things a little easier and more social.
00:46:44.200 --> 00:46:46.500
<v David Wondrich>And suddenly people are saying, yeah, punch.
00:46:46.600 --> 00:46:48.300
<v David Wondrich>Let's make some punch.
00:46:48.400 --> 00:46:53.400
<v David Wondrich>And that's really the only serious book on it.
00:46:54.500 --> 00:46:58.400
<v David Wondrich>There's maybe been one other that was pretty good.
00:46:59.700 --> 00:47:07.200
<v David Wondrich>And an early French one that should be reprinted by Touraine in 1867, I think.
00:47:09.400 --> 00:47:15.600
<v David Wondrich>But those are the only three books I know that are only on Punch, other than some photo books.
00:47:17.600 --> 00:47:19.500
<v David Wondrich>But it would be...
00:47:21.500 --> 00:47:23.000
<v David Wondrich>It was really surprising.
00:47:23.000 --> 00:47:30.000
<v David Wondrich>And fortunately, because the prices were going up that high, I was able to persuade my publisher to do a second edition.
00:47:30.300 --> 00:47:30.600
<v David Wondrich>Yeah.
00:47:31.200 --> 00:47:34.300
<v David Wondrich>Because, look, you know, people want this.
00:47:34.600 --> 00:47:37.900
<v Chris Jumentier>But for the instance, it still costs less, you know, than 30 euros.
00:47:37.900 --> 00:47:42.900
<v Chris Jumentier>So I do suggest you to order it now because we don't know what could happen in the future.
00:47:43.200 --> 00:47:47.400
<v Chris Jumentier>And especially because, I'm sorry, I'm just, you know, making a small thing about this.
00:47:48.000 --> 00:47:52.900
<v Chris Jumentier>I think this is more than something which is just a book for people who love cocktail and so on.
00:47:53.000 --> 00:47:58.100
<v Chris Jumentier>It should be the book that every bar schools, you know, should have.
00:47:58.400 --> 00:48:06.500
<v Chris Jumentier>And I think that every, you know, bar students in every type, you know, mixology school or stuff like that, especially in all the French schools, they should buy it, you know, for sure.
00:48:06.800 --> 00:48:10.200
<v Chris Jumentier>Because as you said, I 100% align with that.
00:48:10.600 --> 00:48:19.700
<v Chris Jumentier>You can't pretend, you know, to make great cocktails if you don't know what kind of spirits and how, you know, behave and what, you know, the different liquids you are putting inside your cocktail.
00:48:20.000 --> 00:48:21.500
<v Chris Jumentier>But as well, you know, where does it come from?
00:48:21.700 --> 00:48:23.400
<v Chris Jumentier>Why you are mixing, you know, some stuff?
00:48:23.400 --> 00:48:24.100
<v Chris Jumentier>Where does it come from?
00:48:24.100 --> 00:48:26.200
<v Chris Jumentier>What the country of origin?
00:48:26.300 --> 00:48:27.700
<v Chris Jumentier>What are my main characters?
00:48:27.800 --> 00:48:28.300
<v Chris Jumentier>And so on and so on.
00:48:28.600 --> 00:48:30.800
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, the story behind it, I...
00:48:32.100 --> 00:48:39.000
<v David Wondrich>It's less, I guess, I suppose it's less important to the culinary side of mixing drinks.
00:48:39.100 --> 00:48:47.200
<v David Wondrich>But bartenders in particular are not just culinary artists, though some think they are, because they also have to be entertainers.
00:48:47.500 --> 00:48:51.200
<v David Wondrich>You have to be, it's a public-facing job.
00:48:51.500 --> 00:48:56.400
<v David Wondrich>That means you need things to say to people about the drinks, about what you're doing.
00:48:56.400 --> 00:49:02.700
<v David Wondrich>And if you know the tradition and if you know the stories of the drinks, that's very powerful for people.
00:49:02.700 --> 00:49:03.800
<v David Wondrich>People like to hear that.
00:49:04.400 --> 00:49:11.100
<v David Wondrich>It gives them a little factoid that lives in their head that they can, you know, pop out with.
00:49:11.400 --> 00:49:14.100
<v David Wondrich>I was at this bar drinking such and such a drink.
00:49:14.400 --> 00:49:20.300
<v David Wondrich>Did you know that so-and-so drank it, you know, and that Marilyn Monroe used to drink these?
00:49:20.600 --> 00:49:22.400
<v David Wondrich>Or Marilyn Monroe really hated these.
00:49:23.300 --> 00:49:26.800
<v David Wondrich>That was like the bullshot, which is a drink I actually like.
00:49:26.900 --> 00:49:31.400
<v David Wondrich>And they make, weirdly, at Harry's Bar in Venice still.
00:49:32.000 --> 00:49:41.200
<v David Wondrich>It's a 1960s, 1950s, 1960s drink of vodka and bouillon, beef bouillon, beef broth.
00:49:42.100 --> 00:49:46.500
<v David Wondrich>And a very simple drink, but it's...
00:49:46.600 --> 00:49:47.600
<v Chris Jumentier>It's a hot broth.
00:49:47.900 --> 00:49:50.200
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, it can be hot or it can be cold.
00:49:50.200 --> 00:49:53.000
<v David Wondrich>It's usually cold, the bullshot, to be honest.
00:49:53.300 --> 00:49:57.200
<v David Wondrich>But Marilyn Monroe said that was a terrible thing to do to vodka.
00:49:59.000 --> 00:50:01.400
<v Chris Jumentier>But it's like, have you ever tasted?
00:50:01.900 --> 00:50:02.500
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah, it's good.
00:50:03.000 --> 00:50:04.300
<v Chris Jumentier>It's really tasty.
00:50:04.400 --> 00:50:06.900
<v Chris Jumentier>Actually, you know, we made some stuff.
00:50:07.000 --> 00:50:08.200
<v Frédéric Roginska>I could see myself drink that.
00:50:08.300 --> 00:50:08.500
<v David Wondrich>Yeah.
00:50:08.700 --> 00:50:08.900
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah.
00:50:09.200 --> 00:50:10.200
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, it's surprisingly good.
00:50:10.800 --> 00:50:11.600
<v Chris Jumentier>Kind of twist the blimmy.
00:50:11.600 --> 00:50:22.600
<v David Wondrich>And, you know, it's funny if you go to Harry's Bar in Venice, no relation to the Paris one, but Giuseppe Cipriani, who founded it, you know, was also a restaurateur.
00:50:23.100 --> 00:50:24.000
<v David Wondrich>And they...
00:50:25.100 --> 00:50:34.800
<v David Wondrich>Make an absolutely spectacularly tasty one and they don't put it on their menu you have to know and you order it you know and then they're they're like okay you're you're cool
00:50:36.500 --> 00:50:45.500
<v David Wondrich>definitely if nobody knew tasted before you should taste it you'll also pay 24 euros for it of course it's the most expensive bar i've ever been in in my life as you
00:50:46.400 --> 00:50:51.700
<v Chris Jumentier>Say in your book as well, if you have the right ingredients and if you have enough knowledge to do it, you can as well.
00:50:52.100 --> 00:50:53.500
<v David Wondrich>You can make it at home, exactly.
00:50:55.900 --> 00:51:00.700
<v Frédéric Roginska>Let's move to maybe the bar history, because you write about cocktails.
00:51:00.700 --> 00:51:01.100
<v Frédéric Roginska>Absolutely.
00:51:01.300 --> 00:51:04.700
<v Frédéric Roginska>And it's also the history of the bars, of the spirits.
00:51:05.200 --> 00:51:11.100
<v Frédéric Roginska>And so I was wondering, how do you see the bar scene evolving today?
00:51:11.700 --> 00:51:12.700
<v Frédéric Roginska>What's your stand on that?
00:51:13.300 --> 00:51:16.600
<v Frédéric Roginska>But maybe first, I know Chris has a question about...
00:51:17.400 --> 00:51:18.400
<v Frédéric Roginska>The movie cocktail.
00:51:18.500 --> 00:51:24.500
<v Frédéric Roginska>So maybe it will be a good transition for that.
00:51:26.400 --> 00:51:26.900
<v Chris Jumentier>No problem.
00:51:28.700 --> 00:51:29.200
<v Chris Jumentier>Chapter 8.
00:51:29.900 --> 00:51:30.100
<v David Wondrich>Yeah.
00:51:30.300 --> 00:51:33.900
<v Chris Jumentier>You talk about the famous 1988 cocktail film.
00:51:34.500 --> 00:51:38.500
<v Chris Jumentier>And I have my personal opinion about this film.
00:51:39.300 --> 00:51:40.600
<v Chris Jumentier>I will share it just after.
00:51:40.800 --> 00:51:41.200
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah, please.
00:51:41.300 --> 00:51:45.400
<v Chris Jumentier>Not to influence, you know, I know that I'm not going to influence yourself, but...
00:51:47.500 --> 00:51:54.100
<v Chris Jumentier>Do you remember how you felt when you first saw it in 1988?
00:51:54.800 --> 00:51:59.100
<v Chris Jumentier>And what is the view of that same film today?
00:51:59.500 --> 00:51:59.800
<v David Wondrich>Okay.
00:52:00.400 --> 00:52:03.200
<v David Wondrich>Well, first, I didn't first see it in 1988.
00:52:03.300 --> 00:52:07.300
<v David Wondrich>I thought it was a dumb movie, and it wasn't the kind of movie I went to see.
00:52:08.400 --> 00:52:16.600
<v David Wondrich>I saw it years later, but I read the book that it was based on, and I've even met Haywood Gould, the author, who used to read my stuff in Esquire.
00:52:16.700 --> 00:52:18.100
<v David Wondrich>I was very flattered by that.
00:52:19.600 --> 00:52:23.800
<v David Wondrich>I wrote for Esquire magazine in New York for 16 years.
00:52:26.400 --> 00:52:30.000
<v David Wondrich>His book was very cynical and very dark.
00:52:30.200 --> 00:52:31.600
<v David Wondrich>It's out of print right now.
00:52:31.700 --> 00:52:32.900
<v David Wondrich>It should be back in print.
00:52:32.900 --> 00:52:33.900
<v David Wondrich>It's a very good book.
00:52:34.500 --> 00:52:36.600
<v David Wondrich>They made a very dumb movie out of it, I thought.
00:52:36.700 --> 00:52:39.500
<v David Wondrich>But he wrote the screenplay, so he got paid.
00:52:40.000 --> 00:52:44.100
<v David Wondrich>And then they brought in all the story consultants and all that kind of stuff.
00:52:44.600 --> 00:52:48.200
<v David Wondrich>But I think he did write the last bartender poet bit.
00:52:49.700 --> 00:52:50.700
<v David Wondrich>That sounds like him.
00:52:54.500 --> 00:52:56.500
<v David Wondrich>The, you know, that movie,
00:53:02.400 --> 00:53:14.600
<v David Wondrich>It freezes a moment of when, before bartending rediscovered its traditions, and it's an exuberant celebration of a...
00:53:17.900 --> 00:53:28.500
<v David Wondrich>A pretty weird moment in bar history where bartenders for 20 years had become more and more entertainers and less and less mixologists and chefs.
00:53:28.800 --> 00:53:33.900
<v David Wondrich>They were making simpler and simpler drinks and they had to keep people interested.
00:53:34.300 --> 00:53:39.000
<v David Wondrich>They had to, and they didn't really have many stories about the drinks they were making.
00:53:39.300 --> 00:53:41.700
<v David Wondrich>I mean, what story is there to the Harvey Wallbanger?
00:53:41.800 --> 00:53:43.800
<v David Wondrich>You know, there's not much history there.
00:53:43.800 --> 00:53:51.500
<v David Wondrich>There's a little bit, but it's not a long tradition and it doesn't, or the, you know, the slow, comfortable screw.
00:53:52.000 --> 00:53:53.400
<v David Wondrich>You know, there's drinks like that.
00:53:53.700 --> 00:53:55.100
<v David Wondrich>So they're making drinks like that.
00:53:55.200 --> 00:54:04.100
<v David Wondrich>And to entertain people, they had to either learn a lot of jokes, and the best bartenders knew a lot of very good jokes, or they had to do something.
00:54:04.200 --> 00:54:07.600
<v David Wondrich>And one of the things was flair bartending.
00:54:08.100 --> 00:54:10.600
<v David Wondrich>And I know some of the top flair bartenders.
00:54:10.600 --> 00:54:11.600
<v David Wondrich>They're very nice guys.
00:54:11.600 --> 00:54:12.900
<v David Wondrich>They're very good bartenders.
00:54:13.300 --> 00:54:16.800
<v David Wondrich>But their focus at the time was not mixology.
00:54:17.000 --> 00:54:20.800
<v David Wondrich>Life would have been difficult if it was because the ingredients were mostly not there.
00:54:21.300 --> 00:54:26.400
<v David Wondrich>You know, they were working with, you know, I'm not going to name some of the bad ingredients.
00:54:26.600 --> 00:54:28.500
<v David Wondrich>We all know what the bad ingredients are.
00:54:28.700 --> 00:54:29.800
<v Chris Jumentier>With some colors and sweet.
00:54:29.800 --> 00:54:31.800
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, some colors and sweet.
00:54:32.800 --> 00:54:35.800
<v David Wondrich>No more than 35% alcohol, you know.
00:54:36.900 --> 00:54:38.200
<v David Wondrich>And a lot of sugar in it.
00:54:38.300 --> 00:54:40.700
<v David Wondrich>So there was really no way to screw up a drink with that.
00:54:41.000 --> 00:54:42.700
<v David Wondrich>There was also no way to make it great.
00:54:43.400 --> 00:54:45.400
<v David Wondrich>You know, it was always in the middle.
00:54:47.700 --> 00:54:52.600
<v David Wondrich>So they got increasingly into seeing if, oh, you could do that?
00:54:52.700 --> 00:54:54.400
<v David Wondrich>Well, I'm going to top this.
00:54:54.500 --> 00:54:57.600
<v David Wondrich>And then you started seeing bartending competitions, etc.
00:54:58.000 --> 00:55:00.100
<v David Wondrich>And that was the moment that this book came along.
00:55:00.300 --> 00:55:02.400
<v David Wondrich>The flair stuff was not in...
00:55:03.100 --> 00:55:04.500
<v David Wondrich>I'm sorry, that the movie came along.
00:55:04.800 --> 00:55:06.500
<v David Wondrich>Because the flair stuff was not in the book.
00:55:07.600 --> 00:55:08.300
<v David Wondrich>The book was...
00:55:08.800 --> 00:55:19.400
<v David Wondrich>They were fast bartenders in the book, but they were not tossing bottles around in unison and to the hippie hippie shake.
00:55:20.200 --> 00:55:21.600
<v David Wondrich>There wasn't anything like that.
00:55:23.500 --> 00:55:25.000
<v David Wondrich>It was a rather darker book.
00:55:26.200 --> 00:55:27.000
<v David Wondrich>So anyway.
00:55:27.200 --> 00:55:28.600
<v Chris Jumentier>I need to read it.
00:55:29.100 --> 00:55:29.900
<v David Wondrich>If you can find it.
00:55:30.300 --> 00:55:33.400
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah, I discovered that it comes from a book.
00:55:33.600 --> 00:55:34.600
<v Chris Jumentier>Actually, I didn't know it.
00:55:34.800 --> 00:55:43.100
<v Chris Jumentier>And I wasn't surprised that at the end, you know, the book was like darker, you know, and sinning because of the, you know, Douglas Coghlan.
00:55:44.000 --> 00:55:44.300
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, yeah.
00:55:44.400 --> 00:55:45.700
<v Chris Jumentier>In fact, he's really dark.
00:55:46.100 --> 00:55:47.800
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, and the book is very dark.
00:55:47.900 --> 00:55:51.400
<v Chris Jumentier>And that's what I found very, very interesting.
00:55:52.200 --> 00:55:53.300
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah, thank you for sharing that.
00:55:53.400 --> 00:55:54.600
<v Chris Jumentier>Actually, you know, I discovered the book.
00:55:54.700 --> 00:55:55.800
<v Chris Jumentier>I was pretty young.
00:55:56.800 --> 00:55:58.200
<v Chris Jumentier>I didn't see it neither.
00:55:58.200 --> 00:56:00.400
<v Chris Jumentier>You know, at 88, I was six years old.
00:56:01.500 --> 00:56:02.200
<v Chris Jumentier>Well, fair enough.
00:56:02.300 --> 00:56:02.500
<v Chris Jumentier>Okay.
00:56:03.600 --> 00:56:03.900
<v Chris Jumentier>It's okay.
00:56:04.300 --> 00:56:04.800
<v Chris Jumentier>I saw it.
00:56:05.000 --> 00:56:09.500
<v David Wondrich>So you're about like four years too young for the mental age of the film.
00:56:09.700 --> 00:56:11.000
<v David Wondrich>That's it.
00:56:11.400 --> 00:56:11.900
<v Chris Jumentier>I saw it.
00:56:11.900 --> 00:56:13.000
<v Chris Jumentier>I was about 14.
00:56:13.500 --> 00:56:22.700
<v Chris Jumentier>I think I was, I already started my hospitality school and I was, to be honest,
00:56:23.500 --> 00:56:29.500
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah, very fascinating, you know, by this film, because it was like, wow, that's great.
00:56:29.700 --> 00:56:34.500
<v Chris Jumentier>It's a kind of liquid cook, you know, you can lick in one, but it's like entertainment.
00:56:34.500 --> 00:56:35.900
<v Chris Jumentier>It's like plenty of stuff.
00:56:36.200 --> 00:56:38.200
<v Chris Jumentier>It's a bit sad at the end, but whatever.
00:56:39.100 --> 00:56:46.900
<v Chris Jumentier>And I used to work, you know, a few years ago, I used to work in a bar next to Madeleine in Paris called Bar Le Forum, run by the Bioto family.
00:56:47.300 --> 00:56:56.500
<v Chris Jumentier>And one of my mentors used to, I asked him, did you see the film Cocktail?
00:56:56.800 --> 00:56:58.000
<v Chris Jumentier>He said, of course I saw it.
00:56:58.800 --> 00:57:01.100
<v Chris Jumentier>It was like 55 years old.
00:57:01.500 --> 00:57:02.400
<v Chris Jumentier>Of course I saw it.
00:57:02.400 --> 00:57:03.200
<v Chris Jumentier>And why do you think about it?
00:57:03.800 --> 00:57:07.800
<v Chris Jumentier>And it just told me, I remember it, you know, like it was yesterday.
00:57:08.300 --> 00:57:12.300
<v Chris Jumentier>It just told me, yeah, well, I will tell you something.
00:57:12.900 --> 00:57:22.600
<v Chris Jumentier>When you work, you know, behind a bar since more than 35 years, and one day there is something, you know, at cinema or in television,
00:57:23.300 --> 00:57:35.600
<v Chris Jumentier>And you don't know why, the day after, there is plenty of people coming in your bar and asking you, do you throw the bottles and the glass and the fruit and the ice tubes, you know, everywhere in the room?
00:57:36.100 --> 00:57:38.500
<v Chris Jumentier>And you say, no, sorry.
00:57:39.400 --> 00:57:42.600
<v Chris Jumentier>And when the customer said, oh, okay, sorry, I thought you were a bartender.
00:57:46.100 --> 00:57:52.700
<v Chris Jumentier>He was so nervous and upset to hear this kind of stuff.
00:57:52.700 --> 00:57:59.200
<v Chris Jumentier>So I remember, you know, this film, so for both sides, and I truly understand, you know, the different opinion about it.
00:57:59.200 --> 00:57:59.500
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah, yeah.
00:57:59.700 --> 00:57:59.800
<v Chris Jumentier>Clear.
00:58:00.000 --> 00:58:00.200
<v David Wondrich>Yeah.
00:58:00.600 --> 00:58:01.000
<v Chris Jumentier>Thank you.
00:58:01.700 --> 00:58:05.100
<v David Wondrich>Also, you know, in 1988, I was still playing in punk bands.
00:58:06.800 --> 00:58:12.500
<v David Wondrich>I was nowhere near the drinks world other than just playing in bars.
00:58:13.300 --> 00:58:16.500
<v David Wondrich>But so I had no interest in it.
00:58:17.300 --> 00:58:26.500
<v Frédéric Roginska>But I believe until this day, for some people, it probably freezed the bartender image forever.
00:58:26.600 --> 00:58:27.000
<v Frédéric Roginska>Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:58:27.000 --> 00:58:30.300
<v Frédéric Roginska>They're still looking at, oh, you're a bartender?
00:58:30.500 --> 00:58:31.300
<v Frédéric Roginska>You're Tom Cruise.
00:58:31.500 --> 00:58:33.600
<v David Wondrich>It's people of a certain generation, you know.
00:58:33.700 --> 00:58:35.700
<v David Wondrich>It's like, yeah, that was their image.
00:58:37.500 --> 00:58:37.600
<v David Wondrich>No.
00:58:38.400 --> 00:58:38.600
<v David Wondrich>Yeah.
00:58:40.100 --> 00:58:42.000
<v David Wondrich>Some things have helped to break that up.
00:58:42.100 --> 00:58:45.400
<v David Wondrich>But yeah, I think you're right.
00:58:45.600 --> 00:58:53.400
<v Frédéric Roginska>If we move fast forward, how do you see the evolution to this day about the bar?
00:58:53.600 --> 00:59:06.600
<v David Wondrich>Well, I had to, for the comic book history, I had to really like put together the last 30, 40 years, which I'd written, you know, about pieces of, but never like really.
00:59:07.600 --> 00:59:10.200
<v David Wondrich>Tried to explain exactly what was going on.
00:59:10.200 --> 00:59:12.000
<v David Wondrich>And I think,
00:59:16.100 --> 00:59:24.700
<v David Wondrich>The 1960s, 1970s saw a great simplification of things.
00:59:24.800 --> 00:59:26.500
<v David Wondrich>And a lot of products went away.
00:59:27.000 --> 00:59:31.200
<v David Wondrich>Things like Jamaican pot still rum basically disappeared.
00:59:31.300 --> 00:59:33.300
<v David Wondrich>And, you know, the really rich rum.
00:59:33.300 --> 00:59:36.500
<v David Wondrich>You couldn't make rich rum drinks anymore because you couldn't get the rum.
00:59:38.800 --> 00:59:42.600
<v David Wondrich>They started making blended Jamaican rum instead of just pure pot still.
00:59:44.300 --> 00:59:46.500
<v David Wondrich>And that really does make a difference in a drink.
00:59:46.900 --> 00:59:49.700
<v David Wondrich>And, you know, like rye whiskey almost died.
00:59:49.900 --> 00:59:51.200
<v David Wondrich>Gin was failing.
00:59:51.500 --> 00:59:53.800
<v David Wondrich>You know, they're really flavorful spirits.
00:59:54.000 --> 01:00:02.300
<v David Wondrich>And what took over was these kind of middle-of-the-road drinks where bartenders no longer knew how to balance things because they didn't have to.
01:00:02.700 --> 01:00:13.600
<v David Wondrich>Instead of using, for instance, fresh lime juice, you would use sour mix or, even easier, pineapple juice or orange juice or both mixed,
01:00:14.200 --> 01:00:18.000
<v David Wondrich>which both of those have sweetness and acidity already combined.
01:00:18.300 --> 01:00:19.400
<v David Wondrich>You can't screw them up.
01:00:20.500 --> 01:00:21.900
<v David Wondrich>You can't unbalance them.
01:00:22.300 --> 01:00:25.100
<v David Wondrich>They're already evenly balanced.
01:00:28.400 --> 01:00:39.300
<v David Wondrich>And instead of using things like bitters and simple syrup, they would use a liqueur, which already combines the herbal flavors and the simple syrup.
01:00:40.200 --> 01:00:43.500
<v David Wondrich>And so it became very, very...
01:00:44.800 --> 01:00:48.800
<v David Wondrich>Easy to mix the drinks, but the drinks could only go within a certain range.
01:00:49.800 --> 01:00:50.800
<v David Wondrich>They were all preset.
01:00:51.400 --> 01:00:54.000
<v David Wondrich>You couldn't go outside of that range.
01:00:55.800 --> 01:01:00.000
<v David Wondrich>It was very difficult, given the tools that they had.
01:01:00.300 --> 01:01:09.100
<v David Wondrich>And the bartenders, like we were just saying, their emphasis shifted more towards being like a camp counselor.
01:01:09.200 --> 01:01:12.600
<v David Wondrich>I don't know if that means anything in France.
01:01:12.900 --> 01:01:18.600
<v David Wondrich>You know, we have summer camps where kids go in the U.S.
01:01:18.700 --> 01:01:25.200
<v David Wondrich>And the counselors are there to make the kids have fun and do activities and things like that.
01:01:25.300 --> 01:01:27.200
<v David Wondrich>And that's what the bartenders kind of became.
01:01:27.800 --> 01:01:37.900
<v David Wondrich>Instead of being professionals who were career bartenders, what you got were young college, young good-looking college students hired.
01:01:38.900 --> 01:01:46.600
<v David Wondrich>Taught a few simple drinks and put in charge of the bar as a camp counselor to entertain the other young people in the bar.
01:01:47.100 --> 01:01:51.800
<v David Wondrich>And then there were, you know, there were other bars where there were professionals, but many fewer.
01:01:52.100 --> 01:01:54.400
<v David Wondrich>And those weren't the ones that got any of the press.
01:01:55.200 --> 01:01:58.300
<v David Wondrich>And that was the 70s and 80s.
01:01:59.400 --> 01:02:02.700
<v David Wondrich>And, you know, the Hentz cocktail where those guys are camp counselors.
01:02:02.900 --> 01:02:04.100
<v David Wondrich>You know, they're entertaining.
01:02:04.200 --> 01:02:11.100
<v David Wondrich>They're, you know, facilitating the mating rituals of the clientele.
01:02:11.200 --> 01:02:12.600
<v David Wondrich>And they're doing all that kind of stuff.
01:02:13.100 --> 01:02:14.900
<v David Wondrich>And that was a time.
01:02:15.000 --> 01:02:15.200
<v David Wondrich>But...
01:02:17.400 --> 01:02:26.500
<v David Wondrich>The rise of the internet made it possible for all the people who were sick of that and thought it was dumb and wanted something a little bit better.
01:02:26.800 --> 01:02:38.700
<v David Wondrich>At the same time, we had the artisanal food revolution, which was here too, to a degree, although you were much closer to that already.
01:02:39.000 --> 01:02:45.900
<v David Wondrich>But in the U.S., we had to come back from two decades of frozen foods and
01:02:47.600 --> 01:02:58.200
<v David Wondrich>really bad stuff to start rediscovering our food traditions and how to cook and how to really take back the kitchen.
01:02:58.700 --> 01:03:04.300
<v David Wondrich>And along with that, you've got a miscellaneous group of people who wanted better drinks.
01:03:04.800 --> 01:03:10.400
<v David Wondrich>They wanted them more like they used to be or more like they saw in old movies.
01:03:10.600 --> 01:03:12.500
<v David Wondrich>They said, those drinks sound delicious.
01:03:12.500 --> 01:03:13.500
<v David Wondrich>Why can't we have those?
01:03:14.400 --> 01:03:16.500
<v David Wondrich>And that would have...
01:03:17.600 --> 01:03:24.300
<v David Wondrich>Really not gone anywhere except for the biggest innovation of the late 20th century, the internet.
01:03:25.700 --> 01:03:30.900
<v David Wondrich>Suddenly, instead of one person coming into your bar and saying, can you make a sidecar?
01:03:31.300 --> 01:03:34.200
<v David Wondrich>And the bartender saying, no, we don't have any call for that.
01:03:34.300 --> 01:03:35.300
<v David Wondrich>I don't know what that is.
01:03:36.400 --> 01:03:39.100
<v David Wondrich>Suddenly, if there's a bar that does know,
01:03:40.300 --> 01:03:42.900
<v David Wondrich>Suddenly there are 10 people in there saying, oh, can you make a sidecar?
01:03:43.000 --> 01:03:44.200
<v David Wondrich>I hear you make a sidecar.
01:03:44.600 --> 01:03:48.000
<v David Wondrich>And suddenly you're making sidecars all day.
01:03:48.300 --> 01:03:50.700
<v David Wondrich>And that's fantastic.
01:03:50.800 --> 01:03:54.800
<v David Wondrich>And then other people start going to the bar because they hear that you've got good cocktails.
01:03:54.800 --> 01:03:56.700
<v David Wondrich>And that's what the Internet did.
01:03:56.700 --> 01:04:00.900
<v David Wondrich>And it brought people together and it enabled people to share knowledge.
01:04:01.200 --> 01:04:03.500
<v David Wondrich>It's like, you know, what really goes into a sidecar?
01:04:03.600 --> 01:04:04.600
<v David Wondrich>Can you do it with this?
01:04:04.600 --> 01:04:05.800
<v David Wondrich>What are the proportions?
01:04:05.900 --> 01:04:14.000
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah, a recent example in France that we actually leave was not about sidecar, but really recent, was about the Pornstar Martini, for example.
01:04:14.000 --> 01:04:14.300
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, yeah.
01:04:14.500 --> 01:04:18.500
<v Chris Jumentier>Because Pornstar Martini wasn't well-known in France, you know, like 10 years ago.
01:04:18.500 --> 01:04:18.900
<v David Wondrich>No, no, no.
01:04:19.100 --> 01:04:28.500
<v Chris Jumentier>And just one bar, two bars, and digital, you know, just spread it all over, and they just copy and paste because they just discovered that if they have, you know, just the right ingredients, you know, they can mix it easily.
01:04:28.600 --> 01:04:28.800
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, yeah.
01:04:29.000 --> 01:04:32.000
<v Chris Jumentier>And the demand has been, you know, exponential.
01:04:32.400 --> 01:04:36.000
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, if you've got the passion fruit puree, it's an easy drink.
01:04:38.300 --> 01:04:43.500
<v David Wondrich>I'm sorry Douglas Ancra didn't live to see it because he was a lovely man.
01:04:43.600 --> 01:04:45.200
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah, I can imagine, yeah.
01:04:45.700 --> 01:04:51.600
<v Chris Jumentier>The type of very popular stuff, like we can say about this, about as well the espresso martini.
01:04:51.800 --> 01:04:53.200
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
01:04:54.100 --> 01:04:56.300
<v David Wondrich>I know, and Dick Bradsell didn't live to see that either.
01:04:56.300 --> 01:04:58.200
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah, and now it's just booming.
01:04:58.600 --> 01:04:59.200
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah, yeah.
01:04:59.400 --> 01:04:59.900
<v Chris Jumentier>It's crazy.
01:05:00.000 --> 01:05:00.800
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, it's crazy.
01:05:01.500 --> 01:05:06.200
<v David Wondrich>But, you know, those are, so right now we're kind of back in the late 90s.
01:05:06.800 --> 01:05:10.500
<v David Wondrich>And hopefully we'll go back a little farther to, you know, just.
01:05:12.800 --> 01:05:16.500
<v David Wondrich>Putting a place for the classic cocktails back on the menu.
01:05:16.900 --> 01:05:24.000
<v David Wondrich>They were on the menu maybe too much in the 2000s, early 2010s.
01:05:24.500 --> 01:05:32.500
<v David Wondrich>Then there was a reaction and all the young bartenders wanted to be culinary stars and were saying, we don't need to mix any of that old crap.
01:05:32.900 --> 01:05:38.700
<v David Wondrich>You know, people will order it, whatever, and we'll make it for them.
01:05:38.700 --> 01:05:41.900
<v David Wondrich>But what we really want to do is show our creativity here.
01:05:42.400 --> 01:05:49.100
<v David Wondrich>And now people, I think, are getting a little bit tired of creativity, or at least I see a lot of people who are.
01:05:49.500 --> 01:06:02.200
<v David Wondrich>And not everybody, but people, you know, it's definitely starting to reach a point where people are saying, can you just make me something simple and maybe charge me a little less than $20 for it?
01:06:03.600 --> 01:06:10.300
<v Chris Jumentier>You know, I think it's so true because I do lots of, you know, conference or, you know, bar training or demonstration, you know, all of our friends.
01:06:10.400 --> 01:06:16.600
<v Chris Jumentier>And when you are, you know, in so many, many places and they ask for you, can you mix something?
01:06:16.600 --> 01:06:20.900
<v Chris Jumentier>And you just mix like drinks quite quickly, you know, not with complicated stuff.
01:06:20.900 --> 01:06:23.200
<v Chris Jumentier>And they just say, wow, what is it?
01:06:23.300 --> 01:06:23.500
<v David Wondrich>Yeah.
01:06:23.600 --> 01:06:24.900
<v Chris Jumentier>It's just, it's wonderful.
01:06:25.800 --> 01:06:26.700
<v Chris Jumentier>It's called Daiquiri.
01:06:27.000 --> 01:06:27.100
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah.
01:06:27.900 --> 01:06:28.300
<v Chris Jumentier>And it's.
01:06:28.600 --> 01:06:29.300
<v David Wondrich>Three ingredients.
01:06:30.000 --> 01:06:31.000
<v Chris Jumentier>But the good one as well.
01:06:31.000 --> 01:06:31.100
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah.
01:06:31.900 --> 01:06:32.000
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah.
01:06:32.100 --> 01:06:33.100
<v David Wondrich>You need a good white rum.
01:06:33.100 --> 01:06:35.700
<v Chris Jumentier>I'm not using sweet and sour, you know, powder mix.
01:06:36.000 --> 01:06:39.300
<v Chris Jumentier>I'm not using, you know, the cheapest rum in the world.
01:06:39.400 --> 01:06:42.600
<v Chris Jumentier>I'm not using as well, you know, like a cheapest sugar or industry.
01:06:42.700 --> 01:06:43.400
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:06:43.700 --> 01:06:47.300
<v Chris Jumentier>So, and do it perfectly, shaken, you know, with great ice cubes, and that's all.
01:06:47.500 --> 01:06:48.200
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, that's all.
01:06:48.300 --> 01:06:52.700
<v Chris Jumentier>And I can sell it a little bit more as well, because you can expand them, they can make more profit.
01:06:53.000 --> 01:06:53.700
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:06:54.700 --> 01:07:02.800
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, you can sell it for less than something that's using green chartreuse and mezcal, which are two very expensive ingredients.
01:07:03.100 --> 01:07:07.600
<v David Wondrich>You can use Havana Club three-year-old rum, granulated sugar.
01:07:07.800 --> 01:07:09.500
<v David Wondrich>You don't even need to make simple syrup.
01:07:09.600 --> 01:07:10.600
<v David Wondrich>It's better if you don't.
01:07:11.000 --> 01:07:13.500
<v David Wondrich>And fresh lime juice, okay, that you need.
01:07:14.200 --> 01:07:14.500
<v David Wondrich>Done.
01:07:15.300 --> 01:07:18.200
<v David Wondrich>And your cost of ingredients is very low.
01:07:18.600 --> 01:07:18.800
<v Chris Jumentier>It is.
01:07:23.400 --> 01:07:24.400
<v David Wondrich>We'll wait for a moment.
01:07:25.200 --> 01:07:27.100
<v Frédéric Roginska>On entend une petite sirène passer.
01:07:27.100 --> 01:07:27.600
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, yeah.
01:07:28.500 --> 01:07:29.000
<v David Wondrich>C'est bon, c'est parti.
01:07:29.200 --> 01:07:34.100
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, so your cost of ingredients is low, and the time it takes to make the drink is much lower.
01:07:34.500 --> 01:07:41.100
<v David Wondrich>The pre-shift prep is lower, so you're not asking as much from the bartenders.
01:07:44.300 --> 01:07:52.800
<v David Wondrich>In making their job a little bit easier and giving them, you know, maybe a little more energy during the shift because they're not making all these ingredients all afternoon.
01:07:53.200 --> 01:07:54.600
<v Chris Jumentier>Less time in the prep.
01:07:55.000 --> 01:07:55.100
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah.
01:07:55.200 --> 01:08:01.300
<v Frédéric Roginska>Makes a great link because, so you wrote a year and a half ago an article for Punch.
01:08:01.500 --> 01:08:01.700
<v David Wondrich>Yes.
01:08:01.900 --> 01:08:03.100
<v Frédéric Roginska>That was about that.
01:08:03.200 --> 01:08:03.400
<v David Wondrich>Yes.
01:08:04.800 --> 01:08:08.900
<v Frédéric Roginska>And I believe, so it was very polarizing, I believe.
01:08:09.000 --> 01:08:09.800
<v Frédéric Roginska>Yeah, it was.
01:08:11.100 --> 01:08:20.300
<v Frédéric Roginska>And one of the arguments people had about all the fancy mixology is that, okay, people go to bars and they want to drink something.
01:08:20.399 --> 01:08:25.800
<v Frédéric Roginska>And when they pay, obviously, $20 or something, they want to have something they cannot do at home.
01:08:26.000 --> 01:08:29.100
<v Frédéric Roginska>And so all the fancy mixology is about that.
01:08:29.700 --> 01:08:35.300
<v Frédéric Roginska>But if I make a link to the history of the bar, I believe it's...
01:08:36.200 --> 01:08:43.300
<v Frédéric Roginska>In some way, if we think like that, we forget about what people are actually looking when they go to a bar.
01:08:43.700 --> 01:08:47.000
<v Frédéric Roginska>Because many people just go to a dive bar.
01:08:47.500 --> 01:08:50.000
<v Frédéric Roginska>They have a bottle of beer from an ice well.
01:08:50.399 --> 01:08:54.700
<v Frédéric Roginska>And they're not thinking like, hey, I could have the same in my fridge, right?
01:08:55.100 --> 01:08:57.500
<v Frédéric Roginska>So it's about the bar is something else.
01:08:57.500 --> 01:08:57.800
<v David Wondrich>Yeah.
01:08:57.800 --> 01:08:58.500
<v David Wondrich>That's my point.
01:08:58.600 --> 01:09:01.300
<v David Wondrich>The bar is not just focused on cocktails.
01:09:01.700 --> 01:09:04.000
<v David Wondrich>The bar is a place where you go to meet other people.
01:09:04.300 --> 01:09:19.000
<v David Wondrich>You know, I see so many people in bars, and I know this is their reality, but, you know, these are the cocktail geeks one who are looking at all the ingredients and photographing the drink very carefully and talking with the bartender about the drink.
01:09:19.200 --> 01:09:27.000
<v David Wondrich>But for every one of them, there's three other people who are just having a drink and talking and their phones are away.
01:09:27.100 --> 01:09:34.000
<v David Wondrich>And, you know, that is what you're forgetting by focusing only on the art of the cocktail.
01:09:35.800 --> 01:09:42.000
<v David Wondrich>I like to say that, you know, in the 1970s, we had bartenders who knew all of the jokes and none of the drinks.
01:09:42.600 --> 01:09:47.700
<v David Wondrich>And now we have a lot of bartenders who know all of the drinks and none of the jokes.
01:09:48.100 --> 01:09:55.900
<v David Wondrich>Except now they don't even know all of the drinks because the other argument about that piece I wrote was people saying, well, why do you care?
01:09:55.900 --> 01:09:57.500
<v David Wondrich>You can just go into these bars.
01:09:57.500 --> 01:10:03.800
<v David Wondrich>Any of these bars can make you a sidecar, a daiquiri, a New York sour, any of the classics.
01:10:03.900 --> 01:10:06.000
<v David Wondrich>But in fact, that's no longer true.
01:10:06.100 --> 01:10:07.000
<v David Wondrich>It used to be true.
01:10:07.000 --> 01:10:09.300
<v David Wondrich>But the people who were...
01:10:11.600 --> 01:10:18.000
<v David Wondrich>Criticizing me using that article, I think most of them don't actually go into bars and order classics.
01:10:18.400 --> 01:10:23.800
<v David Wondrich>They don't realize that that knowledge, that training is no longer done.
01:10:24.200 --> 01:10:26.500
<v David Wondrich>The people don't know the classics very well.
01:10:27.200 --> 01:10:29.700
<v David Wondrich>They don't have the ingredients stocked.
01:10:29.800 --> 01:10:33.800
<v David Wondrich>They've got the ingredients stocked in their bar to make the drinks on their list.
01:10:34.300 --> 01:10:40.100
<v David Wondrich>They don't have, you know, maybe a funky Jamaica rum because they don't have any drinks that call for it.
01:10:40.400 --> 01:10:47.200
<v David Wondrich>You know, they don't have, they're stocking things very selectively because they have to keep costs down.
01:10:47.500 --> 01:10:48.200
<v David Wondrich>It makes sense.
01:10:48.500 --> 01:10:56.900
<v David Wondrich>But it means you have a hard time ordering a simple classic cocktail at these places because they're really not in the simple classic cocktail business.
01:10:57.600 --> 01:11:05.500
<v David Wondrich>And what I think, I hope I'm beginning to see and what I think would be...
01:11:06.900 --> 01:11:12.800
<v David Wondrich>Great is if they started bringing back some classic cocktails on their list and then some...
01:11:13.200 --> 01:11:13.700
<v Chris Jumentier>But the good one.
01:11:14.100 --> 01:11:15.200
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, exactly.
01:11:15.400 --> 01:11:20.100
<v David Wondrich>And they don't have to be, you know, they can be forgotten classics.
01:11:20.200 --> 01:11:22.800
<v David Wondrich>They can just something, some simple drinks.
01:11:23.200 --> 01:11:27.200
<v David Wondrich>Not because they're, not just because they're classic, but because they're simple.
01:11:27.400 --> 01:11:27.500
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah.
01:11:28.400 --> 01:11:29.300
<v David Wondrich>And quick.
01:11:29.700 --> 01:11:37.000
<v David Wondrich>And they usually tend to be more spirit forward, brighter in flavor because they don't have so many ingredients.
01:11:37.500 --> 01:11:46.100
<v David Wondrich>You're not mixing mezcal, amaro, chamomile-infused vermouth, and, you know, a passion fruit.
01:11:48.100 --> 01:11:54.900
<v David Wondrich>Syrup, a little bit of that, and four other ingredients, and a rinse of Boker's bitters.
01:11:55.500 --> 01:11:57.700
<v David Wondrich>You know, you're not making drinks like that.
01:11:58.500 --> 01:12:02.100
<v David Wondrich>It's usually like three or four ingredients and pretty clear.
01:12:02.300 --> 01:12:13.500
<v Chris Jumentier>I don't know if there is, you know, a bar, of course, you know, lots of bars, but I know if one bar is really, really dedicating in Europe, for example, on only pure classics.
01:12:14.000 --> 01:12:18.300
<v Chris Jumentier>Having a menu, you know, with like 15 top recipes with only the bar classes.
01:12:18.500 --> 01:12:21.100
<v Frédéric Roginska>I can name one that I really enjoyed in Athens.
01:12:21.900 --> 01:12:25.700
<v Frédéric Roginska>Called Jazz in Jazz, and they do only classics.
01:12:27.000 --> 01:12:27.500
<v Chris Jumentier>Not twist.
01:12:27.700 --> 01:12:29.700
<v Frédéric Roginska>Because they're like a speakeasy.
01:12:29.900 --> 01:12:30.700
<v Frédéric Roginska>You don't shake to...
01:12:31.000 --> 01:12:32.300
<v David Wondrich>Right, right, right, right, right.
01:12:32.400 --> 01:12:36.500
<v Frédéric Roginska>And so the menu is Brooklyn, Manhattan, Sazerac.
01:12:37.400 --> 01:12:40.900
<v Frédéric Roginska>If you like boozy, steered cocktails, it's a paradise.
01:12:41.500 --> 01:12:42.200
<v David Wondrich>I will go there.
01:12:42.400 --> 01:12:43.700
<v David Wondrich>I'll be in Athens in November.
01:12:43.800 --> 01:12:44.500
<v David Wondrich>So Jazz in Jazz.
01:12:45.000 --> 01:12:45.200
<v David Wondrich>Go there.
01:12:45.200 --> 01:12:45.900
<v David Wondrich>Jazz in Jazz.
01:12:46.000 --> 01:12:46.400
<v David Wondrich>Perfect.
01:12:46.400 --> 01:12:46.800
<v David Wondrich>Thank you.
01:12:47.900 --> 01:12:48.300
<v David Wondrich>That's great.
01:12:49.000 --> 01:12:51.100
<v David Wondrich>There are a couple in the U.S.
01:12:51.200 --> 01:12:52.800
<v David Wondrich>Where they're more or less doing that.
01:12:54.000 --> 01:12:58.800
<v David Wondrich>The famous Long Island Bar in Brooklyn, they have a very short cocktail list.
01:12:58.800 --> 01:13:06.600
<v David Wondrich>And they're very simple versions, slight twists on classics.
01:13:07.200 --> 01:13:10.300
<v David Wondrich>And it's great.
01:13:11.300 --> 01:13:12.800
<v David Wondrich>But the bartenders can make anything.
01:13:14.200 --> 01:13:22.500
<v David Wondrich>They're senior bartenders who are very well trained, to say the least, and there's some real leading former bar owners, 10 bar there.
01:13:24.000 --> 01:13:34.300
<v Frédéric Roginska>So obviously the new book probably will bring newer generations to learn about history.
01:13:34.800 --> 01:13:47.000
<v Frédéric Roginska>And maybe go back to basics in this way, rather than just look up the fancy stuff and go straight to the fancy without having the steps before.
01:13:47.700 --> 01:13:53.400
<v Chris Jumentier>And I think that you brilliantly underline the fact that
01:13:53.900 --> 01:13:57.500
<v Chris Jumentier>You can be a great bartender, be in a bar, making great questions, cocktails.
01:13:57.500 --> 01:14:07.600
<v Chris Jumentier>But if you want really, really to develop yourself, I think, you know, in a mixologist, as a mixologist or otherwise, you definitely have to master, you know, the basics.
01:14:07.800 --> 01:14:10.700
<v Chris Jumentier>And having something really clear.
01:14:11.200 --> 01:14:16.700
<v Chris Jumentier>If we do, you know, some sours, if you want to make or to create any sours cocktail, you know how to do a sour.
01:14:17.200 --> 01:14:18.400
<v Chris Jumentier>You know how to do a daiquiri.
01:14:19.300 --> 01:14:20.900
<v Chris Jumentier>Understanding, you know, the balance of taste.
01:14:21.000 --> 01:14:22.200
<v Chris Jumentier>All those classic cocktails.
01:14:24.000 --> 01:14:27.700
<v Chris Jumentier>Is the base of any type of creation.
01:14:27.900 --> 01:14:32.500
<v Chris Jumentier>Nowadays, of course, I think there is two types of new style.
01:14:32.600 --> 01:14:40.400
<v Chris Jumentier>The new style, which is finding the finest spirits, finest juice, finest syrup, buying it.
01:14:41.200 --> 01:14:45.900
<v Chris Jumentier>And the other type is kind of the step after is modifying.
01:14:46.200 --> 01:14:46.300
<v David Wondrich>Yeah.
01:14:46.600 --> 01:14:47.200
<v David Wondrich>The base products.
01:14:47.700 --> 01:14:50.900
<v Chris Jumentier>For me, it's kind of, you know, three steps.
01:14:51.300 --> 01:14:54.200
<v Chris Jumentier>First step is mastering, you know, the classics.
01:14:54.300 --> 01:15:04.400
<v Chris Jumentier>Second one for me is hunting the best products to copy and paste, you know, the classics or to use, you know, the classics, but with the best spirits.
01:15:04.800 --> 01:15:06.800
<v Chris Jumentier>And the last step is...
01:15:07.500 --> 01:15:14.800
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah, I mean, creating something from scratch and breaking all the rules from these three kinds of partnering.
01:15:15.800 --> 01:15:25.000
<v David Wondrich>I would add there's a final step, which is once you've learned all of that, you learn, which I agree, those are the three formative steps.
01:15:25.100 --> 01:15:32.700
<v David Wondrich>But then there's sort of the senior people who come out the other side and say, OK, I'm going to go back and make those simple drinks again.
01:15:33.000 --> 01:15:34.400
<v David Wondrich>But now I know so much more.
01:15:34.500 --> 01:15:37.000
<v David Wondrich>I'm going to use exactly the right product for this.
01:15:37.400 --> 01:15:43.300
<v David Wondrich>You know and and i'm and i i know my products i'm going to cut the number of ingredients and just
01:15:43.700 --> 01:15:54.400
<v David Wondrich>be very careful it's like i'm just going to use this if i need to make something in house i will but i'm not going to make drinks just so that i can show off the things i'm making in house
01:15:54.800 --> 01:16:08.200
<v David Wondrich>you know i'm looking for this flavor and this is exactly the flavor i want and i want a very narrowly focused drink not oh this is this drink goes here and here and here you know so i think you're seeing that one thing
01:16:09.000 --> 01:16:19.600
<v David Wondrich>i i i am seeing is the people who started bartending uh right after pandemic when so many people got out of the business and you know bartending is a smart person job
01:16:20.100 --> 01:16:30.400
<v David Wondrich>it always has been like a cocktail bartending you have to be very quick mentally uh to to make it work and a lot a surprising number of people got out of the business to do other things.
01:16:31.400 --> 01:16:36.500
<v David Wondrich>And were perfectly successful because they were smart, hardworking people.
01:16:36.900 --> 01:16:48.000
<v David Wondrich>And so there were a lot of new people came in, and they learned to make, they learned, you know, all the fancy art without learning the drawing first.
01:16:48.000 --> 01:16:57.100
<v David Wondrich>And now those people, some of them are saying, okay, I got into this profession, and it was, I didn't think it was a profession.
01:16:57.200 --> 01:16:57.800
<v David Wondrich>It was a job.
01:16:57.800 --> 01:16:59.200
<v David Wondrich>I was going to do it for a while.
01:16:59.400 --> 01:17:01.600
<v David Wondrich>But now I can see that, you know, if I...
01:17:02.700 --> 01:17:05.800
<v David Wondrich>Apply myself to this, I can have a good career.
01:17:06.000 --> 01:17:06.800
<v David Wondrich>I see the path.
01:17:06.800 --> 01:17:18.700
<v David Wondrich>You go to brand ambassador or bar owner, and then you go up, and you can have a fun and interesting life with a lot of travel and things like that.
01:17:18.700 --> 01:17:21.400
<v Chris Jumentier>They don't see it as a job, but more as an entire industry.
01:17:21.400 --> 01:17:22.400
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, exactly.
01:17:22.400 --> 01:17:26.700
<v David Wondrich>And at that point, they're realizing, okay, now I've got to learn more.
01:17:26.700 --> 01:17:27.100
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:17:27.400 --> 01:17:27.800
<v David Wondrich>That's it.
01:17:28.200 --> 01:17:30.800
<v Chris Jumentier>They're becoming greedy of knowledge.
01:17:30.900 --> 01:17:36.700
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, yeah, because it's like new demands are being placed on them.
01:17:37.200 --> 01:17:40.900
<v David Wondrich>And it's not just make my cocktail list, says the famous consultant.
01:17:41.800 --> 01:17:46.600
<v David Wondrich>Now it's like I've got to come up with my own cocktail list that has to have a focus.
01:17:46.800 --> 01:17:55.400
<v David Wondrich>This establishment has been open since 1946, and they want that reflected in their history, in their cocktail list.
01:17:55.400 --> 01:17:56.200
<v David Wondrich>How do I do that?
01:17:56.400 --> 01:17:58.000
<v David Wondrich>What's a 1946 cocktail?
01:17:58.100 --> 01:17:58.900
<v David Wondrich>I've got no idea.
01:17:59.300 --> 01:18:02.200
<v David Wondrich>So suddenly you're put in positions like that.
01:18:05.700 --> 01:18:11.900
<v David Wondrich>My good friend Jeff Beachbum Berry and I do consulting for one of the cruise lines.
01:18:12.300 --> 01:18:20.300
<v David Wondrich>And they were asking us to come up with cocktails themed for various ports that they sail from in the Caribbean.
01:18:20.700 --> 01:18:25.700
<v David Wondrich>And that, you know, that's like, that's suddenly you've got to like know something about like Caribbean drinking.
01:18:26.000 --> 01:18:30.600
<v David Wondrich>You've got to know some of the history of the Caribbean and so on and so forth.
01:18:31.000 --> 01:18:37.900
<v David Wondrich>So there's a lot of stuff like that, that you've got to know which ingredients go with which island.
01:18:37.900 --> 01:18:41.900
<v David Wondrich>And there's always, there are always demands like that.
01:18:42.000 --> 01:18:47.000
<v David Wondrich>And it's stuff you can figure out, but you have to be willing to understand the culture.
01:18:51.400 --> 01:18:57.400
<v Chris Jumentier>Just to add something, which is thank you, of course, and you add it in your book through all the...
01:18:58.100 --> 01:18:59.300
<v Chris Jumentier>I think it's...
01:18:59.900 --> 01:19:14.400
<v Chris Jumentier>I love the fact the way you just come through the centuries and talking about the nouvelle normalité, so the new standards from 2015 to nowadays,
01:19:15.400 --> 01:19:18.900
<v Chris Jumentier>and putting ahead that hospitality is the key.
01:19:20.700 --> 01:19:23.600
<v Chris Jumentier>What's for you the importance of hospitality?
01:19:24.400 --> 01:19:36.800
<v Chris Jumentier>If we have to mix, like a good bartender is 50% hospitality or 25% or what's your experience through the years about that?
01:19:37.100 --> 01:19:49.600
<v David Wondrich>I don't know about percentages, but I do know that I would much rather drink shots of Jameson and crap American beer in a fun bar than drink a
01:19:49.900 --> 01:19:53.700
<v David Wondrich>perfect cocktail in a stiff, boring bar.
01:19:54.300 --> 01:19:57.900
<v David Wondrich>You know, I mean, that's the problem.
01:19:58.000 --> 01:19:58.300
<v David Wondrich>Me too.
01:19:58.400 --> 01:19:59.100
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, you know.
01:20:00.300 --> 01:20:01.200
<v David Wondrich>You want it to be fun.
01:20:01.300 --> 01:20:07.200
<v David Wondrich>It's not a, you know, being in a bar on the customer side should not be a job.
01:20:07.800 --> 01:20:09.700
<v David Wondrich>You know, it should be fun.
01:20:10.100 --> 01:20:14.600
<v David Wondrich>I mean, that's why I like, to this day, I've always liked Harry's Bar because they've always kept that.
01:20:15.000 --> 01:20:18.400
<v David Wondrich>You know, it's always a lively bar with interesting people.
01:20:18.500 --> 01:20:19.400
<v Chris Jumentier>It's a really social place.
01:20:19.400 --> 01:20:26.600
<v David Wondrich>And the bartenders are always, well, they used to, back in the day, there were some grumpy ones, but now they've gotten rid of those.
01:20:26.900 --> 01:20:34.200
<v David Wondrich>And they're all just really, you know, kind of lovely people who are very pleasant and friendly.
01:20:34.200 --> 01:20:36.700
<v David Wondrich>And that, I think, is the key.
01:20:36.800 --> 01:20:39.800
<v David Wondrich>It should be one of life's pleasures, you know.
01:20:39.900 --> 01:20:46.300
<v David Wondrich>And that, to me, is everything.
01:20:46.300 --> 01:20:49.600
<v David Wondrich>I mean, of course a good bartender should know how to mix drinks.
01:20:50.600 --> 01:20:53.000
<v David Wondrich>I mean, if you're working in a cocktail bar, you're better.
01:20:53.800 --> 01:21:01.100
<v David Wondrich>You should know a lot of drinks and know how to invent them on the fly if somebody asks you for something particular.
01:21:01.100 --> 01:21:02.700
<v David Wondrich>And, you know, frankly, that's not that hard.
01:21:03.200 --> 01:21:14.800
<v David Wondrich>The mixing drinks part you can learn in two years, which is why we had so many people recently who got into the business and are suddenly making all these complicated cocktails.
01:21:15.000 --> 01:21:15.900
<v David Wondrich>They can do that.
01:21:16.300 --> 01:21:20.900
<v David Wondrich>What they can't do at age 24 is have a...
01:21:22.700 --> 01:21:30.700
<v David Wondrich>A pleasant conversation with a 55-year-old, you know, because they're not used to that.
01:21:31.000 --> 01:21:34.600
<v David Wondrich>And some of them can, and others are learning, and you have to learn.
01:21:34.900 --> 01:21:37.900
<v David Wondrich>You have to learn to just relax and just talk to people.
01:21:38.100 --> 01:21:40.000
<v David Wondrich>It doesn't matter if they're older than you.
01:21:40.100 --> 01:21:41.700
<v David Wondrich>It doesn't matter if they're a little scary.
01:21:42.000 --> 01:21:44.600
<v David Wondrich>You've got to learn that part of it.
01:21:44.700 --> 01:21:57.200
<v David Wondrich>And I think that is the most important part of bartending, is the human stuff, because bars are the places we go to be with other humans,
01:21:57.200 --> 01:22:03.200
<v David Wondrich>to share our successes and to make our failures seem smaller.
01:22:04.100 --> 01:22:05.400
<v Chris Jumentier>And that's the best final drop.
01:22:05.800 --> 01:22:06.000
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah.
01:22:06.800 --> 01:22:08.300
<v David Wondrich>So that's what we do, you know.
01:22:09.100 --> 01:22:09.400
<v Frédéric Roginska>Amen.
01:22:12.600 --> 01:22:14.400
<v Frédéric Roginska>You wanted to conclude with a...
01:22:16.300 --> 01:22:17.700
<v Chris Jumentier>Mais complètement, complètement.
01:22:18.000 --> 01:22:18.800
<v Chris Jumentier>I need to conclude.
01:22:21.200 --> 01:22:25.900
<v Chris Jumentier>Without, once again, without spoiling your book and reading it.
01:22:27.900 --> 01:22:35.400
<v Chris Jumentier>We would like to read a small part of your book that I truly recognize.
01:22:35.600 --> 01:22:39.200
<v Chris Jumentier>First of all, the industry, but we are.
01:22:40.300 --> 01:22:42.300
<v Chris Jumentier>We fully agree on this part.
01:22:42.400 --> 01:22:46.600
<v Chris Jumentier>So I will read it in English and in French as well, if you don't mind.
01:22:46.900 --> 01:22:48.300
<v Chris Jumentier>No, please, please.
01:22:48.300 --> 01:22:51.500
<v Chris Jumentier>So in English, it's nevertheless exceptions are legend.
01:22:52.200 --> 01:22:57.200
<v Chris Jumentier>Thanks to unprecedented access to spirits, soda, bars, tools and recipe.
01:22:57.900 --> 01:23:02.800
<v Chris Jumentier>If no one can mix the exact drinks you are looking for, you can always make it yourself.
01:23:03.400 --> 01:23:18.300
<v Chris Jumentier>And whether you do it or a tattooed young philanthropist takes care of it for you, a well-executed cocktail remains one of the best remedies to soften.
01:23:18.400 --> 01:23:19.700
<v Chris Jumentier>Sorry for my English accent.
01:23:19.700 --> 01:23:21.000
<v Chris Jumentier>Sorry for my English accent.
01:23:22.200 --> 01:23:31.600
<v Chris Jumentier>Remedies to soften, if only for a moment, the bumps are existence today just as much as in 1903.
01:23:32.800 --> 01:23:33.300
<v Chris Jumentier>En français...
01:23:34.100 --> 01:23:34.900
<v Chris Jumentier>1803, sorry.
01:23:36.100 --> 01:23:37.900
<v Chris Jumentier>18, ça n'aurait pas eu de sens.
01:23:38.500 --> 01:23:39.300
<v Chris Jumentier>Je vais le lire en français.
01:23:39.900 --> 01:23:42.700
<v Chris Jumentier>Je voulais clôturer en tout cas, moi, un peu ma partie aussi par ça.
01:23:42.800 --> 01:23:57.400
<v Chris Jumentier>C'est un extrait, en fait, d'une des dernières parties, du coup, du livre de David, que je trouve hyper intéressante, qui synthétise, en tout cas, moi, grandement, ma pensée, et que je trouve très bien, puisqu'elle résume un peu ce qui est pour moi l'univers du bar,
01:23:57.600 --> 01:24:00.900
<v Chris Jumentier>et en même temps, respecte aussi énormément le métier de barman.
01:24:01.700 --> 01:24:06.800
<v Chris Jumentier>Néanmoins, les exceptions sont légion grâce à un accès inédit aux spiritueux, aux sodas, aux ustensiles et aux recettes.
01:24:07.300 --> 01:24:12.600
<v Chris Jumentier>Si personne ne peut composer le mélange exact que vous recherchez, vous pouvez toujours le préparer vous-même.
01:24:13.100 --> 01:24:18.200
<v Chris Jumentier>Et que vous le fassiez ou qu'un jeune philanthrope tatoué s'en charge pour vous, je me suis un peu reconnu là-dedans,
01:24:19.000 --> 01:24:28.800
<v Chris Jumentier>Un cocktail bien exécuté reste l'un des meilleurs remèdes pour adoucir, ne serait-ce qu'un instant, les chaos de l'existence aujourd'hui tout autant qu'en 1803.
01:24:32.600 --> 01:24:33.200
<v Chris Jumentier>Bravo, David.
01:24:34.400 --> 01:24:35.100
<v David Wondrich>Merci, mes amis.
01:24:35.200 --> 01:24:38.100
<v Frédéric Roginska>Congratulations, François Monti, for the translation.
01:24:38.300 --> 01:24:39.500
<v Chris Jumentier>Et merci beaucoup, François.
01:24:39.600 --> 01:24:40.700
<v David Wondrich>He's a very good translator.
01:24:43.200 --> 01:24:44.400
<v Chris Jumentier>Yeah, that was really, really great.
01:24:46.400 --> 01:24:48.500
<v Frédéric Roginska>Well, so thank you very much for your time.
01:24:48.500 --> 01:24:54.600
<v Frédéric Roginska>It was a pleasure to have you for this first episode of the Distilcast this season.
01:24:55.800 --> 01:24:57.000
<v Frédéric Roginska>It was very interesting.
01:24:57.800 --> 01:24:59.800
<v Frédéric Roginska>I mean, we had so many questions.
01:24:59.800 --> 01:25:02.000
<v Frédéric Roginska>We obviously can't do it all, but...
01:25:03.100 --> 01:25:05.700
<v David Wondrich>I could talk all afternoon with you guys.
01:25:06.400 --> 01:25:08.900
<v David Wondrich>Gentlemen, this has been extremely pleasant.
01:25:09.000 --> 01:25:09.800
<v David Wondrich>Thank you so much.
01:25:10.200 --> 01:25:11.200
<v David Wondrich>Thank you for having me.
01:25:11.600 --> 01:25:12.900
<v David Wondrich>Thank you for the kind words.
01:25:12.900 --> 01:25:14.300
<v David Wondrich>They're greatly appreciated.
01:25:14.400 --> 01:25:19.500
<v David Wondrich>And I'm very pleased that you're enjoying the comic book history.
01:25:20.100 --> 01:25:23.900
<v David Wondrich>La Grande Histoire du Comique.
01:25:25.000 --> 01:25:25.600
<v David Wondrich>Du Cocktails.
01:25:25.900 --> 01:25:34.800
<v Frédéric Roginska>And just so people know, so you've been in Paris right now and you're coming back in France next year?
01:25:34.900 --> 01:25:40.000
<v David Wondrich>Yeah, I'm coming back in February to do some masterclasses.
01:25:40.500 --> 01:25:43.700
<v David Wondrich>We're not sure what form those exactly are going to take.
01:25:44.100 --> 01:25:46.800
<v David Wondrich>I'm working on it right now with our friends at Ferrand.
01:25:47.600 --> 01:25:50.400
<v David Wondrich>And we'll be in several French cities.
01:25:50.400 --> 01:25:52.600
<v David Wondrich>So please come and say hello.
01:25:54.100 --> 01:25:57.100
<v David Wondrich>Keep an eye open and it will be fun.
01:25:57.200 --> 01:25:59.600
<v David Wondrich>I try to make these things not very painful.
01:26:00.900 --> 01:26:02.500
<v David Wondrich>And a little bit educational.
01:26:03.100 --> 01:26:07.100
<v Chris Jumentier>And we keep posted as well, you know, for our next emission around, you know, the Punch episode 2.
01:26:07.700 --> 01:26:08.000
<v Chris Jumentier>Maybe.
01:26:08.500 --> 01:26:08.700
<v Chris Jumentier>Maybe.
01:26:09.200 --> 01:26:19.300
<v Frédéric Roginska>And anyway, we will obviously talk about it in the still news and bar news in the upcoming weeks or months when all the details are set up.
01:26:19.600 --> 01:26:20.200
<v David Wondrich>Fantastic.
01:26:20.400 --> 01:26:28.300
<v Frédéric Roginska>And for all those that, once again, thank you also, Barge 166 and Maison Ferrand for hosting us today.
01:26:29.000 --> 01:26:39.800
<v Frédéric Roginska>If you want more information about the barge and what you can do here, because you can actually age your own cognac and own plantary rum if you want,
01:26:40.200 --> 01:26:44.100
<v Frédéric Roginska>I will put the link on the description for all the information.
01:26:44.100 --> 01:26:46.600
<v Chris Jumentier>And we'll put the link as well, you know, to David's book.
01:26:47.200 --> 01:26:47.700
<v Frédéric Roginska>Obviously.
01:26:48.600 --> 01:26:49.200
<v Frédéric Roginska>Thank you very much.
01:26:49.500 --> 01:26:50.100
<v Frédéric Roginska>Merci beaucoup.
01:26:50.500 --> 01:26:51.100
<v David Wondrich>Merci beaucoup.Le DistilCast est disponible sur
Apple Podcasts | https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/distilcast/id1543972202
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RSS | https://anchor.fm/s/42a3cdc4/podcast/rss
Nos derniers invités
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David Wondrich
Andy Migevant
Alex Arzuman
Florian Migeon
Nicolas Munoz
Benjamin Missoffe
Kevin Guillot
Marjorie Dumontel
Marjorie Dumontel
Alexandre Mourigué
Eric Fossard
Julien Roques
Franck Penard
Les voix du DistilCast
Frédéric Roginska
Fondateur de DistilNews, du DistilCast et des French Bar Awards, Frédéric Roginska a d’abord été consultant en communication chez We Are Social, avant de se former au bar à New York en 2014 et de prendre en charge la production de la Distillerie de Paris en 2015. À partir de fin 2017, il a dirigé le chantier de Bordeaux Distilling Co., dont il a signé les premiers spiritueux. Rentré à Paris fin 2020, il ausculte depuis l’actualité du bar et des spiritueux à travers ses newsletters et podcasts.
91 épisodes · Tous ses épisodes →
Chris Jumentier
Consultant expert en boissons et CHR pour le groupe YNDA, Chris “Horseman” Jumentier cumule plus de vingt-cinq ans dans l’hospitalité et le on-trade. Passé par le Royal Monceau, Le Forvm ou La Cervoise, comme par des maisons telles que Diageo et Bacardi-Martini, il a aussi mené ses propres projets, de Bar Spoon à Cocktail Guild en passant par Heads and Legs. Cette polyvalence lui donne une vue complète de la chaîne de valeur, de la production à la distribution.
21 épisodes · Tous ses épisodes →
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