It's always cocktail hour somewhere

Paul Clarke, the blogger behind the Cocktail Chronicles, chats with Salon about classic martinis, lost ingredients and how rye whiskey changed his life.

By Robert Simonson

Read more: Alcohol, bloggers, Life, Eat and Drink, Food and Travel

Aug. 7, 2007 | How do you know that cocktail blogs -- that is, Web sites whose mono-obsessional authors natter on about nothing else but carefully mixed intoxicants, their ingredients and their histories -- have come into their own? Well, at the preeminent annual cocktail convention in the nation, Tales of the Cocktail (this year held July 18-22 in New Orleans), said bloggers claimed ownership of their very own seminar. Called "Cocktails and the Blogosphere," the event trained a spotlight on New Orleanian Chuck Taggart, who writes about music, food and politics as well as sazeracs on his blog, the Gumbo Pages; Rick Stutz of Kaiser Penguin, so named because, I quote: "It is a well-known fact that penguins are members of high society and enjoy fine cocktails"; and Darcy O'Neil, a professional bartender who peppers his Art of Drink blog with chemistry lessons he learned in college.

But the man moderating the panel -- and one of the godfathers of cocktail bloggers everywhere -- was Seattle native Paul Clarke. Clarke launched his site, the Cocktail Chronicles, in May 2005, when his ramblings on the best ryes on the market were still but a slurred voice in the cyber-wilderness. Now, he has been joined by more than 100 blogs dedicated to the art of the carefully considered libation. Their creators include bartenders, mixologists, lowly journalists such as Clarke and what the spirits mafia call "Cocktailians" (loosely defined as individuals who are enthusiastic about cocktails and know how to mix a mean specimen of such).

Clarke's efforts have earned enough attention to land him regular writing gigs for Imbibe magazine and SeriousEats.com. He recently talked to Salon about the art of mixology, reviving lost ingredients and how to mix the ultimate martini, over a bowl of gumbo and a (gasp!) beer at the French Quarter's Acme Oyster House.

You began the Cocktail Chronicles in May 2005. Did you know of anyone else blogging about booze back then?

To the best of my knowledge, only one purely cocktail-oriented blog existed then. That was barmixmaster.com. It's now very sporadically updated, so it's not very active. There were a couple of other people who blogged about a number of things, with cocktails being among them. Chuck Taggart has been blogging on the Gumbo Pages since before there was blogging, about everything from food and politics to music and cocktails. But his cocktails, especially his originals, are absolutely fantastic. He is very conversant in spirits and liqueurs. For me, he was a big motivation. I thought, "Here's someone who's blogging, but he actually knows what he's talking about."

In my day job, I'm a journalist and I work as an editor part time in a small publishing company. When I started my blog, I thought it would be nice to write something without an editor looking over my shoulder. I didn't have to worry about a word count, a deadline; I could write about a topic I want to write about; I could use the voice I want to use. I didn't do it to broadcast my message. But then people actually read it, which constantly surprises me.

When did the drink bug bite you?

I think it was in 2003. My wife's family is a big foodie family. Any time we have a big gathering, there's a massive amount of cooking going on. My mother-in-law is a trained chef; my sister-in-law went to baking school. I'd always think: "What am I going to do except sit here and eat everything?" Then, one time, I was reading a cocktail recipe in the New York Times and thought, "We have a dinner coming up. I'll make a drink." It was like the clouds opened and the Jesus light came down. I'd always been interested in cocktails, but I didn't know anything about them. Every time I'd try to make myself a martini, it was terrible.

Why was that?

In retrospect, I see everything I was doing wrong. I was using a gin that was not very good. And I was using a lousy vermouth and not much of it. I wasn't using bitters, and I was shaking the cocktail. Now when I make a martini, I use a decent gin, a lot of vermouth and a good vermouth, and a little bit of orange bitters, and stir it nicely. It's lovely.

So you prefer a classic martini style, the way it was made in early decades of the 20th century?

Circa 1930s -- exactly. I always thought my drinks sucked because I used too much vermouth, that the two or three drops I used were too much. Then I realized that I actually needed it to be one-third vermouth -- and I'm happy as a clam.

Next page: "When I made a rye Manhattan, it was an 'Oh, my God' moment"