Raise a Glass to Days Gone Past

To mark the anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition, our tidbit this week comes from Allen Katz, host of The Cocktail Hour on Martha Stewart Living Radio.

Hooray! Hooray!
By Allen Katz

Imagine 13 years without sex or chocolate...or foie gras. Not by choice but by government imposition. Sounds crazy, you say? Well if you had been there on that colder than normal day in the winter of 1920 you might not find the prospect so farfetched. While the insidious Noble Experiment, Prohibition, lasted 13 years, its incursion into reasonable (and, well, perhaps sometimes slightly indulgent) society was born decades earlier by the Temperance movement - a movement which originally had designs in the context of moderation in drinking not the ambition of a nation of teetotalers. The government can spiral out of control sometimes.

One of my favorite ditties of the era pleads in anticipation of the feds ultimate act, 'How Are You Going To Wet Your Whistle When The Whole World Goes Dry?' (1919). It expresses the sentiment at the dawn of a peculiar and wonderful decade that gave us newfound freedoms and excesses in music, art, and literature (Rhapsody In Blue, O'Keeffe, Hopper, Houdini and The Algonquin Round Table, to name a few) and ended with the thud of the Great Depression.  The years in between all but stripped an American culture of the key ingredients of one of its very few gastronomic contributions to the rest of the world - the cocktail. Sure, beer and wine were included in the Prohibition, but the real culprit was booze - hard alcohol. It has taken us decades to reasonably restore our taste buds and cultural sensibilities.

My Great Uncle, a grand character who in his prime could easily let an ordinary day lapse at the rail of Craps table, was born in 1902. When pressed, he always told me that alcohol wasn't that difficult to come by during Prohibition, but the taste was so retched that by the time you added the fruit juice or soda or sugar you could barely taste any semblance of the cocktail you were making in the first place. He said they drank it anyway. They didn't want to be told what to do.

Today, the 5th of December is a holiday in my book. You don't find it on any stationer's calendar but in my opinion it should be. Nestled between Thanksgiving and Christmas, right at the start of the holiday season is this slightly different day of joy. For today is Repeal Day, the 73rd Anniversary of the end of The Volstead Act - the end of Prohibition. Wherever you are (at 5:32pm if you can make it - when the 21st Amendment was ratified) raise a glass of something delicious and distilled or fermented in honor of this equally holy day. As for me, you'll find me sipping a Rye Whiskey Manhattan at the Pegu Club. Feel free to stop by.

New Videos for New York City:

• Pegu Club with Audrey Saunders
• Lupa with Jason Denton and Mark Ladner
• DB Bistro Moderne with Daniel Boulud

New Videos for San Francisco:

• Boulevard with Nancy Oakes

Check back later this week for another video on cocktail tips featuring Audrey Saunders from Pegu Club.