It’s Marlon Brando’s Birthday! Celebrate With A “Godfather” Cocktail!

It’s Friday, April 3rd in the year of COVID-19 two-thousand-and-twenty and it also happens to be Marlon Brando’s birthday today.

I almost wrote “the actor Marlon Brando,” but, really, what other Marlon Brando is there in the history of the world!? And if you’re only nominally familiar with the man, it’s probably from his portrayal of Vito Corleone, the “Don” and paterfamilias of the Corleone family in the 1972 film and cultural milestone “The Godfather.”

Of course, by now, it’s probably evident by the headline, the fact that it’s Marlon Brando’s birthday and that lead-in about the Francis Ford Coppola flick that the point of this post is to write about The Godfather cocktail.

About This Drink

A simple, understated scotch cocktail that adds slight sweetness and almond flavor to your favorite scotch.

And to think, I’ve already been drinking scotch this week!

In terms of the scotch going into your Godfather cocktail, grab whatever your go to scotch is — or call in a curbside pickup for a nice workhorse scotch whisky like Monkey Shoulder.

Ingredients

Search Google for Godfather recipes and you’ll come up with everything from scotch-heavy recipes with just a drizzle of amaretto to overly sweet recipes calling for equal parts spirit and liqueur.

I like to split the difference with this drink, skewing closer to the 2:1 proportions of a drink like the Manhattan, but without the bitters — though the addition of bitters, like Fee Brothers old fashioned bitters, would suit this drink just fine for me.

So for my Godfather cocktail I’ll be sipping tonight:

• 2 oz scotch
• .75 oz amaretto
• Orange peel garnish

Preparation

• Add all the ingredients into a rocks glass with ice cubes. Stir and garnish with a swath of orange peel.

Further Drinking:

•The Spruce Eats calls for 1.5oz whisky to .5oz amaretto: Link

•Esquire calls for 2oz whisky to .5oz amaretto: Link

•Many sites source the drink as having appeared in the 70s and cite that there’s no confirmed origin or creator: Link

•The Godmother cocktail: Link

•The French Connection cocktail: Link

Cary Grant Drank Coffee Liqueur With A Lime

I’ve only tasted Tia Maria once, but I didn’t drink it like Cary Grant.

Some “Old Hollywood” stars and starlets had drinks invented and named after them as a tribute during and after their heydays. But then there are the actors and actresses with drinks named after them because that’s actually what they drank.

And apparently Cary Grant drank vodka and Tia Maria with a squeeze of lime.

I’m not going to knock it til I try it, but the idea of coffee and citrus did initially strike me as strange.

Of course, there’s nothing new under the sun, as a quick Google search always proves.

The following recipe for the Cary Grant cocktail comes from a post on the blog Mix That Drink.

Cary Grant was born Jan. 18, 1904.

Ingredients

• Vodka
• Tia Maria
• Lime wedge garnish

Preparation

• Combine equal parts vodka and Tia Maria in a rocks glass with ice. Garnish with a lime wedge that’s been squeezed for the juice and stirred into the drink.

Some recipes online call for “the juice of 1 lime” in the cocktail, but I have to imagine it’s the juice from the garnish and not a full ounce or so of lime juice.

Further Reading

• There’s a great many Cary Grant cocktails from films listed at CaryGrant.net

STARS AND SPIRITS

Cocktail: Cary Grant
Inspiration: Actor Cary Grant
Base Ingredients: Vodka
Why today? Cary Grant was born Jan. 18, 1904.
Origin: This drink is named after Cary Grant because it was allegedly his cocktail of choice.
Cocktail Groupings: Old Hollywood, Actresses & Stars And Spirits

Salvador Dali’s Casanova Cocktail

Today is Salvador Dali’s birthday.

He was born May 11, 1904 in Spain.

So, in honor of his birthday, I searched the Internet to see if he has his own cocktail — and lo and behold, he actually had his own cook book!

Les Diners de Gala was published in 1973. 

 

In the book he details how to make his Casanova Cocktail, which seems to me to be the appropriate drink to have today in honor of his birthday today.

INGREDIENTS
• The juice of 1 orange
• 1 tablespoon bitters (Campari)
• 1 teaspoon ginger
• 4 tablespoons brandy
• 2 tablespoons old brandy (Vielle Cure)
• 1 pinch Cayenne pepper

From Les Diners de Gala:

This is quite appropriate when circumstances such as exhaustion, overwork or simply excess of sobriety are calling for a pick-me-up.

Here is a well-tested recipe to fit the bill.

Let us stress another advantage of this particular pep-up concoction is that one doesn’t have to make the sour face that usually accompanies the absorption of a remedy.

At the bottom of a glass, combine pepper and ginger. Pour the bitters on top, then brandy and “Vielle Cure.” Refrigerate or even put in the freezer.

Thirty minutes later, remove from the freezer and stir the juice of the orange into the chilled glass.

Drink… and wait for the effect. 

It is rather speedy.

 

Casanova Cocktail Online

All the text I included above came from a site called Brain Pickings. I believe that’s the text which accompanies the drink recipe in Dali’s book.

Want to read more? Here’s a link to Huff Post and a link to First We Feast and also Dangerous Minds.

Mary Astor’s Painless Anesthetic

Actress Mary Astor was born on this day in 1906.

She starred in silent movies as well as “talkies,” and is perhaps best-known for having played the role of Brigid O’Shaugnessy in the movie The Maltese Falcon. She also played the role of Mrs. Anna Smith in the movie Meet Me In St. Louis.

In searching the Internet for a Mary Astor cocktail, I came across two recipes that piqued my interest. The first was a drink I found on the site of a liqueur brand called Chareau, which is a booze company based in California — and the liqueur they make is aloe flavored.

Check out the site’s “about” section by clicking here. The liqueur sounds mind-boggling. I don’t know that I ever would’ve thought of aloe as a primary ingredient for a liqueur. Of course, I’m also not a California farmer.

Other ingredients in the liqueur include: Cucumber, eau de vie, lemon peel, muskmelon, spearmint, sugar and water.

Online at the Chareu site, the company lists this as their Mary Astor cocktail:
 

Photo from chareau.us

 

INGREDIENTS

• 2 oz Gin
• 3/4 oz Chareau 
• 1/2 oz Lillet Blanc 

PREPARATION

Stir ingredients over ice and strain into a coupe. Garnish with edible flowers. Cocktail by Pablo Moix.

Crazy interesting, right!? I have got to know what that tastes like.

ASTOR’S PAINLESS ANESTHETIC

So, while still interesting, Chareau’s Mary Astor cocktail is a brand specific modern cocktail. 

There isn’t any official “Mary Astor” cocktail that I’ve found, but there is the thing called “Astor’s Painless Anesthetic!”

What is an Astor’s Painless Anesthetic? Well, according to Lesley M. M. Blume’s book “Let’s Bring Back: The Cocktail Edition,” the drink was created for Mary Astor by the Stork Club.

The full title of Blume’s book is: Let’s Bring Back: The Cocktail Edition: A Compendium of Impish, Romantic, Amusing, and Occasionally Appalling Potations from Bygone Eras.

Google made research into the matter even more helpful by having a copy of The Stork Club Bar Book available to search online:

INGREDIENTS

• 3 oz gin
• 1 oz French vermouth
• 1 oz Italian vermouth
• 1 oz cognac
• Orange bitters

PREPARATION

“Shake well with ice cubes and dash of orange bitters, twist of lemon peel and just a touch of sugar.”

THE STORK CLUB

The Stork Club was a nightclub in Manhattan, which was open from 1929 to 1965 and was regarded as one of the most prestigious clubs in the world. 

The club was a symbol of café society, where the wealthy elite, including movie stars, celebrities, showgirls and aristocrats all mixed in the VIP Cub Room of the club.

Reading over the Stork Club’s Wikipedia page I found out that Walter Winchell actually coined the name of the Stork Club’s “Cub Room,” — a fact which has me now wanting to rewatch that HBO biopic starring Stanley Tucci.

It’s Sailor Jerry’s Birthday!

Tattoos, booze, brawn and broads.

It’s Sailor Jerry’s birthday today and, as such, I’ve found myself falling down a rabbit hole of sorts — scrolling through Internet pics of all the things associated with the man: hula girls, black leather, white cotton, sepia-colored rum and all the staples of the “American Traditional” school of tattoo which we’ve come to associate with the brand.

It’s the sort of sequence of images that inspires one to want to skip work and go off adventuring.

Sailor Jerry was born as Norman Collins on Jan. 14, 1911.

There’s a decent-sized bio written about him on the Sailor Jerry site, but in short: the man was in the navy, lived through World War II, had a love for the Pacific, got the nickname “Jerry” from his father and later settled in Hawaii where he set up shop.

Yes, but what about the rum?

When Collins died in 1973, he left his shop and artwork to his two protégés, Ed Hardy and Mike Malone.

In 1999, Hardy and Malone partnered with a small independent Philadelphia clothing company to establish Sailor Jerry Ltd., which owns Collins’ letters, art, and flash, and produces clothing and other items in what’s now known as the Sailor Jerry style.

Sailor Jerry Ltd. also produces a 92 proof spiced Navy-style rum. The bottle features a typical Sailor Jerry hula girl on the label. As the bottle is emptied, additional pin-up girls designed by Sailor Jerry are visible on the inner side of the label.

What is Navy-style rum? Here’s a link to a primer. In short, Navy-style rum is rum modeled after the darker, more full-bodied rums associated with the British Royal Navy.

The Royal Navy was famed for its custom of providing a daily ration of rum to sailors, as far back as 1655 when the British fleet captured the island of Jamaica. Rum traveled aboard ships far better that French brandy. As a matter of fact, where grape-based spirits of wine and brandy eventually went bad in the heat of the tropics, rum seemed to improve as it aged in the barrels aboard ship.

Sailor Jerry’s rum is distilled in the U.S. Virgin Islands. It takes its influence from Caribbean rum, which sailors would spice with flavors from the Far East and Asia to make it more enjoyable to drink. In 2010, the original formula was changed to include a less sweet taste.

•Locally•
Locally, I’ve seen Sailor Jerry a few places, but I don’t remember ’em all. We don’t stock it at the bar where I work, so in his memory today I’ll have to make a stop at The Wine Cellar for a shot of the rum. Maybe a mixed drink too. We’ll see where the day takes me.