cocktail review no. 63 - Planter's Punch

Tropical drinks are a rum do.

A wealth of visual imagery and context and light and sound and feeling and fury lie bound up in those two words.

Most people immediately think of tiki bars, and rum bars, and tropical bars, and beach bars, and barbecues and summer nights and sambas and limbos and rumbas and tangos and lambadas when you say "tropical drink."

They think of tattooed women caked with makeup, drinking way too much and wearing way too little, easy prey. "Oh, I can't taste the alcohol, it's fair game for me!"

They think of paper umbrellas, and friends staggering on the street, and loud clubs, and garnishes almost too gaudy to be edible, pineapples and cherries and pomegranates and God knows what else. "For Christ's sake, where's the booze? This tastes like fruit juice!"

They think of outlandish names, monikers fit for the Sheriff of Nottingham, Vlad the Impaler, Robespierre, Ceauşescu, Shiro Ishii: the Zombie, the Scorpion, the Tidal Wave, the Green-Tailed Dragon of the Maroon Morning.

Maybe that last one's a stretch, but it's imposing regardless.

There are a few hardy folks, however, who don't subscribe to the trendy, hip, club-going, bar-hopping, street-puking, alley-humping "in-crowd." Some of us out here in the ether still dream of seaplanes, hammocks, palm fronds, zebra stripes, native girls, ukeleles, volcanoes, howdahs, bungalows and sprawling plantations while we sip tropical drinks.

I do, anyway.

And this drink, Planter's Punch, made every daydream I'd ever had about a voyage to the South Seas or a passage to India or a beach house in Cuba come galloping to the forefront.

• 1 ounce dark rum
• 1 ounce light rum
• ½ ounce orange Curaçao 
• 2 ounces fresh orange juice
• 2 ounces pineapple juice
• ¼ ounce fresh lime juice
• ½ ounce simple syrup
• dash of grenadine
• dash of Angostura bitters

Shake all ingredients well with ice and strain into a glass. Garnish with an orange slice and a cherry. Top with club soda.

I need to tell you about a little book I found at Anthropologie.

The book, the acquisition of which cost me fifty-three U.S. dollars, is the jewel of my bartender's collection.

It's called Vintage Cocktails.

Part of Assouline's line on travel and culture and fine dining, the book features photography by Laziz Hamani, who is better known for his pictures of Louis Vuitton handbags than alcoholic drinks.

That should give you some idea about how lush the photography is.

As Brian Van Flandern explains in the introduction:

"The word vintage often implies antique, a relic from the past that has come back into vogue. Not to be confused with the classic cocktail, the vintage cocktail conjures images of specific places in time when a particular cocktail gained global popularity. Many of the recipes featured in [Vintage Cocktails] survived the devastating years of Prohibition (1920-1933) while others, like the Brandy Crusta (created in New Orleans in 1852), boast legacies of over a century."

What we have in this book is a collection of cocktails that are very old, mostly unheard of these days, known to only a few old-fashioned drink-meisters, mentioned frequently in black-and-white films, sometimes seen on those giant prints that Red Robin loves to put up on its walls. Nobody drinks this stuff anymore, but once you taste it, you may never go back to your Scooby Snacks and Blow Jobs. These names conjure up images of dimly-lit mahogany bars, and brightly lit ballrooms, and yachts, and verandas, and red carpet and movie stars and black-tie affairs.

The Sidecar.

The Brandy Flip.

The Gin Mule.

The Dry Martini.

The French 75.

The Sazerac.

The Irish Coffee.

The Stinger.

The Sloe Gin Fizz.

The Pousse-Café.

The Hemingway Daiquiri.

The White Russian.

Between the Sheets.

Pimm's Cup.

And all the rest of it. You can just see a bunch of Hollywood's greats lounging around in tuxedos, sipping on these masterpieces. (And indeed, there is a picture in the front pages of Vintage Cocktails showing Clark Gable, Van Heflin, Gary Cooper and James Stewart, tuxedo-clad, enjoying a "drink and a joke" at a New Year's Eve party in Beverly Hills.

Wowzer.

So these drinks (with a few exceptions) have a long, epic history, steeped in tradition and class, endowed with unimpeachable reputations, crafted from the finest ingredients, and savored by some rather legendary human beings.

One of these is—you guessed it—Planter's Punch.

And it has earned its place on the list of vintage (and classic) cocktails.

I've had tropical drinks before. Lots. I like 'em. Makes me feel a little closer to my idols (Ernest Hemingway and Bartholomew Roberts come to mind). But I've never had one like Planter's Punch. It is a doozy. For once, the pineapple juice does not overpower or undermine. It smoothly backs up the orange juice and complements the sour kick of the lime, while its best qualities are brought out by the simple syrup. The simple mix of light and dark rum creates both a smoky undertone and a sweetly alcoholic finish which entrances nostrils and taste buds alike. (Some recipes for Planter's Punch include three or four kinds of rum; this is, I believe, an unnecessary and wasteful practice.) The bitters balance out what would otherwise be overwhelming sweetness. The grenadine provides both a textural solidarity and a slight cherry undertone that creates, in my opinion, the perfect tropical flavor. Many tropical drinks taste foully or overwhelmingly of pineapple; some are sickly sweet; others dilute the booze to fantastic degrees. The Planter's Punch does none of this. The addition of orange juice and orange Curaçao provides just the right amount of orange overtone (supplemented by the lime) without submitting to or adulterating the other sensations.

Sorry, I'm gushing.

Putting it bluntly, I think I've found my favorite tropical cocktail.

But, as always, don't take my word for it.

I need Paul Theroux to kick my @$$

You've heard of Paul Theroux, haven't you?

If you haven't, I'll give you the skinny. It's subjective, of course, so you are cordially invited to do as you've always done and make up your own damn mind.

Paul Theroux is a travel writer and novelist. You might know him for crafting books like The Mosquito Coast (which most people have never heard of until you mention that it was made into a godawful movie with Harrison Ford).

What he's best known for (i.e., what I know him best for) is travel writing. Specifically, train travel. Paul Theroux loves trains. He's ridden them across most of the world's countries, across every continent that has railroads. He's a consummate train traveler, the kind who boards a train, finds himself a sleeping compartment, and then holes up with a bottle of wine or whiskey or gin and either reads Faulkner novels or scribbles notes in his journal as the countryside rolls by. He'll slither out of his lair at mealtimes to take in refreshment in the dining car and converse with his fellow passengers. Most of these passengers he will inevitably snark at, either in person or later in print. Theroux is a snarky devil. He is excoriating in the extreme, and will not hesitate to latch onto a perceived shortcoming in his interlocutor's intelligence and follow it to its source; he seldom rests before ripping it out by the roots. He will calmly and ruthlessly stick a chisel into cracked logic, whether it be as simple as someone's raw-foods diet or as complex as a society's cherished beliefs. He borders on being a misanthrope. (If he's reading this, I'm sure my use of that word will annoy him no end; for one, he's the type of man who despises such labels, and for another, he will instantly deplore the degraded and decaying state of the American educational system which induces such an inherent tendency in arrogant youthful minds to use a word like "misanthrope" so readily and lightly.)

Long story short, Paul Theroux loves trains. He hates people. I've said it before.

Nonetheless (and you can probably tell this from what I've written) the man gives me an inferiority complex.

Not only has he been to more countries than I have, he is also a ferociously good writer, and well-established in both the fiction and travel markets.

Perhaps "inferiority complex" is inapt. It would be more fitting to say that everything I do (or don't do) makes me wonder what Theroux would think of me. Each transgression I commit against my craft, every sinful negligence I indulge, takes shape in my mind as a black mark in Theroux's ledger. I feel as though his living spirit, taking my nightstand or desk lamp or pencil-case as an avatar, is constantly watching my feeble attempts at a writing career and passing brutal, silent judgment.

If I let my novel go untouched for more than three weeks, I can see Theroux shrugging in a dismissive manner and staring out the window of a moving train. And before I can order a dry Gibson and begin to plead my case, he gets up and walks away.

If I let a day go by where I don't write (and there have been way too many of those lately), I can hear Theroux give a derisive laugh and stomp off to his sleeping compartment.

If I reach for the Xbox or computer games or comics, I can hear Theroux flipping the pages of a Dashiell Hammett book and tut-tutting under his breath.

This has a profound effect on my psyche.

I alternate between periods of glorious rebellion, where I couldn't give a fig for Theroux or any other high-minded footloose world-traveling novelist. On occasion, however, my conscience awakes, avenging harpies swoop out of the sundered heavens, and Paul Theroux rises above the horizon, his arms folded and his brow pinched together disapprovingly. And I skulk about the house like a beaten dog, cringing at the sight of my laptop and the notebooks full of scribbles and the manuscripts under my bed, each page a grievous blow to my ego.

Yeah, okay, I know. I'm insecure. No well-adjusted person would ever feel inferior to a travel writer a few decades older than them, nor allow a mental picture of that person to control them in such a ridiculously comprehensive fashion.

Well, who said I was well-adjusted?

This is probably good for me. Just by opening a Theroux book (I have three of them so far, all train-related; several more populate the wish-list) I get a free kick in the butt. One snide remark from Paul and the guilt rises in my throat like bile. No matter how engaging his tales of chugging through the Khyber Pass or across the Australian outback may be, just reading about them makes me want to throw the book down and get to work on my own career. Of course, that's where the Catch-22 comes in: as soon as I put the book down, Theroux's hectoring becomes much easier to ignore. It's only when I'm actually reading Theroux—surprised at every turn by his depth of feeling, his powers of perception, his talent for description, the wonders of his travels, and his sheer snarkiness—that the guilty feelings pervade. I had my last bout with shame and inferiority when I read The Great Railway Bazaar a couple of years ago. Having recently finished The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna (more about that later), I picked up The Old Patagonian Express two days ago and launched into it.

And wham-o, wouldn't you know it? The old Theroux-Induced Inferiority Complex has kicked in again. I'm feeling behind. My life hasn't started. I haven't done anything. I'm a nobody. I'll never get anywhere at this rate. I spend my days reading comic books and playing video games instead of squaring my shoulders, marshaling my courage and pursuing my dreams.

It's funny how difficult something as simple as chasing one's dreams can be sometimes.

That's why I need Theroux to kick my ass.

dead ends

You know that moment when you're in a game of high-stakes poker and you look down at your cards and you raise your opponent by two hundred bucks and realize you've just made the gravest mistake of the game, and have inextricably f—ed yourself over?

I came to that disturbing epiphany just last week. I am in a deep hole, and it's going to take some doing to get me out of it.

We might be facing a crisis here.

An unexpected delay in the paperwork process for our Korean visas (apparently it takes EIGHT weeks for the State Department to process an apostille, not four as originally advertised) has forced us to wait until now to get all of our documents in order. In the meantime, Miss H and I have missed out on some excellent opportunities in Korea, opportunities that may not repeat themselves.

My situation at work has compounded matters. Due to the delays, I was forced to retract my resignation from my company and stay on for an indeterminate length of time. Meanwhile, however, my superiors had already hired a replacement, who now must needs be trained. That means that my hours have been cut back by half. Thanks to my parents, my financial situation is by no means desperate, but it can little stand any loss. I'm beginning to worry about my loan payments and credit card bills. (My credit account, in fact, is still reeling from the trip to England I took last year.)

So that's the situation: dwindling funds, missed opportunities and dashed hopes. Miss H and I are scrambling to cultivate other options in case the worst should happen (i.e., we can't find a teaching position in South Korea before mid-November), but it's a slow and dicey process. Increasingly I feel as though the walls are closing in on me.

I have a few cards left up my sleeve. I'll keep you posted.