cocktail review no. 40 - Tequila Sunrise

Jeez, I haven't done a cocktail review since before I left for England! It's about time I got this column back up and running.

I'll make it easy on you folks who are just joining us, and some of you who might have been away for a while. This isn't some über-complex tropical drink with fifteen ingredients; an apéritif with a name longer than your arm; or any obscure cordial. This is just a nice, simple, easy, and aesthetic cocktail.

And a damn good Eagles tune, too.

• 1½ ounces tequila
• 4 ounces orange juice
• 2 teaspoons grenadine

In a mixing glass half-filled with ice cubes, add the tequila and orange juice. Drop the grenadine into the center of the drink.

In essence, you're taking advantage of a very simple property of liquids: density. Because grenadine is more dense than orange juice, it settles down and lays on the bottom of the glass, forming a thin red layer below the yellowish-orange of the orange juice. The result, if you're not a total klutz, exactly resembles the hues of a typical Southwest sunrise.

Pretty neat, huh?

The libation itself is a timeless classic. The orange juice perfectly offsets the tang of tequila, without obscuring it completely; while the grenadine adds subtle berry overtones and a sweeter finish. It's a spicy-sweet kick, especially on a hot summer's day (though maybe not at sunrise).

Unlike most of the other cocktails I've posted up here, I've heard vague rumors of the tequila sunrise's origin. Apparently there was this bartender somewhere in Arizona who stayed up drinking with his customers all night. The bar owner came in at dawn and demanded to know what in hell the bartender thought he was doing. The bartender, though thoroughly drunk, snatched up some ingredients, poured them, and told his boss he was busy working on a new drink. The owner tried it and was so impressed that the bartender kept his job, and the drink became a legend.

Variants include the Tequila Sunset (where blackberry brandy is substituted for the grenadine, lending purplish evening tones to the beverage); and the Tequila Moonrise, one sweet mother of a cocktail (containing a whopping seven ounces of alcohol) with tequila, light rum, dark rum, lime juice, lemon juice, sugar, and ale. I used to serve those up as the starting round at my cocktail parties in South Korea. That got us in the mood right quick.

news from the side

You probably already know that I like the Marx Brothers. My favorite is definitely Groucho, or "Julius" as he was sometimes known. Clever man. Always up for a good laugh, and if there wasn't one handy, he'd supply it. My favorite Marx flick is 1933's Duck Soup, where Groucho plays Rufus T. Firefly, the dictator of a small European country, Freedonia. (Don't that beat all?) For various uncomplicated reasons, Freedonia is drawn into a war with a neighboring country, thanks to the double-dealing ambassador, Trentino, who has secretly been trying to subvert Firefly's power.

Firefly's having none of it, though.

Then it's war! Firefly commands the troops in the field, keeping a Thompson submachine gun in a violin case by his side. A soldier comes in and hands him a message from the front.

"I'm sick of getting messages from the front," gripes Firefly. "Why can't I ever get a message from the side?"

Fine, fine. Go ahead and groan. Jeez, nobody appreciates intelligent humor anymore. Nowadays it's all bathroom humor and sex jokes and flatulence.

Soapboxes aside, I have some news for you.

I want to apologize for tapering off from my current spate of blogging fervor. Several things have come up. Firstly, I finally have a second job. The proprietor of the small café down at Apple Valley Airport, Mack, keeps asking me if I want to wash dishes for him, only half-jokingly. Since none of the bars in the area are hiring, I finally decided to take him up on it. I've read Bill Gates's 11 Rules Kids Won't Learn in School. Number Four is as follows:

Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger-flipping. They called it opportunity. They weren't embarrassed about making minimum wage, either. They would have been embarrassed to sit around talking about Kurt Cobain all weekend.

That's telling 'em, Bill. For what it's worth, I agree with him. Work is work. I need the money, I'm able-bodied and capable, and it's not embarrassing or degrading. (Heck, more embarrassing yet would be sitting around my parents' house all day blogging about how broke I am.)

So I've taken the job and am working towards my goals with added zeal (and increased income, hallelujah!). I've survived the first weekend, so I think I'll be fine. It was tough, make no mistake. Mack runs a catering service on the side, and in addition to the café's dishes, I had all the catering trays and pots and pans and bowls to do. Saturday was ten hours and Sunday was eleven. Thank goodness for rubber gloves or the skin would've been sloughing off my dishpan hands.

So that took up Saturday and Sunday. The other thing that's been going on is...girls, dude.

I've gotten myself one.

Sorry ladies, the Postman is now taken. He's been reserved. Snatched up. Diverted by a wonderful lady. I'll call her Miss H. She's an old high-school friend. We had quite an amiable relationship in class, went our separate ways during college, and met up again one night back in August. What with one thing and another, we decided to go steady. So here we are, having a ball. We're an old-fashioned couple: we go to movies at the drive-in theater, sit out on hilltops and stargaze, or go prowling through used bookstores. We're both taking enormous pleasure in each other's company. I'm feeling much more sanguine about life in general since Miss H and I took up together, let me tell you. It's as though this void in the center of my chest has suddenly been filled up. Something's back in my life that's been gone for too long, and it's the grandest thing. She's a classy lady and a real kick to be around, cute as a button, easygoing all get-out, and shares a lot of my interests. What more could a guy ask for?

And last...did I tell you I sent a story off to Fantasy & Science Fiction? Well, I most certainly did. It's a 3,500-word humor/science fiction piece concerning two Earth astronauts who are trying to communicate with an alien life form—and failing miserably. Science believes that we may discover sentient crystalline life on exoplanets with odd geological makeups. So my question was, how would we communicate with them? How do you talk to a crystal? My two astronauts are trying some unusual methods: interpretive dance and impressionist art, for starters. If this story gets published, you'll see the results.

That's about the news. I've been trying to finish and finalize two of the other stories I've been working on, both much longer (in the novelette range, 10,000+ words). One of them needs to be rewritten; I've decided that this first draft is rather puerile and doesn't explore the themes fully enough. The second isn't finished, but I've got a handle on where it's going.

This just in: I had jury duty today, but I called up the automated hotline just a minute ago and it said it was canceled! So now I've got the rest of the day off, thank goodness. Looks like a busy week ahead, though. The chase program is finally starting up again on Thursday and there'll be another load of dishes to do on the weekend...but Miss H and I have a nice trip to the bookstore planned for later this afternoon. Maybe I'll pick up yet another forgotten sci-fi classic like The Escape Orbit. (Which, by the way, is turning into such an excellent work...the plot has gotten more convoluted than I ever would've imagined. Full review coming later.)

How's things been with you?