The whole subject of mixed drinks and alcohol has made me pretty tense lately -- a feeling that was further compounded by the excellent post by Paul Clarke on Serious Eats about the start of the absinthe backlash. Backlash... about a drink. This isn't a certain style of jeans, it's a drink. If you like it, you like it. While trends might influence our eating, do any of you say: "Gee, chocolate chip cookies aren't in right now. I'm going to stop eating them"? No. We keep eating them because they're darned tasty. So why do we succumb to the pressures of alcoholic trends?
The years go by and certain mixtures become passe, while others thrive because of something prevalent in media. (Like the inundation of Cosmopolitans from Sex and the City.) When they bite the dust, the old drinks get this "yuck" stigma, as if their lack of popularity is due to their flavor, and not the mindless following of trends. Old drinks become weird and foreign, even if they might be tastier, simpler, and infinitely more rewarding. New generations hit the bars, and they order what they know, and no one ever seems to tell them otherwise.
My first alcoholic drinks were what I was familiar with, and luckily it wasn't entirely youthful trends. I drank straight Southern Comfort because I remembered that my mother would order them Old Fashioned with muddled fruit. I drank Amaretto because I loved the old Hagen Daz ice cream. I drank Sambuca because I loved Black Jack gum and Bazooka Joes for further bubble nostalgia. Since I didn't grow up on the overly rampant Long Island Iced Teas, Blowjobs, B-52s, I quickly slid into a world of my own creation (Slow Comfortable Screws on the Beach in Manhattan), and then into a retro wonderful world of gin gimlets, martinis, and scotch.
And every step of the way -- I marveled at the flavor, and got blank stares at the bar when I tried to go retro. Half the time I order a gimlet, the response is "What's in that?" If I ask for a drink because I can't decide, I get something fruity. (Although that's partially due to bartenders' preoccupations with gender stereotypes, and usually inspires me to order something hard and straight next.)
It's sort of like the trends towards processed foods, where we have no idea how much tastier they are naturally. There are prevalent pushes to go back to natural foods, simple ingredients, and local fare, but where's the push to get back to our cocktail roots? Let's forget that it's trendy to order a mojito and remember that they've been around for a while. Let's not be scared of the foreign gimlet and other drinks of yesteryear. Let's drink and enjoy absinthe because it's a beautiful and delicious tradition, not because it got trendy due to stringent bans. Let's stop being hypnotized and tantalized by the new, the famous, the marketed, and start following our tastebuds ... and remembering to embrace the past.
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