Leggero Does It Right (Foto, Julja)

Dear Julja,
° Who says reading History, all bloodandgutsy and celebritymad, is a waste of time?
° (Well of course Victor Hugo does, says the only true history of humanity is the history of ideas; and just about anybody who ever read Suetonius after reading Tacitus must’ve concluded that there were two entirely discrete Roman Empires coexisting temporally and spatially; while even the dullest dullard must realise that his own morning coffee and sweetbuttered brioche with raspberry preserves holds more meaning than all the Hitlers all the Robespierres all the Inquisitors all the Prophets Priests Kings and Paris Hiltons that ever were said to have lived.)

° And yet they’re all wrong.
° For the other day, as I was putting cosmetic colouring into my history of the McLey family, I came across a recipe for what surely must be the first cocktail ever mixed, nearly a century before the Roaring Twenties.
° The vampirism of old recipes, just thirsting for resurrection . . . .

° I nabbed Leggero and Greco--he no longer looks like Steve Reeves, he only looks as Steve Reeves would’ve looked had he too shaved off his facefur--before the Saturday crush began.
° I dazed them with a learned lecture upon “rectified whisky,” “common whisky,” and “burst-head.” What really dazed them were the 1837 prices: $.40 a gallon for aged rectified, $.36 a gallon for common singling, $.20 a gallon for rotgut shipped down from Cincinnati, for distribution by candidates on Election Day, no wonder folks voted more often back then.
° I myself was dazed by the fact that everything but the loaf sugar used to be produced locally.
° One or two substitutions had to be improvised, and only the rectified whisky is still local, that and the mint, but the two lads attacked the project with the attentiveness of chemistry students warned of the effects of phosphorous. Greco raided the kitchen for simple syrup, Leggero ripped apart the mint and added the ingredients in decent order, then clapped a tumbler over the tumbler, shook, poured.
° It foamed over, for very joy at being reborn after almost two centuries of dusty oblivion. A garnish of whole mint and, ecco!

Leggero’s Rectifier

2 fingers loaf sugar syrup
1 finger peach brandy
1 finger apple brandy
1 finger cherry cordial
2 fingers rectified corn whisky

Add

Mint
Broken ice

Shake and pour.

§§§§§

° “Rectifier?”
° Yes, because after only two sips, your world‘s as right as Rousseau‘s.

° Cordially mentholated, Giac.

P. S. Simple syrup, peach brandy, apple brandy, cherry cordial, rectified whisky. A historically correct substitute for peach or apple is grape brandy, my own McLey great great grandfather distilled it just north of Overton at his vineyard.