Year the Old Fashion Drink Was Created?

Potable

The One-time-Fashioned

A classic that tin be destroyed, perfected, perverted. It can too reveal the depths of your character.

An sometime-fashioned

Andrey Novikov/Thinkstock.

One cold morning many years ago, a grouchy old New Yorker cranked out a letter to the editor of the Times. Happens every 24-hour interval, I know, simply listen: This was New Year's Day in 1936, and this old timer—that's how he signed the letter, "One-time Timer"—unraveled a righteous jeremiad about the improper mixing of drinks. Writing three years after Repeal—and presumably typing through a hangover, with the hammers of an Underwood clacking at his temples—he surveyed the violence Prohibition had washed to the martini, the Manhattan, and, foremost, the old-fashioned whiskey cocktail:

Time was when the affable and sympathetic bartender moistened a lump of saccharide with Angostura bitters, dropped in a lump of water ice, neither as well big nor likewise pocket-size, stuck in a miniature bar spoon and passed the glass to the client with a bottle of good bourbon from which said client was privileged to pour his ain drink. In almost places the cost was 15 cents or two for quarter.

Nowadays the modernistic or ex-speakeasy bartender drops a spoonful of powdered sugar into a drinking glass, adds a squirt of carbonic to aid dissolution, adds to that a nuance or two of some kind of alleged bitters and a lump of ice, regardless of size. Then he proceeds to build upwards a fruit compote of orange, lemon, pineapple and reddish, and himself pours in a advisedly measured ounce and a half of bar whisky, ordinarily a blend, and gives one a glass rod to stir it with. Price, 35 to 50 cents. Profanation and extortion.

In his grumping, Quondam Timer roughly described the 2 chief approaches to this uniquely venerable beverage. The austere former—its liquor just sweetened and seasoned, not even tarted up with a citrus twist—is difficult-core originalist. The fancy latter points to the opposite farthermost, where the bartender muddles a whole Carmen Miranda headdress and the squirt of carbonated h2o becomes a long spritz of Sprite.

The old-fashioned is at once "the manliest cocktail gild" and "something your grandmother drank," and betwixt those poles we discover countless simple delights, evolutionary wonders, and captivating abominations. Because of its core simplicity and its elasticity—because information technology is primordial booze—ideas about the old-fashioned exist in a realm where gastronomical notions shade into ideological tenets. It is a platform for a bar to brand a statement, a surface on which every bartender leaves a thumbprint, and a solution that many a picky drinker dips his litmus newspaper in. You are a free man. Drink your drink as y'all delight. Just know that your interpretation of the recipe says something serious near your philosophy of fun.

I like mine with rye. Matter of fact, I'm liking mine with rye while proofing this sentence. I'm sitting here with a fifth of Rittenhouse 100 and a stack of this autumn's cocktail books. I've been using the bottom of an onetime-fashioned glass as a lens to focus on the soul of each.

The oldest of the new books is Mr. Boston Official Bartender's Guide: 75th Anniversary Edition, which was edited by Jonathan Pogash with Rick Rodgers and draws on the efforts of many other esteemed barkeeps.ⁱ In the get-go, the Guide existed to shill for Old Mr. Boston, a Massachusetts company that once sold a line of 148 liquors, including the finest mint-flavored gin, butterscotch schnapps, and premixed apricot sours e'er distilled in the neighborhood of Roxbury. Now, the liquor brand is a beat of its one-time cocky, and the volume is the closest thing nosotros have to a standard moisture-bar reference. Information technology is, like Hoyle'south Rules of Games, Emily Mail service's Etiquette, and Vātsyāyana's Kama Sutra, a volume without which no home is truly complete.

The former-fashioned whiskey cocktail comes first amongst the volume's one,500 recipes. A 4-page discussion begins by connecting the erstwhile-fashioned with the starting time recorded definition of the cocktail in general—"a stimulating liquor, equanimous of spirits of any kind, sugar, water and bitters"—which dates to 1806.² "As the cocktail evolved, this primeval of cocktails became known simply as the Old-Fashioned," the text explains. Before old-fashioned became popularly synonymous with a particular drinkable made with American whiskey, information technology described a general style. In keeping, the book later presents the rum one-time-fashioned and the tequila old-fashioned and more. At that place'southward a "Bad-Humored Old-Fashioned" for fans of Dutch gin, a "Oaxaca Quondam-Fashioned" for mezcal enthusiasts, and a scotch old-fashioned for aficionados of fucking upwards perfectly adept scotch. It simply strays from the strictest definition of the term with the coffee old-fashioned, a sort of bourbon-java spritzer served cold. Though the coffee quondam-fashioned is passable equally a hearty after-dinner diversion—and also suitable as an eye-opener for female characters in Bukowski novels—it might work best to fuel late nights of reviewing very boring legal documents. Back up front, handling the basics, Mr. Boston endorses a recipe from 1895 and presents a mod analog that calls for smoothen simple syrup rather than grainy saccharide.³

And then he anticipates a frequently asked question: "Only what about the cherry and the orange?" Though the book, open-minded near the orangish, suggests a few techniques of getting at its excellent essence,⁴ information technology approves of the scarlet merely as a garnish: "Muddling them into the drink does little to improve the flavor or the aesthetics." Depends on your ideas of beauty. At my dive of choice, where they turn out an quondam-fashioned equally a vermilion mess of blasted cherries, the drink is only interesting for its aesthetics. With its evocation of lipstick traces and its garish air of frilly dissipation, the thing is most plausible as an accessory for a young woman cultivating a bad-daughter touch.

One of the persons responsible for maintaining Mr. Boston's relevance in recent years is Jim Meehan, proprietor of the Manhattan bar PDT and now the author of The PDT Cocktail Book, illustrated with brawny suavity past Chris Gall. It is only one indication of Meehan's stature that he admits the loathed cosmopolitan to these literary bounds; many players on the craft-cocktail scene would hesitate to do so for fear of being abandoned by their tribe. The book's 300-odd formulae include canonized classics and originals from Meehan's hooch house, which range from models of delicious simplicity to total stunts like the "Cinema Highball," a Cuba Libre made with buttered-popcorn-infused rum. The PDT Cocktail Volume is a terrific resource for anyone running a chic bar, especially if that bar is PDT: Very many cocktail guides offer drawings of Champagne coupes and aqueduct knives in their equipment sections. Meehan goes the further step of showing you his Kold-Draft GB1060 ice machine and diagramming its location in his basement.

In that location are three old-fashioned recipes hither—a minimalist version from 1888, a "Newfangled" that tops its Old Grand-Dad with wheat beer, and the "Benton'southward Sometime-Fashioned," which relies on bacon fatty-infused bourbon and Course B maple syrup. This is PDT's most popular beverage, its virtually imitated, and the all-time exemplar of the house style. This was something I needed to sip, so I called ahead for a table.⁵ The wife put on her party shoes, and nosotros rendezvoused with a friend at a hot-dog joint on St. Mark's Place. I went into a phone booth, spun the "1" on the rotary dial, and a hostess opened a subconscious door onto a narrow barroom. I placed my guild with a pleasant beau wearing a bow tie and prune-on suspenders. Very presently, the bacon-infused erstwhile-fashioned got all up in my face. It came on easy—smoky and rich but frail. The wife observed that the clarity of the bourbon contrasted wonderfully with the elevate of the sweet grease. I quickly decided that I wanted another, merely non for years, probably, unless information technology were served alongside a plate of crispy Eggo Minis. The bacon fat lingered on the palate—loitered, fifty-fifty—on through the cab ride abode.

Back on my burrow, I dreamily re-read Bitters: A Spirited History of a Classic Cure-all, written by Brad Thomas Parsons and enlivened past the appetite-whetting photography of Ed Anderson. Parsons tells you everything you always wanted to know virtually his subject and tells it in a manner that may convince you that everything is not enough. "Bitters," he writes, "are an aromatic flavoring agent made from infusing roots, barks, fruit peels, seeds, spices, herbs, flowers, and botanicals in loftier-proof alcohol (or sometimes glycerin)." They give rest, counter sweetness, cut richness … and nigh of the people who omit them from old-fashioneds are ignoramuses and fools.^vi After offering a history of Angostura, a review of bitters' origins as medicine, an overview of today's bitters makers, and instructions for making your own, Parsons turns to recipes for threescore-odd cocktails. The former-fashioned heads up his "Bitters Hall of Fame." Characteristically, his tone is companionable, and his communication encourages R&D: "Merely mix and match your bourbon or rye with unlike bitters, and the sugar can take the form of a flavored syrup. … I'm fond of putting an autumnal twist on the sometime-fashioned by using bourbon, cinnamon syrup, and apple bitters."

Fab. I recommend Bitters to the Etsy set up without reservation. Merely I besides propose studying information technology equally prove of certain problematic quirks in cultural consumption amongst a certain caste.⁷ On two occasions, Parsons mentions the most precious of all auteurs when introducing a recipe. In i such case, he invokes The Royal Tenenbaums when dedicating a fabulous estimation of the Pimm's Cup to ii sisters who collect vintage knickknacks in their Williamsburg loft and blog about tweed and that sort of matter. Further, the author features a handful of drinks named with reference to proficient music, and he has paid special attention to the Matador back catalog. What sort of expression is i supposed to make, in lieu of a direct face, when asking for an "Exile in Ryeville"? It only seems possible to order one if y'all don't even know who Liz Phair is. I run into where things are going, and the destination makes me uneasy. Nonetheless, I call dibs on the following drink names: Arcade Firewater, the Cape Codder Kwassa Kwassa, and the Lykke Li Lychee Martini.

If Parsons' indie-rock-on-the-rocks streak—with gin in his "Shady Lane" and rye in his "Autumn Sweater"— is a bit as well much for y'all, then wait till y'all get a load of North Star Cocktails, credited to Johnny Michaels and the North Star Bartenders' Guild, which is to say the most happening bartender in the Twin Cities and his happening bartender friends. In acquainting the reader with 125 drinks, the book namedrops The Smiths, The Cult, The Who, The Sexual practice Pistols, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Sly Stone, Bauhaus, Belle and Sebastian, Mogwai, a Castilian electronic instrumentalist of whom you have never heard, J. Lo, and Spinal Tap. And if you lot recollect that is the playlist of a book that is exerting itself overly much, so expect till you get a load of the actual drinks.

The tertiary recipe in the book demands xiv ingredients, one beingness a combination of grapeseed oil and Nu Silvery Luster Grit. Forging alee, the reader ponders urgent questions: Are they serious about the "platinum-grade leafage gelatin"? Am I some kind of hick for never having heard of mangosteen juice? "Habanero-butterscotch syrup"? Really?⁸ North Star Cocktails is published by an imprint of the Minnesota Historical Order Press, which is either documenting a baroque local tradition of cuisine or preserving a record of tragic hipsterism as practiced in the Upper Midwest.

On the upside, this feverish pursuit of novelty leads to a quorum of swell innovations, and Due north Star'due south treatments of the quondam-fashioned strike a fine residual between classical rigor and extravagant whimsy. I count five of them—the "Fashionably Fashioned" (fabricated with applejack, simple syrup, cinnamon tincture, and "carmine bark-vanilla bitters"), the "Of the Older Style" (bourbon, muscovado syrup, and a load of small-batch bitters), the "Bronko Nagurski" (rye, root-beer syrup, three kinds of bitters), the "Victoria" (Canadian whiskey, maple syrup, ii kinds of bitters), and the potentially ludicrous "Breakfast in Vermont," based on rye infused with oatmeal and vanilla. Michaels himself created the Victoria. "This is an old drink, one of the originals from the opening list at La Belle Vie," he writes. "It seems so outdated now, merely yet simple and good." Don't fret, dude! Something so close to a true old-fashioned will never go out of date. Also, get some perspective: La Belle Vie opened in 2005.

Seeing from his writer bio that Brian D. Murphy, the author of Run into Mix Potable, lives in Minneapolis, I had to wonder whether he'd ever sampled one of Johnny Michaels' "conceptual drinks," perhaps the deliberately gross "Agony of Defeat," inspired by the Vikings' overtime loss to the Saints in the 2009 AFC Championship game.⁹ But I did non wonder long. Potato'south tastes are far less exotic, and we should welcome his volume, subtitled A Refreshingly Uncomplicated Guide to Crafting the Earth'southward Most Pop Cocktails, as a humble rebuttal to mixological excess.

"I became frustrated while trying to employ conventional cocktail books," Potato writes in the introduction, "Like near people, I am a visual learner, still most cocktail books on today's shelves are laden with text-based recipes and wordy instructions. … It's time for a cocktail book revolution." There, at the ramparts, he uses an "innovative visual format" to spread the word about "the 100 virtually sought-after cocktails." Imagine that the "Happy 60 minutes Assemblies …" item sheet knocked upward a United states Today infographic and that their child grew to be a user manual. Murphy devotes a two-page spread to each drink. The dominant illustration on each left-mitt page is a vertical cross-section of a drinking glass with liquors and mixers arranged in a kind of i-bar graph. Below, yous run into a color-coded row of the relevant bottles, fruits, and equipment. Opposite, you lot'll detect a brief description of this drinkable, a doughnut nautical chart indicating percentages of ingredients, a calorie count in the doughnut chart's hole, written and pictorial instructions, and a photo of the finished cocktail.

Proficiency in the English language may well be detrimental to the enjoyment of this volume. The inclusion of the phonetic spelling of each drink—mahr-tee-nee, fuhz-ee ney-vuhl—reinforces the impression that See Mix Drink is best suited to the needs of an Ecuadorian barback all of a sudden thrust behind the stick or of a Maori ordering a sex on the embankment at Frankfurt Aerodrome. But I refuse to knock the book on that count because we all have different learning styles, yes, and because at that place are more important things to knock information technology for. Murphy seems to think that all whiskey is 80 proof, which is the kind of mistake that could get somebody hurt. He also believes that you're supposed to stir a madras, which is the kind of mistake that could become somebody mocked pitilessly at the yacht club.

Murphy'south sometime-fashioned—ohld fashund—is 86 percent bourbon, seven percent muddled orange, 5 percentage sugar cube, and ii pct Angostura bitters, standing every bit decent reflection of popular sentiments. This one-time-fashioned is made with but plenty fruitiness to appeal to mass gustation, just enough ritual to satisfy nostalgia, and merely enough whiskey to start getting you drunk. But the almost significant words about Tater's old-fashioned come in the publicity materials, which note that the author, "having been inspired to endeavor it after watching Mad Men,"¹⁰ counts information technology as his favorite. The old-fashioned, in plow, inspired the book, thus serving as a love-philtre.

Vintage Cocktails: Retro Recipes for the Home Mixologist, written by Amanda Hallay, or perhaps drunkenly dictated by her, as well advertises the old-fashioned's connection to Mad Men: "Why it is the suave Don Draper's favorite cocktail remains something of a mystery; this is a sweet, sweet beverage. It is besides incredibly labor-intensive." Well, the way she adulterates it, certain it'due south saccharine, duh, but still Hallay points us somewhere interesting: "If your wrist isn't hurting and you don't desire to kill the person who asked for an old-fashioned, y'all take not muddled enough." This is wrong and yet onto something—a peculiar labor theory of value. Surely some people derive pleasure from watching a bartender work at an erstwhile-fashioned. To them, the old-fashioned offers a richness unavailable from an effortless pour of whiskey neat.

Vintage Cocktails reads like a novelty item. Or a gag souvenir. It is loopy. It is unclear how "Everclear Dial" qualifies as "vintage." ("You lot really shouldn't drink this yourself," Hallay writes. "Use it to become other people drunkard.") I drink memorializes the author's recently dead tabby cat, named Matlock. You're supposed to add the bourbon and Kahlua and Bailey's and heavy foam in layers: "The drink will then expect like the stripes on the fur of a much-missed moggy."

To clear that taste from your mouth, endeavor The American Cocktail. This one comes to u.s.a. from the editors of Imbibe magazine, and it often combines the unpretentiousness of See Mix Drink, the swank adventurism of PDT, and the photographic beauty of Bitters. Subtitled fifty Recipes That Gloat the Craft of Mixing Drinks From Coast to Coast, it gathers a "St. Louis Southside" and a "Boston Bog," a "Copper Flim-flam Cooler" from Virginia and a "Pig on the Porch" from S Carolina. From Louisiana, it collects the "Comfortably Old-Fashioned," which uses Southern Comfort every bit its base. In its sweetness, this one'south on the grandmotherly end of the old-fashioned spectrum, but information technology has its charms—provoking nostalgia for 1's youth, for instance. Southern Comfort is, of class, a peachy whiskey-based liqueur especially popular among college students, who beverage it in prelude to preposterous beliefs centered on SEC football games, ACC basketball tournaments, and Ivy League sorority pledge nights.

Going the SoCo route, The American Cocktail goes counterintuitive. To discover the most amazing regional variation on the old-fashioned—a local drinking tradition with just one, far less exalted, peer¹¹—nosotros must expect north of New Orleans. The Wisconsin brandy quondam-fashioned is non just a refreshment simply an institution, i tied upwards with supper-club relish trays and Friday-night fish fries, and it must taste best when sipped from a commemorative Packers tumbler. The brandy is preferably domestic and probably Korbel. The pull of soda is oft sweetness (with 7-Upwards) or so-called sour (with Eject). People garnish these with cherries, olives, onions, tomatoes, Brussels sprouts, pickled eggs. … Knowing that Jim Meehan started tending bar as a higher student in Madison, I sent him a note requesting his thoughts on the matter. He said that, if enjoying some Badger State hospitality, he would order his brandy old-fashioned "press"—topped with equal parts 7-Up and society soda. "I'm always intrigued by those who order it with mushrooms. Perhaps not enough to club it though."

Meehan ventures that the about remarkable thing nearly the miracle is "how well information technology demonstrates the modularity of the near iconic cocktail recipes." I would add that the Wisconsin old-fashioned is glorious in its process even on occasions that the product is considerately vile. The tradition suggests that the careful mixing of any sometime-fashioned is a ceremony celebrating tradition itself. In that location is a school of thought, well attended, that says an erstwhile-fashioned is best made at home. But wherever information technology is made, it goes down with the sweetness of a homecoming if it is made to perfection, which must be determined by i'south own self. This is the seminal cocktail of a pluralistic nation.

ⁱ Over the final three-quarters of a century, Mr. Boston has had confront-lifts almost one time a year, and this edition, the 68th, is the handsomest yet. The cover has deepened in color from the sickly maraschino of one-time to a shade somewhere between oxblood and archetype Caulfield red; the beaver-hatted Mr. Boston icon, formerly depicting a blithe and bloated young man, has become the streamlined profile of a precipitous young dude. People who say you can't judge a book by its cover don't know how to read. The content inside the new Mr. Boston is, like the style of its exterior, highly gimmicky in a neo-retro way. The fellow is finally telling y'all how to make your own grenadine, just for instance. This edition ushers in more concoctions featuring fashionable amari and shrinks the azure pool of drinks that call for blue curaçao. (Return.)

² On May 13, 1806, on the letters page of an upstate New York paper called The Balance, and Columbian Repository, a reader expressed defoliation nigh a passing reference to "cock-tail" in the previous week'southward edition: "I accept heard of a forum, of phlegm-cutter and fog driver, of wetting the whistle, of moistening the clay, of a fillip, a spur in the head, quenching a spark in the pharynx, of flip &c, just never in my life, though have lived a good many years, did I hear of cock tail before. Is it peculiar to a role of this country? Or is information technology a late invention? Is the name expressive of the effect which the beverage has on a detail part of the body?" The editor replied, "Cock tail, then is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, saccharide, h2o and bitters. It is vulgarly called a bittered sling, and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion inasmuch as it renders the heart stout and assuming, at the aforementioned time that it fuddles the caput. It is said also, to be of great use to a democratic candidate: considering, a person having swallowed a glass of it, is ready to swallow whatsoever matter else." (Render.)

³
two oz. rye or bourbon whiskey
¼ oz. simple syrup
ii dashes Angostura bitters
Garnish: Lemon twist
Pour rye or bourbon, syrup, and bitters into a cracked-ice-filled old-fashioned glass and stir. Add lemon twist. (Return.)

⁴ It happens that my researchers, diligent, led me to gustation the fruits of some of these. At a smart whiskey bar, the guy employed a dozen little strips of skin. At a cozy lounge in a clamorous neighborhood, a fetching barmaid added 2 orange wheels to the muddling mix in her shaker and strained the potion over water ice, achieving a vaguely Mediterranean effect. At an old-schoolhouse steakhouse, a compact bartender, who shook and stirred and added ice twice according to some ancient ritual, painstakingly built a painsgivingly large version with Crown Imperial. Crucially, there was no pulp in any of these and thus none in my teeth (Return.)

^five Though reservations are not required at PDT, they are highly recommended. At 3 p.k. last Thursday, when the bar began booking tables for the evening, I chosen to get a table for four at nine p.thou. I got a decorated point and called back. I repeated this procedure 53 times. At 3:10, I reached a reservationist who offered our party of four a choice of a tabular array at vii p.m. or at midnight. I kicked one member of our political party to the curb and booked a tabular array for three at ix:30. It was annoying, merely what else, curt of posting a sentinel at its portal, is a bar supposed to do when highly in need and desirous of maintaining a civilized atmosphere? In any case, our stay was enriched, every bit indoor experiences in Manhattan and then oftentimes are, past the knowledge that others were existence actively excluded. (Return.)

^vi This article is non particularly interested in dispensing advice. I really don't care what you drink or how yous drink it and then long as you exercise not spit information technology up on my shoes. But I must counsel that if you ever find yourself in a bar where it comes to lite that in that location are no bitters on the bounds—not even a bottle gathering grit and DNA evidence somewhere behind the Frangelico—then exercise not order any liquor in any form. The absence of bitters from a professional bar indicates 18-carat degeneracy. Stick to bottled beer and picket the bartender closely. (Return.)

⁷ Some experiences of urban composure leave a sensitive soul wanting to move to an ashram and fast on vegetable broth. Bitters isn't one of those. Rather, it left me wanting to move to Tampa and go to Chili's. So the moment passed and I strolled over to Prime Meats, which serves the former-fashioned that Parsons, on his website, counts every bit his all-fourth dimension favorite. Tasting the signature ingredient—pear bitters made from the fruit of the tree out back—I savored my own good taste. Noticing the straps across the bartender's shoulders, I imagined, not for the first time, the moment a few years back when a downtrodden suspender manufacturer, fearful of bankruptcy, brightened upon getting a slew of orders in from the tin-ceilinged saloons of Brooklyn. Settling the bill, I wondered when I had started regarding a $10 drink as relatively cheap and whether there was whatever turning back. (Return.)

^viii Why are they trying so hard? I want gently to suggest that Michaels and his posse are driven to such abstrusity by a kind of civic condition anxiety. Historically, the almost important U.S. cocktail cities are, in order, New Orleans, New York, Louisville, and San Francisco. Lately, the aggressive gourmands of the Pacific Northwest accept been keeping the dream of the '90s—the 1890s—alive in Portland and Seattle. Now, I have no reason to believe that the beverages of Minneapolis and St. Paul are anything less than totally fine, but, well, they've had two whole cities to work with for a century and a one-half, and, well. … (Render.)

⁹ Ingredients include Bacardi 151, Laphroaig, and crème de banane. Michaels writes, "I wanted something so heinous that you would never forget it, much like the heartbreak of watching the Vikings lose. … The drink smelled like a wet, nasty ACE cast." (Render.)

^ten The quondam-fashioned is Don Draper's poison of selection and thus, in recent years, many young men thirsting to achieve his suave and sturdy facade have become acquainted with its pleasures and problems. Don prefers his with Canadian Lodge, but in the third episode of the third flavor, he hoisted himself over a country club bar, seized the One-time Overholt, and whipped upward a round to share with Conrad Hilton. Cocktail blogger Michael Dietsch has comprehensively detailed that recipe: "You lot won't bother stirring the sugar into the beverage, probably because you lot'll be making out with someone else'southward spouse by the time you'd accomplish the sugary sludge." I would add that Don uses quite a good for you splash of soda water. Profanation? Perhaps. Unmanly? Maybe. But in this context what really counts is that the carbonation sped Don'due south buzz along. As Johnny Michaels writes, "Replacements guitarist Bob Stinson once told me that if y'all desire to become drunkard fast, drink something hot or with bubbles. So I made him a hot drink with whiskey and sparkling cider. He wouldn't drink it." A Replacement refused booze?!?! Christ. (Return.)

¹¹ Allen'due south Java-Flavored Brandy, virtually unknown outside northern New England, is overwhelmingly the almost popular liquor in Maine. In 2010, Downeasters bought 1.ane million liters of the stuff at home and—who could incertitude it?—many tens of thousands more than at the tax-gratis liquor outlets across the edge in New Hampshire. This is in a state of 1.3 million people, a population including infants, teetotalers, and people with some class. (I wish I didn't find it funny that the combination of Allen's and Diet Moxie is called the "Welfare Mom.") Allen's is widely known as "the Champagne of Maine" and also, amidst defense attorneys, as "an platonic food for criminal offense." It has a flavour "reminiscent of the kind of coffee that you lot perk over a woodstove," an oily torso, and an acrid finish. That Mainers are able to put abroad so much of it is a great testament to the rugged New England character. (Return.)

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