Imbibe! (21 page)

Sling, which most likely takes its name from the act of “slinging” one back, seems to have been a purely American drink (or at least a purely American name for it); not only was Dr. Rush apparently the first to notice it in print, but “gin sling” appears as one of the “peculiarities” an 1808 article in the Philadelphia
Port-Folio
noted as characteristic of the American way with the language. Peculiar or not, it was something Americans couldn’t stay away from. From the end of the eighteenth century until well past the middle of the nineteenth, whenever somebody made even passing mention of the alcoholic concoctions characteristic of the American people, “Sling” was sure to be one of first words out of the inkwell. It didn’t hurt its notoriety that it was often partaken of in the morning, right upon arising.

Like the Toddy, if the Sling had a particular corner of America to call its own, it remains well-hidden to the mixographer. Sure, Washington Irving in his
Knickerbocker’s History of New York
might try to pass it off on the Marylanders, and the abstemious Newport, Rhode Island,
Mercury
on the Virginians (while claiming that New Englanders stuck to tea, thank you very much). But at pretty much the same time—the first decade or so of the 1800s—a paper in Saratoga County, New York, only 150-odd miles away from both New York and Newport, could talk about seeing a man take two Slings “before breakfast” as if it were as common as brushing your teeth. Okay, bad comparison, seeing as the first American patent for a toothbrush wasn’t registered until the 1850s; but you get the idea. In New York City, the Sling even passed as a health drink—as the
Evening Post
’s editorial department noted in 1825, “It is stated with unshaken confidence, as the result of actual and repeated experience, that half a tumbler of gin sling, well powdered with grated nutmeg, proves a speedy and an efficacious styptic in that dangerous and alarming complaint, a bleeding of the lungs.” Dr. Hamilton would have been pleased.

That “actual experience” was only to be more repeated once ice made the transition from luxury to staple. By the 1830s, it had formed an indissoluble union with the Cold Sling; having tried Gin Sling with water and Gin Sling with ice, I can see why. By the end of the century, the rise of the Sling’s offspring—the Cocktail—rendered it a subject of nostalgia. But for a good while there, it sufficed—and, if made with a certain amount of care and consumed with a certain amount of blended sympathy and archeological curiosity, it still does. Don’t forget the nutmeg.

 

NOTES ON INGREDIENTS:
Gin, of course. Historically, it would’ve been Hollands, but in an iced drink, where body is less of an issue, you can get away with something like Plymouth (or, better still, a 60- 40 mix of Plymouth and Irish whiskey, which yields a fair enough field approximation of Hollands). Jerry Thomas also lists whiskey, which is plenty good, although here it’s the American ones that shine—the same sharp woodiness that makes them a bit scary in a hot drink rescues a cold one from insipidness. My personal preference is for rye, but bourbon slings up nicely as well. Beyond that, the historical record offers “Madeira Sling” (attested in 1804), which is more properly a Sangaree; “Mint Sling” (also from 1804), identical with the Julep; and even the occasional Rum Sling or Brandy Sling (the only other one the Professor lists). The mention of Brandy Sling brings up a deeper issue. Good cognac is expensive these days, and if I’m going to mix it up in a drink, I’m afraid I want something a bit spicier than a plain old Brandy Sling. In fact, while Hot Toddy is an essential drink, I’ve always found its close cousin Cold Sling—dare I say it—rather uninspiring. It happens in the best of families, I guess.

Water and ice can be adjusted. Spirits tended to be stronger in the Professor’s day and could take more dilution, so with the weak stuff we get today a quarter of a wineglass—½ ounce—of water should do. Before the ice machine, every bartender had to carve his own ice cubes, which means the Professor’s “small lump” might very well be our “baseball.” In any case, two or three regular-sized cubes are enough. And the nutmeg has to be fresh-grated, as above, or don’t bother.

I should note here that in English hands, the formula for the Sling was expanded to include citrus juices and, later, liqueurs, thus making it nothing more than Punch in a glass. Thus it appears in the 1862
Cook’s Guide, and Housekeeper’s and Butler’s Assistant
by Charles Elme Francatelli (Queen Victoria’s chef) and numerous other early transatlantic works of mixography. It’s from this tradition that the famous Singapore Sling is descended.

 

NOTES ON EXECUTION:
If you’re using lump sugar, muddle it with the water before adding the spirits (see the
Cocktail
). Some preferred to shake their Slings, while old-timers would deploy the toddy-stick.

Somebody somewhere was kidding. A “julep,” you see, was medicine, pure and simple, and it always had been. It was medicine when Rhazes put it in his
Kitab al-Mansuri
in 900 (his Juleps had no offense in them, being merely violets macerated with water and sugar); it was medicine in the fifteenth-century Latin translation of his book; it was medicine in 1583, when Philip Barrough noted in his
Methode of Physicke
that “a iulep doeth not much differ from a syrupe, but that it is lesse boyled . . . and because also it is made without the permixtion of
anie other decoction with it”; it was medicine in 1619, when a character in John Fletcher’s
Humorous Lieutenant
predicted a battle-wearied enemy would “no doubt fall to his jewlips”; it was medicine in 1698, when Samuel Lee pontificated on the inability of “life-exhausting blood-lets” and “cold, mortal Juleps” to stave off death and judgment (“O vain man!”); it was medicine in 1765 when William Alexander treated some poor bastard for his ills with “camphorated julep” and “musk julep”; it was medicine in 1770 when Peter Thomson, a surgeon, was prescribing juleps compounded with things like egg yolks, “Chymical Oil of Cinnamon,” and “Salt of Wormwood.”

It was not medicine, however, in 1796, when the anonymous American author of
The Wedding, An Epic Poem
rhymed “nymphs in gardens picking tulips” with “maids preparing cordial juleps.” Nobody wants
to drink salt of wormwood or suchlike at a wedding, no matter how dull it is. After centuries of usage as a term connoting medicine, somehow, in America, “julep” morphed into a word for something you drank for fun. In 1784, John Ferdinand Smyth, a Briton, published his impressions after a tour of America. In Virginia, he observed, upon arising the man of the lower or middling class “drinks a julap, made of rum, water, and sugar, but very strong.” Now to call this, which is mixologically identical with a Sling, a “julep” was like calling a morning bong-hit “glaucoma medicine.” Sure, medicinal Juleps often contained alcohol, and had since the 1600s. But they also contained various objectionable things and were taken under a doctor’s orders, for specific complaints. The American Julep began in the same kind of sophistry that allowed drinking a morning Cocktail to be called “taking one’s bitters.” Not every drinker was so dishonest: In 1804, only two years after we first hear of mint going into a Julep (in a letter by a William and Mary student, no less, who thought his class-mates too devoted to them), we find the
Adams Centinel
, a Pennsylvania paper, making reference to “Mint Sling.” For a time, people fought the good fight and called a Sling a Sling, but by the 1820s it had become a Julep for good.

Richard Barksdale Hartwell has written a scholarly and entertaining monograph on the Mint Julep that ably chronicles this drink’s glory years before the Civil War, so I will not repeat the story; suffice it to say that the Julep spread from the South to all parts of the Republic, and then the world. It was the most popular drink in America from the early nineteenth century until the Civil War, and—along with the Sherry Cobbler—spread the gospel of the iced drink everywhere it went (the estimable Willard, of the City Hotel, was serving iced Juleps as early as 1831). But what is not generally realized is, despite its agrarian, Southern image, how much a part of city drinking the Julep was. Willard, Cato Alexander, and Shed Sterling of the Astor House were all famous for their Mint Juleps. Even after the Civil War, New Yorkers, Chicagoans, and other urbanites were still good for a staggering number of the things every summer. It really wasn’t until the early twentieth century that the Julep’s star began to fade. Sure, people had complained of its decline before then—the 1887 edition of Thomas’s book reprints one such article—but people always complain of such things (in 1902, the
New York Sun
went so far as to assert that not even Jerry Thomas had known the secret of concocting a proper Julep).

In the earlier part of the nineteenth century, when the Julep was primarily a brandy drink and rarely a whiskey one, one heard of various sorts of fancy Juleps; of variations with dashes of this and that, fancy fruit garnishes and the whole panoply of mixological swank. Always the sign of a living drink, this faded away after the war and the drink became something of a fossil. I’ve included a couple of the variations.