Greetings old friends and webular archaeologists! You have actuated a bookmark or clicked a link that has led you to what OUGHT to be a dead page....a former incarnation of Dr.Cocktail many years ago. So why isn't it a dead link? Because so many people retain this bookmark and so many sites still sport the link! Want to take a trip into the future (by which I mean the present?) Point that rodent button here: the FABULOUS, shiny, newish Dr.Cocktail website, DrCocktail.com! And while you're at it, alter the links to reflect said new page, and do likewise to those hoary old bookmarks.
Thank you,
Dr.Cocktail's research assistant, Blodget.
As the bio briefly stipulates, when Mr. Haigh slips the surly bonds of the workaday world, he transforms into Dr. Cocktail, a sort of super hero whose secret powers include Dewey Decimal System mastery, old bookstore/antique shop/flea market/yard sale/auction/liquor store/bar search prowess, bookworm magnifying glass wielding, and a muscular liver. He (meaning I) first revealed this heroic persona as the cocktails & spirits maven for America Online and later as co-proprietor of CocktailDB.com, The Internet Cocktail Database, a comprehensive online encyclopedia of mixed drink recipes, reference work, barware, and ingredients; catalogued, defined, and depicted.
To date, not that I'm counting, but fourteen books either quote me or reference me by name. These are grand books and their authors are all geniuses. Magazine, web, and newspaper articles have done likewise. Pulitzers are in store for those scribes. Links to them (at least the ones I've been able to find) are below this clever introduction.
If, as it happens, you would like to engage Dr.Cocktail for consultation, seminars, interviews, events, or to write an erudite article for you, click here for contact data and a broadside replete with more concise info.
I got a particularly nice spread, authored by John Kellogg Hodgman in the New York Times Magazine on October 17th. You must pay the Times to view the article, but I have scanned the print edition as a pdf you may download. I have been interviewed by the National Public Radio newsmagazine, Day to Day, and that interview fittingly aired on New Year's Eve, 2004. You can listen to it here. Most recently, Modern Drunkard Magazine published a marathon interview with me. Besides the website, they even have a print edition you can subscribe to -- and having a copy of Modern Drunkard Magazine on your coffee table is a definite lifestyle choice.
Along with friend and business partner Martin Doudoroff, I relaunched, in time for last October's Times article, a vastly expanded (and expanding) Internet Cocktail Database. As an adjunct, experiment, and whimsy-doodle we also created Mixilator: The David Embury Random Cocktail Generator. This automaton creates brand new cocktail recipes using the complex mixing theories of the aforesaid Embury and the giant ingredient database at cocktaildb. I wrote what we like the call the "ridiculously long treatise" about how it all works. Two Advils before you read it will probably work better than after. Mixilator was Yahoo's Pick of the day November 16th, 2004 and was since picked up by various radio stations as just the perfect thing to rave about during drive time. Denver's ABC TV affiliate also gave both CocktailDB and the Mixilator pleasing props, and the bloggers went nuts. Two things really surprised me about the public reaction to Mixilator: Some people seem to believe the recipes are real and have been culled from some (crazed) source, and there has been a growing buzz (no pun intended) about "Mixilator parties." Now that's enough to scare even me.
In January, I mounted, designed, and curated the inaugural exhibit of The Museum of the American Cocktail the opening for which was on January 12th, 2005. It'll be on the 2nd floor of the New Orleans Historical Pharmacy Museum, (and yes, the poetry of this is not lost on me) through September 2005. Here are a couple of articles covering the opening of the exhibit; the first, written by Pableaux Johnson for Lagniappe, the arts magazine of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and the second, an Associated Press article by Wayne Curtis - this version of which appeared in USA Today. You may become a member of the cocktail museum which will both make you feel worthy, improve your standing among your peers, and help finance our plans of global curatorial bibulo-academic domination. Actually it will help us in our quest to find our own permanent museum space at a later date. To read my personal account of this curatorial adventure go here.
Suffice to say, I had a good time.
Speaking of the Museum, (and earlier of radio,) Robert "Drinkboy" Hess and I were interviewed recently on cocktails in general and the Museum specifically on WGN Radio in Chicago. They have a website making the station accessible live worldwide via the Internet, and the Nick D. & Garry Lee Show occasionally puts up audio archives of their more memorable shows - and they have just done so for ours. Fair warning, we were on for 38 minutes.
Now, I know you enjoy reading about me almost as much as I do, but there is also the pointy little fact of my own writing about these libational subjects. Otherwise, how could I be a Doctor of Cocktology? Wait. That didn't come out right. Anyway, there are a few other places where you can read what I write....
Hot off the presses, the latest news is that I am now a cocktail columnist for the popular Los Angeles politics, cocktail, music, theatre, and sports mega-blog, MartiniRepublic. Here is a link directly to my columns. Check in weekly. Look Maw, I'm a pundit!
The Museum of the American Cocktail issues yearly a scholarly journal of cocktail writings entitled "Mixologist: The Journal of the American Cocktail" in book form. I wrote a treatise on the Singapore Sling for the initial Journal, which has just been released and is available for purchase. I also designed the cover, woo hoo!
If navigating Los Angeles watering holes, you'll find Thirsty? Los Angeles: The Lowdown on Where the Real People Drink a solid resource and I wrote 13 of the reviews.
And I have also written my own book. Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails is published by Quarry Books and is available in the U.S. via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell's, & Borders. This tome gives a goodly dollop of cocktail history -including a new theory as to how the cocktail got its name- and indulges in some cocktail archaeology, digging up obscure recipes anew. It also gives advice on how to obtain some of the rarer cocktail ingredients for truly stratospheric tipples. I am chagrined that I have no info on indie bookstores carrying it, but I have been made aware that Target and Walmart have it on hand. No way around it, I'm a lifestyle choice for the masses. A gift purchase would be delightfully thoughtful for all involved.
In England & Europe it was published by Apple Press under the name Vintage Cocktails & Spirits. Very succinct, chaps.
In other performance art news, I gave a seminar, "Dubonnet 101" on April 26th at the beautiful Little Door Restaurant in Los Angeles, courtesy of the folks at Heaven Hill who produce the beloved Dubonnet aperitif domestically. The talk was well-received and cocktails were sampled. Thanks to the advice of Dave Wondrich, I requested from the reps a bottle of the rare and wonderful bonded Rittenhouse 10 year-aged rye whiskey (also made by Heaven Hill) which they were pleased to present to me, along with some amazing single barrel Evan Williams Bourbon, also with a 10 year cask age. Thanks Dave! Thanks Heaven Hill!
I was pampered guest of Modern Drunkard Magazine's 2nd annual Modern Drunkard Convention (May 13th-15th in Denver, Colorado) speaking, perhaps counter-intuitively (given my hosts,) on the entire span of alcohol history, and mixing for taste, not just effect. Considering the party hardy crowd, I was surprised at how receptive they were, but they cheered and applauded wildly. It was an utter delight to be part of the convention. If you read my Martini Republic column, you can get the entire narrative rundown.
In bittersweet news, I was a guest of Southern Comfort's Tales of the Cocktail August 18,19 and 20, in the New Orleans French Quarter exactly one week and one day before the tragic Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. It was the last of a particular vision of New Orleans most of us would ever have. Please click the link at the top of The Museum of the American Cocktail website for Dr.Cocktail-approved ways you can help.
Besides all of the famous festivities associated with Tales of the Cocktail, I was a participant on a discussion/seminar panel on cocktail bitters along with Philip Greene, descendant of the great Antoine Amedee Peychaud and generally a great guy himself. It was animated. It was splendid; AND I got to meet Joe Fee!
And here continues my virtual cyber-scrapbook of press...
The most recent and exciting news is the new baby. The newborn bouncing baby bitters just gone to market. After a wait a trifle shorter than that for Godot, we will finally be treated to the long anticipated Regans' Orange Bitters #6, originated by Mr. Gary Regan, and produced, bottled, and distributed by The Sazerac Company, joyous souls that they are. The label on this estimable product was designed by Yours Truly. See? You knew I'd insert myself into this news flash in some manner, didn't you? Of course you did. When every bar in the world has orange bitters, the world will be a better place.
And you can quote me.
Little known fact: In anticipation of becoming a bitters magnate, Gary has had some "work" done and now looks more like a rock star and less like one of the guys on a Smith Brothers Cough Drops box. Here he is (R) proudly receiving the first bottle off the assembly line from Sazerac helmer, Mark Brown.
I recently designed a signature cocktail for the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Scottsdale, Arizona. The SMOCA Special debuted April 2nd at their Get Smart benefit.
I just got some more press, courtesy of Mr. Regan, which actually bonds together the two schizophrenic aspects of my life, here in this San Francisco Chronicle article.
Here is a staggeringly (heh) good book of cocktail theory - possibly the first serious attempt at it since David Embury's Fine Art of Mixing Drinks back in 1948. A saint among men, Gary Regan not only included 8 of my latest cocktail creations, he asked me to illustrate the book and wrote some really nice things about me in it too. I didn't even have to bribe him; I'm very proud.
Just a word here -not a clipping per sé- to acknowledge the support and promotion given to me, my book, CocktailDB, the Mixilator, and the museum by friends and compatriots Chuck Taggart & Wesly Moore of The Gumbo Pages, an indispensable New Orleans and culinary resource, and by the cocktail's greatest diplomat, Robert Hess of Drinkboy.com fame. You rule.
The balmy and beachy scribe Jeff "Beachbum" Berry has authored three excellent books of tropical tiki drink and food recipes entitled, respectively, Beachbum Berry's Grog Log, Beachbum Berry's Intoxica, and Beachbum Berry's Taboo Table. All are the best in their class - something I'd say even if they DIDN'T mention me, honest.
Five of my original cocktail recipes are in this lovely bartending tome by Mardee Haidin Regan.
Here's an odd one: In this book by one Duane Swierczynski appears a previously unpublished cocktail recipe I created. It apparently saw print back in 2003 complete with some pithy observations by me. I got exactly NO notification of the book's release, wasn't expecting it, and only discovered its existence last December (2004). Note to author: if you send contributors a promo copy by way of thanks, maybe they'll promo your book.
I wrote this monograph as an adjunct to an erudite work on the larger subject by Dr. Randy D. Ralph. My research explores, hands down, the most obscure drink ingredient ever. Don't believe me? You will.
A little Amazon article about one cocktail I created.
A Wine Enthusiast article citing one of my cocktail theories.
A New York Times article quoting my theory of Aperitifs.
I'm acknowledged by William Grimes in possibly the greatest sociological treatise of the cocktail ever written
The first of two articles about me in Nation's Restaurant News.
The second of two articles about me in Nation's Restaurant News.
A cocktail was named for me in Esquire magazine. (Incidentally, I love being called a cocktail fiend.)
Dr. Cocktail goes swingingly international when four of his concoctions appear in full color in Fernando Castellon's Larousse des Cocktails, an excellent and hefty reference work published in Paris. Hijinks ensue.
CocktailDB & I are cited in the first book authored by our most celebrated mixologist, Dale DeGroff.
I am acknowledged in the latest incarnation of the Esquire Drink Book by the formidable researcher and man about town, David Wondrich.
An Esquire credit regarding a drink favorite of mine.
Another first: I am a recurring fictional character spouting real facts in this San Francisco Chronicle article.
A respectful ref by John Hodgman in this funny little article in Men's Journal (Rolling Stone's manly men's magazine).
A tribute to the author of the first (1862) cocktail manual - which I attended and the New York Times covered.
A second recounting of the tribute - with photos!
...and a third, from Dale "King Cocktail" DeGroff.
I got a pleasant acknowledgment by Sven "Tiki" Kirsten in the best book on Polynesian pop culture (with a section on always celebratory tiki drinks by Beachbum Berry) ever published.
