Food & Drink

I am standing in a sunny courtyard in the little town of Gijduvan, waiting for a drink. Just in case you don’t know, Gijduvan is a way station on the old Silk Road, in the far west of Uzbekistan: it is known for ceramics, Sufi mystics and loud celebrations of the Persian spring festival, Nowruz. As part of this festival, the locals make a special soup/beverage called sumalak. The recipe, I’m told, dates to Zoroastrian times – more than 3,000 years ago – and includes “wheat sprouts,” “cottonseed oil” and, I am not joking, “stones.” I can already see the sumalak bubbling away in a vast steel pot. It looks like viscous brown cow slurry. To be honest, I’m not brimming with eagerness.

It’s been a while since we have traveled to Beaujolais, that ancient wine growing region along the Saône River north of Lyon. Since summer is nigh, it’s time for another visit. Beaujolais is an ideal summer red wine. It is almost always made exclusively from the Gamay grape, a cross between Pinot Noir and an ancient white varietal called Gouais. It is light, flowery, full of pleasing acidity and fruitiness, satisfying by itself and notably food friendly. Of course, anyone who writes about Beaujolais these days has to begin by issuing a little advisory, like the Surgeon General’s warning on packs of cigarettes and certain medications. A few decades back, Beaujolais was plagued by scandal.

As the Super Bowl rolled into New Orleans, with Kendrick Lamar and his flared jeans in tow, I was thinking about the many contributions that this small Louisiana city has brought to the cocktail bar. There’s the creamy green Grasshopper, the French Quarter’s whiskey-based Vieux Carré, the tropical rum punch Hurricane and, of course, the comically difficult Ramos Gin Fizz – which blooms up in a tower of egg-white froth. But perhaps the oldest, most widespread and most conventional is the Sazerac: it is considered one of America’s oldest cocktails, having been served in New Orleans from the late 19th century.

I have to begin this column with a glass of Pol Roger cuvée Winston Churchill. It’s fancy stuff, and — according to some — it’s a bit early in the day to be quaffing Champagne.  “How early is too early?” I’ve often wondered that. The jury is out but most of the best authorities say that any time before actually awakening is too early.   Why the shampoo (as David Niven was wont to denominate the beverage)?  It seemed like the appropriate expedient in response to a bulletin I received from a Trump-skeptical friend. It came in over the headline, “Trump’s first mistake.

On April 26, 1336, the poet Petrarch, accompanied by his younger brother, climbed up the windy slopes of Mount Ventoux in the Rhône Valley. He said that he was the first person to climb that Alps-adjacent peak, which isn’t quite true. But it may well be true that he was the first person to go mountain climbing for fun. Petrarch wrote about his outing in 1350 in a famous letter called “The Ascent of Mount Ventoux.” The twentieth-century German philosopher Hans Blumenberg (speaking of mountains) wrote that Petrarch’s climb marked “one of the great moments that oscillate indecisively between the epochs,” namely between the medieval world and the Renaissance. Today, we like mountains. They mean picnics, sight-seeing, natural beauty.

In November, I was privileged to attend the 91st Paulée de Meursault. There are three coveted invitations at that time of year in this part of Burgundy: the world-famous wine auction held in Beaune and the luncheons called la Paulée de Beaune and la Paulée de Meursault. La Paulée de Meursault celebrates the fine wines grown in this small village. It is home to eighty wine-growing families and the area is known for its charm and terroir, that unique blend of soil and climate that has been producing exceptional white and red grapes for centuries. I had heard from our family about this festive celebration ever since our daughter and son-in-law moved to France fifteen years ago to work in wine.

Only a fool tries to guess exactly what awaits at a French karaoke bar. But on a Saturday night in Avignon, I wasn’t expecting to find a crowd of twentysomething hipsters drinking American-style IPA and singing “Mr. Brightside” and “Friday I’m in Love.” France, in all its stereotypical glory, has always been a wine country. Edward Lear wrote no limericks about a “young man from Saint-Étienne, who liked drinking Old Speckled Hen” but things are changing. France has the most breweries in Europe and beer is now the most bought alcohol in supermarkets, though if you ask a middle-aged Frenchman why young people are embracing beer instead of burgundy, you are met with the most Gallic of shrugs and a “bof... je ne sais pas.” So, why are they doing it?

It was January in Chicago and the forecast was for heavy snow followed by bitter cold — high time, I thought, for a shot of malört, the most undrinkable beverage on earth. Or so I’d always heard — and therein lies a tale I didn’t expect to tell. Chances are you’ve never heard of malört, formally known as Jeppson’s Malört, Carl Jeppson being the Swedish immigrant who invented the liqueur a century ago. However, it’s legendary in Chicago, where it’s commonly described as a rite of passage. That tells you a lot right there. Lest there be any doubt, readers are invited to search for #malortface on X, formerly known as Twitter, or Instagram or Flickr.

Where will conservatives and Donald Trump's disciples spend their non-working hours in DC for the president-elect’s term? The Washingtonian provided a list by Jessica Sidman last week, but by Cockburn’s estimation, it’s not totally over the target. Contenders on Sidman’s list include the Big Board, Cafe Milano, Capital Grille, Dirty Water, RPM Italian, Royal Sands Social Club, Shelly’s Back Room and the Waldorf Astoria — which used to be the Trump Hotel DC but was sold back in 2021. Shelly’s is Cockburn-approved, especially for the cigar smokers. Rudy Giuliani has been spotted in there before. But Cafe Milano, Capital Grille and Dirty Water are not necessarily “hangouts” for conservatives or the MAGA crowd in particular.

Not to live up to Irish stereotypes, but for me, Christmas wouldn’t be complete without booze; and so, for this seasonal column, it’s only fitting that I recommend some perfect yuletide drinks to get you slammed under the Christmas tree. There are two broad bases you can work with for Christmas drinks — creamy ones and those with seasonal spices. You can do both, but these are the two broad playing fields, and just because you don’t like one kind doesn’t mean you won’t like the other. There aren’t a lot of cocktails using cream (the classic or the alcoholic Irish one); the trick is to use a good Irish cream and add it to existing non-alcoholic drinks. Want a nice boozy milkshake? Want a hot chocolate that gets you blitzed? A creamier espresso martini?

It’s 1951 and the Hotel Monteleone burns bright, a gilded island of light and liquor adrift in the New Orleans dark. Inside, the air is thick with the sweet tang of cigar smoke and the murmurs of polished conversation. Over in the Swan Room, the trumpets blare, their brassy notes cutting through the gentle chatter, their absence filled with the lively, gravelly voice of Louis Prima. The crowd sways in rhythm, caught between the pulse of jazz and the flicker of chandelier light. Outside, the French Quarter is still alive.