THE REASON

Several years ago, I was seated at the bar of a fashionable restaurant when the barman pushed forward a chilled martini glass filled with a light blue-colored drink, which I later learned was an Aviation cocktail. I took a sip and tasted an icy crisp harmony of herbal and floral flavors, both sweet and sour yet neither sweet nor sour. It was brisk, refreshing and delicious, and something I had not previously experienced.

My first reaction was surprise. I had come there that evening at the invitation of friends, who were going on about the new mixologist, whatever that was, but only reluctantly. I had spent many years tasting, studying and drinking excellent wines, ports, brandies and traditional beers and ales. To me a cocktail was perhaps a shot of cheap vodka or gin mixed with some sort of soda pop, garnished with a dried up lime wedge and served in a plastic cup. This cocktail was disrupting my notions.

As I continued to taste and enjoy this complex drink, my reaction turned to irritation, if not outright anger. How had this happened? How had I gone a lifetime without knowing about true, well-crafted cocktails? Were they the result of some new technology? Had they been there all this time, but I was too blind to see? It was all very bewildering. And so I began to investigate.

I learned that there was a time when cocktails were made with precision and care by craftsmen who had spent years honing their skills, when mixing drinks was an art form, when the people knew and appreciated fine cocktails and would not tolerate the kinds of mixed drinks to which I had become accustomed. Sometime after the end of World War II, however, things began to change. Perhaps because of the war effort and the need to produce vast amounts of supplies and materials as quickly as possible, quantity and efficiency came to be valued over quality and creativity. Soon, the bread was white, pre-sliced and tasteless; the coffee freeze dried into crystals; juices powdered; soups dehydrated; whole diners frozen and insipid. All was homogenized, artificial, instant, plastic-wrapped and convenient, with only the taste and quality sacrificed. It was the dark age of food.

The cocktail suffered mightily as well. Fresh ingredients were replaced with pre-mixes, artificial sweeteners displaced natural and herbs and botanicals disappeared altogether. Before long, the cocktail became little more than a vehicle for the delivery of cheap booze.

Happily, things began to change in the early 1990s. It started with a new found appreciation of good wine. Then, Americans took a renewed interest in dining and cooking. Before long, quality products from coffee to cigars became increasingly available to a newly appreciative public.

In the early years of this century, a few intrepid barmen, like Petrarch atop Mont Ventoux, surveyed the sorry state of the cocktail and began looking to the past for guidance. They dusted off ancient cocktail books from the golden age to rediscover the classics and learn the techniques of the