John j. OH

Bartender, there’s a silent “x” in my drink.

A love letter to my favorite libation, the Vieux Carré.

Eric Frank
Be A Better Bartender
5 min readAug 14, 2013

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The first cocktail I ever cocktailed was a Gin and Tonic. Not a great gin, mind you, and not great tonic. But it was good enough for me to take notice. After that, it was whiskey sours (with terrible sour mix) and all kinds of awful college drinks like Incredible Hulks and Jungle Juice. I’m not proud of those days. But maybe I should be proud. It was the Taoist philosopher Laozi who said:

Even a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, so fuck the haters.

My tastes developed more after college and I discovered real whiskey sours with egg white, real old fashioneds without the fruit salad, and most importantly, quality spirits. Most of my early education took place at the affable Los Angeles cocktail stronghold Seven Grand. It was there, on some middling Wednesday in 2009, that I dared a bartender to “make me something with Whiskey that I haven't had before.”

Vieux Carré means “old square” in French. It’s what French people call the French Quarter of New Orleans. There isn’t much history on this drink that I can find, so I’ve filled in the blanks myself. I imagine it went down thusly:

SOMEWHERE IN NEW ORLEANS:

Gérard (wearing a Parisian striped shirt): Cécile, come here. I’ve invented a drink.

Cécile (chain smoking): No you haven’t, you’ve just put two extra things in that Manhattan.

And the Vieux Carré was born.

Let’s have a walk through the ingredients in the cocktail, and how each ingredient is produced.

1 oz. Rye Whiskey

To call something whiskey, under US law, it must be a distilled spirit made from cereal grains (usually barley, wheat, rye, or corn) that has been aged in white oak barrels for a minimum of three years. Without the aging, you have “moonshine” or “white dog” or “white whiskey” as some objectionably call it. Rye whiskey is simply whiskey containing 51% or more rye distillate. Bulleit Rye, as an extreme example, is 95% percent rye. The other 5%? Maybe horse meat, I don’t know. But it tastes like golden unicorns.

To make whiskey, you need some hungry yeasts and some sugar for them to munch on. We sprout our cereal grains and dry them out right when they start producing an enzyme that converts their starch into sugar. This is called malting. We then mix those malted grains with some other grains that we’ve heated to extract the starch (a mash), and the whole damn thing turns to sugar. A yeast buffet. After a little fermentation, we’ve actually made beer. Huh.

After the yeast has had it’s fun, we heat our “beer” to make the alcohol evaporate (this is called distilling) until we have a heady 80-90% solution. Don’t drink that stuff unless you’re trying to win an argument with your organs. Add water until you have something closer to 40 or 50%. And that, ladies and girls, is whiskey.

For this drink, I recommend Rittenhouse Rye.

1 oz. Sweet Vermouth (the red one)

Like any respectable intoxicator, vermouth began its life as a sixteenth-century medicine. Some Italian pharmacist added brandy—fermented and distilled grapes—to his wine, along with a gaggle of herbs, roots, spices, sugar, and probably more brandy. It’s what we call a “fortified wine.” People believed that it cured their ailments, and sailors liked it because it didn’t spoil on long voyages. Sweet vermouth is sometimes called Italian vermouth, while dry vermouth (the white one) is French vermouth. You should stick to saying sweet and dry to make things easier for me.

For this and every drink, I recommend Carpano Antica Vermouth.

1 oz. Cognac

Cognac is just brandy, you guys. Made in the Cognac region of France. Fermented grapes, twice distilled, aged in French oak for at least two years. Mic drop.

For this drink, I recommend Pierre Ferrand Cognac. It’s amazing, but a bit pricey, so if you’re on a budget, Remy Martin will do just fine.

A bit of Benedictine

Benedictine is an Amaro, which is a class of Italian herbal liqueurs made from a base spirit (usually brandy or wine), herbs/roots/spices, and sugar. “Wait a minute, that sounds a lot like vermouth!” Yeah, pretty much, but usually with more alcohol and sugar and stronger flavors. Other members of this happy family are Fernet, Montenegro, and Cynar. Don’t ask me what’s in Benedictine, specifically. The Italians are tight-lipped about it.

How much is a bit? Just pour a tiny splash into your mixing tin and stop freaking out.

3 dashes each of Angostura and Peychaud’s bitters

Bitters are another former medicine-turned-drinkifying-agent. They’re made by soaking herbs/roots/spices in high-proof alcohol to extract flavor. Think of them as the spices of the cocktail world. Angostura bitters have a beautiful cinnamon-clove taste and smell, while Peychaud’s add some anise-based herbal magic to the mix.

All together now

Put all those things in your mixing tin with some ice cubes, grab your long bar spoon, and stir until the outside of the tin is ice cold and covered in condensation. Call it 15 seconds. We’re doing two things here: making our beverage nice and cold, and diluting the mixture by about 30% to make it refreshing and drinkable. Strain it out into a champagne coupe, an old fashioned glass, a martini glass, or a coffee mug if it’s 11:30am and you’re still at work. Garnish with a lemon peel/twist.

Don’t shake it. Don’t shake it. Please don’t shake it in your novelty polar-fucking-bear-shaped shaker. You’re adding too much water, some unwanted frothiness, and a ton of tiny ice chunks that ruin the smooth, velvety mouth-feel that the Vieux demands. Don’t shake it.

I watched my Seven Grand bartender grab a number of bottles that I’d never seen before, whip them up in his tin, and strain out a reddish-brown Manhattan-looking thing. My first taste brought me all the flavor of the Manhattans I had been enjoying, but with a lot more to explore. The roundness, the interesting bitterness, and the rich caramel notes won me over.

That night, I fell deeper in love with the cocktail.

Go out, find a good bar, and order yourself a Vieux Carré. Unless you don’t like falling in love. Then skip it.

Hey guys, this is my first post on Medium. Are there any cocktail-related topics you’d like me to write about? You should look them up on Wikipedia or something. I’m not your errand boy.

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Eric Frank
Be A Better Bartender

Take my hand; let’s explore the cocktails. Tweets at @ercfrnk.