Caught in a Downpour
By Brian McDonald
Years ago I worked at Elaine’s with a bartender named Tommy who was something of a legend on the East Side of Manhattan. We were behind the bar together one night when an older, well-dressed couple came in for what seemed to me to be a rare night on the town. After some deliberation, the woman brightly asked my bartending partner for a brandy Alexander. Tommy turned to the register took out a $10 bill and handed it to the lady. “Go across the street,” he said. “They make that garbage over there.”
Proof(David Walter Banks for The New York Times)
Now Tommy was really a softy at heart, but he was from the old school of bartenders who thought that cream belonged in coffee, a blender belonged on the kitchen counter and — like Nick the bartender at Martini’s in “It’s a Wonderful Life” — believed the bar was only for people who liked to drink real drinks, and liked to drink them often.
Vodka is vodka. And those high-priced brands in fancy bottles are not worth the price.
As a big fan of the frozen margarita, I didn’t mind the blender behind the bar. I also thought that every now and then , a blended drink made with ice cream had its place, especially when nursing a hangover. (During one particularly painful Sunday brunch shift I went through the better part of a five-gallon tub of vanilla Häagen-Dazs making Mudslides — that’s vodka, Kahlua and Bailey’s Irish Cream — for the wait staff, a couple of regulars, and me.) But where Tommy had trouble suffering dilettantes, the bane of my bartending nights were those label-conscious drinkers who considered themselves connoisseurs but in reality didn’t know the difference between a Grey Goose and a cold duck.
I tell a story in “Last Call at Elaine’s,” a book that I wrote about my bartending and drinking careers, of working in a restaurant outside of New York City where we poured cheap booze into all of the name-brand bottles: a trick known as a “downpour.” Now it’s not like we came up with the idea. Bars have been downpouring since before the invention of the neon sign. But we were by far the exception and not the rule, so I would warn against hurling accusations of being served rotgut in your local establishment.
The bar staff dubbed the place “The Make-Believe Ballroom.” We obviously downpoured to keep liquor costs down, which helped the house. But it also allowed us to buy back more drinks for customers, which got us better tips. It was a fairly busy place and I worked there for three years. In all of that time only twice was the validity of a cocktail’s ingredients questioned.
One was a straight-up Beefeater martini that was sent back twice from a table. The customer accompanied the waitress the second time. “I’ve been drinking Beefeater my whole adult life,” the man complained, “and this is not Beefeater.” As we had no real Beefeater in stock, I was in something of a predicament. Relying on the power of suggestion, I made the martini with a flourish right in front of the man, pouring the gin from a Beefeater bottle with a label that was as yellow and curled as an antique map. The man lifted the martini to his lips and took a sip. “Now that’s Beefeater,” he said with a cultured and satisfied smile.
Another night I had a few too many behind the bar and accidentally downpoured white crème de menthe into an Absolut bottle. There was no quick fix for that.
Now I’m not saying that all bar patrons are clueless. There are plenty of single malt scotch and small-batch bourbon drinkers, for instance, who would gag on a bargain brand. But most drinkers can’t tell the difference between the cheap and expensive stuff and, to be frank, I don’t think there is a whole lot of difference. Especially when it comes to vodka, the best-selling distilled spirit in the United States.
One urban legend has it that vodka first became popular in America back in the “Mad Men” days of the three-martini lunch. Looking for a less odoriferous substitute for gin, which left you walking into the office smelling like you were drinking Old Spice, the gray flannel suit crowd embraced the vodka martini. (The idea that you can’t smell vodka, however, is a joke. You can do your own test. Stay sober and have a friend down three vodka marts and take a whiff. Then ask them for a loan.)
Vodka’s popularity comes from the fact that it doesn’t have much flavor: it mixes easily with juices, tonic and flavorings, which makes it appealing to those who don’t like the taste of alcohol in the first place and to those new to the drinking universe. Vodka was my first alcoholic drink. When I was 15 I had something called “Tango,” a premixed beverage of vodka and Tang that came in a pint bottle, I think NASA developed Tango in case Dean Martin was ever sent into space.
Although vodka can be made from a variety of things — including sugar beets, potatoes, grain and even hemp — after the fermented material is distilled the final product is pretty much the same no matter how pretty a bottle it comes in. Even the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives describes vodka as a neutral spirit “without distinctive character, aroma, taste or color.” To be fair, that definition first appeared in Treasury Department literature in 1949. And I’m sure there have been advances in the distilling of vodka since. But enough to warrant the price commanded by Belvedere, Grey Goose and Ciroc?
Well the answer to that question might come right from The New York Times. A few years back, the Dining section ran its own vodka blind taste-test. Granted, the gang over at the Dining section might have a little too much time on their hands, but they did produce an interesting discovery. In a field filled with frosted, embossed and decanter-like bottles, the workman-like Smirnoff — added to the other 20 premium brands as an afterthought — turned out to be the “hands-down” winner.
Now I’m not really proud of those nights at the Make-Believe Ballroom. Bartending has always brought out my more devious side. But I do believe that vodka is vodka and that those high-priced brands in the fancy bottles are just a form of downpouring at the distillery level and are not worth the price.
So the next time you’re having a vodka drink at a bar, or buying a bottle at the liquor store, impress your friends with your humility and fiscal responsibility. Get yourself a Smirnoff, or a Popov or a Georgi. Like a guy I knew once said: Why pay $30 for the ticket when you can get there just as fast for $3.99?
Now what’ll ya have?
