And this is a significant point in history. This is the 200th anniversary of the first time the word "cocktail" was defined in print. (The Balance and Repository newspaper of Hudson, New York, published an editor's reply to a letter in the 13 May 1806 edition, defining the cocktail as "a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water and bitters".) Naturally, we passed around samples of a most elementary cocktail--an Old-Fashioned sans the topping off with soda water and the muddling of an orange and a commercial-graded maraschino cherry that we were all trained to execute back in the day.

1/2 orange slice

1 lump (or cube) sugar

2 dashes Angostura bitters

2 dashes Regan's Orange Bitters

2 oz (60 ml) rye or bourbon whiskey

Muddle orange, sugar, and bitters in an old-fashioned glass until the sugar is mostly dissolved. Fill with large cubes of ice (or carve one large chunk to fit the glass, if you are a true classicist). Add the whiskey. If you must garnish it, tradition calls for a "flag"--an orange slice and a Luxardo Marasche al Frutto cherry (available at Dean & Deluca) paired together on a cocktail pick.

It's also the 150th anniversary of aperitivo, the most civilised ritual born in the Piedmonte capital of Torino. Aperitivo is the ancestor of the cocktail hour --the interval that marks the end of the work day and the beginning of the evening's activities. A glass of red vermouth and a tramezzini (small sandwiches), canape, or other amuse bouche forms the centerpiece of the ritual, which includes conversation and relaxation in a cafe or al fresco in one of the city's numerous colonnaded piazzas.

Two refreshing and appetite-stimulating concoctions arose from this ambient atmosphere: the Americano, created by Guiseppe Campari at his bar in Torino, and the Negroni, crafted by Gloomy Scarselli for Conte Negroni at the Bar Casoni in Florence.

Negroni

1 oz (30 ml) Campari

1 oz (30 ml) red Italian vermouth (Carpano or Martini & Rossi)

1 oz (30 ml) Plymouth Gin

Shake all ingredients in a shaker filled with ice until icy cold. Strain into a rocks glass filled with ice. Garnish with an orange twist or half-slice.

Anniversaries abound in this year of Our Lord 2006. Last but not least is the 150th anniversary of the word "mixologist," which debuted in the July 1856 issue of The Knickerbocker Magazine: a New York publication famous for its illustrious roster of writers which included Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and William Cullen Bryant, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and John Greenleaf Whittier.

A few years later the most controversial, the most subjective mixologist's concoction of veiled--and contentious--origins arose on the cocktail radar: the Martini. Some say it was eponymously named after the rifle, some say after Old Waldorf-Astoria bartender Martini di Arma di Taggia, some say after the dry white vermouth brand sometimes used in the drink, some say, some say...

You get the idea. Our favourite formula employs an ingredient that has long since disappeared in modern versions of the Silver Bullet--orange bitters.

Martini

2 oz (60 ml) Plymouth or Beefeater's Gin (depending on your preference for floral or citrus gins)

1 oz (30 ml) dry white vermouth (preferably poured from a freshly-opened bottle)

1 dash Regan's Orange bitters

Shake all ingredients in a shaker filled with ice until icy cold. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist made by paring the peel with a vegetable peeler to avoid putting the flavour of the pith into the drink.

Not all cocktails were devised by mixologists. Some had humble beginnings in places as far a field as the sugar cane fields the West Indies. The mojito is such an example. Born in the 1890s from thirst and a lack of hygienically clean water on the island of Cuba, the mojito began as a simple concoction of yerba buena mint (found growing beneath the sugar cane) and rum (the cheapest to produce and most plentiful liquid consumed in the Caribbean), stirred with a stick of sugar cane. When the drink made its way to the bustling urban center of Havana around the 1920s, it acquired a few more ingredients--soda water and ice. Hemingway popularized the drink among the American celebrity circuit, buying rounds for them at La Bodeguita del Medio. And Bacardi, the producer of the rum most commonly employed in its making, reintroduced to a new audience of cocktailians in the past decade.

We prefer making our mojitos the Spanish way--with dark rum instead of the usual white rum. And we use demerara or light brown sugar in place of standard white or caster sugar.

Mojito Negro

2 oz (60 ml) Bacardi Select rum

2 lime wedges

4-24 mint leaves

1 tsp demerara or light brown sugar

seltzer water

Muddle the sugar, mint leaves, and lime wedges in a rocks glass. Fill with ice. Add the rum and top with seltzer water. Garnish with a sprig of mint, and add a sugar cane stick as a stirrer.

The last drink we presented last night is considered by many to be the worst abomination ever hidden under a cocktail umbrella, if you make the appalling fruit-juicy red travesty that even the drink's creator riled about after his first encounter: the Mai Tai.

Created by Trader Vic Bergeron in 1944 (the same year the Andrews Sisters hit the Top 40 charts with their song "Rum and Coca Cola"), the true Mai Tai was divined as a vehicle for featuring rich Jamaican rums in the same manner that the Martini spotlights gin and the Manhattan focuses on whiskey. No pineapple juice, no orange juice from the gun, no grenadine, no bottled lime juice syrup (read: Rose's).

The original formulation calls for light, gold, and dark Jamaican rums in equal measure. But we've been known to craft the drink using only dark Cuban-style rum.

Mai Tai

3 oz (90 ml) Bacardi 8 rum (or 1 oz (30 ml) of each: silver, gold, and dark rums)

0.5 oz (15 ml) Cointreau or orange curacao

0.5 oz (15 ml) Amaretto or orgeat syrup

0.5 oz (15 ml) freshly-squeezed lime juice

Shake all ingredients in a shaker filled with ice until icy cold. Strain into a rocks glass filled with ice. Garnish with a sprig of fresh mint. (The mint is essential to the flavor of the drink.)

If this is your first time considering a Mai Tai, we suggest you travel to one of the many Trader Vic's restaurants found in such far-off destinations as Emeryville CA (the original establishment, across the bay from San Francisco), Beverly Hills, London, Berlin, Munich, Tokyo, Osaka, Bangkok, Bahrain, Spain, Abu Dhabi, or Dubai. Then head home and craft the concoction of which Vic's Tahitian guests proclaimed and named upon first tasting it: "Mai Tai, Roa Ae!" (literally translated as "Out of this world, the best."

That's enough litanizing on the merits of the cocktail for one morning. Back with more soon.

Copyright 1995-2006 Jared Brown & Anistatia Miller. Shaken Not Stirred is a registered service mark.

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