As the popularity of fine wine has grown in America, restaurants have developed a bent for arranging their wine lists more on the wines’ body and character than country of origin. Similarly, with premium-beer sales now soaring, certain establishments have taken to developing beer lists that offer more information than just style and source.
And for cocktails, the drinks at the heart of one of the hottest trends in hospitality today? Nothing. Just a list and, if you’re lucky, a bit of information on the ingredients.
But perhaps not for too much longer, at least at Clover Club, a cocktail lounge in Brooklyn, N.Y., that opened in June. It’s run by Julie Reiner, a celebrated bartender and beverage director who has been bringing expertly crafted drinks to patrons on both coasts for more than a decade. Not content to put together yet another laundry list cocktail menu, Reiner chose to catalog the drinks at her new spot under traditional classes, from “Collins & Fizzes” to “Juleps & Smashes.”
Reiner says she was reading David Wondrich’s James Beard Award-winning book, “Imbibe,” while she was setting up the Clover Club and drew ample insight from its pages.
“I really liked the way he divided the book by drink categories, and that inspired me,” Reiner says.
Reading the Clover Club’s menu is a bit like getting a liquid history lesson, with each class of drink accompanied by informative, entertaining and sometimes quite amusing text. In describing the technique necessary to make a true Swizzle, for example, Reiner writes: “Some contend that a swizzle’s ingredients aren’t as important as the actual technique of swizzling.” She closes with the caution that, “These drinks require both skill in the person making them and patience in the person ordering them.”
Also included in Reiner’s headings are “Cobblers & Highballs.” The former are “said to have gotten their name, more than a century ago, from the little ‘cobbles,’ or pebbles, of ice they were made with.” Reiner adds that their popularity was due in no small part to the novelty of the straw, which was a necessary tool if one wished to pierce the ice “cobbles” and access the drink.
Also featured at the Clover Club are “Royales,” or cocktails made with sparkling wine, on which Reiner states categorically, “People love Champagne cocktails.” Perhaps surprisingly, she also includes a selection of punches.
“Punches are my answer to bottle service, which I don’t really believe in,” Reiner says, explaining that if she feels the need to make her own drinks, she’ll just stay home. While punches may never approach the current trendiness of that nightclub standard, Reiner insists that they fill a definite niche. Making punches “is not an easy thing to execute, but it’s proven to be very popular so far,” she says. “We’re selling six to ten punch bowls a night.”
Of course, it’s one thing for a specialty bar in New York to promote punches and cobblers, but Reiner says smaller or non-specialty outlets can join in the fun, too.
“[The] general thinking is that you don’t want to have more than ten items on any particular menu, unless you’re crazy like me,” she says. “But if you want to use two or three of the categories, you should just pick the ones best suited. For example, if you are already using crushed ice, put a cobbler or two on your menu.”
Still, not everyone is as experienced or skilled in the art of the cocktail as is Reiner, and for those just getting their feet wet, or their shakers icy, the doyen of the Clover Club closes with a very sage piece of advice: “Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Choose your cocktails wisely.