
History, Sugar and Sex: Why Mixed Drinks Were Terrible for 30 Years - samclemens
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/theslice/mixologys-dark-ages-why-drinks-were-neon-sugary-and-terrible-for-three-decades
======
Animats
That's the marketed, romanticized side of the booze industry. The reality is
more like this:

A sizable fraction of the liquor on the US West Coast comes from Frank-Lin
Distillers Products.[1] They used to be near the San Jose railyards, but now
they're in Fairfield, with better rail access. They need rail access because
the ethanol comes in by the trainload, in tank cars.[2] One of their major
suppliers is MGP Ingredients in Illinois. They used to be called Midwest Grain
Products, and before that, Midwest Solvents. MGP provides pure ethanol to both
the beverage and gasoline industries.

Frank-Lin has their own water deionization and filtering plant on-site, to
take all the minerals out of tap water and have just pure water. They do some
additional processing on the ethanol to remove trace impurities. Then they mix
ethanol, water, and flavoring to produce beverages. They have about a thousand
different products - vodkas, gins, brandies, bourbons, rums, and wines, but
only about a hundred different recipes.

Each brand has its own bottle design and label. The Ball bottle-making factory
is conveniently next door. Frank-Lin has an advanced bottling line that can
automatically change from one bottle to another without a shutdown.

Frank-Lin also does "contract bottling" \- they will make your brand for you.
They used to make Skyy Vodka. Skyy was a virtual company - everything was
outsourced, like a app startup. Skyy was bought by a major distiller a few
years ago, which pulled production in-house.

Once you get past the marketing, that's the reality.

[1] [http://www.frank-lin.com/](http://www.frank-lin.com/) [2]
[https://www.google.com/maps/@38.278159,-121.973672,3a,75y,11...](https://www.google.com/maps/@38.278159,-121.973672,3a,75y,110.96h,84.71t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1s7q5oONBCFi809rGS7PMM1w!2e0)

~~~
deeferty
Are you saying all Frank Lin products are made with the same grain ethanol and
just different flavourings? I'd be astounded if that's the case. I thought
things labelled as for example 'wine' or 'rum' had legal definitions. Can you
really sell flavoured grain ethanol as unqualified 'wine'?

~~~
GeorgeBeech
If you look at their site, it's all college rot gut, and well liquor level
stuff. It's the brands that you go and get a giant 1 Gallon handle for 10$.
Which makes sense given their business model.

This is the stuff you'll get at a corner bar when you say "I don't care." When
they ask what kind of vodka you want.

~~~
dredmorbius
Skyy Vodka isn't well-level.

And about three seconds' thought would tell you: "GeorgeBeech, no idiot
running a 'premium' liquor brand would allow their product to be featured on a
bulk purveyor of flavored methanol products manufacturer website."

Brand appearances are tightly controlled. The message is as much about what
you want to be known as what you want to be concealed.

~~~
Animats
Skyy Vodka was featured on the Frank-Lin web site back in 2006.[1] _" One of
our current contract customers is Skyy Vodka. We are very proud to mention
that we bottled the first bottle of Skyy for Maurice Kambar and have bottled
every single bottle for him since."_ That was in 2006. Campari later bought
out Skyy, and moved production to a Campari facility.

It's all ethanol, water, and flavoring. Deal with it.

Coca-Cola's "Dasani" is tap water that's been run through a deionizing plant
and had some minerals added.

[1]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20060318162306/http://www.frank-...](https://web.archive.org/web/20060318162306/http://www.frank-
lin.com/services.html)

~~~
dredmorbius
Yeah, I'm supporting your point

Here's a list of Frank-Lin products: [http://sourmashed.com/american-whiskey-
database/frank-lin-di...](http://sourmashed.com/american-whiskey-
database/frank-lin-distillers-products/)

------
dredmorbius
On the topic of branded alcohol and mixed drinks, I got interested in the rise
of both a ways back and did some digging, much of it by way of the Google
Books ngrams viewer.

The part that wasn't particularly surprising was that mixed drinks and
cocktails, along with associated terms ("cocktail hour", "cocktail party")
largely date to U.S. Prohibition, when bootleg (and low-quality) hard liquor
had to be mixed with other ingredients to become drinkable:
[http://goo.gl/EBXM87](http://goo.gl/EBXM87)

What was more surprising was that the _vast_ majority of branded alcohols
dated to no earlier than the 1950s. Baccardi Rum is a notable exception
showing up in the 1920s ([http://goo.gl/it9vOc](http://goo.gl/it9vOc))

Schmirnoff: 1950, on the nose: [http://goo.gl/j0yle3](http://goo.gl/j0yle3)
[http://goo.gl/YxXJ9i](http://goo.gl/YxXJ9i)

Remy Martin, Beefeater, Gordon's, and Bombay Gin: 1950s:
[http://goo.gl/qX6JEY](http://goo.gl/qX6JEY)

That "traditional old Number 7" Jack Daniels? 1970s:
[http://goo.gl/JWVLG6](http://goo.gl/JWVLG6)

And an "Irish pub" is really a 1990s phenomenon:
[http://goo.gl/vLwvTn](http://goo.gl/vLwvTn)

And if you look at many of today's "trendy" brands, most are creations of the
1980s, 1990s, or later:
[https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120306152857A...](https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120306152857AAD0Ozv)

"Mixology" itself -- also largely a creation of the past 20 years:
[http://goo.gl/1hVsEU](http://goo.gl/1hVsEU)

And whiskey, the American version at least, was largely created to allow
movement of an otherwise unusable product -- frontier grain -- to the
population centres of the East Coast.

Your "sophisticated drinks" are an ad-man's creation.

~~~
CPLX
> And an "Irish pub" is really a 1990s phenomenon

That is an extraordinary conclusion which requires a bit more evidence than
you're putting forward.

Another interpretation of the data is that the entire idea of a bar, pub, or
corner bar was Irish by default until the 90's, when it became necessary to
distinguish between different types of bars.

As an older fellow, my memory from well before the 90's is that what we think
of now as an "Irish Pub" would have just been called "a bar" back in the day.

~~~
michaelt
[http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2006/03/irelan...](http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2006/03/irelands_crack_habit.html)

    
    
      Ireland, as much of the world knows it, was invented 
      in 1991. That year, the Irish Pub Company formed with
      a mission to populate the world with authentic Irish bar

~~~
smacktoward
That article manages to make its claim by focusing entirely on Irish pubs _in
Ireland_ and completely ignoring _Irish-American_ pubs, which have been
flourishing in the United States since before the Civil War.

Like McSorley's Old Ale House in NYC, for instance, which has been operating
at the same location since at least the 1860s
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McSorley%27s_Old_Ale_House](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McSorley%27s_Old_Ale_House)).
Most Northern cities of any size will have had similar establishments set up
at roughly the same time, though it's rare to find one that's been in
continuous operation for so long.

I would venture to guess that when people think of an "Irish pub," nearly all
of what they're thinking of comes out of the Irish-American pub tradition. The
program described in the article just takes all that stuff and wraps it into
an "official Irish" package that's easy to franchise.

~~~
dredmorbius
_focusing entirely on Irish pubs in Ireland_

My God! Ireland's annexed Kazakhstan and the Canary Islands?!!!!

From TFA:

 _In the last 15 years, Dublin-based IPCo and its competitors have fabricated
and installed more than 1,800 watering holes in more than 50 countries.
Guinness threw its weight (and that of its global parent Diageo) behind the
movement, and an industry was built around the reproduction of "Irishness" on
every continent—and even in Ireland itself. IPCo has built 40 ersatz pubs on
the Emerald Isle, opening them beside the long-standing establishments on
which they were based._

------
mturmon
It's easy to write an article poking fun at fern bars and pseudo-naughty drink
names like Slippery Nipple. People in the past and their absurd habits - so
unbelievably shallow. So unlike you and I, who have discovered genuine
connoisseurship concerning drinking habits.

But history is unforgiving, and the laugh will be on us. In a few years the
term "mixologist" and the whole discourse concerning bitters, muddling, and
artisanal gin is going to be ripe for the comedic shredder. I look forward to
it.

~~~
pedalpete
Dare I say it is already here. The mixologist is a pretentious name for a
bartender. Though I'd argue there is nothing wrong with bitters, muddling or
artisan liquers.

I can go to any number of bars in Sydney where a 'mixologist' can't make a
simple Belvedere Vodka, a bit dirty (not slutty). Go to a place that has a
bartender, and at least you've got a shot at something half decent.

------
Crito
It seems like cost should at least be mentioned.

It may not be the sort of thing your average SF tech worker can relate to, but
for many Americans the choice between a $10-$20 mixed drink and a $2 double
shot of a well liquor (with more ethanol than the mixed drink) is no choice at
all.

~~~
jghn
Not sure I agree. At least around where I live (Boston) the older style ("Dark
Ages" in the parlance of TFA) bars are also serving $10-$20 mixed drinks,
they're just not as good.

For instance, a Dark Ages bar you'll be paying $15+ for a bird bathed style
"martini" which is simply chilled vodka (martinis are not vodka, and they
should have a measurable amount of vermouth) or you're paying the same for a
proper 3-4 oz sized craft cocktail.

This article wasn't talking about cocktails vs slugging shots of straight
liquor, rather it was talking about how wretched the state of mixed drinks
themselves became.

~~~
Crito
If mixed drink sales are poor (for instance, because many consumers cannot
justify the price), then there isn't much motivation for the bar to hire
professional bartenders rather than college kids, or even create a proper
cocktail menu. Extreme cocktail pricing made it a niche market with few
businesses willing to participate in it in earnest.

~~~
jghn
Except that the trend away from quality cocktail making long predated the
pricey mixed drink trend. I don't disagree with your premise but I still don't
think it has anything to do with the situation described in the article

------
WillNotDownvote
When I worked as a bartender, if we didn't know what a particular drink was,
and the customer didn't know what was in it, we just asked "What color is
it?". We usually came up with something satisfactory!

------
Thrymr
Not just mixed drinks: Prohibition killed decent American beer & wine as well,
and led to decades of industrialized, homogenized mediocrity that we are still
recovering from.

~~~
nsxwolf
I can get all the great beer I want in the US. At this point, if people are
still drinking Coors and Budweiser and wondering if there's more to life,
that's their own problem.

~~~
thrownaway2424
It depends on the state. In oakland California where I live the grocers have
phenomenal selections of craft beers. But in Oklahoma City where I used to
live the grocery stores can only sell beer with at most a negligible amount of
alcohol so even the good grocers have at best Dos Equis and Bud. If you want
real beer you have to go to a liquor store or if there's a session beer you
really like you have to tell the beer buyer where to get it because they
aren't on the state approved list of shitty industrial beers.

------
lmm
The article ended just as I was expecting the meat. The article seemed to want
us to blame women for this, but never quite dared to say as much outright.

Some of us like sweetness, and there's no reason a sweet cocktail should be
inherently less skill-based than a sour one (if you're worried about the
nutritional balance of your cocktail, the alcohol will kill you first). A
clever name doesn't have to mean a bad drink. The disappearance of federal
regulation was interesting, but it doesn't seem like it tells the whole story
- it's not like those federal whiskey inspectors have been reintroduced (have
they?).

~~~
angersock
I don't know how you managed to pull misogynist tones out of this--author
merely pointed out that, to increase patronage, bar owners moved towards more
open and public spaces. It's just what the market wanted.

 _Some of us like sweetness, and there 's no reason a sweet cocktail should be
inherently less skill-based than a sour one._

So, again, you're missing the point: strong mixers (sweet _or_ sour!) cover up
bad ingredients and also cover up bartenders being incompetent. It's not a
choice between sweet, sour, and whatever else in a good mixed drink; it's a
bartender knowing how the flavors fit together in the drink, and knowing how
the flavors vary across brands and years of theoretically the same ingredient.
For example, there are several different manufacturers and brands of gin, and
what works well in a gin and tonic may fail to test nearly as good in a proper
martini.

It's more economical and requires vastly less skill to dump vodka or well
tequila into a sour-mix and thrown in some cubes and give to a patron, than it
is to pick the right tequila off a bar, pair with the right liquors, and add
just a slight amount of mixer for flavor, and then serve.

------
dredmorbius
In related news, a list of what whiskey brands are owned by which of the big-
four companies: Pernod Ricard, Diageo, Suntory, and Brown-Forman:

"Bourbon or scotch? You may be surprised by who owns your favorite whiskey"
Raghu Manavalan, Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - 15:53

[http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/numbers/bourbon-o...](http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/numbers/bourbon-
or-scotch-you-may-surprised-who-owns-your-favorite-whiskey)

------
lscharen
Somewhat off-topic, but I've really enjoyed the "Bartender" manga over the
years and its historical digressing into various mixed drinks.

I can't vouch for accuracy, but it's an entertaining read.

[http://www.mangahere.co/manga/bartender/](http://www.mangahere.co/manga/bartender/)

~~~
astrange
You can learn all kinds of things from Bartender, like how to turn someone's
life around by serving them whiskey with water.

He truly makes the bar tender.

