The Next Best Thing to Time Traveling?

To continue the theme of the77th Anniversary of Repeal Day last Sunday I wanted to introduce a series of blogs that will be posted here over the next couple of months.
I was recently given, as a present from my Mum, a cocktail book that she had found in my Granddad’s basement in Philadelphia. It was a little tattered red book with a faded title. After closer inspection it turned out to be an official bartenders guide first published in 1935.
This book is a snippet of the history of cocktails offering an enormous range of drinks and it even has a section dedicated to being “the perfect host” suggesting classics like the Manhattan or an Old Fashioned, this is a very intriguing book. So, for obvious reasons, I showed it to a good friend of mine, James Mackay (who was behind the bar in 99 last Sunday), and we decided to do what every bartender would do - try a good few of the cocktails from the book made the way it was intended. With the recipes and measurements differing greatly to how a modern day bartender would serve them today, we felt it was our only option. Together we are going to visit bars across Aberdeen in search for the right ingredients in order to recreate these early recipes.
We will blog our experiences and share the best drinks that we come across so you can try them yourselves.