Rye

I have no idea why I have to special-order Myers Platinum Rum in Providence, but four liquor stores I checked didn’t have it. Installment 3 of the Month of Rum is delayed until after my order arrives on Friday, which in all practicality means until Tuesday of next week. Sorry, rum chums. Meanwhile, rye.

If you’re not caught up on Mad Men, you might want to stop reading right now.

SPOILERS

It happens to all of us, eventually. You’ll be at the country club, at a party hosted by your boss, who’s in the midst of a humiliating midlife crisis. He’ll be the fool in blackface, serenading his new bride, who’s 30 years his junior. Disgusted, you’ll walk away and seek out another old-fashioned. Alas, no bartender will be on duty, and the famous hotelier who’s rooting around behind the bar will declare that he’s on the same mission as you, but to his dismay, there’s no bourbon.

With a James Bondian flourish, you’ll leap over the bar, rummage a bit, and find some good Old Overholt. You’ll take a couple of glasses, drop a sugar cube in each, and dash in some bitters. While the bitters soften the sugar cubes, you’ll find any old tall glass behind the bar and fill it about halfway with ice. Free-pour the rye over that, open a bottle of soda water, and splash some in. Muddle the sugar cubes. Roughly thrust a barspoon up and down in the tall glass three times, and then pour the drink, ice included, half into one glass and half into the other.

You’ll drop a wedge of lemon into each glass, then, but you won’t bother stirring the sugar into the drink, probably because you’ll be making out with someone else’s spouse by the time you’d reach the sugary sludge. And you’ll have yourself an old-fashioned rye cocktail. Hand one off to the hotelier and drink up.

At least that’s what you’d do if you were Don Draper, ad man. If you’re Michael Dietsch, sad man, you’ll scratch your head and laugh at how slapdash it all is. And then you’ll ask yourself two questions:

1. Is a drink made this way any good?
2. Just what kind of Old Overholt was Don Draper drinking anyway?

As to the first, well, I’m not sure. We don’t have any Old Overholt around, and either no one in Providence is ordering it, or there’s a shortage or something. The one place that reliably has it, hasn’t had it in over a month. I can get Beam Rye, Wild Turkey Rye, and, as I found out today, (ri)1, but not Overholt. I mixed it with the bird. Because the drink is barely stirred, and therefore barely diluted, it was strong. Not unpleasant, but nothing I’d want to drink several of in a day. Now you’re probably saying, “Wait a minute, Dietsch. Turkey’s 101 proof. Of course it was strong! And it’s an unfair comparison, since Overholt is 80. What gives, moron?”

Well, here’s what gives. Today’s Old Overholt is not the same product it once was. Y’see, Old Overcoat used to be, in fact, a 100-proof spirit. And when I asked the rye geeks on eGullet when that changed, the drinks historian David Wondrich told me that Overholt was bottled in bond (at 100 proof) until at least 1980. Which means Don was certainly drinking some hardnosed, 100-proof whiskey, not today’s 80-proof number.

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