When a cocktail is born, it receives a name. How it’s christened has as much to do with the drink’s lineage as the bartender’s mood—and sometimes, how it makes you feel after you’ve finished it.
Naming Today
When a cocktail is born, it receives a name. How it’s christened has as much to do with the drink’s lineage as the bartender’s mood—and sometimes, how it makes you feel after you’ve finished it.
Micro-living is no longer just for the very poor and the very bohemian. But how much space do we really deserve? Tracking down the minimum square-footage below which no one should be forced to endure.
As we progress from smartphones to smart toasters, our things are becoming increasingly connected. Soon they’ll be on Facebook alongside us. From there, it’s only a few steps to tactful beds.
I wouldn’t feel comfortable bringing an animal into existence if it were to have a nasty life and painful death.
When a cocktail is born, it receives a name. How it’s christened has as much to do with the drink’s lineage as the bartender’s mood—and sometimes, how it makes you feel after you’ve finished it.
Lawyers need bartenders more than bartenders need lawyers. When it comes to cocktails and the names they’re given, a recipe can’t be copyrighted and a name isn’t usually trademarked, and there’s no governing body, no law of the liquor land that stops the duplication of a recipe or a cocktail name. Which makes cocktail naming—shall we call it mixonymics?—special among naming practices in the modern world: It’s the bartender tribe, not the law, that defines prior art.
Trey Hughes, a bartender at the Blue Spoon, a restaurant in Portland, Maine, assiduously avoids repeating either a recipe or a name if he knows someone else has used it before. He looks up ingredients to make sure there’s nothing similar in terms of what’s going on in the glass, then he Googles the name. “If it’s already taken for another drink, I usually stop right there and come up with another name,” he said. “For me, I feel more comfortable knowing that there was no duplicate. I try to minimize confusion. I don... Continue Reading