The Ideal Bartender

Classic pre-prohibition cocktails from yesteryear. "Tom Bullock’s cocktails slaked the thirsts of many an august figure at the club, and his reputation is wrapped up in more than one president. The book’s introduction was written by George Herbert Walker, a club member and both the grandfather and great-grandfather of a chief executive. “I doubt if he has erred in even one of his concoctions,” Walker wrote of Bullock." -The New York Times “Is it any wonder that mankind stands open-mouthed before the bartender, considering the mysteries and marvels of an art that borders on magic?” "I have known the author of "The Ideal Bartender" for many years, and it is a genuine privilege to be permitted to testify to his qualifications for such a work. "To his many friends in St. Louis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Chicago and elsewhere, my word will be superfluous, but to those who do not know him, and who are to be the gainers by following his advices, it may prove at the very beginning a stimulus to know something of his record of achievement. "For the past quarter of a century he has refreshed and delighted the members and their friends of the Pendennis Club of Louisville and the St. Louis Country Club of St. Louis. In all that time I doubt if he has erred in even one of his concoctions. Thus if there is "many a slip twixt the cup and the lip" it has been none of his doing, but rather the fault of those who have appreciated his art too highly. But why go on! His work is before you. It is the best to be had. Follow on, and as you sip the nectar of his schemings tell your friends, to the end that both they and he may be benefited." -George Herbert Walker A testimonial from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch which appeared in the form of an editorial, Wednesday evening, May 28, 1913, at a time when Col. Roosevelt was vindicating, by a libel suit, his reputation for sobriety and temperance. Colonel Roosevelt's fatal admission that he drank just a part of one julep at the St. Louis Country Club will come very near losing his case. Who was ever known to drink just a part of one of Tom's? Tom, than whom there is no greater mixologist of any race, color or condition of servitude, was taught the art of the julep by no less than Marse Lilburn G. McNair, the father of the julep. In fact, the very cup that Col. Roosevelt drank it from belonged to Governor McNair, the first Governor of Missouri, the great-grandfather of Marse Lilburn and the great-great-grandfather of the julep. As is well known, the Country Club mint originally sprang on the slopes of Parnassus and was transplanted thence to the bosky banks of Culpeper Creek, Gaines County, Ky., and thence to our own environs; while the classic distillation with which Tom mingles it to produce his chief d'oeuvre is the oft-quoted liquefied soul of a Southern moonbeam falling aslant the dewy slopes of the Cumberland Mountains. To believe that a red-blooded man, and a true Colonel at that, ever stopped with just a part of one of those refreshments which have made St. Louis hospitality proverbial and become one of our most distinctive genre institutions, is to strain credulity too far. Are the Colonel's powers of self restraint altogether transcendent? Have we found the living superman at last? When the Colonel says that he consumed just a part of one he doubtless meant that he did not swallow the Mint itself, munch the ice and devour the very cup.