“The important thing is the rhythm. Always have rhythm in your shaking. Now a Manhattan you shake to foxtrot time, a Bronx to two-step time, but a dry Martini you always shake to waltz time.” – Nick Charles (The Thin Man)
My wife and I have always been fans of the Thin Man movies featuring the amazing chemistry between William Powell and Myrna Loy as they drank their way through crime capers, always ending with all of the suspects in the same room and some mild-mannered characters suddenly revealing a secret vendetta against the murder victim.
The Golden Age of Mixed Drinks
Some of the best-known cocktails — the martini, the daiquiri, the Manhattan, Brooklyn were invented around the 1860s up to the Nationwide Prohibition (1920 – 1933), historians have dubbed that time span the “Golden Age of Cocktails“.
The Thin Man series of movies started up in 1934 just when America could once again drink legally.
Marriage of Perfect Drink to Perfect Glass
Every Friday night, to celebrate the end of the workweek, my wife and I have a cocktail. We’ve been trying all kinds of recipes and our liquor collection has been growing with all kinds of exotic liquors and ingredients.
But lately, we’ve been referencing the simpler, classic three-ingredient cocktail recipes. There are a couple of fine books with recipes for three-ingredient mixed drinks including:
3-Ingredient Cocktails: An Opinionated Guide to the Most Enduring Drinks in the Cocktail Canon
and Sip: 100 gin cocktails with just three ingredients
As you start mixing and shaking these drinks, you soon discover having the right glassware to match the cocktail is very important. Highballs and collins have more volume and need larger tall glasses. Drinks on the rocks need short, wide “rocks” glasses with plenty of room for a beautiful, clear, round ice cube. And shaken cocktails typically result in about 3 or 4 ounces which would look silly in a large glass.
Enter the “Nick and Nora” glass as it is called. A classic glass from the turn of the century. Holding 4-5 ounces or less with turned up on the side so it doesn’t spill like a martini glass. Small, elegant, and with thin glass so a small sip is possible.
One of the best glasses I’ve found in this style is the Riedel 6417/05 Drink Specific Glassware Nick & Nora Cocktail Glass, 2 Pieces, 4 oz, Clear.
These high-quality crystal glasses are perfect for classic cocktails from the Golden Age of Mixed drinks.
The innovative machine-made cocktail glass Nick & Nora of the functional glass collection Riedel barware makes it possible to savor the drink effortlessly and elegantly by delivering it perfectly to the mid-palate so that you do not need to tilt your head back.