Brunch and its Jacked Up Juices
Back in the day, hard working men of various occupations and military groups didn’t think twice about a little grog or whiskey wake up in the morning. However modern society generally frowns on morning drinking. If you find a cocktail in your hand before noon, you must have a well-thought-out excuse to avoid social custom hanging heavy on your conscience. Therefore, as an introduction to this essay’s topic, here is a little help in this area.
My 10 Acceptable Excuses for Drinking Before Noon
- You are looking to deal with a really bad hangover: “I’m buying into the Hair-of-the-Dog philosophy.”
- You are on a cruise: “Hey, the party never stops on a cruise.”
- You are in Vegas: “I can’t see a clock, and what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”
- You are on a golf trip with the guys (or ladies): “Like Vegas, what happens on the golf trip stays on the golf trip.”
- You are on an early winery or brewery tour: “I’m just sampling.”
- You are on an airplane or in any airport: “Who knows what time zone I’m in.”
- You are on an all-inclusive resort vacation: “I have to get my money’s worth.”
- You are at a College or NFL tailgate party or even prepping for the game on TV: “I gotta get psyched, Man.”
- You are at a brunch: “Brunch cocktails are on the menu aren’t they.”
- If all else fails and you find yourself in some other situation than the above nine, just say, “It’s Happy Hour somewhere!”
Chapters could be written about each of these excuses. However, for now the focus is on invoking Excuse No. 9 – brunch and its many cocktail connections.
The Beginning
Once upon a time, there was no brunch. There was just breakfast, lunch and dinner (or supper), a cultural pattern that, over time, we have integrated into our daily lives. That is because work schedules have for the most part become regular, and there is comfort in a three meal routine. But brunch was an invention begging to happen, and one British writer stepped forward. In 1895, he proposed an idea that changed those set-in-stone weekend eating habits; a tale that cries out for a clarity only imagination can bring…
It was Sunday morning, and Guy Beringer very slowly opened one eye. He peered through a waking blur at the small clock on his bedside table. “Oh, God,” he thought. “I’ve done it again. He was referring to his staying out too late on a Saturday night, overindulging in alcoholic intake, and subsequently sleeping well past his normal waking hour.
He rose, feeling the effects of the night’s revelry, and with great effort went about his morning personal hygiene and clothing selection. It was now 11:30, and as he made his way unsteadily downstairs, he realized he was famished. However, he had missed breakfast, and lunch would not be served for a couple of hours.
Beringer was a true connoisseur of fine dining and found nothing more enjoyable than a lavish well-planned meal. Therefore, after having to seek out his cook to scrounge up a small leftover meat pie, his thoughts were focused on how he could improve upon this frequent Sunday dining dilemma. “Why can there not be a meal that allows one his needed sleep, and then when rising between two meals provides the benefits of each?” he said to himself. “A sort of breakfast-lunch, or maybe ‘brunch’ for short.”
With that idea swirling in his writer’s brain, he headed for his desk, exclaiming, “I must plead my case on paper!” He sat down, picked up his pen and the following words spilled on to the paper before him.
‘Brunch: A Plea.’
“The word Brunch is a corruption of breakfast and lunch, and the meal Brunch is one which combines the tea or coffee, marmalade and kindred features of the former institution with the more solid attributes of the latter…Apart altogether from animal considerations, the arguments in favor of Brunch are incontestable. In the first place it renders early rising not only unnecessary but ridiculous. You get up when the world is warm, or at least, when it is not so cold. You are, therefore, able to prolong your Saturday nights, heedless of that moral “last train”—the fear of the next morning’s reaction.”
“Brunch is a hospitable meal; breakfast is not. Eggs and bacon are adapted to solitude; they are consoling, but not exhilarating. They do not stimulate conversation. Brunch, on the contrary, is cheerful, sociable, and inciting. It is talk-compelling. It puts you in a good temper; it makes you satisfied with yourself and your fellow-beings. It sweeps away the worries and cobwebs of the week.”
And, not one to overlook the cocktail aspects of this new meal, he concluded his essay with, “P.S. – Beer and whiskey are admitted as substitutes for tea and coffee.”
America Catches On
The British took to Beringer’s idea readily. But, regardless of his compelling arguments, Americans weren’t as quick to latch on to this brunch thing. The British culinary combination took 30 years to take hold in the States
The tradition finally caught on in the United States in the 1930s. Hollywood stars making transcontinental train trips frequently stopped off in Chicago to enjoy a late morning meal. It was a meal championed by hotels, since most restaurants were closed on Sundays. And later, with church attendance lower after World War II, people were looking for a new social outlet that also let them sleep in a bit. Women working at home needed some relief on the weekend too. Thus, the popularity of a Sunday brunch eaten out increased quickly. Restaurants were happy to have another way to lure in customers. They began offering the decadent spreads of food and signature morning cocktails that we have come to love. Brunch may have started elsewhere, but it was definitely perfected in the United States.
Beyond Just Juice
For some, brunch is a big meal served early to fuel productivity for the coming events of the day. For others, like Mr. Beringer above, it can be a ‘hair-of-the-dog’ first step on a hangover recovery path. What does that strange expression mean anyway? Well, the full phrase ‘hair of the dog that bit you’ goes back to an ancient belief that if you were bitten by a dog with rabies you should put one of the dog’s hairs in the wound to help cure it. Not exactly science, but it led to the general theory of taking a little more of what hurt you to help you, i.e., have another drink to cure the hangover. In actuality, taking more alcohol is just a numbing effect prolonging the inevitable.
Nevertheless, ‘Hair of the Dog’ remedies persist. And, brunch, from its very beginnings, was often paired with thoughts of hydration and renewal after an evening of excessive revelry. So, regardless of the underlying reason for those waffles, quiches, and casseroles, there are many popular drinks we’ve come to think of as natural brunch accompaniments.
The general formula for a brunch cocktail is the addition of healthy mixers to some base alcohol component. One of the key considerations for these mid-to-late morning drinks is to lean toward ones that look fruity and fun, rather than the typical more serious evening cocktails. Light drinks filled with fruit flavors are perfect for brunch. While they’re not as strong and boozy as others, they pump up the normal array of morning juices with a little sparkling wine or clear spirits.
Add a Little Bubbly
One category of brunch cocktails might be referred to as Bubbly or Fizzy Juices, i.e., those with Prosecco or Champagne. The Mimosa is the queen of bubbly brunch beverages. The history behind that favorite pre-midday cocktail is much disputed. However, there is little doubt that the Mimosa is simply a later variation of the classic Buck’s Fizz cocktail. Both drinks combine champagne (or sparkling wine) and orange juice, with just the quantities signifying any difference.
The British likely invented the Buck’s Fizz in 1921 at the Buck’s Club in London, although the French probably had been combining champagne and orange juice for quite some time without any official name. The simple reason for creating the Buck’s Fizz was to give English gentlemen an excuse to start drinking before lunch. The most widely accepted recipe was one-part orange juice to two-parts champagne.
The Mimosa came along four years later, when bartender Frank Meier mixed them up at the Ritz Hotel in Paris. His drink was a slightly more diluted version of the Buck’s Fizz, with equal measures of oj and champagne. However, he never actually took the credit for the cocktail, despite mentioning it in his book, Artistry of Mixing Drinks. No one seems to know who came up with the name, Mimosa. But, the pretty Australian yellow-orange shrub, mimosa, was very popular among French gardeners, which would further support the Ritz Hotel origin story.
It took a few decades for the Mimosa’s popularity to cross the big pond. But, eventually, the British royal family and jet-setting Europeans like Alfred Hitchcock and Vanessa Redgrave brought their love of this mixture to the fore of American restaurant brunch menus. The Mimosa has remained an iconic brunch cocktail because it’s light, fruity and effervescent, and incredibly easy to mix up.
The Mimosa has led to an entire family of bubbly brunch cocktails, mostly by either replacing the orange juice with another, or sometimes by adding a third ingredient. Prominent among these is the Mimosa’s peachy cousin, the Bellini. The Bellini uses peach nectar or puree along with sparkling wine, generally a prosecco. There are also the Tintoretto with pomegranate juice, the Poinsettia with cranberry, the Megmosa with grapefruit juice and garnished with raspberries; the Soleil with pineapple juice, the Lemosa with lemonade and a splash of blueberry syrup, and the Vermosa with apple cider. The blushing Mimosa has pineapple juice and pomegranate juice to add that blushing color to the cocktail. Sunset or sunrise Mimosas (whichever name you prefer) use grenadine to get that color gradient. The Grand Mimosa adds a teaspoon of Grand Marnier to the oj and champagne.
Spike it Up With Vodka
Another brunch drink category is the vodka juices. These cocktails are for the most part simple combinations of vodka with a juice. However, some get slightly more complex with the addition of another juice or a liqueur.
Near the top of any vodka juice cocktail list, and prominent on most brunch drink menus is one of the simplest and maybe sneakiest cocktails of all. Some of you may remember teenage days when Mom and Dad were out and, of course, they would never miss a little of that large bottle of vodka in the liquor cabinet. And what would make it easier to drink and easier to hide…dump some healthy orange juice in and voila, a Screwdriver. All those sneaky teens surely did not invent that drink even if they thought they did. A popular story of origin tells us that the drink’s Screwdriver label came about when hard working blue-collar workers (some say miners, some say oil workers) started mixing vodka and orange juice like a sneaky teenager. Lacking a mixing spoon, they just reached for their always handy screwdrivers.
However, the queen of this category, and equal in brunch stature to the Mimosa, is the Bloody Mary. The origin of the Bloody Mary is as cloudy as the history of most other classic cocktails. And indeed, some google searching reveals that a few different bartenders from the early 20th century have claimed credit for its invention. Folks might argue about who invented the Bloody Mary. But, David Wondrich, the noted cocktail historian, points out that, “the larger picture is really actually clear. From about 1900 on, people began drinking, as a hangover cure, the juice out of cans of stewed tomatoes. And then somebody started canning tomato juice.”
Of course, once people discover a new juice, the next logical step is to add liquor to it. Russian immigrants after World War I brought their vodka to the West and the marriage was complete. The original Bloody Mary cocktail was simply equal parts tomato juice and vodka, straightforward, tasty and clean. But in the hundred years since its invention, it has evolved to become more complex, with a tanginess and spiciness created by the addition of lemon juice, hot sauce, salt and pepper, and sometimes even Worcestershire sauce or horseradish. Now, the Bloody Mary generally comes with a salted rim that might include things like bacon bits or Old Bay seasoning.
And then there is the game of garnishment. In my internet research on this subject, I would place the Bloody Mary garnishes I discovered into four categories:
- Normal – celery stalk, lemon wedge, cherry tomato, pickle, olive…
- Slightly Out There – scallions, baby corn, cucumber spear, jalapeno pepper, pickled asparagus…
- Way Out There – cheese chunks, bacon, shrimp, smoked oysters, pickled beets…, and
- Insanely Out There – an entire fried chicken, a whole crab with olives for eyeballs, a burger with tater tots, a medium pizza with chicken wings…).
There seems to be no limit to what clever restaurateurs can balance on top of a large cocktail glass.
I, myself, have never been much of a tomato juice drinker, so it followed that I seldom enjoy a Bloody Mary. But one day, while relaxing in the Orlando golf resort condo we were sharing with our friends Dot and Ron, someone said, “Let’s have Bloody Mary’s with lunch.” We eagerly consented, and proceeded to invoke a combination of Excuses 4 and 7 (golf and a resort both being involved), thus making it socially acceptable.
It was then that Ron turned us on to “Zing Zang,” an award-winning Bloody Mary mix that he learned of years before, drinking a Bloody in an airport bar (note that he was invoking Excuse No 6 at the time). I loved his drink. I found Zing Zang to be a balanced combination of smoothness, tanginess, and spiciness, with no overbearing thick tomato consistency. It was a perfectly acceptable simple alternative when all the required additives were not handy.
Just as in the bubbly category, there are many more vodka juice brunch cocktails beyond the queen. Add grapefruit juice to your vodka and you get a Greyhound; add cranberry and you get a Cape Codder; add apple juice and you get an Adam and Eve; add cranberry and orange juices and you get a Madras; add cranberry and grapefruit and you get a Sea Breeze. You could even bump up your Screwdriver with a little peach schnapps and get a Hairy Navel.
Why Brunch?
The bountiful spread of a good restaurant brunch is a culinary treat to be relished whenever the opportunity presents itself. Here is why.
- Brunches are usually offered on Sundays or holidays. Therefore, you can sit back, relax, and enjoy the morning meal without having to rush off to work;
- Brunch is usually a buffet with lots of choices. Where else can you have Belgian waffles, mac and cheese, fried chicken, crab cake Benedict, and sticky buns right next to each other;
- Brunch is two meals in one. Its name, like smog and motel, a clever portmanteau combination of the breakfast and lunch it replaces. So logically, you are allowed to eat twice as much; and
- You can peruse the menu, and as your eyes fall upon a Mimosa or other early cocktail offering, you can exclaim, “Yeah baby! I’m invoking Excuse No. 9.”
Brunch is not just a quiet meal to start the day. As Mr. Beringer wrote so many years ago, it is cheerful and sociable and can help sweep away the worries and cobwebs of the week. Adding a choice of tasty juicy cocktails can only serve to add liquid support to that sociable enjoyment. Now go grab all your family and friends and get out there to a nearby big bold brunch. But don’t neglect that bubbly beverage.
