|
by Ruth Tobias |
October 06, 2008
On a chilly November night two years ago, an old friend and I slid into
a booth in a quiet, candlelit New York bar for what was to be a quick
drink and a chat. Several hours later, we slid out, in tears and in
love — drunk on the potion that was hot buttered rum. Thus owing my whole sex life to a winter warmer, I tend to look rather sentimentally forward to cold snaps.
So
like a Cherokee doing a rain dance in full headdress, I’ve been working
frantically to hasten the season by beseeching the gods — or at least
some local mixologists — to send cocktails: rich, dark, tummy-tingling
cocktails. And lo, they have heard my calls and promised to deliver.
Though not all the concoctions they’re crafting are toddies, all share
dear alcohol’s wondrous ability to “increase[] the volume of warm blood
in the skin” and thereby produce a “feeling of warmth,” as authors
Haven Emerson and Gerald N. Grob put it in Alcohol and Man: The Effects
of Alcohol on Man in Health and Disease. That may not sound so romantic
in the flush of Indian summer, but read on — the scoops I got should
set your capillaries stirring. ...
|
