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(ARCHIVE) Vol. XXI No. 4, June 16-30, 2011
Make mine a 'Madras'
(By V. Vijaysree)

Recently, it occurred to me – while I was at a bar, of course – that my hometown has one thing in common with New York’s oldest and most famous borough, Manhattan: both have decent cocktails named after them. But while the Manhattan, a classic, was invented in the Big Apple, the Madras certainly did not originate in its namesake city on the Coromandel Coast.

In its present form, the Madras is a highball: a vodka-based drink with cranberry juice and a splash of orange juice to top it off. The drink reminds me of cheap, brightly-dyed cloth bleeding in the wash. The older version, a visual stunner, which Gourmet magazine calls a “snow cone of a drink”, calls for cognac and a variety of liqueurs. Poured on densely packed ice, the liquids evoke a turquoise-and-brown cotton plaid. Once upon a time that used to be Madras’s best known export to the West: textiles with the ‘Madras-checks’ design. Starting in the mid-1840s, Madras began receiving consignments of ice, cut from the frozen ponds of New England; the frozen water trade went on for some forty years. Ships sailed from Boston harbour with this precious cargo.

Ice from ponds in New England travelled to several cities in the U.S., helping to make cocktails widely popular throughout America. “Iced drinks had always been available for the few, but in the 1830s, with the burgeoning trade in fresh, clean New England ice, delivered by horse-drawn carts from insulated central warehouses even in the hottest months of the year, ordinary people started getting used to the stuff, expecting it, calling for it in their drinks. Suddenly, the bar-tending game was entirely transformed,” says David Wondrich, cocktail historian, in his book Imbibe!

In 1856, the research-oriented bartender who could conjure up innovative mixed drinks acquired a new name: mixologist. Modern mixologists work with a dazzling array of tools and ingredients. In some high-end bars, experts use liquid nitrogen to chill cocktail glasses, so that ice can stay in the drink longer without melting. Ice continues to be at the core of the cocktail: it chills the drink and dilutes alcohol in it to an acceptable level. The clink of hard ice against glass, that musical sound-effect, is pure la gniappe.

When ice arrived from New England, packed in pine sawdust, classifications like chilling ice and drinking ice simply didn’t exist. Natural ice was considered good enough to be dropped directly into drinks. At the Marina Beach in Madras, shore hands must have moved swiftly to remove the gelid blocks away from the glare of sunlight and into the windowless Ice House for storage. Back then, a simple cold drink, any sundowner, must have seemed magical, even without embellishments.

A good century and a half later, I still marvel at the fact that crystalline water could survive a journeyof 3-4 months to arrive at a distant tropical destination, more or less intact. The transport of ice that made cocktails possible boggles the mind.


In this issue

Monorail, Metro, MRTS, buses...
It's not Tamil, a sudden discovery after decades
Green prisons now educate their inmates
I have a dream, I have a story
Kelly's Drain– Where was it?
Make mine a 'Madras'
Other stories

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Short 'N' Snappy
a-Musing
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Quizzin' with Ram'nan
Dates for your diary

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