Astragalomancy is the art of using dice (or “astragaloi” in ancient Greek) to gain insights into the future, a practice that was once as widespread as it is ancient. Ritual dice-rolling was practiced by the Shona people of Zimbabwe, helped decide legal questions in the Tibetan Empire, and Julius Caesar famously uttered the phrase “Alea iacta est!” – “The die is cast!” – after crossing the Rubicon and plunging his country into the civil war that ultimately made him an emperor.
In 1971, American novelist George Cockroft (writing under the name Luke Rhinehart) penned ‘The Dice Man,’ supposedly an autobiography of a psychiatrist who decided to surrender all his life decisions to the roll of a die. It became a cult classic in every country but America, has remained in print for decades, and includes billionaire Richard Branson among its fans, who said it helped build his Virgin Records empire.
(Amazon.com)
This novel immortalized the surrender all life decisions to the roll of a die.
This summer, Smith & Wollensky beverage director Christian Gianaris realized he could use the practice to make a better cocktail. The upscale steakhouse at the southern tip of South Beach is giving diners an “Off the Rails” experience, in which we can roll dice three times to construct an old fashioned, step by step: once for the kind of bourbon, once for the sweetener, and once for the bitters.
(Courtesy of Smith & Wollensky)
Smith & Wollensky wants you to roll the dice to take a chance on the ingredients of your old fashioned.
It’s halfway between rolling for a random encounter in a D&D game and letting luck be a lady a la Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando in ‘Guys and Dolls.’
Gianaris says he was influenced by both nerdy roleplaying and Rat Pack cool when he came up with the concept.
“I am a HUGE nerd – I listen to wine podcasts and love ‘Star Wars,’” he says. “Fortunately, I also have years of previous experience working at a casino. The idea first came out of a discussion I had with our VP of culinary, Chef Brian Doyle. He told me about an experience he had one night out for drinks in London. He had a ‘build your own Negroni’ at a bar that included, oddly enough, D&D-style dice. He and I sat down in our Seaport Boston Location and started making all kinds of crazy old fashioneds and experimenting with various garnishes. I mentioned to him that everyone was going to think we had gone off the rails. ‘Great name,’ he said and the ‘Off the Rails Old Fashioned’ category was born.”
The crusty and cynical might recoil at the thought of letting so much chaos into the composition of a well-composed cocktail, but for Biscayne tipplers and other fatalist followers of Fortuna, the dice make an awful lot of sense … especially for the cocktail known as “the old fashioned.”
To truly understand that one has to go back to first principles.
RETRO BACK THEN
“Originally, in the mid-19th century, a cocktail would have been defined as a combination of alcoholic spirit, water, sugar, and bitters,” explains Jeff Warner, a director of operations at Miami’s Ariete Hospitality Group and a bit of a cocktail scholar.
The Scapegoat - King Kong
“At its most basic, it is mainly spirit, with a little bit of water, a little bit of sugar and a little bit of bitters, just enough to sort of maybe make it more approachable. “In an effort to get innovative, you might not just use regular sugar, you might use a different alternative sweetener, maybe in the form of fruit ... there might be the inclusion of different liqueurs, like chartreuse or Curaçao. But too much of any good thing can be a bad thing. I think it got to the point where it was like, you know, ‘Make me a cocktail, but don't don't put any fruit, don't put any weird liqueurs or anything like that in the cocktail. Just give it to me … the old-fashioned way.’”
(Nicolás A. Jiménez for Ariete Hospitality Group)
Ariete's Jeff Warner knows a thing or two about serving cocktails "the old fashioned way."
That is the most accepted version of where the “old fashioned” as a cocktail name comes from – not a recipe, but a system for approaching a spirit. A system for getting back to basics. The very simplicity of it invites one to poke at each level of it and see how one alteration changes the whole. That’s probably why there are so many variations, and why the drink keeps coming back into fashion.
“I think that anybody who achieves balance is doing it right,” Warner says.
THE FRUIT QUESTION
“If you go to Wisconsin, the traditional old fashioned there, which a lot of people call ‘the Wisconsin old fashioned,’ is brandy-based and it includes muddled cherries and oranges in place of sugar,” says Warner. “It’s bizarre to me because, getting back to the original, ‘make my drink the old-fashioned way,’ meant ‘don't put that fruit in my cocktail.’ Yet variations today still have the fruit in the cocktail.”
For introducing a Miami vibe into “one made the old-fashioned way,” Warner points to the King Kong: one and half ounces of bourbon, half an ounce specifically of Smith and Cross rum, half an ounce of banana liqueur (he’s always used Giffard), a couple of dashes of Angostura bitters, and a lemon garnish.
(Jeannie Balfour for Biscayne Times)
The Taurus, Miami's legendary oldest bar, is known for making a mean old fashioned, as Nancy the bartender is doing here.
“I have found a ton of success behind the bar here in Miami with that,” Warner says.
Closer to the by-the-book old fashioned is the one poured at The Taurus, which has a claim to being the oldest bar in the city. They tweak their recipe by splitting the “sweet” between white and demerara or turbinado sugar (to bring out the maltiness of the bourbon) and splitting the “bitter” between Angostura and orange bitters. As a final touch, instead of simply expressing the oil from the orange-peel garnish over the top of the cocktail, they actually do it over a lit matchstick.
(bellyfull.net)
Making a classic old fashioned requires just a few basic ingredients, that is if you want to make it the old-fashioned way.
“It adds a darker and heavier nuance, if that makes sense,” says Warner. His favorite local old fashioned has another specific, small difference that makes it superior.
“Cafe La Trova on Calle Ocho is probably my favorite bar in the entire city and makes an absolutely phenomenal old fashioned. They do it the very, very old-school way, which is a sugar cube as opposed to simple syrup. A sugar cube not only adds, you know, the obvious great flavor to the cocktail, but there's something of a texture component.”
(Sophia Balfour for Biscayne Times)
Can a roll of the dice bring out the best in a cocktail?
The ingredients for each drink are simple, the differences in technique are minor, but the end results are delightfully distinctive.
“When I hear about bars or restaurants like Smith & Wollensky that have gamified the entire cocktail where you roll dice and it determines your spirit, your sugar, and your bitters …” Warner laughs. “I'm willing to bet that in the mid-nineteenth century, they weren't rolling dice to figure out what they're drinking. But at the same time, it wasn't super far off.”
BY THE NUMBERS
The dice do not lead you astray. Unlike the binary “yes/no” of a coin flip, the dice offer options, and can suggest alternatives that would not immediately come to mind. Sitting down at Smith & Wollensky, you can watch the ships pass Fisher Island, and take your dice cup in hand.
Black for a spirit, amber for a sweetener, and green for bitters. Roll a six for spirit, and you start with a Whistlepig Piggyback Rye (have you even heard of a Whistlepig Rye?). Roll a two for sweetener and you’ve got maple (now, maple and rye sound like they were meant to go together, right?). Roll a final five for bitters and huh … that’s interesting. A four. Chocolate bitters? Isn’t that more of a dessert thing?
‘Well, yes … and no. Together, they’re sort of a revelation. Not a combination that one might have chosen, but maybe a combination one should.
Simple combinations and re-combinations are at the heart of all cocktails, and really all cooking. The dice just bring the essential elements into focus. Gianaris has found the Off the Rails Old Fashioned concept such a success, Smith & Wollensky have expanded it to other classic cocktails.
“Recently, for this spring/summer menu release, we added the 2:16 Negroni,” he says. “This is similar to what Chef had experienced in London. It’s named 2:16 because there are 216 variations that can be created with the ingredients listed.”
Grant Balfour is a Miami Beach native, writer, editor, traveler, musician, bon vivant and our official Biscayne Tippler.