Are you planning to go to the Tales Of the Cocktail festival in the French Quarter of New Orleans? It’s on for late July. Sounds like huge fun. I’m bound to go down for a couple of days of gallivanting (Mr. KB, watch out!). This I’ve decided after reading Bitters: A Spirited History of a Classic Cure-All, by Brad Thomas Parsons. If you have the slightest interest in cocktails, or culinary craftsmanship of any sort, this book is for you. Many years ago, I used to read GQ magazine not for the fashion, none of which I could afford, but because I loved reading short features about things like a little old English craftsman who makes the world’s greatest penny loafer. I’m interested in people who geek out over things like that. Bitters is definitely for cocktail geeks, and it’s inspired me to plan to geek out and make my own bitters (there are a number of recipes in the book).
Anyway, I know that Brad Thomas Parsons will be at TOTC, because Bitters, which won the James Beard Foundation Book Award for Beverage, is up for a big award at TOTC. My old high school chum and rock star New Orleans bartender Alan Walter will no doubt be in the thick of it. Below, on this Times-Picayune video, watch Alan make a fantastic-looking summer drink called the Red Wing:
theOtherWill 
MH - Secular Misanthropist 
Todd 
N.O. is a great city for cocktails, even if the Sazerac is a bit wintry for the hot summers. (A Pimms Cup, despite its alien roots, is my summertime choice when a mint julep would be too sugary.)
I have a friend who’s kin to Henry Charles Ramos, he of the Ramos Gin Fizz. My friend hosts a great party at his house every few years, at which when he makes Ramos Gin Fizzes from the original recipe, a photocopy of which survived Katrina. It’s a long and slow process with a dozen steps and as many ingredients, but when it’s done, it’s a thing to be hold.
But I only be holding it for about two minutes because the other joy of this drink is that you have to drink it fast — much faster than it was made — or else the eggs and cream and fizz will harden into a beaver-dam of meringue that seals the glass shut. So you can savor it, but you’ve got to savor it FAST.