By Mackensy Lunsford / Photos By Matt Rose
Some Sunday mornings are serene. The birds are chirping, The New York Times awaits your perusal, the smell of coffee drifts through the house. Other Sundays are, well, not so ideal. They usually follow the all-too-festive Saturday nights. The Sundays of pulsating temples, sandpaper tongue and desert eyes; those are the Sundays that demand a stiff Bloody Mary.
While the exact origins of this restorative tonic are a bit murky, cocktail lore suggests that the imbibing of the Bloody to defeat a hangover goes back to, appropriately enough, the Roaring ‘20s. The comedian George Jessel is sometimes credited with developing the first Bloody Mary. It was a simpler version of the cocktail we know today, little more than vodka and tomato juice.
General consensus attributes the creation of the classic Bloody Mary to Fernand Petiot, a bartender at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris in the 1920s. Petiot spiced the mix with Worcestershire sauce, lemon, salt and pepper and later perfected his concoction at New York’s St. Regis Hotel, adding Tabasco sauce to the blend.
The St. Regis attempted to rename the drink a “Red Snapper” (“bloody” being considered a bit too rough and tumble a term) but the original gory appellation stuck, and the Bloody Mary recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, with appropriate reverence and revelry, in the bars and taverns of New York City.
The one certain thing about the Bloody Mary—the recipe has become, well, bloody-well convoluted over the years. Enterprising bartenders mix in fanciful additions like harissa (hot chili paste), wasabi, and whatever else they can get their hands on. But just as Sunday morning post-revelers tend to lean heavily toward the basic breakfast, the traditional Bloody Mary prevails. As they say, if it ain’t broke, go ahead and drink it.
Justin Crawford, the mixologist and general manager at Nova, concurs. “I like the classic. I stick to that rather than getting too fancy-pants with it.” Crawford whips up a fairly traditional version for Sunday brunches. His recipe packs a bit of a punch with a liberal dash (or several) of Tabasco in the mix, salt, pepper and Old Bay Seasoning on the rim.
To Crawford, the theory behind a good Bloody Mary is the same theory that pervades the menu at Nova: good recipes begin with good ingredients. The most important component? “Since you always have about three parts more tomato juice than anything else in there, it basically comes down to the quality of your juice,” he says, adding that he prefers Knudsen organic tomato juice. “You can’t beat it. It’s a little thick, but if you’re putting the full two ounces of vodka into your drink, you get the desired consistency.”
But what about that vodka? Doesn’t a great Bloody beg for Belvedere? Really…no, says Crawford. “Especially with vodka—where its whole point is to be flavorless and odorless—you’re not really getting a harsh profile from bad vodka [in a Bloody Mary]. You’re already expecting spice and the bite, so the negatives from cheap vodka don’t really come through.” Crawford is quick to add that his well vodka is Smirnoff. “I wouldn’t exactly use Popov,” he says with a smile.
Nova, 109 Broadway Asheville, 828-505-2152
