Lobotomy

My investigations into the origin of the Sazerac cocktail the other day prompted some recollections on the earliest phase of my interest in cocktail making, when I was an undergraduate at University.

'Cocktail parties' were quite the rage as fundraisers for student societies and so on in my day, and I had many, many brain-bludgeoning experiences at such events; and, indeed, staged a good few of them myself. I achieved something of a reputation for my rare ability to balance profitability with customer satisfaction.

I bought my first cocktail shaker as a Christmas present to myself at the end of my first term. And I began the Spring term by inviting all of my new friends to 'Collections Cocktails' in my room at breakfast time. (At Oxford, 'Collections' are internally administered exams that take place on the Friday before the beginning of each term, to check on how much holiday reading has - or has not - been done. Naturally, we Freshers were somewhat apprehensive about our first encounter with this vicious little torture.) Most people just had coffee and toast. Only a few people joined me in something stronger. But I, of course, had been up since 7 or so, mixing and testing drinks half an hour or more before anyone else showed up; I drank throughout.... and somewhat overran the projected end-time of the party. Indeed, I was about 10 minutes late reporting to Hall to pick up my 'Collections' from my tutor, and I was - though reining it in manfully - quite conspicuously drunk by that time. So drunk, in fact, that I was probably unduly forthright with my tutor. "Are these the Unseens?" I asked him. "No," he replied, somewhat tetchily, "they're the Set Book translation papers on the reading you were assigned over Christmas." "I know what I mean," I said.

Anyway, of all the cocktails I devised during this period, the most successful and the most deadly was tellingly christened the Lobotomy. It was just a variation on the Screwdriver, but the little tweaks I added could turn the drink into something quite devastating.

It was all about deception and misdirection. I added a little Cointreau to the mix (roughly a generous half-measure, to a double measure of vodka), to disguise any smell or flavour of the base spirit with a big hit of orangeyness. I would generally also add just a few drops of syrup, to raise the sugar content even higher: sugar disguises the taste of anything else, and dramatically accelerates the uptake of alcohol into your bloodstream. In the original version, I also defied cocktail conventions by combining unlike spirits - vodka and gin, 50/50 - in the belief that those with particularly astute olfactory apparatus might become confused by the mixed data they received and perhaps conclude that the drink contained neither. (And I do believe it worked; although it is perhaps an unnecessary over-refinement, and these days I tend to make it with vodka only.) I used to boost the alcohol content even higher with a lavish dash of overproof vodka (at that time, soon after the collapse of Communism in Poland, Wyborowa vodka was just making its appearance in England; these days, I gather, the brand is migrating upmarket, but in those days the standard product was not especially nice but a whopping 140°proof - just what you need for spiking drinks). Then, of course, you'd top up (usually a Collins glass; although I have been known to make this in half-pints!) with orange juice - freshly-squeezed obviously preferable in most respects, although in fact the extra sugar and the lurid artificial colourants of lesser brands are more effective in colouring the drink and masking its alcohol content. The final embellishment - and this, I think, might have been the real key - is a splash of lemon juice, to undercut the sweetness. Serve with a few ice cubes, and a thin slice of orange or lemon as a garnish. There you go.

I know, it doesn't sound like much, but...... there is a strange alchemy about this drink. It's very fiddly to get the proportions just so, to perfectly counteract the sweetness with lemon, to completely disguise the presence of the main spirit content, to get the orangeyness tasting natural. Trust, me, if you get this just right, you have a drink which - despite being a good 30-35% alcohol - looks and tastes exactly like orange juice. I used to get people falling-down drunk with this stuff in no time. They just couldn't believe how strong it was.

The most notorious victim of this drink's seeming innocuousness was my good friend, The Bookseller. I threw a cocktail party for my birthday at the beginning of my second year, in which the newly invented Lobotomy was to play a starring role. The Bookseller, a Freshman, was supposed to be attending a getting-to-know-you soirée with the President of our college that night, but - despite my admonitions to the contrary - insisted on coming to my party first, and trying to get as drunk as possible in the space of half an hour or so. The evening ahead was likely to be a particularly embarrassing ordeal for him because he had some distant family connection with the President, and his parents were anxious for him to convey their greetings and to have their boy make a good impression. He decided that the best way to deal with this weight of parental expectations and to soothe the nervousness they produced in him was to insulate himself with alcohol; or, as he put it, to get "stotting drunk". The Lobotomy, of course, undid him. The Bookseller was never much good at genteel small talk, but I gather from eye-witnesses that his conversation was particularly inappropriate in its subject matter and its excessive enthusiasm that night in the President's parlour. That is, until he came over all woozy, and had to excuse himself. He found his way to a bathroom upstairs...... and proceeded to throw up in the bathtub (I do hope he cleared up thoroughly after himself. He probably did, although this element of the story is not recorded.). He then lay with his head propped forlornly on the edge of the bath, contemplating his handiwork for the better part of an hour while he slowly recovered himself. He became obsessively fascinated by the pattern his vomit had made. "You know, it looked just like a map of Australia!" he would be telling people for weeks afterwards.