Naming Rites
It’s probably been a minute since you heard someone order a vodka cranberry with a wedge of lime or a bourbon and ginger with just any old ice. Maybe that’s because all bartenders tighten the leather straps on their aprons at the thought of birthing the next Manhattan or Fuzzy Navel—cocktails immortalized with snappy names now known the world over. Or maybe the sheer number of ingredients shaken into today’s libations requires wrapping them in a convenient label in order to sell them. Whatever the reason, our craft-cocktail-loving culture practically demands we title our drinks.
At Lenoir, my restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina, we named our cocktails to help tell the story of the restaurant’s namesake, Lenoir County—my rural, rich, poor, complicated, and simple home in Eastern North Carolina. drink, my whiskey sour spiked with my blueberry barbecue sauce, the sippable party about which every server, bartender, host, and restaurant regular would know to say, “This is Vivian’s drink”—that task, to encapsulate mycocktail essence in a colloquial phrase, seemed undoable.
