It is Easter weekend, which is about the busiest my calendar gets every year. I have hardly had time to breathe this week, let alone read this blog, never mind contribute. The craziness of my schedule has even prevented me from doing that which I love most: watch sports and drink. And that all ends Sunday afternoon.
Every Easter, I throw a Resurrection Barbecue, where we throw some ham on the grill, dressed in our Sunday best, drinking beer and, more importantly, breaking out the greatest summer drink you\’ve never had: The Charles River Highball.
The Charles River Highball is liquid summer. It is warm evenings on a porch with friends, the rhythms of a gentle breeze and the fading noise of a neighborhood getting ready to go out. It is walking through a park with your partner (or dog), feeling the sun on the back of your neck. It is sitting in the bleachers at a Little League game, cheering for some stranger’s kid, because if baseball is being played, it’s a sin to walk past without watching.
It’s also gin, ginger ale, orange juice and bitters, but like the 2010 West (By God) Virginia Mountaineers, it’s not the parts, but the whole that matters. I think this makes Bob Huggins, appropriately, the bitters — without them, this drink still works, but it doesn’t quite come together to blow your mind. Let the Dukes of the world have their vodka martinis, all shine and pomposity. Let the Butlers of the world have their Jack and Cokes, workmanlike and predictable. Let the Michigan States of the world die in a fire*. Give me a Charles River Highball, a drink that blends too many things together, looks like the polluted river it’s named after, but comes together as the worthy champion at the end of it all.
The drink, as the inventor crafts it:
Get a large pitcher and half-fill it with ice.
Cover the ice with gin (any gin works, but Hendricks gin brings it up an extra level)
Fill the rest of the pitcher with equal parts orange juice and ginger ale.
Pour on the bitters and stir slowly until it looks less FFFF and more FFCC**.
Drink it ’til it’s gone and make another, but now with equal parts gin, ginger ale and orange juice.
Be a champion.
Cheers.
* I hate Michigan State like Pop hates Glenn Beck, with a bemused fury.
** I will search the archives for an actual picture of one, but HTML geekery will have to suffice.
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