Copyright Baton Rouge Advocate
At 83 years of age, John Shelton Reed has authored or edited a whopping two dozen books. His most recent work, “The Ramos Gin Fizz,” was published this summer by LSU Press as part of their popular series on iconic New Orleans cocktails. The book fits well into Reed’s oeuvre, most of which has focused on the contemporary American South. That makes sense for a lifelong Southerner. He was born in Kingsport, Tennessee, but has lived in Chapel Hill since 1969, when he took a job teaching sociology at the University of North Carolina. “The only time I moved out of the South was 10 years for college and graduate school, but then I came back with great relief,” he laughed. “I wanted my daughters to grow up as Southerners, though now they live in California and Rhode Island, so the joke is on me.” The Ramos gin fizz ignited Reed’s interest as many regional topics have before it. The flashy drink, once dubbed “the Cadillac of cocktails,” has had moments of intense popularity and Reed — a past Guggenheim Fellow and chancellor of the Fellowship of Southern Writers — delighted in the opportunity to dive into thousands of archived articles in creating this book. And, if you want to make your own, the book has the original recipe as well as more recent riffs on the drink. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Let’s start off with what exactly is a Ramos gin fizz. What are the ingredients and what is its taste profile? Well, first, it has upward of three times as many ingredients as most other cocktails: lemon and lime juices, gin — of course — is in the name, orange flower water, heavy cream, egg whites, sugar, and seltzer. There is a lot going on! You put it all together, you shake it like crazy for quite some time, and you get this foamy masterpiece that tastes like an orange Dreamsicle. It’s light on the alcohol, so it goes down easy, but it’s also rich so you probably don’t want to drink three of them in one sitting. As the LSU Press “Iconic New Orleans Cocktails” series shows, if you want to write a book about a mixed drink invented in the Crescent City, you have quite a few options. Why did you choose the Ramos gin fizz? With a baseline of nine ingredients, there is a lot to talk about. Plus, we know who the founder of the drink is, and that helps in crafting a story. Finally, as I did a little bit of research, I saw this was a cocktail with an amazing history. It seemed like it would be a lot of fun to work on, and I was right. Let’s get into some of that history. What is the drink’s origin story? Well, Henry Ramos was a German immigrant to New Orleans who owned a bar on Gravier Street called the Imperial Cabinet Saloon. Ramos got his start working in beer halls, and he sometimes toyed with inventing various drinks. The one that really caught on was his gin fizz, which he created around 1890. Businessmen would come from the old Cotton Exchange at all hours of the day for the cocktail. Its reputation grew, and soon you had tourists coming to New Orleans with a to-do list topped by trying a gin fizz at Mr. Ramos’ bar. Records show he did an astonishing amount of business. At one point he was using 5,000 egg whites every week and had a dozen bartenders on hand — and that was during the slow season, it was way more during Mardi Gras — just to make this one complicated drink. But your book says the cocktail had a bit of a roller-coaster ride in popularity after that, right? Exactly. Obviously all alcohol took a hit during Prohibition, but the Ramos gin fizz was hit especially hard. That’s because it was thought of as a sophisticated drink that was relatively light on alcohol. People illegally drinking during Prohibition, however, were doing it to get drunk, and the gin fizz wasn’t as helpful in that regard. Fortunately, as you mention in the book, the late ’90s and early 2000s started a cocktail revival. The Ramos gin fizz has survived. It certainly has. Not only can you find a Ramos gin fizz in craft cocktail bars in New Orleans, but you can also find it in cities across the country and the world. Did you find there is anything different about a gin fizz today compared to Henry Ramos’ original drink? For one, many mixologists have taken all of this shaking to the extreme. Ramos was probably having his gin fizz shaken for three minutes at most. Later on, that probably became five minutes for showmanship. But, over the years, it has gotten ridiculous! Twelve minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes? It is probably unnecessary, but it is memorable. The other component is the tower of foam at the top of the drink. Ramos would have relied on foam from the egg whites and that would have been much less. Today, a lot of bartenders pour seltzer down the side which kind of activates this massive tower. If we have activated someone’s craving for this cocktail, where are some of your favorites in New Orleans? You can get good ones all over town, but I like the Sazerac Bar at The Roosevelt Hotel because they played such a big part in the drink’s revival, Revel in Mid-City because Chris McMillan is so knowledgeable about how these drinks were originally made, Cure on Freret Street because they have such a strong lineup of classic cocktails, and of course the award-winning Jewel of the South. At 83 years, including a writing career that is now in its fifth decade, it would be understandable if "The Ramos Gin Fizz" was your last book before retirement. Are you done? Ha, good question. After each of my last four or five books I’ve said that was my last. But then some publisher asks if I would be interested in writing about something else, almost always related to the South. It usually sounds fun, so I do it.
