the drunken botanist / By Amy Stewart

Hot Toddies

(Jan. 12, 2012)  A friend of mine has been on a grueling book tour to promote her new novel. One night in early December, after she’d been on the road for weeks, she posted a note on Facebook that she’d developed a scratchy throat on the road and had done the only sensible thing: called room service and asked them to send up a pot of hot water, lemons, honey, and a shot of Jack Daniel’s.

For just a minute, I think we were all jealous of the many comforts her slight discomfort entitled her to. Room service. Hot toddy. The other luxuries of hotel living:  an enormous clean bed, an unrestricted thermostat, a tub that fills endlessly with hot water, and a telephone that will be answered, at any hour, by a person whose only job is to ensure that you have a pleasant evening.

Apple hot toddy PHOTO BY AMY STEWART

GALLERY >

This is why hot toddies were invented:  as a consolation prize for life’s small, wintery difficulties.  They cure nothing — they certainly don’t cure colds — but they offer such warm solace that you almost want to suffer through something so that you might deserve one. For instance, it would be worth getting lost on a mountain ridge (for, say, half an hour), or trudging (a few blocks) through the snow, or having to run out in a storm to throw a tarp over that thing you were hoping wouldn’t get rained on, just to get something hot and boozy at the end of it.

And that is why, after a warm, sunny December that made Eureka look like Santa Barbara, it’s almost a relief to finally descend into the gloom and misery of a winter on the North Coast. Now, at last, we have earned our hot toddies. Just living in Humboldt during January and February entitles you to one of these.  (Those of you who are escaping to Mexico or Hawaii this month don’t get one. Go drink your daiquiris, send us one of your cheery postcards, and post those blurry sunset cellphone photos to Facebook, which we will obligingly “like” — but leave the toddies to us. It’s all we have.)

A toddy is a very old drink; cocktail historian David Wondrich, in his wonderful book Punch: The Delights and Dangers of the Flowing Bowl, finds evidence that Scottish and Irish drinkers were dipping into hot bowls of whiskey and water and sugar and lemon in the mid-1700s and calling it a toddy. Our first recipe — the classic hot toddy — is just that.

Hot Toddy

1.5 oz whiskey

1 sugar cube or dollop of honey

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