July Cocktail of the Month: The Forever Amber

The strawberry: with its distinctive aroma, its bright red color, and its lush juiciness, is there any other fruit that immediately reminds us of summertime? According to a couple of recent studies, the answer is no. More than any other fruit, researchers say, strawberries are correlated with summer and warm weather: most people tend to associate strawberries with fond memories of summer, sunshine, picnics, and childhood in general. Now that we find ourselves well into summer and in the midst of the peak season for strawberries, we here at Bryant’s want to help you make another great summer memory, so we present to you our July Cocktail of the Month: our strawberry hurricane drink, the Forever Amber.

While its sweet strawberry flavor is well suited for the summer months, the Forever Amber is nonetheless a popular cocktail all year round at Bryant’s. Why? Well, as you know, Bryant’s can be quite a romantic place—stories about customers’ first dates and marriage proposals abound here— and for centuries the strawberry has been considered something of an aphrodisiac. Even if you’re unfamiliar with the fruit’s associations with Venus, the Roman goddess of love, desire, beauty, fertility, and sex (among several other things), or its prominence in Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights (in which some art historians see their presence as symbolizing temptation and promiscuity), certainly its bright red color and heart shape makes us think of passion and seduction. Lore has it that sharing a double strawberry with someone will cause you to fall in love with that person, and, if that doesn’t do the trick, you can always dip the sumptuous fruit in chocolate or champagne to help your cause.

So where did the name of this drink come from? No doubt from Forever Amber, an immensely popular (not to mention racy and controversial) bodice-ripper written by Kathleen Winsor in 1944. That book, which was the best-selling novel of the 1940s despite being nearly 1000 pages long and banned in 14 states, describes, oftentimes in a rather frank manner, how its titular heroine Amber St. Clare seduces a succession of men to become the king of England’s mistress, all the while surviving the plague and the Great London Fire in Restoration England. It was shocking and salacious stuff at the time, to be sure. But what better moniker for a strawberry-flavored cocktail than that of the seductive, the promiscuous, the notorious Amber? And when better to enjoy it than now, the summertime? Here at Bryant’s we think every summer can be a summer of love.

Stop in between 5pm and 8pm Sunday through Thursday and be seduced by the Forever Amber for just $6 all month long. Or share one and fall in love.*

*Actual results may vary. 

Cocktail of the Month: The Amelia Cocktail

For September, our Cocktail of the Month is the Amelia cocktail, a vodka-based cocktail that is a play on the famous classic cocktail, the Aviation.  While few of our classic cocktails utilized vodka as a base (in fact, vodka used to be thought of as a cheap liquor more suitable for the drunkard than the sophisticated cocktail drinker), we believe the Amelia is a great cocktail for our vodka loving patrons who are looking for a citrusy cocktail that is more complex than a cosmopolitan.  In fact, if you are apprehensive about trying classic cocktails, or if you don’t know where to start, we believe this is the perfect cocktail for you. 

The Amelia is named after one of the most famous pilots of all time, Amelia Earhart.  For those of you who don’t know, Earhart was the first female pilot to fly across the Atlantic in 1928 and was a well-loved pilot, author, and pioneer of women’s rights in America.  She famously (and some people say mysteriously) disappeared over the Pacific Ocean during her attempt at a trans global flight in 1937. 

In 1938, when Bryant’s first converted his little tavern in to a luxurious cocktail lounge, the world was infatuated with the adventurous Amelia Earhart and her disappearance the year before.  The search teams were still looking for her and many were hopeful that she would be found somewhere alive and well.  After all, how could someone who captured the hearts and minds of a country simply disappear?

We like to believe Amelia Earhart is still alive in the spirit that drove America to recover from the Great Depression and to survive a brutal World War.  In fact, this spirit of adventure and exploration is probably what drove Bryant Sharp to take a risk on his new venture.  We can say with certainty that we are glad he did. 

So, when you sip the Amelia Cocktail, please sip with a spirit of hearty exploration and adventure.  If you are new to classic or craft cocktails, we encourage you to take a risk and try our cocktail of the month.  It is only $6 during Old Fashioned Cocktail Hour, Tuesday through Thursday from 5PM to 9PM.