The Return of Punch
The big cocktail in a bowl makes a comeback
Hanging out in New York City in the late 1700s, you might find yourself at the Queen’s Head Tavern—now known as the Fraunces Tavern in Lower Manhattan—splitting a bowl of punch with some friends. Today, a few miles away in the East Village, Death & Co has brought that tradition back.
Before there were cocktails, there were punches: mixed drinks made in large quantities, presented in bowls, and shared socially. And that’s what happens at places like Death & Co, which has three different punches, served in antique milk-glass punch bowls with matching glasses and a silver ladle. A bowl goes for $38, and serves about two rounds of drinks for four to six people. The lounge offers Fish House Punch, made with peach brandy, Cognac, and rum; Kill-Devil Punch, which includes pineapple juice, rum, and champagne; and Mothers Ruin Punch, a mix of gin, tea-infused vermouth, citrus juices, and champagne.
Served in Wallace Silversmiths 15-Piece Grande Baroque Punch Set,
$1,119.90
“It’s a convenient way to entertain,” says Thad Vogler, a San Francisco–based bar consultant and the former bar manager at Jardinière and the Slanted Door. Vogler offered seven punches at Jardinière’s 10-year anniversary party. “I think the modern trend [of punch bowl service] is part of the trappings of revisiting all of the traditional drinking that happened before Prohibition,” he says.
At the Hawksmoor in London, General Manager Nick Strangeway has offered punch service since the bar opened two years ago, because it is a way to serve skillfully mixed drinks to large groups of people instead of resorting to “mundane” bottle service. Strangeway says he also likes the sense of drama the presentation creates, with the beautiful bowls and garnishes. The Hawksmoor serves six different punches by the bowl for two to ten people.
Punch, the Manly Drink
But the Hawksmoor’s punches—like a mix of pineapple-infused bourbon, passion fruit purée, lemon juice, maple syrup, pineapple juice, and Prosecco—are distant cousins of the drink’s original recipe. Punch used to follow a strict formula, says cocktail historian Wondrich. Originally, it was composed of five ingredients: spirits (rum, brandy, or Batavia arrack—see sidebar); sugar; water; citrus; and spice (usually grated nutmeg, but sometimes green or black tea). “It was like a martini,” says Wondrich. “There was a way to make punch, and there were a couple of allowable variations, but it wasn’t ‘anything goes.’”
PUNCH RECIPES
For Punch with a Punch
Batavia arrack, a liquor used in early punch-making, disappeared from the United States after Prohibition. In 2007, Haus Alpenz, a company that specializes in importing exotic and hard-to-find spirits, reintroduced it to North America.
Batavia arrack is a distillate of both sugarcane and fermented red rice, and is only manufactured on the island of Java in Indonesia. Between the rice and the time it spends stored in teak, it develops a distinct flavor. “It’s veeeeerry funky, and very pungent,” says David Wondrich, cocktail historian and author of Imbibe!. “If you make a bowl of proper arrack punch, you’ll smell it everywhere.”
Eric Seed, owner of Haus Alpenz, says, “It marries especially well with spices and fruit, yet it has a back-palate effect similar to that of dark chocolate.” Because of its unique flavor profile, he says, the heart of its sales today is still in Europe to chocolatiers. “You can use it in lieu of a vanilla,” Seed says.
Ted Haigh, author of Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails, claims that making punch with arrack “is a revelation.” Try it for yourself with this recipe for Bombay Government Punch based on English punch-house regulations from 1694.
You can order Batavia arrack from Union Square Wines for $32.99. Also, take note when shopping for it: Don’t confuse Batavia arrack with Sri Lanka arak or arrak, which is a palm wine–based spirit; or Lebanese arak, which is an anise-flavored grape spirit.
The Return of Punch (cont.)
The first appearance of the word punch, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is in a 1632 letter from Robert Addams to Thomas Colley, a merchant at Pettapoli, a short-lived English settlement in the Bay of Bengal. The OED points to the word’s origins as being the Marathi and Hindi term paunch, meaning “five,” a reference to the original five-ingredient recipe.
Served in Virginia Punch Set, $129.95
Wondrich says that he’s found evidence that the five-ingredient formula for punch was served in England (under different, local names) before trading began with India, but he doesn’t know whether or not the English invented it. Vintage Spirits author Haigh thinks that it was first made in India and was discovered by Europeans, who developed the same sort of fascination for the drink as they had for silks, spices, and sugar. “Punch did contain five ingredients, all available easily in India,” he says. “Only one, water, was common in Europe.”
Punch was popular in England from the 1600s to the 1800s, and it hopped the pond to Colonial America, where it was served in taverns and at parties in private homes. Thomas Jefferson’s father is said to have traded a large piece of land for a bowl of arrack punch. Because punch was made with imported ingredients like citrus and spices, and it was made in large quantities, it was too expensive for the lower classes. “It was a gentlemanly drink,” says Wondrich. It was one of the few things a man would prepare himself and not trust to the servants.
Served in Virginia Punch Set, $129.95
The gentlemen, however, “were a pretty rowdy lot,” Wondrich says, noting that punch was very strong and that “it led to a lot of riotous behavior back in the day.” This is well documented in books: Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities by William S. Walsh, copyrighted in 1892, recounts poet Samuel Coleridge and composer Theodore Hook getting trashed and breaking stuff at a party, rock star–style.
The first glass of the punch was handed to Hook, who paused to quaff it, and then, exclaiming that he was stifled, flung his glass through the window. Coleridge rose … and demolished another pane; the example was followed generally,—the window was a sieve in an instant; the kind host was farthest from the mark, and his goblet made havoc of the chandelier. The roar of laughter was drowned in Theodore’s resumption of the song … 
Served in Wallace Silversmiths 15-Piece Grande Baroque Punch Set, $1,119.90
If it was such a good time, why did punch fall out of fashion? It could have been the tightening social norms of the Victorian era, or that people no longer had time to linger over a bowl and opted for the quick fix of the cocktail instead. Haigh says the drink lost its identity. As the cocktail was gaining ground in the 19th century, punch was simultaneously becoming more elaborate, more foofy, with concoctions including liqueurs, syrups, and multiple spirits. It’s a trend that never seemed to stop, culminating in a “virgin” mess of soda, tropical fruit, and sherbet ladled into plastic cups at high school proms.
With its revival, punch may reclaim its bad-boy roots. “I served a famous New York boxer and his crew punch,” says Death & Co co-owner David Kaplan. “They seemed to like it, iced-out grills and all.” 
PUNCH RECIPES
