This is the violet hour, the hour of hush and wonder, when the affections glow again and valor is reborn, when the shadows deepen magically along the edge of the forest and we believe that, if we watch carefully, at any moment we may see the unicorn.
Bernard DeVoto, The Hour

The concept of Mr. DeVoto’s violet hour was not one of familiarity in my family, this hour spent sipping cocktails in the gloaming while quietly discussing the day just finished. But being the experienced drinkers we are, no telling how many unicorns have been sighted.

The Violet Hour has become a play, a novel, a band, a song, and a bar in Chicago, the kind with mixologists rather than bartenders. DeVoto, who published The Hour in 1948, kept it simple however. He was of the opinion that there are only two cocktails: a slug of whiskey and the martini. The first, and my personal favorite, was made by simply pouring whiskey over ice, and he goes into loving detail about the making of a martini. Six o’clock is the hour and the goal is purification, apparently from the woes and cares of the day. With the first sip of the first cocktail “illusion ebbs away; the water of life has swept us into its current…. Your pulse steadies and the sun has found your heart.” Not to mention the unicorn.

On my bookshelves reside several other fine old volumes that include recipes from the early days of cocktail culture. The Gentleman’s Companion, Volume II, Around the World with Jigger, Beaker, and Glass, by Charles H. Baker, copyrighted in 1939, is one and includes indigenous recipes from Singapore to Saigon to Cuba and ports in between. His adventures included drinks with Hemingway in Key West and Havana. Baker set out to “…bring you famous liquid classics from odd spots of the world—classics which, through the test of time and social usage, have become institutions in the place of their birth.” A number of these classics are still around, like the daiquiri, mojito, Fish House Punch, and some, like the Sazarac, are making a comeback. (Volume I, by the way, is about food—Around the World with Knife, Fork and Spoon.)

“One comfortable fact gleaned from travel in far countries,“ wrote Mr. Baker, “was that regardless of race, creed or inner metabolisms, mankind has always created varying forms of stimulant liquid—each after his own kind. Prohibitions and nations and kings depart, but origin of such pleasant fluid finds constant source.” Indeed. Here’s to unicorns.