Farnham reports that the list of agencies that serve liquor on the premises include names such as BBDO, TBWA/Chiat/Day, Grey Group, and Mindshare. Two other standouts include J. Walter Thompson, which reportedly boasts a 50-foot bar, and Kirshenbaum, Bond, Senecal + Partners, which creates advertisements for Glenfiddich whisky and Hendricks gin, among other liquors.

Company representatives say that most of the imbibing takes place after the day's work is done. And others say the drinks can help take the sting out of workdays that can easily extend past 12 hours.

 
But another common theme is the idea that drinking on the job helps co-workers bond — and it can also spark creative solutions.

During the 20th Century, various bad ideas encrusted the Old Fashioned. Here we will strip off those barnacles to expose the amazingly simple and sublime drink beneath.

The obvious use for these is as cocktail cherries and I won’t stand in your way there. Spoon a few with a little syrup over a scoop of icecream to bring a little summer flavor back into fall.

It's anything distilled from sugarcane or sugarcane by-products. Unlike scotch or bourbon—which are defined by provenance and production method—the rum category cuts a broader swath. Distilled from fermented molasses in New England? Call it rum. Made from Nicaraguan cane juice? That's rum, too.

1. Witty & Charming
2. Rich and Powerful
3. Benevolent
4. Clairvoyant
5. Fuck Dinner
6. Patriotic
7. Crank up the Enola Gay
8. Witty & Charming, Part II
9. Invisible
10. Bulletproof

That said, if you’re interested in making traditional Old Fashioneds, I insist you do not start here. Not that my favorite recipe is more advanced or anything. It ain’t. But it should definitely be filed in the Variation category. So try the real deal. Mess around with ratios, different whiskies, muddle the lemon rind, don’t muddle it, use simple syrup, use sugar and water separately, whatever. You’ll get the technique eventually, and when you do, come back and try this variation on for size.

Jim Coudal's vodka martini: Begin by assembling the following materials and a clean, white towel at your work space. Turn off the television and eliminate other distractions. John Coltranes's First Meditations is appropriate music to work by. I cannot vouch for anything else.

A bloody mary is just the thing to drink with a turkey sandwich. At its most basic, a measure of vodka is topped up with tomato juice and seasoned with Worcester sauce, Tabasco and lemon juice, but the fine details can be tweaked to your own taste.

We’re a little ashamed that we haven’t covered some of the basics about building your home bar here on American Drink. So when Cary, aka Monkeyfrog, asked us via email how to decently stock her home bar, we figured our long-ass response would make a pretty decent Part One.

The Old Fashioned is a variation on the classic whiskey cocktail. We like ours with a slice of orange rind muddled with sugar and water. For less orange flavor, simply garnish with the orange rind; for more, muddle with a full slice of orange and rind.

No other event has the ability to transform the way we drink quite like Christmas. At this time of year, the otherwise abstemious take to the Harvey's Bristol Cream like Nicolas Cage to the bourbon in Leaving Las Vegas, the otherwise sane come over all creative with eggs and Advocaat, and the idea of mulling wine suddenly makes a strange kind of sense to pretty much everyone.

Despite its high sugar content, mulled wine is not a drink that's aged well. The thin, oddly sour broth on tap at most pubs during the festive season is a sad comedown for a tipple originally designed to show off the wealth and generosity of a medieval household. Mulling is not just an excuse to serve laughably cheap wine to your unfortunate guests, although it does have that as a fringe benefit – there's a real art to it.

Complex carbs, such as whole grains and cereals, veg and fruit are a stable way to raise your blood sugar, and are better than simple carbs such as sugary drinks, white pasta and spuds, which will send your blood sugar through the roof and back through the floor in no time.

A simple pound cake should be in every baker’s repertoire. Here, a boozy, nutty glaze adds a little flair to this basic comfort dessert.

The beauty of making your own amaretto lies in controlling the sugar content of this almond liqueur. In a side-by-side tasting of our homemade amaretto and popular commercial brands, ours was less sweet and had a true almond flavor. For the sweet tooths out there, just add more sugar.

I'm definitely letting my girlfriend do the 'food' shopping next week too. http://bit.ly/faTP54

Brief reflections on contemporary American culture cover celebrity, privilege, crime, drugs, teen-age alcoholism, race relations, politics, and the media.

Fantastic sign spotted outside a pub: http://bit.ly/9P1izv

I seemed to spend a large portion of today talking on & offline about my beloved old fashioneds. Then this great post: http://bit.ly/cYmIxn

Sloe gin is just the tipple for warming up cold days, but you have to think ahead and make it now so the rock-hard, purple-black fruits have time to flavour the gin. Your gin isn't ready until the colour resembles a decent Beaujolais.

There are only two cocktails: “a slug of whiskey” and a martini. This isn’t my opinion, but the law as laid down by Bernard DeVoto in his book “The Hour,” first published in 1948 and recently reissued. It so happens that I’ve owned a copy of this book for a long time and often wondered if anyone would ever bring it back into print and whether the world would find it as engaging and infuriating as I do.

Put an Old Fashioned in my hand and I'm a happy man. This is a fine article in praise of the cocktail: "The cocktail is a lovely simple thing: a mixture of spirits and flavorings that whets the appetite, pleases the eye, and stimulates the mind."