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Music For Your Monday: NPR Music is streaming Leonard Cohen’s new album Old Ideas in its entirety. Enjoy! [Related: Leonard Cohen on Fresh Air]

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Music for your Afternoon: Richard Thompson: Tiny Desk Concert

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npr:

Punch bowls are back — but they’re not flowing with lime sherbet or ginger ale or sugary juice mixed with handles of cheap booze. No, think Mr. Micawber’s punch — from Charles Dickens’David Copperfield — a hot, steaming bowl of lemon, sugar and spirits that made Micawber’s face shine “as if it had been varnished all over.”

The punch cocktail has a long history that starts with British sailors (who drank a lot), says liquor historian David Wondrich. Sailors were entitled to 10 pints of beer per day — but when they sailed into the tropics, the beer spoiled, and that’s when they turned to punch.

“They made it with local ingredients in India and Indonesia in the early 1600s,” Wondrich tells NPR’s Linda Wertheimer. “They were 13,000 miles away from any source of English beer or wine, and they had nothing to drink. And English sailors … respond very poorly to that.”

Wondrich, who is also a mixologist, has paid homage to what he calls “the monarch of mixed drinks”; his book, Punch: The Delights (and Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl, features 40 historical punch recipes for the ambitious drink mixer.

-From “A Vintage Cocktail That Packs A Punch”

liquor historian

liquor historian

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