BITTERS bottles By Robert Strickhart By Robert Strickhart
Sherry and Pineapples Sounds like great dessert tonight … and a story I am absolutely certain that there are stories behind every bottle. One category of stories includes the “how I came by this bottle story.” Many bottle collectors, myself included, can tell you how, when and where the bottles on our shelves were acquired, who sold it, and the provenance connected. I have a thing for bottles with the little sticker that reads The Carlyn Ring Bitters Collection. For some reason, they are just a tiny bit more appealing to me. I can also tell you how and where I obtained my first Drakes cabin bitters, for me a fond memory. Then, there is the story of the bottle itself. If you look at historical flasks, there is usually a story being told. Sometimes, and I believe, actually most of the time, there is a secondary story, an underlying second layer of the story. Most of us have seen the beautiful Baltimore flasks with a nicely embossed ear of corn on the front with the image of the Baltimore monument on the reverse
side. Certainly there is a story here, the ear of corn and Baltimore monument must have meant a great deal to a great number of people for a glassmaker to go to the effort of making a flask depicting such things. In another instance, I received a beautiful Christmas card last year picturing a Sheaf of Wheat flask with the reminder that the sheaf of wheat once meant “prosperity” and that is the hope for you and yours for the holiday season. (I really do enjoy and appreciate this bottle family!) Another story is the story being told by the name embossed on the bottle. I dug into the meaning behind the Chartreuse Damiana Bitters in a recent article and while the Damiana bitters had a great backstory, it was sort of a plain, unremarkable bottle. The bitters bottle we will focus on in this article is quite appealing and unusual in form, and it, too, has a great symbolism and ingredient story to be told.
Moulton’s Oloroso Bitters
June 2020
11
