Leaving Manhattan — just your cup of tea

I left Manhattan in 1995, but I get back there fairly frequently, often for judging a cocktail competition. It’s a tough life that I lead.

I lived in the Big Apple for 22 years, and I left not because I’d grown tired of the place — that would be pretty difficult — but because technology made it possible to do what I do for a living from near-as-darn-it anywhere in the world.

If there was Wi-Fi in 1995, I was unaware of it, and although I did have an e-mail address by then, faxes, modems and floppy disks sent through the mail were my main methods of communication.

Mark Zuckerberg turned 11 in 1995, so Facebook wasn’t even a twinkle in his eye when I left New York. And I had to wait three years for Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph to launch Netflix, so I moved with a box full of videotapes to keep me entertained when nothing much interested me on television.

My second book, “The Book of Bourbon and Other Fine American Whiskeys,” co-written with Mardee Haidin Regan, hit the shelves in 1995, too, and I’m thankful we wrote it when we did. Seems to me that there are about five times as many American whiskeys on the market today. An updated edition is not in the cards.

Lest you think I might be yearning for that far simpler past, let me assure you that that is certainly not the case. I love 2012 passionately, and I look forward eagerly to whatever new advances are just around the corner.

One such advance was the cocktail that won the competition I judged in New York this year.

I urge you to actually try that cocktail, even though you’re going to have to brew tea to make it. But that’s way simpler than infusing bacon into scotch, for instance, and some bartenders think nothing of doing exactly that before their creative juices start to flow.

What this drink actually calls for is lapsang smoked tea syrup, so you’ll have to brew an 8-ounce cup of lapsang souchong tea, and dissolve 1 cup of granulated sugar into it, preferably at least an hour before making the drink. You’ll want it to cool to room temperature before you add it to the drink.

And since you’ll be using just ¼ ounce of this syrup to make the drink, you’ll have enough to last you a good long time. You will use it up, though. Promise.

This is a fabulous drink that you’ll probably go back to over and over again. The name of the drink? It’s called Leaving Manhattan.