Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio.
It's said his own handwriting was a neat and graceful script, not unlike Abraham Lincoln's. He could fake the hand of George Washington, Edgar Allan Poe, and dozens of other historical figures. In fact, experts believe that a large number of the documents he produced in the early twentieth century are still
in circulation today and inaccurately regarded as genuine. Today, we're telling the story of Martin Kannely alias Joseph Cosey, who could sign Benjamin Franklin's name perhaps better than ben himself. Welcome to Criminalia. I'm Maria Tremarky, and I'm Holly Frye. Martin Kanneely was born on February eighteenth, eighteen eighty seven, in Syracuse, New York, of Robert Kennely, an Irish immigrant who was a cabinet maker, and Sarah Bees, native to
the state of Virginia. He had six older siblings, Robert Junior, Patrick, Arthur, Philip, Elizabeth, and Thomas, who died in childhood. In their adulthood, Robert Junior ran a small printing shop. Patrick became a plumber. Arthur and Philip were both cooks, and Elizabeth was married with children. As a teenager, Martin acquired an insatiable taste for mid nineteenth century American history, and, after graduating high school,
enjoyed helping Robert in the printing shop. Martin left home at age seventeen, allegedly after he had a quarrel with his father. It's unclear if that's true or why such an argument may have happened, but historians think that he ended his contact with his entire family at that time on his own. He initially just kind of wandered around the Midwest, working in printing shops for money. As he roamed.
Coinciding with his interest in mid nineteenth century America, Martin never met a library he didn't like, and he explored the resources at the local branch in each city in town he found himself in. Unfortunately, with the increasing popularity of the Linotype machine, Martin found his work drying up. Introduced in eighteen eighty six, Linotype was revolutionizing the type setting and printing industry by combining the casting, setting, and
distributing of type into one machine. But that type of streamlining also meant there was no longer a need for people with Martin's skill set. In nineteen oh eight, he was living in Chicago, where he'd been hired by the Bureau of Charities to distribute its reports. Finding the work tedious and the pay a joke, he didn't last more than a year before he decided to join the.
Army as a private with Company G nineteenth Infantry. Martin was sent to the Philippines in nineteen thirteen, though he was back home in the United States, he dishonorably discharged for assaulting the company cook. Later, Martin recalled that army discipline permanently prejudiced him against law and order, and it is around this time in his life that he turned to petty crime. It is also when he began to
spiral into alcoholism. Some records of his life sadly suggest that as the years went on, Martin was happy to forge you a document or signature in exchange for nothing more than a drink.
His discharge from the military may have been the first known instance of Martin as a forger. He made himself a certificate of honorable discharge and also tweaked his army service record. His new records stated he had served first with the one hundred and fifty third Depot Brigade at Fort Slocum, New York, and then with Group C Repair Units three six and three eleven at Camp Hollibird in Maryland.
He edited his personal information, making himself a eight years younger than his actual age, and he noted that his character while in service was quote very good.
After separating from the Army, Martin spent several years, well, as best as we can tell, just drifting. Shortly upon his return to the United States, he was convicted for stealing a motorcycle in Sacramento, California. That was nineteen thirteen, and he was sentenced to eighteen months in San Quentin Prison. He served about six of those months under the alias
Joe Halloway. Upon his release, he began riding trains back and forth across the United States, of course, stopping at all the libraries he could along the way to check out their American history selections.
His list of arrests grew under the alias Frank Thompson. Martin was arrested in Philadelphia on December fourth, nineteen fourteen, while trying to cash a forged check, but because he hadn't actually succeeded in doing so, the court gave him a suspended sentence. In nineteen sixteen, as John Martin, he was arrested after cashing a forged check in San Jose, California, and was sentenced again to San Quentin, this time for three years. It's unclear how much of this sentence he actually did serve.
Fresh out of prison and employed as a runner for a Philadelphia bank, Martin, under his Frank Thompson alias, stole thirty thousand dollars worth of negotiable bonds by forging the delivery receipts. He was arrested the very same day when he attempted to convert all of those bonds into cash at once. He was sentenced to three years in the Eastern State Penitentiary and served just about one of those years of this crime. Martin stated quote, in a way, I suppose it was wrong, but no one would have
been hurt even if I hadn't been caught. After all, the bank was insured.
Martin, though didn't stay out of prison for long. In nineteen twenty two, using the alias Arthur Roche, he was arrested while trying to cash another forged check, this time in Boston. He was sent to the Massachusetts State Reformatory for five years, of which he served two Out of prison and back in Philadelphia, Martin, under the alias Frank Thompson,
was again arrested for cashing a series of forged checks. Convicted, he was sentenced to eight to sixteen years in Holmesburg Prison, and he was paroled after five years served.
If it sounds like he did a lot of prison time for cashing forged checks or trying to cash forge checks, it's because he did. Between nineteen thirteen and nineteen twenty nine. If you'd total it all up, he'd spent roughly a
decade in prison, primarily for larceny. And then, one day in nineteen twenty nine, quote, a slender little man with a lock of brown hair drooping over the right side of his forehead walked into the Library of Congress in Washington, d C. And diffidently asked the guard at the information desk the way to the manuscript's division. He was directed
to the spacious Northwest Pavilion on the second floor. The account of this published in The New Yorker in February of nineteen fifty six, goes on to describe how he quote gazed admiringly at its lofty ceiling, embellished with a flight of seraphs and cherubs. In the center of the room, beneath a ring of lights, stood a massive circular table, divided by clear glass partitions into a number of semi private segments, at some of which scholarly looking visitors sat reading.
Asked to sign the visitor's register, Martin obliged and wrote the name Joseph Cosey. We've seen Martin use a handful of aliases so far, in particular when he was cashing forged checks, but this is the moment when Martin Kinneely became Joseph Cosey. It was the name he used for the remainder of his life. His trip to the Library of Congress, experts have stayed was a defining moment for him.
Taken to a bank of mahogany card catalog files situated at one end of the room, now Joseph Cozy began flipping through them, making notes on call slips of the numbers of several eighteenth and nineteenth century autographs, mostly those of Ben Franklin and Abraham Lincoln, that he wanted to see. He handed his lips to the attendant and took a seat at the partition table, where several boxes, each containing an assortment of letters, signatures, and government papers, was brought
to him. He spent nearly two hours going through the contents.
One of the documents Cozy viewed was a pay warrant endorsed by Benjamin Franklin in seventeen eighty six when he was President of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania. In what is often explained as an act of excitement in the moment, Cozy stole the document planned or unplanned, that's unknown. He signed with an alien, suggesting that he wanted anonymity, but there's nothing in his crime history at this point
to suggest what was to come. In nineteen twenty nine, there was no practice in place for officials to verify the contents of a box before restoring it to the stacks. Cozy just walked away with the Franklin manuscript, easy enough, and then he spent days, weeks, perhaps even months, practicing
and perfecting Franklin's autograph and handwriting style. Cozy later claimed he saw nothing especially unethical in his actions, saying quote after all the library belongs to the people, and I'm one of the people.
And on that note, we're going to take a break for word from our sponsor. When we're back, we'll talk about the first time Cozy sold a forged work and the techniques he used for closing the deal with prospective buyers.
Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's talk about the first time Cozy sold a forged signature and what spurred him to do so so.
About a year after his visit to the Library of Congress, Cozy, penniless in New York City, tried to sell the original Franklin document he'd stolen to a New York City book dealer. The book dealer rebuffed him, though saying Cozy was peddling a fake. Cozy was blown away because it was authentic.
In response to the expert's inaccuracy, Cozy saw opportunity he had discovered through practicing Franklin's signature, an exercise he did with the handwriting of various famous and distinguished people in American history, that while he was very good at mimicking Franklin, it was Abraham Lincoln's handwriting that came the easiest to him.
By nineteen thirty one. He was so proficient at imitating Lincoln's hand he returned to the same book dealer who'd rejected the Franklin and produced a scrap of paper with the signature yours truly a Lincoln. The dealer determined it was authentic, and Cozy made ten dollars on the sale, and he found a new career.
From the early nineteen thirties until shortly after the Second World War, Cozy forged a whole lot of people's signatures. He also forged whole letters and other manuscripts in the handwriting of greats like Edgar Allan, Poe, Walt Whitman, and Theodore Roosevelt. But of all the fakeries, he most often faked Lincoln's hand. Renowned book and autographed dealer Charles Hamilton described Cozy as quote the most skilled and versatile forger of all time. He was also quite prolific as a salesman.
Of his works, Cozy always had some kind of backstory of how he'd acquired the item, sometimes elaborate, usually not, though One of his favorite explanations was quote, my sister used to work for a doctor, and he gave it to her when he retired. Another example is one in which he would explain that he was a Works Progress Administration or WPA worker, and that he had found the documents while helping demolish an old building on the Lower
East Side of Manhattan. Around nineteen thirty four, he tried out a new inheritance story in his attempt to sell a three page letter penned by Well penned by Cosey himself, though he claimed it was written by American religious leader and writer Mary Baker Eddie. Benjamin Bass, proprietor of the Strand bookstore in New York City, was his target. Bass was quoted saying, I was pretty new at the game then,
and autographs weren't exactly in my line anyway. I looked for letters like it in records of book auctions and saw that they brought upwards of forty dollars, so I figured at four dollars it was worth the gamble. Bass paid four dollars for that letter, but when he had it examined by more experienced collectors, he found out he'd been duped.
Under law. At the time, Cozy's forgeries were considered archaeological forgeries, not signature or document forgeries, as we would call them today. It's shady, but Cozy's statements about his documents were not illegal. As experts point out, he doesn't represent his forged documents as anything more than some old pieces of paper he found. According to New York law and a few other states at the time, too, the act of forging any archaeological
object was not in and of itself illegal. In order to get into trouble, he'd have to get caught selling it as an authentic work. Additionally, he almost always let his victim slash prospective buyers set their own prices, and those prices usually ranged between five dollars and ten dollars
for the most part. On a few occaisis, it's reported that he accepted payments as high as fifty dollars and possibly seventy five dollars, and in nineteen thirty seven, it is said that he once demanded and got one hundred dollars, and that is actually true.
Getting to know Cozy has shown us that he never had a lot of luck staying out of prison. In January of nineteen thirty seven, he was arrested again, but not for cashing forged checks. This arrest was for selling a letter allegedly written by Abraham Lincoln to a stamp dealer named Walter Gissinger in New York City. The letter
was enclosed in an envelope postmarked Springfield, Illinois. Cozy had been described as uncharacteristically disheveled during this transaction, and that he also uncharacteristically did the following two things during the sale. One he declared the document as genuine, which he never did, and two he declared he wanted one hundred dollars for it. They were pretty much the opposite of how he typically worked with his prospective buyers.
So here's how it went down. Gissiger, who dealt exclusively in stamps, sent for a friend who dealt in both stamps and autographs. That was twenty six year old Herman Hurst Junior, who was a relative novice in the business. Hurst declared that Cozy's Lincoln document was authentic and advised that it was probably worth two or three times as much as the asking price. He handed over one hundred dollars,
but had a caveat. He expected that that money would be refunded if analysis proved the letter as fake, but if it was authentic, Cozy could expect an additional payment. Once back in his office with the document, it took only a moment for Hurst to see the truth. There was one very obvious problem. The document was dated December second, eighteen forty six, but the paper it was written on
was watermarked eighteen sixty. Hurst attempted to contact Cosey to let him know that they had both been fooled, but Hurst couldn't be sure Cosey ever got that letter, and then Hurst framed the forged Lincoln letter and hung it in his office as a reminder to temper your enthusiasm when doing business. Hurst later said quote, I had the feeling I was dealing with a reputable person. I'll admit there was nothing at all about his appearance to make me think so, but he did seem to have considerable
knowledge of Lincoln. I didn't stop to ask myself how someone looking like a down and outer would come to have a Lincoln letter in his possession, or why if he did know anything about Lincoln, he would be willing to sell the letter so cheap.
Hurst's story spread quickly among the dealers in the stamp district. In the nineteen thirty stamp collecting was so popular that Nasau Street became the center of Manhattan's stamp District or Street of Stamps, with dozens of stamp and coin dealers along its length. Think of it like New York City's famous stretch of flower markets on the west side of Manhattan,
or Book Row between Astor Place and Union Square. So one day, a man named Elliott Wilson, from the Island Stamp Company, located in the same building as Hurst's office, telephoned to say a man was in his store trying to sell him a Lincoln letter and what should he do. So Hirst requested that Wilson keep him there, he was on his way and would bring police. When Hurst arrived with two detectives, he immediately recognized Cozy. Cosey was trying to sell Wilson a copy of the very same letter
Hurst had bought. Cozy also immediately recognized Hurst, and in seeing him, ripped the alleged Lincoln letter to shreds. Cozy was arrested at the police station. He first claimed he'd found both Lincoln letters, the one he sold to Hurst and the one he was trying to sell to Wilson while cleaning out the basement a house for a woman who lived in Jamaica.
He did, though, drop that found it in a basement, excuse and confess to his forgery. This was his first and only conviction in the role of an archaeological forger. On February twenty fourth, nineteen thirty seven, in a Court of Special Sessions, he pleaded guilty to petty larceny and was sentenced to an indefinite term in the Riker's Island workhouse.
About a year later, he appeared in Hurst's shop, reportedly to say quote, I just wanted to thank you again for not trying to cheat me while I was cheating you. It sounds like maybe he did read Hearst's letter after all, but none of this stopped him or his forgery career.
In June of nineteen thirty eight, Cozy showed up at the offices of the Box Book Company located in Brooklyn, with three Lincoln items he wanted to sell. The documents were secured in an envelope address to William A. Hank Wheeler, Junior Educational Radio Projects Box one ninety one Station D,
New York. Without actually saying so, Cozy gave the impression that he in fact was Wheeler, and to back that up inside the envelope with the Lincoln manuscripts was a letter, also forged by Cozy, explaining the provenance of the papers. It was directed to friend Hank and signed by A Walter Kahn. Fox Book Company paid him three dollars for the documents, thinking they were authentic.
It's been said that Cozy was able to quote whip out forgeries with great ease, never resorting to the amateur device of tracery. He may have had a talent at hand, but many experts believe that much of his success should
also be attributed to the materials that he used. For instance, at first, he used only Waterman's brand inc. Until he discovered that it didn't fade fast enough to look like one hundred year old ink should, so he worked at a formula of his own with ink from the local store mixed with rusted iron filings to replicate that dark
brown look of age documents. And when it came to paper that depended for his more ambitious forgeries, historians note he preferred using title pages and fly leaves of old books, which he bought when he could afford them, and he stole them when he couldn't. When old book paper wasn't available. He used paper that he bought at his local stationary store and aged it himself. Originally, he used a weak solution of oxalic acid to give new paper an old appearance.
But while the acid did give the desired yellowish brown tinge to the paper, there was also a problem. It kind of messed with the size of the individual sheets caused distortion. Cozy changed to a solution of potassium per manganate, which produced the same tinge but did not have that resizing side effect.
We're going to take a break for from our sponsor. When we return, we will meet g William Burkewist of the New York Public Library, and we'll talk about how he and Cosey found themselves in an ongoing game of cat and mouse. Then friendship.
Welcome back to Criminaliam. Let's talk about the day that Cozy was outed as a forger.
Cozy was often quoted saying, I take pleasure in fooling the professionals. His works were so convincing they made it into the collections of some of the country's most renowned bibliophiles and esteemed autograph experts and collectors, including American industrialist John Gribble, as well as Emmanuel Hertz, who was an attorney and historians specializing in Lincoln auction houses too got
caught up in his counterfeit. Among them was the Park Bernet Galleries, which once scheduled a Cozy forged Lincoln document it had appraised at fifteen thousand dollars for auction. That story ends well, actually, as the documents in authenticity was discovered before it was sold.
Another Cozy forged Lincoln document, a lengthy legal brief, was long held in an office safe in Brentano's on Fifth Avenue. Arthur Brentano owned what was at the time the largest retail bookselling business, not in New York but in the world, and his purchase of the forgery, it would seem in the historical record, is not a thing the officials of the company ever wanted to discuss.
And then there's Mary Benjamin, whose renowned autograph firm in New York City was founded in eighteen eighty seven by Walter Benjamin, her father. According to Mary quote, practically everybody has been stung by Cozy. In fact, Walter was one of Cozy's victims. He paid twenty five dollars for what he thought was a genuine Lincoln Legal brief to be fair here. By this time in his career, Walter was retired and in his eighties and no longer at the
top of his game. He'd always relied on his natural vision rather than a magnifying glass to evaluate works, but he didn't realize his eyesight had begun to fail due to a cataract. His daughter, however, knew he'd been taken by Cozy as soon as she saw the document it was. She explained an uncharacteristic sheen of the ink that gave
it away. In her book Autographs Akida Collecting, published in nineteen forty six, Mary explained that quote Cozy, who had good reason to be proud of his Lincoln forgeries, had mastered Lincoln's writing in an astonishing manner.
Book Detective G. William Bergquist, an authority on literary hoaxes of all kinds, got to know Cozy well while operating as a special investigator for the New York Public Library at its main building on forty second Street in Manhattan.
Of him, he has stated, quote Cozy was the greatest forger of his kind in this century, and speaking about Cozy to an audience of bibliophiles, at the Grolier Club in nineteen thirty nine, Burquist was quoted saying, decidedly there is something intriguing in the idea of a person sitting down and deliberately forging the handwriting of some well known person. Obviously, this is not the work of any ordinary criminal. I am convinced that the person who does this is hardly
ever motivated by the sole hope of monetary reward. Rarely do these forgers sell their goods to the unwary. No doubt, hunger or some other unsatisfied want forces them at times into the displeasing practice of selling a forgery to the ignorant. But certainly they get no pleasure in doing so, and must feel that they are prostituting their art, for it is an art rather than a profession. It is understandable how a man might learn to forge one hand, but marvelous to switch to others.
At will Bergquist was really the first person to suspect that there was a talented forger at work in the autograph market. While investigating the theft of some valuable back issues of the Christian Science Journal from the New York Public Library, Birkwist visited the rare book company, a shop he knew specialized in Christian science publications. In conversation with the proprietor of the shop, Herman Zodec, Birkwist asked if, by any chance had anyone tried to sell the missing
periodicals to him. Zodok reported no, but there was a butt. He went on to explain that his assistant had recently purchased for ten dollars a letter that was supposedly written by Mary Baker Eddie. He continued that he'd sent it for authentication to the archivist of the First Church of Christ Scientist in Boston, and he was informed that no,
it actually was not genuine. His assistant described the seller as Birkwist had heard similarly from at least thirty other book dealers in the city, quote as a meek little man, but no one had the slightest idea who that neat little man was.
Cozy was finally outed as a forger when he tried to sell a fraudulent legal petition drafted by Abraham Lincoln to a rare book and autograph dealer named Edward Lowell Dean. Several years later, Dean recalled of the event quote it was around noon and I was trying to interest a collector in a first edition of Alice in Wonderland when a kind of shy, apologetic looking stranger poked his head through the door. He said that he had something to sell and that another dealer had told him it might
be in my line. I asked him to wait, since I was busy with a customer, and I left him to browse after the Alice in Wonderland customer had gone cozy, according to Dean, pulled out of his overcoat pocket a legal petition written on three pages of age stained, creased lined, legal sized paper and said quote, I drive a moving van between Baltimore and Boston, and I found this in an old crate we were packing stuff in.
Dean continued that upon reading the inscription on the first page of the document, quote, I felt that here was possibly a major discovery. The paper unquestionably belonged to the right period. The handwriting had that occasional thickening of line typical of Lincoln. The terminology, the nature of the case, the names all called to mind other Lincoln legal documents that I had seen. There was nothing unlikely about the
little man's story of how he found it. Either a lot of Lincoln material has been recovered from old packing trunks and whatnot. I was very excited. When he asked its price, Cozy replied, quote, I look it to the Philadelphia Public Library on my way up here. They told me it was worth maybe seventy five dollars. When Dean asked to keep it a few days to study it, Cozy refused him, but he did give the okay for Dean to keep it until after lunch, about two hours,
with an advance of twenty five dollars. Dean recalled of meeting Cozy, quote, such a mild, pleasant little man. I took quite a liking to him.
Dean later stated he was concerned that the document had been stolen, rather than the possibility it might be a forgery. Many in the profession had respect for Bergquist, and Dean saw his opinion on the potential Lincoln fine. The story goes that Bergquist examined the handwriting and then sighed. Dean replied by pointing out all of the things about it
that looked right, but Dean's document was a fake. Of Dean, Bergquist asked, quote, I think I can describe the man who sold it to you short slight about fifty quiet. He then added, don't feel too bad. This man, whoever he is, is a genius.
It was through the sale of that Lincoln letter that Birkwist met Cozy almost accidentally, when associates of Dean found him at Grand Central Station on a hunt to somehow avenge Dean's poor purchase. They brought him to Burkwist. Described as a large, white haired man with a cheerful disposition, Burkwist is said to have immediately put Cozy at ease. It did not take long before he admitted he was responsible for the recent archaeological forgeries fast friends or not.
Cozy also clearly stated quote, I haven't violated any law. Birkwist agreed, and he also went on to compliment Cozy on his skills, and Cozy began sharing with him certain technical difficulties he found himself up against in forging. In fact, he shared all sorts of things about techniques before Birkwish sent him on his way, advising him to do something more constructive with his life. Cozy replied, believe me, I work hard to earn a dollar.
In nineteen thirty four, just a few years after Cosey's forging career took off. The New York Public Library, under Bergquist supervision, set up a special file that they called the Cozy Collection. It was their attempt to educate both experts and the public about these fakes on the market and removed from circulation as many pieces of Cozy's work
as possible and people help them. Arthur Swan, a vice president of Park Burnet Galleries, contributed to Franklin pay warrants, including the one that had almost gone to auction within
just twenty years. That collection contained seventy eight documents, including this amazing list of names thirty one Abraham Lincoln's, eight At Garrellan Poe's five, David Rittenhouses, four, Mary Baker eddies for George Way Washington's two, Edwin M. Stanton's two, Thomas Jefferson's two, John Marshall's and two James Madison's, plus at least one John Adams one, Samuel Adams one, Button Gwinett, Lyman Hall, Benjamin Rush, Richard, Henry Lee, Patrick, Henry Alexander Hamilton,
Walt Whitman, and Mark Twain also known as Samuel L. Clemens. It's reported the collection also contained a Sir Francis Bacon and Earl of Essex, and a Rudyard Kipling, But experts note that these last three are really unusual examples, because as far as it's known, Cozy made very few foreign forgeries. His forged army discharge paperwork is also included in the Cozy Collection.
It's said that over the years, Cozy would drop in to visit brook West And to check on the progress of the Cozy Collection, and that he was also happy to help clear up any confusion about his work and the real deals. Cozy, as Brookwist had understood, saw his forgery as an art and each piece was important to him.
Years later, in nineteen forty one, The New York Sun reported in a story about the Cozy Collection that it had been a Lincoln letter that Cozy had stolen from the Library of Congress during his nineteen twenty nine visit to Cozy. This type of inaccuracy just couldn't stand. He visited the editor's office protesting that quote. I didn't steal a Lincoln letter from the Library of Congress. It was a pay warrant signed by Benjamin Franklin. And you said I got as high as thirty dollars for some of
my fakes. That's wrong too.
Joseph Cosey aka Martin Kaneely and all of his aliases died in nineteen fifty. The New Yorker reported in nineteen fifty six that it appeared Cozy had disappeared from his former known haunts in the city, going quiet perhaps, They estimated as far back as nineteen forty three. They theorize that his alcoholism had perhaps become insurmountable, but also noted that there had been intermittent reports over the last decade or so suggesting that he had continued to forge on
a small scale, at least for a little while. Bergquist, some versions of this story suggest had urged him to write his memoirs, though Cozy never got beyond a few opening paragraphs, which is frankly too bad for all of us. Are you ready for a bogus bevy?
I am, I am okay.
I thought the great idea would be to find out what Abraham Lincoln's favorite drink was and try to make a version of that something that looks like it. Do you know what Abraham Lincoln's favorite drink was?
I actually thought that Abraham Lincoln didn't drink, so I don't know.
He didn't it was water. Otherwise, No, it's stupid juice.
So I'm kicking back with my glass of water and my not written memoir from Crozy.
Right Water, Abe, I admire you in many ways, but I don't want to party with you. He never really gave the vibe of the guy you want to roll with for a long weekend of wild adventure. But I did think it would still be fun to make a drink that looks like water. So this, of course, is a pretty obvious one, or it could be, but we didn't go the obvious choice, right, Like, obviously you could do something very simple, like.
Here's a glass of vodka.
We're not going to do that. We're not gonna do that. And then it's like the clear spirits like vodka or jin are the obvious choices. We're not going to do that either, So we're gonna use the spirit. I don't think we have been voked on the show before. Oh I love it, and I wanted to make a drink too that was.
Yummy and not just a glass of vodka.
A vodka soda, which anybody can make, and there's nothing wrong with those. I love a simple, too ingredient drink, and I did think about something like ranchwater, which has gotten very popular in the last few years, which is just tequila and usually Topo Chico sparkling because it's vera bubbly, But I want to do something just a hair different that still tastes like another drink, but is also a little lighter and more refreshing, maybe than most versions of this.
Well we haven't used on this show before. Is pisco.
We have not.
That is, of course like a grapey brandy thing. So this is like a diluted pisco sour without the egg white. It's very easy to put together, and we're making the mixer part of it do a little bit of the flavor lifting, because you don't want to put lemon juice in because that will clout it. You want to keep it clear. So it's two ounces of pisco, one ounce of simple syrup. Most simple syrup is clear, but occasionally you'll see it look a little cloudy. If it's cloudy, that's not the one.
To use this time.
You're just gonna shake those together or mix them together and then pour them. I did a dirty dump. I used them with the ice that I had shaken them with because you want to dilute it anyway, and then you just top it with three to four ounces of lemon sparkling water. So you've made like a bubbly, very soft touch pisco soary.
That drink sounds so refreshing and delicious.
It is very refreshing, and it's almost a little dangerous because it softens the flavor so much that it almost doesn't taste like an alcoholic beverage. You want to be careful, It's all I'm saying. Don't chug a bunch of them, because two ounces of pisco is not and two ounces of anything is not a small amount. So you don't
want to chug back too many. Drink responsibly always, and we're calling this the yours truly after that first document that he sold of Lincoln's of Lincoln some here quoting also, don't use beverages like this to trick people who do not drink into drinking alcohol, because that's not cool at all. Speaking of which, let's make an easy, peasy mail, easy pcy little mocktail. Here's what I did for this, because pisco is actually a little bit tricky to replicate the
flavor of. But here is what I ended up doing. And this may involve searching for some ingredients, but you can do it. They're not impossible. So I did the trick that we've done when we do a mocktail to try to do a sub out for gin, where I used a flat tonic water. You can let it sit and get flat, but also if you stir it a
little bit, the bubbles are gonna dissipate pretty quickly. And then I found it was a bitters that I just happened to have that has a grape and it has a citrus note in it, and it's a clear bitters. You got to look for bitters that are clear because sometimes they do have a color. A lot of them are like brown, so you just have to be careful
with that. You can also, if you want to dress up your flat tonic water, use any clear flavor extract right like I have some clear pumpkin extract that I want to try in a version of this because I think it would just be yummy and like the lightest little pumpkin water. And then you do the same thing an ounce of simple syrup three to four ounces of lemon sparkling water and it's still like this bright, yummy delicious.
I was gonna say, this is very much a hot day kind of a drink, and I got no problem with that.
Listen. I got in my vehicle yesterday and it was one hundred and four degrees, so there might be some reasons why I was like, what will be very icy and refreshing, But that is the yours truly, which I realize is sort of a cheat. Instead of replicating a cocktail, we're replicating a non cocktail.
But you replicated water.
Lincoln with just taking ale somewhere in there.
I don't know.
It's possible that he may have had a drink at some point in his life, but he did not. By nature, he was not a drinker. So we hope that you don't get taken by any forgeries and that you will spend some more time with us again. Next week, we'll be right back here with another fakey fake and some more bogus beverige. Criminalia is a production of Shondaland Audio
in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.