A little history on the house

In the years leading up to World War II, cocktails weren’t just cocktails. Bartenders took pride in creating drinkable works of art, squeezing fresh fruit juices, precisely measuring exotic ingredients and shaking their concoctions until their hands practically stuck to the metal mixers.

Many of those old recipes vanished after the 1960s, when bar owners, hip to the value of simpler drinks, began cranking out vodka-cranberries like widgets.

But that formula won’t do for Dan Reichert, whose Vintage Cocktails service pours spirits the old-fashioned way -- no premixed margaritas or Bloody Marys here.

Reichert -- part bartender, part historian, part storyteller -- routinely digs through discontinued bartending guides and resurrects 100-year-old drink recipes for upscale parties or private classes at customers’ homes. His recipes, which date as far back as the 1700s and as late as the 1950s, have grown so popular that Reichert pours nearly every weekend.

“These cocktails, so many of which have been forgotten, are so much better than contemporary recipes,” Reichert said. “They’re sophisticated, and so surprising. They do what a good cocktail should do: stimulate the palate and the imagination.”

A $20-an-hour bartender Reichert is not. His per-night fee starts at $500 for a four-hour party. In return, the client gets a one-on-one tasting and a pre-party consultation, along with a menu that is crafted from the hundreds of drinks Reichert stores in his head.

For a glamorous Hollywood party, Reichert might create a menu inspired by silent-movie goddesses. For a Roaring ‘20s event, Reichert will probably include his favorite recipe: the Pegu, a bracing grapefruit-flavored potion once downed by privileged English officers at the Pegu Club in Rangoon, Burma.

“When it comes to real, vintage cocktails, anything after the 1950s starts to get challenging,” Reichert said. “No vintage cocktails were created in the 1960s. The only innovation was the martini on the rocks, and that’s it.

“If someone asked me to come up with something for an ‘80s party, I would try to convince them to do an 1880s party. That I could do.”

Reichert fell into the business the way so many bartenders do. A classically trained actor who also appears in Los Angeles-area plays, Reichert, who is now 42, realized early in his career that he needed a practical way of sustaining himself.

“I didn’t enjoy it all that much,” Reichert said of his early bartending days. “I had to make the same 10 or 12 things over and over again.”

Now Reichert hopes to reintroduce more Angelenos to the old-fashioned cocktail hour -- evening dress optional.

“People like knowing where a drink originates,” Reichert says. “These drinks often end up being the centerpiece of the party.

“They make guests feel like they are sipping a little bit of history.”

Cost: Catering starts at $500, based on a four-hour event; instruction is $250 for two, $25 for each additional person.

Contact: (818) 985-9096; www.vintagecocktails.com