New Loves Cocktail Party, Part 1: the Bramble

A couple of months ago, I had the pleasure of preparing some cocktails for a party hosted by my good friend Kori.  Originally, the party was to be held on St. Valentine's day, but, because I had other things to do, it was delayed.  The theme was Valentine-y, though: New Loves.  The idea was to introduce some new cocktails which have been relatively recently invented but are as good as the classics.  In time, one or a few of these might come to mind when one contemplates the great cocktails, as perhaps the Daiquri or the Sazerac might to mind today.

In the next few weeks (or less), I'll introduce eleven drinks I served to a thirsty gathering last February 18...

To begin our run-down of the featured cocktails (and the evening's festivities), let's address the Bramble.

Our oldest player, this drink was invented in the 1980s by Dick Bradsell in London.  It's a rejuvenated sour (spirit+citrus+sugar) with the sparkling edition of blackberry liqueur (creme de mûre) for a fruity accent.  Although creme de mûre is not a commonly-used ingredient, it's well worth the cost of a bottle; if you like a fresh, sweet, citrusy drink for hot summer days, there's no better libation than the Bramble.

2 oz London dry gin (Plymouth)
1 oz fresh lemon juice
1/2 oz creme de mûre
~1/2 oz simple syrup (to taste)

Shake with ice; and strain into an ice-filled glass.  Garnish with blackberries, and serve with a straw.

Amber Sunset

A friend asked me for a Mojito tonight, but I told her I thought that was boring, especially since I made her a Mojito the last time she was at my house.  The carbonated water in the Mojito reminded me of the Eastside, which Rhiannon introduced me to the other day.  It's essentially a Southside with cucumber and club soda on ice in a tall glass.  But I was out of cucumber.  So my tangential thought then led me to an as-far-as-I-can-tell unnamed drink that Kirk made me a few weeks ago.  He made me a dark rum sour with a rinse of creme de violette.  Since I have way too much creme de violette and way too few uses for it, I thought I'd pull it out.  I substituted raspberry syrup for simple syrup, and the result was the Amber Sunset (which hopefully hasn't been named something else previously)...

2 oz amber rum (Appleton V/X)

1/2 oz lemon juice

1/2 oz raspberry syrup

1 tsp creme de violette

Shake all but creme de violette with ice, and set aside.  Rinse a chilled cocktail glass or coupe with creme de violette, and discard the excess.  Strain the rum mixture into the coated glass. Spray a mist of creme de violette over the full glass, and serve with a smile.

Yet another simple variation of a classic formula, the raspberry syrup at once cuts the acidity of the citrus and adds raspberry-fruitiness.  The rum, of course, adds a beautiful buttery roundness to the mouthfeel, and is at the forefront on the sip.  The rinse of creme de violette is absent except for the gentlest floral accent both on the nose and the swallow.

Mississippi Punch

Flipping through Jerry Thomas's 1862 bartender's guide, one earns a new respect for punches.  They were the workhorse concoction for entertaining groups greater than just a few people, and the variety of recipes in use in the mid 19th century was enormous.  The vast majority, surely, never saw print and were the inventions of unnamed thousands of party hosts throughout this land and the British empire.

Since I'm I, I'll give you a bit of etymology.  Besides our English numbers and their closely-related Germanic counterparts, we're familiar with Grecoitalic numbers (wait for the figure...).  East of the Centum-Satem isogloss, numbers are different:

Whiskey Kiss

I went to a friend's rooftop party last night near the Quarter, and I was running a little early, so I decided to stop off at Tonique on Rampart Street. I met the good bartender, Murph, who was kind enough to chat with me for a bit.  Their menu (writ large on a chalkboard), included several classics and a couple of interesting variations.  Those included a cobbler style Old Fashioned (presumably the with-fruit variety), Caipirinha, Last Word, Pimm's cup, Aviation, and several others.  As you can tell, a good list.  Because I keep really wanting to like an Aviation but never have, I figured I'd try their attempt at it to see what happened.  I was very pleasantly surprised.  As they make it, it's 

1 1/2 Aviation gin

3/4 lemon juice

3/4 maraschino liqueur

~1 tsp creme de violette

Rinse the inside of a cocktail glass with creme de violette, then discard the excess.  Shake the other ingredients with ice, and strain into the prepared glass. 

This was what I've been waiting for.  For whatever reason, changing the proportions from my 2, 1/4, 1/3, 1/6 did the trick.  I was surprised that the equal portion of lemon and maraschino evened themselves out as seamlessly as they did.  Usually, equal portions of simple syrup and lemon juice is required for a straight "sour mix," and simple syrup is sweeter than maraschino.  But I guess the inherent sweetness of the maraschino combined with its funkiness balanced everything out. Good to know...

Anyway, after that, I decided to test their prowess with a non-classic cocktail that was on their menu, the Whiskey Kiss.  Now, I've recently profiled the close cousin of this drink, the Widow's Kiss. To me, this is an improvement.  Maybe it's just because I love rye...

1 1/2 oz rye
3/4 oz Benedictine
3/4 oz Chartreuse
3/4 oz lemon juice
2 dashes Fee's Old Fashion bitters


Shake; strain; cocktail glass; marasca cherry.

The sweetness of the Chartreuse and Benedictine tamed the lemon juice, and their herbal character showed through beautifully.  The liqueurs, together with the spicy rye, are obviously a wonderful combination, and did not disappoint here.  I believe this may become a regular drink of mine.

The Queen Caroline

Yet another hubristic friend has requested a namesake cocktail.  My neighbor, Caroline, brought home a pot of basil and wanted me to make a drink with it.  She said she thought lemon would go well with the basil, and so I decided to make a Southside variation with basil rather than mint.

2 oz London dry gin (Beefeater)
2 tsp fresh lemon juice
2 tsp 2:1 simple syrup
2 dashes Angostura bitters
several fresh basil leaves

Muddle basil leaves with lemon juice and syrup, then add gin.  Shake with ice, and fine-strain into a brandy snifter (or cocktail glass if no snifter is available).  Float one rubbed basil leaf on the top.  Take another basil leaf and rub it around the edge of the glass; then discard it.

What can I say about the Queen Caroline?  So much of her...uh, I mean it...escapes articulability, but I'll try.  Tart; sweet; beautifully fragrant; sexy, even.  Obviously, then, I'm referring to the drink.

The Relativist

I was talking to an old friend today, and she requested that I make a drink named for her.  Because of this hubristic request, I shall not name her here, but her initials are CZ.

The Relativist

2 oz Bulleit bourbon
1/2 oz Swedish punsch*
1/2 oz Becherovka

Mix bourbon and punsch over ice, and stir in an Old Fashioned glass.  In a brandy snifter, ignite the Becherovka, and, while lit, swirl and pour into the prepared Old Fashioned glass.  Agitate to mix.

This really encompasses the woman.  She was born of a Swedish mother and a Czech father.  Newly American, she's a lover of bourbon.  She's fiery and damned agitating when you're trying to debate her.  And, more than anything, she's a Protagorean relativist.  God save us/God be praised!

*For house-made Swedish punsch (thanks to frederic at Cocktail Virgin and especially to Max Toste), combine

3 parts 1:1 simple syrup
2 parts Batavia Arrack
1 part lemon juice
nutmeg (1/4 tsp grated to 500mL)
cardamom (8 pods to 500mL) 

The Small Aromatic-Sour Cycle

All this talk of Final Wards and Manhattans has brought me to consider cycles: those beautiful natural entities which give and take from their components to construct strangely opposite creations, only to continue the process back home.  To take three, let's consider the Citric Acid cycle, the pitch interval cycle, and the now-dubbed Small Aromatic-Sour cycle.  OK, maybe I'll allow Wikipedia to guide those interested in the first two, and I'll just tackle the drinks. 

What defines any cycle, i.e., the number and particulars of its constituents, is somewhat arbitrary, especially in systems with many potential players (such as biological molecular systems or mixology).  Just as there are a huge number of molecules floating around in a cell, there are hundreds of cocktail ingredients and exponentially more combinations of them.  That's a long way of saying that you could start with any drink and get to any other drink if you allow a large number of ingredient changes.  There is nothing ground-breaking about that, just as it's not terribly impressive to get from Tom Hanks to Kevin Bacon by using 100 degrees of separation. 

However, a particular, relatively small cycle continues to occur to me, and so I present it to you.

This small Aromatic-Sour cycle is made up of seven of my favorite cocktails.  Every time I drink one, I recall at least one or two of its neighbors.  Moreover, these drinks are either old-time or modern classics and are here to stay.  With only a few ingredients (rye, gin, maraschino liqueur, Chartreuse, sweet vermouth, sugar, bitters, lemon juice, and lime juice) one can create this cycle, and he or she might never feel the need to leave it, given the incredible range of flavors that it encompasses.  Are there two drinks more elegant than an Old Fashioned and a Last Word?  Are there two drinks more different than an Old Fashioned and a Last Word or a Bijou and a Whiskey Sour?  Yet they grow from and into each other seamlessly; and the intervening steps, themselves, are beautifully complex but balanced drinks. 

As I've said, there is a near-infinite number of cycles of which one might conceive, but to me this is a seminal one.  If any other small cocktail cycles occur to you, say so in the comments section below!

The Final Ward

I've fixed myself a drink I've been thinking of for some time and never got around to making--the Final Ward.

3/4 oz rye
3/4 oz Chartreuse
3/4 oz maraschino liqueur
3/4 oz lemon juice

Shake; up; cocktail glass.

Like the Last Word, this is a mix of aromatic and sour cocktail genres, and it works incredibly well.  It's freshingly light, sharp, sweet, and herbal, all at the same time--it's the very incarnation of a balanced mixed drink.  I found the lush in me wishing for more rye, so next time I'll experiment with a slightly rye-heavy variant, but it's likely that any deviation will upset the balance.  We shall see...

This cocktail is the invention of Phil Ward, and was brought to my attention by Jay over at Oh Gosh!, to whom I am greatly indebted.

My favorite cocktails, part 4: the Brandy Crusta

The Brandy Crusta was one of several mixed drinks to grace the pages of the first printed bartender's manual, authored by Jerry Thomas and published in 1862.  It's a nearly forgotten drink today, and what a shame that is!  It's not a hard drink to make (I usually defer on the complex lemon peel garnish, but perhaps I shouldn't).  This is how you and I should make it:

2 oz Cognac (Martel VSOP)
1 tsp curaçao (Grand Marnier)
1 tsp Luxardo maraschino liqueur
2 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/2 tsp simple syrup
2 dashes Angostura bitters
Stir with ice, and strain into a sugar-rimmed wine glass.  Garnish with a whole lemon rind.

My favorite cocktails, part 2: the Sidecar

For no particular reason, the second entry in my list of favorite cocktails is the Sidecar.  If you read my first post, it may occur to you that a Sidecar is not technically a cocktail; it's a sour.  A sour is merely a spirit plus lemon or lime juice plus a sweetener.  That sweetener can be sugar, a syrup, or a liqueur.  In lesser bars or in the premade-margarita-mix aisle of your grocery store, you can buy "Sour mix."  Skip that, and take the time to make a crisper, cleaner sour mix as it was originally intended: equal parts lemon or lime juice and simple syrup.

This is a very popular family of mixed drinks with hundreds of variations.  Consider:

whiskey + lemon juice + syrup = whiskey sour

gin + lemon juice + maraschino liqueur = Aviation

light rum + lime juice + syrup = Daiquiri

cachaça + lime juice + sugar = caipirinha

tequila + lime juice + orange liqueur (eg. triple sec) = margarita

applejack + lemon juice + grenadine = Jack Rose

etc.

Tuesday night cocktail hour(s) (cont. ii)

Rehema joined in the fun with her old standby,

Tom Collins

2 oz whatever my well gin is
1/2 oz fresh lemon juice
1/2 (2:1) simple syrup
Shake; strain into a Collins glass with rocks; top off with club soda and agitate to mix.

A refreshing, trusty classic.

Tuesday night cocktail hour(s) (cont. iv)

Mackenzie showed up FINALLY, and I started manufacturing the Ramos Gin Fizz which I promised her earlier in the day. Having never made one before, I was interested to see in what noodle-like state my arms would be after I was done with it. I used the recipe I found in one of my old New Orleans cocktail books:

1 egg white
2 oz heavy cream
1/2 oz fresh lemon juice
1/2 oz fresh lime juice
1/2 oz (2:1) simple syrup

3 drops vanilla extract 

Combine and shake like the dickens for at least a minute. Then add
2 oz gin (I used Old Tom this time, but would usually use a London dry like Plymouth)
3-4 drops orange flower water (Which I did not have. For kicks, I substituted 3 drops of creme de violette and 1 drop of Fee Bros. orange bitters)
Shake like the dickens for another minute or until your actin, myosin, and kinesin apparati are done broke; strain into a tall glass; and add a straw.

I was pleased both with the flavor and texture of my first Ramos Gin Fizz, and I think that Mackenzie, the queen of the RGF, herself, was, as well. I was displeased with my cardiac conditioning and the stength and conditioning of my arms; but that will surprise no one.

Tuesday night cocktail hour(s) (cont. vi)

Mackenzie's second drink was the Clover Club, introduced to us by Kirk Estopinal at Cure. It's a classic and basically a gin daisy with egg white.

2 oz London dry gin (Plymouth)
1 oz fresh lemon juice
~3/4 oz house grenadine or raspberry syrup
1 egg white
Combine all but gin and 1/4 oz syrup and shake. Then add gin and shake with ice. Place remaining 1/4 oz of syrup in the very bottom of a cocktail glass, then strain mixture into the glass, layering it over the syrup which sits prettily at the bottom.

This is a very nice drink, indeed. Its acidity is softened by the egg white, and the texture is beautiful. I screwed it up the first go-round and then winged the correction, so the volume of grenadine is an estimate, but it's close enough. Try it yourself and see what you think!