Vermouth cobbler

Like the julep, this delicious potation is an American invention, although it is now a favorite in all warm climates.  The "cobbler" does not require much skill in compounding, but to make it acceptable to the eye, as well as to the palate, it is necessary to display some taste in ornamenting the glass after the beverage is made.  We give an illustration showing how a cobbler should look when make to suit an epicure.  ~Jerry Thomas, How to Mix Drinks. 1862.

2 oz sweet vermouth (Carpano Antica)

1 barspoon sugar

1 orange slice

Shake with ice; garnish with berries in-season.

I met up with my friends John and Amy at Cure last week, and settled in for a night of tasting.  I had had in mind for a few days the desire to experiment with low-proof concoctions, mostly using a wine or fortified wine base.  Champagne cocktails, sherry cobblers, vermouth cocktails, and the like was what I was thinking. I asked Kirk to make me a drink from Jerry Thomas, and, without knowing the above considerations, made me a vermouth cobbler.  As you can see, he clearly takes Professor Thomas's statement about ornamentation seriously.  The Carpano's rich herbal tones made this a much more complex drink than it would have been with a more typical sweet vermouth.  What's even better, after I had this drink, I didn't feel a thing. I went on to drink two flips and a champagne cocktail with virtually no ill effects.  Cheers to new discoveries that let you drink all night without becoming an embarrassment!

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!

Hasdrubal's Circuit

For me, mixing a new cocktail is not the hardest part of the creative problem.  Naming a cocktail appropriately is often a tougher task.  For that reason, I've decided to go at it in the opposite direction, i.e., come up with a good name and build a drink around it.  My first sojourn into cocktail creation via this method resulted in the
 

Rondo alla Turca 
 

8 parts Campari

5 parts Kirschwasser

1 part Raki

2 dashes Regans' orange bitters

1 pinch of salt.
 

Stir on ice. Strain. Cocktail glass. Orange twist.

OK, not everyone is going to like it.  But it's firmly built around its name.  Mozart's Rondo alla Turca or Turkish Rondo...now that's a good name for a drink.  Raki for Turkey; Kirschwasser for Austria/Germany; Campari for Italian influences in 18th c. music.

Next, I made the Sherman's March which will be here-documented shortly.

But what really started this off was the desire to create a drink named after my favorite battlefield tactical maneuver in Classical Antiquity, Hasdrubal's Circuit, which he executed at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC during the Second Punic War.  (For an explanation of the maneuver, go here and watch the 2:00:00 to 2:09:00 portion of my lecture.)  A cocktail of this name must have ingredients from western suprasaharan Africa (since Hasdrubal was Carthaginian), Spain (which was occupied by Carthage and was a staging ground for the transalpine invasion of Italy), and Italy (obviously for the Roman Republic).

Tuesday night cocktail hour(s)

Last Tuesday night's cocktail hour(s) included some new guests, some regulars, some new drinks, and some old ones.  Here's what I served, some of which were served multiple times...


Mai Tai


1 oz amber rum (Flor de Caña 7 year)
1 oz Jamaica rum (Myers's)
3/4 oz lime juice
1/2 oz triple sec
1/2 oz orgeat syrup
1/4 oz simple syrup
Shake, rocks.


Apple/Orange Mai Tai (my modification)

1 oz applejack (Laird's)
1 oz Jamaica rum (Myers's)
3/4 oz fresh lime juice
1/2 oz triple sec
1/2 oz orgeat syrup
1/4 oz simple syrup
2 dashes orange bitters (Regans')
Shake, rocks.


Tom Collins

2 oz London Dry gin
2 tsp lime juice
2 tsp simple syrup
Shake all but club soda.  Strain into a Collins glass with ice.  Add club soda to the top, and agitate to mix.


Sherman's March (my invention)

1 oz bourbon (Knob Creek)
1 oz Southern Comfort
1 tsp grain alcohol or overproof rum (Everclear)
2 dashes peach bitters (Fee Bros.)
1 dash Fee Bros. Old Fashion bitters
Stir all but overproof spirit on ice; strain into a cocktail/champagne coupe.  Float overproof spirit on the top, and ignite.  Spray oil from a lemon peel twist into the flames.  Quickly drink after the fire goes out.


Cocktail a la Louisiane

3/4 oz rye
3/4 oz Benedictine
3/4 oz sweet vermouth
3 dashes absinthe
3 dashes Peychaud's bitters
Stir, strain, homemade maraschino cherry. 

My favorite cocktails, part 6: the Manhattan

It's hard to beat a Manhattan for several reasons.  First, they taste great.  Second, the ingredients are cheap and easy to find.  Third, they are easy to make (i.e., it's hard for you, your significant other, or your random bartender to screw one up).  Fourth, the template opens the door to a number of exquisite variations.

This recipe works beautifully:

2 oz rye whiskey
3/4 oz sweet vermouth
2 dashes Angostura bitters
Stir on ice, and strain into a cocktail glass. If you can find a Luxardo maraschino cherry, garnish it with that.

Substitute Punt e Mes vermouth to make a Red Hook.
Make it with Carpano Antica Formula vermouth, Fee Brothers Old Fashion bitters, and add Marie Brizard Apry (apricot brandy) and you have a Davidson or a Goodbye Marie.
Consider sherry, another fortified wine, or (now we're stretching it) an Italian amaro instead of sweet vermouth.
Add a little Benedictine or Chartreuse.
Some people prefer or have better access to bourbon, so they make bourbon Manhattans.
You like blended scotch better than rye or bourbon? Make it a Rob Roy.
Rum blends very well with sweet vermouth, too!

Tuesday night cocktail hour(s)

After a slow start, I hosted another successful Tuesday Cocktail Hour(s).


Amanda showed up first and, newly armed with the recipe for the Trouble & Desire (thanks to Mike Yusko), I made her a T&D. Of course, I don't have all of the specialty ingredients (especially the Carpano Antica Formula vermouth), so I substituted for a less-sublime cocktail as below:

2 oz Flor de Cana 7 year rum
3/4 oz Martini & Rossi sweet vermouth
1/2 oz Licor 43
1/2 oz Myers's Jamaican rum
Stir; rocks; orange twist.

The Flor de Cana is a bit less smooth than the originally intended El Dorado 5 year demarara rum, and the Martini & Rossi has a different flavor profile than the Carpano, so on the sip there was a little less character than the original, but still excellent and smooth. This was my first use of Licor 43, the flavor of which I lost in this rendition. In the end, my cheap T&D is a very good cocktail, but not nearly as excellent as Mike's version. Without the intended ingredients, I'd probably just as soon drink a Cruzan Single Barrel Old Fashioned/treacle, but try it for yourself and see what you think.