Vermouth julep

For my second drink last night, I asked Rhiannon for another low-proof drink, and she served up a julep.  How, you might say, is a julep low-proof with all that whiskey?  Good point, but like I said in an earlier post, a julep is anything with a spirit, mint, sugar, and ice as its only ingredients.  Rhiannon made me a vermouth julep.

2 oz Carpano Antica Formula vermouth

1 tsp demarara syrup

several mint leaves

Rhiannon muddled the mint in the julep cup, making sure that all the sides of the cup were aromatized before discarding the mint.  She then added vermouth and sugar, stirred, and filled the glass with cracked ice.  The garnish, as you see, was a beautiful bouquet of mint.

If we're talking about making a drink with vermouth as a main ingredient, Carpano is the way to go without a doubt.  Its rich, herbal character sets it apart from the better known and cheaper brands.  I hate that it's $32 for a liter, but what are you going to do?  Beauty can be expensive.

Lillet cobbler

I've been away from this blog for a while, not for lack of drinking, though.  I don't know what I've been doing but I think it must've been fun.  

Last night, I was exhausted from work and lack of sleep, but I drug myself to Cure for 3 drinks, anyway.  What a horrible life.  

I wasn't interested in drinking much, for sure, and didn't even want to be able to feel it much, so I decided (as I have recently been wont to do) to go low-proof.  Low gravity, wine-based mixed drinks are a venerable bunch, and they've been much-neglected recently.  I asked Rhiannon for a cobbler of some sort, and she delivered with this:

This drink was awesome, and not just because it made me the guy with the best looking drinking vessel in the bar.  Cobblers, as I've posted before, are just a bit of wine (or a spirit), a little sugar, some fruit and some ice, served with a straw.  I presumed this would be a sherry cobbler, so i was surprised to taste how incredibly light the taste was.  In fact, Rhiannon made me a Lillet blanc cobbler.  I don't know her exact proportions or whether she added a small embellishment to the classic cobbler recipe, but I'm sure it was something like this:

2 oz Lillet blanc

1 tsp simple syrup

a slice or two orange

plus some cracked ice in a julep cup.

Garnish with fresh fruit and serve with a straw.

Harry Johnson's 1888 Bartender's Guide calls the Sherry Cobbler "without a doubt the most popular beverage in the country, with ladies as well as with gentlemen."  Deservedly so.  In the last half of nineteenth century, only the mint julep approached the cobbler's popularity.  It's also worth mentioning that the cobbler, according to David Wondrich, was the application which first fully utilized and popularized a new American invention, the drinking straw.

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!

Art of Choke

I have had a few great drinking experiences.  One came at the Violet Hour, where I met Kyle Davidson and Stephen Cole, two of the best mixologists and most gracious hosts I've had the pleasure of meeting.  One of Kyle's signature drinks (along with the Goodbye Marie [a.k.a The Davidson]) is the Art of Choke.  This is one of those inspired creations that rises above (way above) all those newfangled drinks to the level of modern classic.  This is easily on my list of 20 best drinks, and it may break the top ten overall.  If you're in the mood for it, it's a top 5 drink, in my opinion.  

In rogue cocktails, published my Maksym Pazuniak of The Counting Room and Kirk Estopinal of Cure, we can read this description of the Art of Choke: 

Picture yourself in the limestone-walled courtyard of an Italian villa off the coast of the Riviera. You are surrounded by fragrant herbs and flowers, and the sea air is blowing gently. The sun is bright, but it's not hot, and you have nothing to do all day but relax and savor the sensations all around you. Drinking this cocktail is kind of like that if somebody suddenly punched you in the stomach just as you were beginning to doze off in the sun. In a good way.

So how do you make it?

Pimm's Highball Smash

I wanted something light and clean that I could drink this afternoon without alcoholic after-effects, so I turned to a couple of new acquisitions.  First, my dear friends Matt and Michele generously gave me a soda siphon for no reason whatsoever.  That was awesome.  Second, I bought a couple of bottles of bitters from the Bitter Cube guys I met at Tales of the Cocktail.  I decided to combine these with some mint, sugar, and Pimm's No. 1 to make an afternoon drink.

2 oz Pimm's No. 1 liqueur
1/2 teaspoon demarara syrup
2 dashes Bitter Cube lemon tree bitters
10 mint leaves
soda water

Muddle mint with syrup; add Pimm's and bitters.  Stir on ice, and strain into a highball glass filled with ice.  Top off with soda water.  Garnish with a sprig of mint.

Very light, very refreshing.  The mint really came through on the nose and the sip, and the Pimm's and citrus notes blended very nicely, even without actual citrus juice.  I would have liked a little more flavor, but the volume of soda I had to add diluted the drink a bit much for my taste.  I'll have to downsize my glass next time I prepare this one.

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.

Widow's Kiss

Last week at Cure, I was in a very aromatic mood, so I ordered Ricky Gomez's Makeup. Because they were out of green Chartreuse (wait, I thought it contained yellow...), I decided to go with something which calls for yellow Chartreuse, a Widow's Kiss.

1 1/2 oz apple brandy
3/4 oz yellow Chartreuse (you can use green if you like a little more intensity)
3/4 oz Benedictine
2 dashes Angostura bitters

Stir; strain; cocktail glass; marasca cherry.

Flora Italia

My venture to Cure last night was unique because I couldn't get a seat at the bar for a couple of hours.  At first, I decided to bide my time and browse through rogue cocktails, the publication of Maks Pazuniak (formerly of Cure, now at the Counting Room in Brooklyn) and Kirk Estopinal.  After a long time, I decided to try Kirk's Flora Italia.

2 oz Pisco Italia
1/2 oz St. Germain elderflower liqueur
1/4 oz simple syrup
2 dashes Angostura bitters
3 swaths grapefruit peel
2 drops rosewater

Frappe (pack with crushed ice) a rocks glass, and set aside. In another glass, stir Pisco, St. Germain, syrup, and Angostura with ice. Discard the ice from the chilled glass, and express the oil from two large grapefruit peel swaths around its interior. Strain the pisco mixture into the coated glass, and garnish with rose water.

This is an exquisite cocktail. It's extremely light and refreshing, fruity and floral.  It's delicate and subtle, as well.  This drink has pushed me over the edge regarding buying some St. Germain.  Thanks for another gem, Kirk.

The Georgian cocktail

While at the beach recently, I was considering new directions to go with bitters.  I've been serving so many Pimm's Cups and Juliet & Romeos lately that cucumbers kept coming to mind.  So I resolved to make some cucumber bitters.

In 6 oz grain alcohol, vigorously shake 1/2 of a skinned, thinly sliced cucumber.  Fine-strain, discard the solids, and repeat five times in the same 6 oz ethanol (total 3 cucumbers in the original 6 oz).  This will yield a murky, light green solution.  Cover the solution and allow it to rest for at least 24 hours in the refrigerator.  Decant the supernatant (the clear liquid on top), making sure not to pour off the green particles at the bottom of the container.  Combine this cucumber extract with a bitter root extract (I already have one ready to go) to taste.  (My rendition came to a ratio of 27:2.)  

With the cucumber bitters, I created The Georgian cocktail:

1.5 oz Aviation gin (you could use Hendrick's if you want more cucumber, Plymouth, or a clean London dry, but I like the floral notes in the Aviation)
3/4 tsp simple syrup
1 dash Angostura bitters
4 dashes cucumber bitters
1 small pinch of salt. 

Stir with ice, and garnish with a cucumber slice.

The cocktail is named for the Georgian architectural style, not for the State or for a living person. (Georgian was the name of the architectural style that was popular during the reigns of Kings George I-III of England.) The drink was named after this style because of its classic cocktail-symmetry and basic historicity, and because of the popularity of its form during the Georgian reigns.  To me, a gin Old Fashioned, with its simple and basic-but-classic design fits the namesake.  Gin makes the drink clean and light; Angostura adds to the complexity of the selected gin; the cucumber contributes to the lightness of the drink and adds refreshing flavor; and the salt and sugar round it out.  This is wonderful for a summer afternoon, especially for the gin-lover.

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 Libation Bearers Drink Database

I've found that my brain is not well trained to be a bartender.  The problem is that I can't immediately call to mind a large number of drinks that fit a person's request.  Rather, I can think of one or two at a time.  And since people's requests are often redundant, I find myself making the same drinks over and over, even though I am actually familiar with a lot more than that.  I've wanted to have some sort of a database which I could search using keywords.  For instance, it would be nice to search for refreshing, gin-based drinks which use raspberry syrup and to have a list of drinks generated for me automatically.  That would take the heat off of my beleaguered brain.

I haven't solved the problem completely, but I've taken a few steps forward with the development of The Libation Bearers Drinks Database. It's a growing list of recipes with keywords attached to each drink.  I (or you) can search by drink name, ingredient, or descriptor.  I have no intention of even approaching comprehensiveness; rather, it's a list of drinks that I can make at my bar with the spirits et al. that I routinely stock.  Use it if you please.  The link has been permanently placed at the top of the right-hand column.

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!

More Old Fashioneds

To follow my Final Ward, I decided to make an old favorite, the Applejack Old Fashioned.  I learned this recipe at Cocktail Chronicles and immediately fell in love.  Virginia apple plus Vermont maple syrup plus cinnamon courtesy of the East India Company...it's a Colonial masterpiece:

2 oz Laird's applejack
1 tsp genuine maple syrup
2 dashes Fee Brothers' Old Fashion bitters

Stir; Old Fashioned glass; rocks; orange twist.


Perhaps my favorite Old Fashioned variation.  If you have access to Laird's bonded apple brandy and you want to soar, substitute that for the (blended) applejack.  The next time the Applejack Old Fashioned leads off my night, I'll do the same.

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.

Saturday noontime drinks

Well, I have returned from my safari with virtually no physical and only limited psychological damage, and my parents are in town this weekend to welcome me home and to return my cats.

At lunchtime today, I offered my mom a rum drink.  I've only recently figured out what my mother's mixed-drink tastes are, and so I endeavored to make her a cocktail that she wouldn't hate.  (A tall order, I've found.)  So I made up a cocktail which will henceforth be called:

Mid-day in Georgia

3/4 oz light rum (Bacardi)
3/4 oz amber rum (Flor de Caña 7 year)
1/2 oz Jamaica rum (Myers)
1/4 peach, sliced
1/4 oz demarara syrup
1 dash Angostura bitters
2 dashes Fee Brothers' peach bitters
~1/8 oz homemade grenadine


Muddle peach slices with all ingredients except grenadine.  Shake with ice.  Double strain into a cocktail glass, and anoint the inside of the rim with a line of grenadine.  Garnish with a slice of peach.

Perfect for a warm summer afternoon.

And Mom loved it.  Whew.

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).

Saturday 3pm drink

Jetlagged a few days after returning from Africa, 2:00 PM arrived, and I was exhausted but could not sleep.  Needing to be fresh for a 7:00 PM graduation event in which I almost certainly would need my wits about me, I resolved to try a comfort drink to slow my mind and help me take a mid-afternoon snooze.  My dad suggested milk; I was thinking booze.  Ergo:

Milk Punch

1 oz Cognac

1 oz amber rum

2 tsp simple syrup

Combine above ingredients with ice in an Old Fashioned glass and fill to the top with milk.  Shake.  Shave nutmeg on top.

I'll let you know if it worked.

Update: It didn't work.  Still couldn't sleep.