Astro-Punch: Holiday Party 2020

*peep* 🐭

Hi there. It's been awhile hasn't it? Is there even a need to indicate why, this year?

Anyways, I've hope you and yours have been well. Like you, I'm very glad to see the end of this year. It won't be the end of all our troubles, but some element of closure tying a knot on a period of interminable uncertainty may prove fortifying (for the next period of interminable uncertainty). So let's take a moment to salute the current heavens with a couple rounds of Astro-Punch, mixed special for the Astrological Society of Princeton's holiday Zoom party.

There's plenty of background on the development of Astro-Punch, but all you really need to know is:

1 of Sharp, 2 of Sweet, 3 of Strong, 4 of Weak, and Spice!

Align according to the zodiac signs in the chart and get creative!

The heavens for the day, December 13th, featured a balsamic Sagittarius Moon quickly approaching the (Sag) Sun for an eclipse the next day, with Mercury a few degrees behind, Venus in Scorpio and Mars in Aries. We're looking for spirits, aromatics and dilution elements which reflect a contemplative, far-traveling, or religious/monastic quality. Then a rhythm section of sweet/sour which is bold, red and perhaps tart.



Stargazers' Punch
1/2 oz white grapefruit juice
1 oz crème de cassis
1 1/2 oz brandy (Remy Martin or similar centaur or ♐-themed spirit)
2 oz Arctic Fire tea (substitute violet black tea or other thematically-comparable tea)
food-grade frankincense

To make:

Prepare your serving glass with frankincense smoke. Take a tin pie plate and add a few granules of food-grade frankincense, placing this on your stove's burner on lowest setting. Hold your serving glass above the frankincense, letting the smoke/vapor fill the glass for roughly 30 seconds. The frankincense should bubble and liquefy; avoid charring. You may not see much smoke, but you should be able to smell the incense.

Combine sharp, sweet, strong, weak in a shaker. Give a brief shake to combine and aerate, then strain into your serving glass.

If making a punchbowl of the stuff, you could infuse the frankincense into water for a block of ice to rest in the punchbowl: this chills the punch without overdoing the dilution. Gently heat frankincense and water on the stove like making a tea, and pour into a suitable tupperware-type container (lid not required) or bundt pan whose size works with your punchbowl. Freeze, and perhaps run some warm water over the container's surface to help release the ice block when ready.

Tasting notes:

When originally testing this recipe with lime juice, Venus in Scorpio's Sweet element announced itself with mouth-puckering tartness. Of the two classic citruses typically used for punch (and can be used in a pinch for Astro-Punch if other options fail), lime juice normally brings out fruitier flavors than lemon, which is a plus when working with the red fruit liqueurs favored by Venus in Mars signs. However, be it grenadine (pomegranate liqueur — think Persephone), sloe gin or the racy crème de cassis, these liqueurs also come with a hefty dose of Martian acidity! Venus in detriment veers from serving in a purely Venusian fashion, that is, providing a balancing sweetness to unite disparate ingredients and creating a pleasing mouthfeel.

To solve this problem, white grapefruit juice comes to the rescue. The lower acidity, clean flavor and color of white grapefruit evokes Aries' lamb rather than ram (think racy bold lime juice) side, and harmonizes with the cassis. Cognac adds vanilla notes and an element of slow-sipping contemplation to pair with cassis' brooding quality, while the tea provides a low-tannin slightly-herbal vista on which the other ingredients might expand. Starry frankincense on the nose finds flavor affinity with the white grapefruit, and orients one to a spiritual frame of mind.



Oh Dear, There's a Total Solar Eclipse in Sag Tomorrow Punch
1/4 oz lime juice
1/4 oz lime oleo saccharum syrup
3/4 oz Batavia Arrack
2 oz ruby port
2 oz Ommegang Three Philosophers beer
nutmeg

To make:

Oleo saccharum syrup:
Zest one lime and add to a sealable container with 1/4 cup demerara sugar (turbinado or white sugars can also work). Muddle, cover, shake and let macerate on the countertop overnight. The next day add 1/4 cup hot water and shake to dissolve the sugar. Strain off lime zest and store syrup in the refrigerator.

ALSO: oleo saccharum (for any citrus fruit) makes a great base for a lemonade or limeade-style non-alcoholic beverage — just mix in the citrus juice and more water, to taste.

Cocktail:
Add lime juice, syrup, Arrack and port to your serving cup. Stir gently. Add beer and stir gently. Grate nutmeg over top. Enjoy!

Tasting notes:

This is more of a recipe "inspired by" the transits, and provides an alternative way of working with desired ingredients while not strictly following the regular Punch ratio. With an eclipse the day after the party, a little holiday season opulence, in the spirit of Ford Prefect persuading Arthur Dent to down 6 pints immediately prior to getting beamed on-board a Vogon spacecraft to avoid Earth's destruction, seemed apropos.

Here, the acidity issues of Venus in Scorpio and Mars in Aries are solved reverse-King Solomon-style: combine them into one ingredient, ruby port*! As a digestif, ruby port's nature as an after-dinner sipper combines a dense blend of sugar and acid in a red fruity, Martian and festive delight. Yet the port could use some stiffening via our Sagittarian ingredients. Prominently, the quadruppel-ale-and-kriek Three Philosophers, another festive element one could imagine happily resting in the hand of a friar, real or erstwhile, at a pub bull session.

Wine and beer in the same cocktail, you ask? Believe! I say.

The bready, malty (dare I say laconic) ale with notes of dark chocolate, coffee, and yes, cherry, balances quite well with the young ebullient port. To this we add Batavia Arrack, the rum progenitor first encountered by westerners traveling the East Indies during the early days of punch and global circumnavigation (you'll have to write me if you want to know how this relates to the gods of the Piscean Age and Homer's Odyssey). In a word, the arrack adds an element of funk to this otherwise smooth and too-easy-drinking quaff. And to this already-heady brew, we add in a ceremonial amount of lime juice and lime oleo saccharum, bowing in the direction of Right and True punch, because the arrack would feel out of sorts without the Tiki undershadings. Another classical punch element, nutmeg, finishes the cocktail with that spicy-yet-creamy thing nutmeg does, and sets the imagination on untamed possibilities.

Careful: too much nutmeg and you go from Sag to Pisces terrain. Granted, this is a recipe which could very easily set you down for a long winter's nap, but whether you want to encounter Lord Kinbote is entirely your choice.

*I would avoid LBV or aged port if possible, because it diminishes the sweetness and would throw off the punch's balance.


Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy and have a warm holiday season and winter ahead with friends and family as close as our present moment allows.


For my latest astrological musings, please check out my blog Kastalia Astrology. It's a bit quiet at the moment due to an ever-expanding-in-scope research project, but stay tuned: I've had too many "holy $#!^" moments so far to not share what I'm finding.

Cinderella's Coach

I can see the pumpkin up ahead, hurtling down the road like a rickety jalopy driven by Mr. Toad, lantern light screaming into the forest darkness.

"Faster!" I declaim. "We gotta catch it this year! We've been trying to get this recipe out the door since 2012!" "And don't say it! We don't have room for an Emilio Rivera cameo in this vignette!"

MoD, ever the bombshell waiting to go in her diaphon and plum-paired mask, conductor's jacket, and boots, revs the throttle and looks down at my sidecar. "You better drink that down to a stable level then."

"Since when have I ever been stable?"

"Good point. I still don't know why we have to follow this coach though."

"Because," I cry, gripping the short windshield. "THE CHAISE IS ON!"

The four white horses are no match for four cylinders, and steady-up to a stop as my partner-in-crime and I keep pace aside.

As the bike's motor clips to a halt, whose face should appear at the gilded glass window but that humble lass, pearl hairnet spritzed with gold pins, growing more ashen by the moment. "No! Not now!"

My partner leans back to not obstruct and tilts me an "Ok, let's see this" eye of bemusement. Seizing the opening, I tip my coupé at a jaunty angle and lift my wind-goggles. (with the bomber jacket and long whiskers I'm sure I could be mistaken for Clark Gable) "Pardon me, mademoiselle. Do you have any Brain Poupon?"

"Boomer!"

My partner's not liking how I start, but I lean in, letting the candlelight catch my eyes so they light up like a hungover jack'o'lantern. "BRaInSsss......"

A squeak comes from inside the coach, and I'm not sure if it's the maiden. "Sacre bleu! I ran him through once! I vill do eet again!"

"Come out from behind her skirts, Remy, and say it to my face, why don't ya?"

From around the flaxen-haired beauty pokes the snout of my old enemy: same empty black stare, same dumbo ears, same overbite that could cut cigars, just a lot more human this time. "You're supposed to be dead!"

"I am dead, ya mook. Doesn't mean I still can't get work. I see you've been playing coachman again, eh?" I grab my bamboo cocktail skewer. "Come on out, I want a rematch!"

Remy just chuckles. "And what do you intend to do avec ça? Pick my teeth? You are just a little undead dwarf hamster. Go away and stop bothering us."

"That's loaded undead dwarf hamster to you, bucko! You might be towering now, but in a few minutes it'll be an equal mano-a-mano. And I know drunken boxing! Hoowah!"

"Just like last time, a drunken lout who knows nozzing of ze finer methods in life. Excuse-moi madam-- Oh no, leave ze coach mademoiselle, hurry!"

He's right, everything's beginning to shrink back to its old self. Why the old dame kept doing this year after year is beyond me. Maybe by now it was her one night out from the great beyond. How many of us coachmen had attended her... Ooh, peanut, for me? *stuff* Anyway..

The fading lady throws herself to the ground, but Remy's not so lucky. A dim squeaking and clawing echoes from the beach-ball-sized gourd. "Don't worry. The bugger'll claw himself out pretty quickly."

MoD gapes askance. "Should I have sought more references before hiring you?"

"Probably so. I mean, that's why you made me head of HR, right?"

"The blog doesn't have HR! You're an admin!"

"Adding additional responsibilities outside the role description! Workplace abuse! I'm reporting you to HR! Hello, me? MoD's at it again. What can we do about this?"

"I'd like to contest these charges."

"DENIED. Consider yourself suspended, missy!"

With that, MoD rises from the bike, aghast. "Hey, Cinderella-bella." The ol' lass looks towards me.

"C'mon, ma cherie. Hop on. I know a nice place where we can get drinks.."

To be continued...

Cinderella's Coach

1 1/2 oz cognac

3/4 oz lemon juice

1/2 oz Gran Gala

1/4 oz orgeat

1 (rounded) barspoon pumpkin butter

mist Galliano

Shake the first 5 ingredients on ice and double-strain into a chilled cocktail coupe misted before and after with Galliano.

Notes:

I had originally started with a base of pumpkin-infused cognac, but, well..try as I might, it just didn't turn out. It doesn't last long if made with puree, and pie pumpkins can be hit-or-miss for flavor.

The difference in switching over to pumpkin butter was stark: pumpkin butter is rich, deep and fruity -- an excellent match for brandy. I've tested using off-shelf Kozlowski Farms (delicious, and a beautiful almost-red color - imagine the caramelization here) which is a great guarantor of consistency, and also homemade pumpkin butter (see below for the recipe, which comes close to the off-shelf). If you've got good pumpkins, more power to you. With the lighter flavors in the cocktail, making from-scratch will also let you fine-tune the flavor profile away from allspice and clove to match the anise and vanilla.

But while the pumpkin butter may be bouncy with the flavor, this is where the orgeat and Galliano really come in, pulling the drink in lighter and more elegant directions, fit for a Gran Gala (yes, I pun, it's a way of life). Though a mist generally functions better on top of egg white foam, Galliano's anise comes through well, diverting the pumpkin aroma from the nose so that pumpkin becomes a prominent though not dominant flavor.

Homemade pumpkin butter (just enough for a small jelly jar)
Half a 15oz can of pumpkin puree
1/4c apple cider
1/4c water
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Mix all in a small pot (butter warmer size if you got it), cover mostly with some opening for evaporation, and let slow cook on the stove on the lowest heat possible for about 4 hours, stirring occasionally. Let cool and store in a jar in the fridge.

The above story was probably not included in Grimm's Fairy Tales for....reasons.

Related recipes:
The Pumpkin Pie: by Erick Castro; cognac-pumpkin butter sour but a straight Sour/egg white formulation (not a New Orleans Sour as one Mr. Regan would term it)
Charante Hessian: by Rhett Williams; Hot pumpkin-buttered cognac
Pumpkin Patch Julep: page has a bad certificate so I'll spare you: not a Julep (has lemon juice); whiskey Cinderella's Coach, without the Gran Gala or Galliano
Also, probably too many others since it's 6 years later, but the heck with that. Unless there's a really distinctive ingredient apart from all the rest (including pumpkin), it all kinda blends into one another.

That said, from all these years ago I must shout-out @dagreb, because this is the proper way to present the recipe.

Bonus recipe!

Cinderella's Coach Royale

1 1/2 oz cognac

3/4 oz lemon juice

1/2 oz Gran Gala

1/4 oz orgeat

1 (rounded) barspoon pumpkin butter

3 oz brut sparkling wine/Champagne

mist Galliano

Shake the first 5 ingredients on ice and double-strain into a chilled cocktail coupe. Add wine. Mist with Galliano


The dryness of the bubbly makes this truly magical. Enjoy!

The NOLA Variations: Moo Carré

'Cause now you can lawfully eat King Cake!

Moo Carré
1 oz rye whiskey
1 oz cognac
1 oz bianco vermouth
1/4 oz Galliano
2 dashes Peychaud's bitters
1 dash Angostura bitters
1 1/2 oz milk stout
lemon twist for garnish

Build, stir, fizz, twist.

As our dear MoD was finding out on Anadyomene's Waves, choice of spirits makes all the difference. Despite use of a milk stout -- the lactose is the hinge holding it all together -- you want a good roasty bitter-ish beer, because then the caramel-vanilla flavor note axis emerges and isn't drowned out by sweet. Left Hand and Duck Rabbit make great well-rounded milk stouts that fit the bill. You can taste the Vieux Carré (or at least the Saratoga) underneath, but the axis takes it on its own path.

For Negroni Week: Rosso Doré

So in case you haven't been following on Twitter for the past 6 days, it's the third annual Negroni Week! The Negroni: Campari, sweet vermouth and gin. Simple, classic, the bitter progenitor of dozens of Renaissance cocktails (including my own The Doe's Path). And I've got a fresh little riff-ditty (maybe two, we'll see how tomorrow goes) to say about that. (I'm thinking yes, I could use several Negronis the way work's been this week)

Originally an impromptu from before there were Impromptus here, this recipe's now refined with a little help from my new Burlesque bitters. The Negroni itself is a marvel of 3 herbaceous ingredients each working at different levels to create an energetic whole. When working with less-than-herbaceous ingredients, it's not a bad idea to yet find ways to introduce texture with the ingredients, such as a spicy rye whiskey or grassy agricole rhum or bitters with different bittering agents and flavor notes, to keep that energy moving.

Rosso Doré
3/4 oz cognac (Remy Martin VSOP)
3/4 oz rhum agricole blanc (Neisson)
3/4 oz Dubonnet Rouge
1/2 oz Campari
1/4 oz Crème Yvette
2 dashes Peychaud's or Burlesque bitters
1 Meyer lemon twist

Stir, strain, garnish.

With a floral-thyme Meyer and grassy agricole nose to start, you find yourself on steep descent into velvet violet-lush bitterness. Grape spirits round the body, and the combination of cognac and rhum agricole is a somewhat rare one which reminds me of a refined gilded quality (maybe it's the Neisson bottle cap talking?). Finishes with grape and bitter.


The 1/2 oz of Campari is a high-water-mark: use that much if both base spirits you're using are overproof otherwise dial down to as low as 1/4 oz. (2 tsp is about right using the brands in the recipe)

Not Quite Mixology Monday, April 2015: Drink of Shame

Hi everybody! The grand catch-up continues with my entry for last month's Mixology Monday event (gotta get it out before today's deadline for May's event, natch!).

For the month of April, our host was Whitney of Tipicular Fixins, a lass with a creative bent and sensibility for far-ranging ingredients after my own heart - go check her out (especially the Ikea lingonberry post)! She brings us a theme that's a recipe for searching out the deep dark parts of our cocktail psyche (bring Q-tips!): Drink of Shame!

So, you’re a certified, mixologist, craft-tender, bar chef or fine spirit enthusiast...now.

But, there was a time when you only ordered Long Island Iced Tea. Or, maybe you always made the Jello shots for your frat? Perhaps you’re the reason that your local had an Island Oasis machine for so long? Rye & Ginger? Vodka Seven? Someone was ordering these things. Your street cred would be ruined if you ordered or (gasp) served one now, but don’t you miss it, just a little?

Wouldn't you love to have one more Jolly Rancher? A chance to drink a mudslide without shame? We all made questionable drink choices in our past, the popular drinks from 1970 to the year 2000 were a cheap, sugary mess. Now is the time to resurrect your favourite drink from the time before modern Mixology. Give a new life to the drink you had to put down after you had your first real cocktail.

This is the remix.

Maybe you need to use fresh ingredients, or you can try elevating the spirits. Make everything from scratch or remove an offending ingredient. Do whatever you can to bring back and legitimize a drink you used to love.

Check out last month's round-up post here, along with the transformative magic at work from all the participants!



Y'know? For the life of me, I struggled to even remember a trashy recipe I had more than once (and that's not just because of the blackouts they induced). No, I remember the Cerebral Hemorrhage and the What She's Having and (ha!) the Angel's Tit (the crusty old bartender at the brewpub went wild, swinging his towel around when he heard that order - that was actually in a recipe book they had, natch). But my motto back then was (and largely still is except for certain classics) "never have the same drink twice." And with all the recipes I was finding on drinksmixer.com (don't click, avoid the potential viruses) and writing down on business cards I'd never otherwise use so I could have them at the ready for bartenders, I had too big a world to explore not to.

Our drink, nearly finished, with my old
Incredible Hulk/Chuck Norris recipe card.

But there is one recipe I do remember quite well and maybe even had a couple of times, both at home and out when I could find a place that kept Hpnotiq in-house (yes, we're going there, today): the Incredible Hulk. Real simple: drizzle an equal part bright sky-blue Hpnotiq over cognac on ice, letting the drink morph into a radioactive green mess - bing! There's your Hulk. (although if you add a shot of Johnnie Walker Red from there, the Incredible Hulk gets angry and morphs into Chuck Norris! I never had a Chuck Norris.)

The Hpnotiq was good while it lasted, both for the Hulk and other brand-proprietary recipes (and my own bright violet Fairy Princess made with pink Kinky liqueur and vanilla vodka - see what my early editorial discretion saved you folks?). But I finished that bottle off in my early days of getting serious and haven't looked back. Until now.

Looking at the recipe, the cognac was never the issue, just the crayon-colored industrial sugar and acid bomb that was Hpnotiq. How much actual cognac they used and what their definition of "premium" is, we'll never know. Nor do we know the exact flavor profile other than "vaguely tropical with a heaping helping of passionfruit esters" according to its brand competition with blue Alize (don't get me started on the Alizes..). Ahhh...but tropical, that's something we can work with, especially if it involves approximating a flavor with a stack of ingredients.

Bruce Banner's ditched his plane somewhere in Fiji and taken up with a hula maid down in a little tiki hut by the sea. I give you the Tiki-fied...

The Beachcomber Hulk
1 1/2 oz cognac
3/4 oz Batavia arrack
3/8 oz passionfruit syrup
1/4 oz blue curaçao
1/4 oz lemon juice
1 dash orgeat
1 dash vanilla bitters
1 slice starfruit
Mint and cherry for garnish

Fill a rocks glass with pellet or slightly-larger-than-pellet ice.

Muddle the starfruit in a shaker along with everything but the cognac and garnish. Shake with 1 small ice cube to agitate with minimal dilution.

Add the cognac to the rocks glass and then drizzle the blue mixture over top, letting it sink down to turn the drink green.

Give a little stir and garnish.

Secret of the Ooze

Passionfruit and blue flavors, anchored by the wondrous funk of arrack, a light lemon acid edge not generated by a dumptruck of sugar, based on able illuminous cognac. Avec un certain je ne sais quoi.

So I gave the blue mix a good initial eyeball for ingredients -- how was I supposed to know it'd smell exactly like Hpnotiq? Incroyable! Who says you have to stick to the model of a cognac/vodka base? Batavia arrack is infinitely more interesting, and at 100 proof a lot more Hulk-like. The starfruit extends the tropical flavors and brings some good mild freshness as well, though you might want to play around with other tropical fruits too.

I know the pics show one large rock instead of small ice - that was a misstep for the initial version, however much the flavor was spot-on. You want something that will bring a good dilution and balance without also over-diluting. Otherwise, go to town!

Thanks to Whitney for hosting a fun theme and to Fred for wrangling as ever.

Stay tuned, dear reader - this very eve is another Mixology Monday - and this time I've got the time, the recipe and the name already in place.

Grandeur of the Season

Herald trumpets,
Holly berries,
Pine needles,
Spice cake,
Bright Christmas oranges,
And glass jewels for the tree.

Grandeur of the Season

1 oz cognac

1 oz pear eau-de-vie

1 oz ruby port

1 tsp Solerno blood orange liqueur

1 tsp Campari

1 tsp crème de cassis

1 dash Pernod

2 dashes pimento bitters

festive aromatic ice sphere

Rolling ribbons and great globes of grape and orange and berry.

Anise accents.

Gentle emerging pine and spice.

Opulence for jubilant jovial occasions.

Step 1: Festive aromatic ice sphere.

Add water to an ice sphere mold.

Arrange ginger coins, cloves and rosemary sprig (a bit of orange zest and red currants also welcome).

Add top and freeze.

Step 2: Mix the cocktail

Three spirits, three liqueurs, three accents.

Batch and bottle in the fridge days ahead for parties and something even smoother.

Measure 3 1/2 ounces per serving (1/2 cup minus 1 tablespoon).

Pour over ice sphere in large balloon glass.

Swirl, take in the aromas and let dilute for 5-10 minutes.

Sip!

Step 3: ???

There's still some left in the bottle. What's next? New Year's!

Sunset of September Seventh

Back last summer while prepping for the Smokemont, I made a delightful purchase of rare/offbeat fruit preserves from Smoky Mountain Farms. In addition to Smokemont's huckleberry, I also picked up bottles of mayhaw and scuppernong jellies. Leaving aside the mayhaw for now, the state fruit of North Carolina is a whiter, muskier form of muscadine grape, whose earliest cultivar may be the "Mother Vine" from Roanoke Island. The scuppernong had this mild wine-like early-autumnal taste perfect for this moment in the season.

My thoughts instantly drifted to some form of Sour cocktail, a natural when using jellies or other preserves, possibly with cognac to match or maybe woody and orchard-fruited Dad's Hat* rye whiskey. I couldn't decide, so I split the spirits, noodled around the edges, and came up with something just right for this very moment.

* any other rye whiskey is going to be a step away from tthe intended result, Dad's Hat being quite distinct in its own way.

Sunset of September Seventh
3/4 oz Dad's Hat rye whiskey
3/4 oz cognac (Ferrand Ambre)
1/2 oz reposado tequila (Cazadores)
1/2 oz lemon juice
1/2 oz scuppernong jelly
1/4 oz Drambuie
5 drops Fee Bros. black walnut bitters

Shake all on ice - hard.

Double-strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

No garnish.




I first should note that the honor of doing a scuppernong jelly Sour goes first to B. T. Parsons for his Scuppernong Sour, from his Bitters: A Spirited History of a Classic Cure-All (itself a riff on Jamie Boudreau's Marmalade Sour). The germ of SoS7 was already in my mind when I got the book last fall, but it fell off for awhile until I checked on a misremembering and found his version used bourbon and egg white. That was great motivation to keep going and add in some tweaks to help this drink further stand on its own (though I did borrow the extra 1/4 oz sweet from his structure - I think the jelly's pectin negates some of its sweetness, or at least my jar's did. YMMV.).

I had started with a classic 2 : 1 : 1 structure for this sour with rye and cognac, but the base spirits seemed a bit overwhelmed by the sweet and sour elements. So I pulled both of those elements back while adding a third base, buttery highlands reposado tequila to help dry it further (but not overmuch that the agave note would stick out like a sore thumb). And these mods pretty much made the cocktail.

The overall flavor is an emergent one, but depending on the sip you get those hints of agave, or a wash on palate and nose of maple syrup and birch wood from the rye and bitters, or perhaps a view down to the copper horn of cognac on which everything rests. The egg white seemed like so much gilding with everything else going on, so I omitted it - but the jelly's pectin adds a lovely body. The scuppernong flavor itself is mild and mellow, but it dominates in its own way. I added the Drambuie instead of simple syrup to help keep with the overall "golden" aesthetic, and it helps round edges with faint herbs and scotch-smoke where they would otherwise be flat.

You get a little bit of summer in the glass from the lemon and tequila, while slowly moving into autumnal flavors with the cognac and rye. Shake up a glass for yourself today and toast the rays of gold falling on you and the ever-darkening shadows. This is the best time of year.

Le VVO (Violet, Vert et Or)

For as little a time as I've gotten serious about cocktails, it's easy to find historical aspects of cocktails that utterly fascinate, such as the triumvirate of classic New Orleans cocktails: the Sazerac, the Vieux Carré, and the Cocktail à la Louisiane. It's a case of a group of ingredients worked and reworked in different formulations which speak to the city's character. There are the basic Manhattan ingredients: rye whiskey, sweet vermouth, and aromatic bitters. To these are added rich cognac, graceful Benedictine, exotic and brooding absinthe (or local variant Herbsaint), and soul-of-NOLA Peychaud's bitters.

This time last year, I had just bought my first bottle of Pernod pastis on an eventual quest to add a true absinthe to my cabinet. But I made my first Sazerac, and later a Vieux Carré, and my mind was dazzled at how immediate a sense of place was brought to bear. The Vieux Carré had me envisioning balconies with gilded wrought iron rails looking out over the antique square and fountain, everything draped in Spanish moss and decorated with morning glories, impatiens and other small flowers; the light imbuing the place in the color of pale parchment. The Sazerac rumbled of dripping, broody wood-bedecked back rooms lit through Venetian blinds, and diabolic voices so smoke-husked they could only buzz.

With all that and Mardi Gras dancing through my mind, I lit on an image of jewels of green, purple and gold twinkling in a glass. Was such a cocktail even possible? What could color it? And, if spirits could indeed color the ice, would the ice entirely freeze up with just enough alcohol content to imbue a proper coloring and flavoring?

It turns out that the vision made it to reality, and readily at that. And, with all my fascination for the above triumvirate of cocktails, I felt it only proper to pull in some golden NOLA elements (cognac, Benedictine, pastis) to best situate the drink at home.

Behold, Le Violet, Vert et Or!

Le VVO (Violet, Vert et Or)

2 oz cognac

1/4 oz Benedictine

2 mint bitters ice cubes

2 Crème Yvette ice cubes

rinse of Herbsaint or pastis

long spirally lemon twist

• Rinse a chilled cocktail glass with the Herbsaint or pastis (discard some but not all of the excess).
• Add the four ice cubes in a decorative pile.
• In a mixing glass, stir cognac and Benedictine without ice to blend (better not to chill here, that'll slow down how fast the cubes will melt into the drink and flavor it) and pour over the ice cubes in the cocktail glass.
• Garnish with a festive ribbon of lemon zest.
• Wait a few moments. Stir using the zest-rope, letting the green and purple (especially the purple) integrate. 
• Enjoy.

Ice cubes: Using a 1 inch square ice cube tray (like Tovolo), add and mix the following per cube, and then freeze:

• Mint bitters: 1 barspoon (3/4 tsp) Fee Bros. Mint bitters and 1 oz water.
• Crème Yvette: 1/4 oz Crème Yvette and 1 oz water or to top. (use a 1/2 T so as not to overmeasure)

The Crème Yvette isn't as purple-tasting here as it might be, so long as it's integrated. In fact, it's this bit of sweet which saves the drink from being overly-bittered, and it's so busy being sweet it doesn't hit one over the head with violet. It's a careful balance to be sure: the important thing is to manage what melts when, because as soon as the cocktail becomes cold enough, the ice stops melting and you're left with whatever's gone to that point. (also, if you balance the ice so that the mint bitters ice cubes are both on top, melting last, you have a nice minty sipper to end on)

The cognac and the Benedictine and the pastis are largely for those first few sips when everything's still integrating: it's effectively a nice anise-tinged B&B to delight the palate before the big flavors take over (real absinthe might be a bit strong and overly complex here). Beyond that, once the mint bitters ice gets melting, elements of the Stinger emerge, and when the Crème Yvette comes in, the lemon zest helps counterpoint it into a more comfortable palatability - something of a verdant brooding savage garden.

In addition, in a moment of great-minds-think-alike, though I've been noodling the imagery of Le VVO for a year, I imagine taste-wise it's not that great a distance from a recently featured drink over on cocktail virgin slut, the Wells Cocktail.

In all, a pretty little throw-bauble of a cocktail.

Sun King's Crown

The K'inich cuts where blood is sweetest and catches it in the offering cup:

Sacred sacral sanguine saccharum sangraal.

Dank halls call for a vital quaff -- spiced burnt wine for the song-haunted liege:
Bejeweled brow troubled by the riddle of steel.

In the shadow of the Omphale, Pythia upon her tripod chews laurel amid the foul vapors:
 Voyez-vous le crève des rêves révélatrices!

Richness layers in words and drink alike.
If you think you can improve, then by all means create!
To both king and god make fit.

 Sun King's Crown

1 1/2 oz Pierre Ferrand Ambre cognac

3/4 oz Lustau Palo Cortado Solera Reserva Peninsula sherry

1/2 oz The King's Ginger

1/4 oz Solerno blood orange liqueur

Usquebaugh-filled Lemon-Herb Iceball with lemon twist circlet (see recipes below)

*looks up* Do I sense a theme here?

Stir the first four ingredients without ice in your serving goblet. Carefully add the iceball, lemon-crown up.

You may sip when the outside of the glass has become frosty (not very long, but enough to let some dilution occur).

The drink itself is a study in liquid gold. It begins a noble quaff, each of the base spirits presenting in turn: hearty with an unmoving cognac anchor, rich and maple-nutty with sherry, the spice of ginger and faint smoke around the edges an accent bell's rattle, opulent with blood orange and just the right bright lemon note. It grows honeyed as the ice melts, until it gives way to a meditative pilgrimage through the mystic desert of bitter herbs and tea, paling in clarion call of faint lemon. And then, on last sip, you taste the lion's growl in your throat: spicy Usquebaugh.

And just when you thought I was going weak on my art pieces.

Would you believe the idea for this drink originated with this recipe? Yes it did, yes I did (or at least managed for 5 of 7 days). Vegan with a quaff of salad dressing every morning. The fresh ingredients made up for a lot and it worked, inflammation-wise. But that's not the point.

That entire ingredient list for the cleanse drink? Sun Medicine, as pertains to the astrological sign Leo. And the Sun King's Crown ingredient list? You see the regal, Sun (Sol), citrus and ginger refs? How the ice sphere is a glowing yellow orb (perhaps with a noticeable orange core if the ice is clear enough)? The Greek word for king: Basil? The allusion to the myth of Apollo and Daphne (the bay laurel tree)?

Have I mentioned that it's ok for you to call me completely farschtunken nuts? I'm fine with it and I think you'll feel better for airing the truth.

And if you have rotten tomatoes I'll take those as well. I know, I kvetch on Twitter about PLCB stock limitations at the same time I include bitters only obtainable through mail-order and other oddball ingredients. Well, I'm sure NONE of you have homemade Usquebaugh* in your cabinet, or at least won't for several months. (although if you do, I would like to meet you and buy you a drink) Other thematic, spicy, brightly-colored 80 proof spirits would work fine as substitutes here.

*which you can improve upon by adding culinary gold flake to make...wait for it....Royal Usquebaugh. (would it be gilding the lily to suggest a dash of King Cocktail's new aromatic bitters wouldn't be out of place in the cocktail either?)

For lemon-herb water:

4 cups near-boiling water
zest of 2 lemons, heavy with pith, chopped into 1" pieces (may be post-juicing spent rinds)
2 cups lightly-packed fresh basil leaves and stems
4 fresh bay leaves

• In a heat-safe non-reactive container, add the latter 3 ingredients followed by the hot water.
• Cover and let steep an hour.
• Once an hour has elapsed, remove the basil and bay leaf and cover to continue steeping.
• Once cool, transfer liquid and lemon to the fridge, the point being to let the pith bitter the water.
• I found about 10 hours after removing the herbs produced the right bitterness. At this point I strained out the lemon, then returned the liquid to the fridge until I was ready to use it.

Some influences.

Notice the lemon twist circlet in the ice.

For the Ice Ball:

• Make lemon-herb water.
• Cut a lemon twist that, circled with ends crossed, makes a circlet to go about the circumference of the ice ball.
• Add the twist upside down and then the lemon-herb water to a Tovolo ice ball mold. Freeze until it's a sphere with a small core of water and a thick sturdy outer shell.
• Drain the water core, freezing the sphere again to firm up if needed, then fill with Usquebaugh and plug up the hole. Keep in freezer until needed.

You want to experiment here with regular water first to observe how fast your freezer will do this, and then with some sort of cheap alcohol to practice filling the sphere without the alcohol wearing a hole through the bottom. I've found, with my old-old freezer at maximum, the process will take about 3.5 hours (and not a minute more) to freeze to the right thickness.

It's something to keep an eye on until you get a sense of how it works for you. For me, sometimes the ice will freeze unevenly (top heavy). Not to mention it's more difficult to drill a hole when the sphere is at the correct thickness instead of starting it before. You may want to simply add a fill-hole placeholder at the beginning, or, as I did, at 2.5 hours I flipped the sphere upside-down in the mold so the new bottom had the better supportive thickness and started the fill-hole through the thinner top with a very miniature funnel (also good as a placeholder through the hole at the top of the mold).

As for adding alcohol, regardless of what you use, Usquebaugh or a substitute: 1) Add water to dilute the proof and help the refreezing take. Doing this at home without a special blast freezer (as opposed to something like this) means you'll need to compromise the filling, but if you choose a filling with potent flavor and color, dilution won't take away much from it. 2) Chill the filling beforehand. 3) Add the filling on a bias to your drilled hole with an eyedropper - there isn't going to be much room in there with the correct ice thickness anyway - and rotate the sphere as you fill to minimize erosion in any one place.

The plus side to all this practice and work? You've just been given techniques you can use to your creativity's unlimits.









Et pour les pédants, je sais que mon français est impropre. Je vous dis: Considérez-vous Apollo, Apollinaire, les deux sexes de Pythie (pace Camille Paglia), et le proverbe célèbre de Delphi. Je le déforme et abuse avec intention.