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)

Aquamarine

Aquamarine

1 1/2 oz Irish whiskey

3/4 oz bianco vermouth

1/2 oz rhum agricole blanc

1/2 oz green chartreuse

1/4 oz tequila blanco

1 bsp pear eau-de-vie

1 bsp blue curacao

2 dashes rhubarb bitters

2 dashes Bittercube Jamaican #2 bitters

Stir. Strain. No garnish.

For all the March birthdays out there, especially the Pisces. Still, I'm sorry: somehow, it tastes like a more-richly-vegetal-but-clear Shamrock Shake. Yes, I'm telling you you'll taste mint and cream, despite (because of?) the ingredients. And it's both delicious and complex!

For a long while I'd had a draft post with only the title, Aquamarine. Similarly, I've wanted to devise an Irish whiskey/cachaça recipe because the high school percussionist in me adores how Brazilian rosewood marimbas often accent Irish folk music - though that's a recipe better realized at another time. Given how I generally prefer a good rhum agricole blanc to something like Leblon, I figured I give that combo a whirl while pulling in some of my favorite early spring cocktail ingredients (fast become a trend for me): bianco vermouth, pear eau-de-vie and rhubarb bitters (in addition to Irish whiskey and rhum agricole being stars of some Ti(n)sanity posts from this time last year). Plus, some elements simply demanded inclusion, if only because of the name and that St. Paddy's Day draws nigh.

Now, I'm sure you're looking at all the ingredients above and shaking your head, because it is an obnoxious list (which would probably run you close to $200 plus a week's time for potential mail-order if you wanted to collect-bottles-from-scratch). But, I have tasted the recipe if you broke it down to base parts of whiskey, vermouth, rhum, chartreuse and rhubarb bitters - and it's only 66% there. The other small ingredients truly give a proper rounding and depth - the tequila, eau-de-vie and curacao (yes, the curacao has a flavor, it ain't vodka) add extra vegetal and fruity notes with their sweetness taming the heat from both the chartreuse and rhum, while the bitters balance out the added sweetness. And...well, there's more, but it's better developed at the next Ombudsman session.

Suffice it to say, to hell with current attitudes: elegance rocks and generally produces greatness (and the Manhattan is a supreme muse-rich cocktail, despite it being untrendy in some quarters), but a muse has gotta do what a muse has gotta do, whether it's neophyte (or even cognoscenti)-friendly or not.

For those brazen hearts who wish to take up the challenge of this drink, some notes on ingredients:

• Tullamore Dew 12 years - a dry Irish whiskey like this sets the cocktail up for success.
• Martini & Rossi - aggressive vegetality is a plus.
• Neisson - the rough, funky 100pf doesn't get lost.
• Azul - a blanco with vegetal notes is again what's best.
• Schladerer - it's an eau-de-vie we're after, not a brandy or a liqueur. Dry, but so flavor-intense it becomes sweet. Anyone else using an eau-de-vie like this for a rounding accent? I'd be happy to give a shout-out.
• Eyeball the curacao - you know what an aquamarine gem look like, so use that as your final color target.

Sláinte!

Ti(n)sanity!: T. T. Punch

Disclaimer: this is a non-sponsored post. Also, I'm not looking to do sponsored posts. I just really like this tea, is all, and have a policy of happily and independently buying all my ingredients.

To coin a phrase: ACK! Funny how life, a fridge in terrible need of total defrostment, and the need for a crash course in punch can get in the way of cocktailing. My intent was to get this punch recipe out at the end February (ideally while still in the month of Aquarius, the libation-bearer). But, we are still in the watery Neptune-ruled month of Pisces and that has to count for something.

Anywho, welcome back to Ti(n)sanity!, a series exploring all the unique potential applications for herbal tea (that is to say, tisanes), with our friendly Maguffin common denominator, Celestial Seasonings Tension Tamer tea. This is the third post, of at least ten, and the first post for our mad month of March!

Now, I say "mad" because, aside from the basketball and the airhorns I hear outside from Villanova students, for this next week we're going to go a little more crazy than usual by exploring four different though related applications, leading up to a special do-it-yourself homemade liqueur for St. Patty's Day that only takes a day or two to put together. After all that, we're going to reduce the Ti(n)sanity scheduling to about once a month for slightly more complex applications.

As with our previous two entries, today's recipe works with strong-brewed tisane -- all the better to mix and permit the flavor to come through. This time, instead of boiling hot tisane for a Toddy or tisane ice for an Old Fashioned, we have room temperature or chilled tisane for use in that classic mixed drink form known as Punch.

Put simply, the essence of punch is strong and weak, sharp (sour) and sweet, and of course: spice. Tea will often feature as a combination weak/spice ingredient in punch, though it tends to be black or green tea: something astringent, unctuous and flavorful to be used in place of plain water (and potentially something that can hold its own against hogo-filled rum).

So, to start for this punch, I was somewhat limited in my choices for a base spirit. One of my aims for the entire series is to not reuse ingredients wherever possible, to avoid redundancy and boredom on your part and to showcase the range the herbal tea can have. Given my plans for other recipes, I was angling for either cachaça or new-to-me rhum agricole. The cachaças in my cabinet weren't throwing off vibes for this one recipe, so I soon found myself with a new bottle of Neisson Rhum Agricole Blanc: light, delicate, astringent with soft savory funk. Everything I could have hoped for this recipe and beyond.

As to mixing? Sometimes the simplest concoctions are best. Here, I took rhum agricole's signature cocktail, Ti' Punch --which techinically isn't a punch-punch: wrong ratios, no weak, no spice-- and turned it into one.

T. T. Punch

1/2 oz lime juice

3/4 oz sweet lime syrup

1 1/2 oz rhum agricole blanc

2 oz Tension Tamer tea, brewed and cooled

lemongrass

fresh grated cinnamon

Give the four liquid ingredients a quick shake without ice to blend, then strain into your serving cup over a large cube or sphere of ice. Garnish with fresh grated cinnamon and a lemongrass straw.

If making a full-sized punch, multiply your ingredients as needed and serve in a punch bowl with an ice ring or block possibly filled with mint and slices of sweet lime, with lemon grass curls strewn and cinnamon grated over the whole punch.

If your taste runs drier than average, try reducing the syrup to 1/2 oz.


The Tension Tamer isn't as perceptible here as one might want, but when you consider how the punch would taste with water instead of tea, the herbal undercurrent it provides becomes that much more noticeable. In all, though, all the flavors harmonize especially well, making a light, sweet-ish, gently funky punch. It's not the perfection as is this Donn's Gin Punch I discovered while researching punch, but it's more than serviceable.**

The story on the sweet limes? (which are different from regular limes) I never had them before this recipe, but they seemed like a good flavor match for Tension Tamer. As it turns out, there's a lot of sweet and very little acidity to them, so their juice would function as a sweet and not a sour ingredient. However, their zest's scent was incredible and too good to pass up making oleo saccharum (a process where citrus zest oils are extracted by being immersed in sugar, the oily sugar then used to sweeten and flavor the punch).

On the cinnamon and lemongrass, nutmeg tends to be the most common spice grated over punch, but in this case I opted to play up ingredients in the Tension Tamer. You may find this tactic cropping up again and again the further we get into Ti(n)sanity!


Sweet Lime Syrup
2 sweet limes - pithless zests only
1/4 cup demerara sugar
1/4 cup white sugar

Combine zests with the sugars in a sealed plastic bag (as much air squeezed out as possible). Let it oleo saccharuminate anywhere from an hour on the counter to overnight for a day or two in the fridge (probably not good to let it go beyond two days, tops). Once you're satisfied with the amount of oil extracted from the zests, pour 1/2 cup warm water into the bag, seal up, and agitate until all the sugar is dissolved. Strain off the zests and store in a sealed container in the fridge until ready to use. Makes about 3/4 cup.

Given sweet limes tend to be pretty difficult to find, especially as we're moving out of citrus season, feel free to just do a simple syrup using the above-listed sugars and the 1/2 cup of water. Regular lime zest is too bitter to substitute here.


**On the MxMo with which Donn's Gin Punch is associated: you might notice that Hobson's Choice, the host blog, is viewable by invite-only. If interested in exploring punch further, though, here's a list of all the entries to MxMo XLVII that I was able to google up, from the finest cocktail blogging minds out there, natch: Spirited Remix, Fogged in Lounge, Wordsmithing Pantagruel, Cocktail Chronicles, A Mountain of Crushed Ice, Inspired Libations, Science of Drink, Cocktail Virgin Slut, Rum Dood, and Drink of the Week.


Previous Ti(n)sanity recipes:

Me-tea-orite (single malt scotch)
Introduction and eThéreal Toddy (grappa)

The Lady's Piercing Eyes

They told me I couldn't miss her. I did.

Trawling up'n'down the Rue Whatisevers, right aroundside the Pantheon for 3 hours, they told me I'd find her sitting outside at a café - and there weren't too many of 'em in that district.

To coin a phrase: Hah!

Turns out, after sweatin' like a hunk o'capicola left out on the sidewalk in the afternoon sun ('cause that's what I was, y'know), I find her sittin' outta sight in the shadiest corner under a canopy I musta looked in 10 times.

There she was, lookin' the perfect evil French stereotype: black bob under a purple beret, black Lennon shades, green sheath dress and stilettos that said "don't fall for me." Coulda been my eyes adjusting to the shade, but she blended in a little too well into the texture of the bushes behind her. Sitting tall at her lone table reading a book and sipping a demi-tasse. All she needed was a yard-long cigarette holder.

So I go up to her to deliver my message and I says: "Meduse de Javert? Good to see that you're well. I'm Bateman. Mr. Kinich sends his regards."

The lady's eyebrow twitched up and back, less reflexive than a brief display of inner calculation. She shut her book and sat back, taking me in. Felt like I broke some minute degree of protocol - maybe I didn't get everything outta the real Bateman when we were ripping out his fingernails to take over this transaction.

"Merci. J'envoie mes salutations à M. Kinich, aussi. Avons-nous un accord?"

"Oui, madame. Mr. Kinich also invites you for dinner this evening at Agapé Substance to further discuss the implementation. Seven Pee Em."

"C'est agréable. Mais, j'ai l'intention de manger légèrement." Here she was speaking too fast for me to hear. "Ma taille fine." But that I understood.

"Of course. Merci, madame. I will apprise Mr. Kinich." And here I half-turned: I shoulda just kept business and left, but something about her tickled me, like a faint tingle at the back of my ankle.

"de Javert, eh? Like that guy from Les Mis? Your family ain't into hockey, is it?"

She looked down, brow furrowed, squeezing her eyes so tight white light flashed out from behind her shades, scratching irritatedly a little too far up her scalp. Nah, couldntabeen. She murmured something under her breath. "Pardon, ma'am?"

She looked up. All I could see were those black holes over her eyes. They were swirling. Glowing. "Des. Yeux. Verts."

"H-huh? I don't speak.."

"Vous n'êtes pas Bateman. Et je ne travaille pas avec les incompétents!" The tingle at my ankle got the better of me. My head hit the concrete and all I see is her head in the red canopy, staring down cold dinosaur-like. Those black dots transfix me like the petite shoe sinking into my chest.

"A message for your employer: no one wishes to be Bateman." She lifted her shades, mouth wet, savoring the taste of her words. "Vois-ci!"


The garçon arrived to clean up the (medium-rare and babbling) mess. "Et votre café?"

"C'est bon. Mais, c'est l'heure: je voudrais voir votre carte de cocktails?"

The Lady's Piercing Eyes

2 oz Leblon cachaça

1/2 oz lime juice

1/4 oz Rumple Minze

1/4 oz simple syrup

3 dashes Vanilla Lace Bitters

1 barspoon crème de mûre

sage leaf 

Chill your serving glass.

Shake first 5 ingredients on ice to chill and mix.

Double-strain drink into serving glass and sink blackberry liqueur.

Lightly press sage leaf to promote oils and float on top of drink.

Whether your stir her glowing red eye is up to you.

One thing I keep forgetting to mention in these Vanilla Lace Bitters recipes: I try to keep my recipes not only seasonal, but connected to meanings associated with calendar and zodiac months as well. If my original batch of VLB had worked out, its recipe and these last two cocktails using it would have come out some time in October during the month of (Venus-ruled) Libra. Hence the exotic lady themes. My excuse for January? I associate it with snowy whiteness, to which vanilla is a natural match. (and Northrop Frye associates Winter with the Satire, being a season of Mind *draw the connection to* cerebral blackberry...or that might've just been the Smuckers commercial talking...)

With the idea of ladies and the Feminine firmly ensconced in my head, my first thought was to the White Lady cocktail, including an earlier version of the same, utilizing crème de menthe. The idea itself, associating white and white crème de menthe isn't bad -- there's a fitting purity in the bracing sharp peppermint in white crème de menthe (which is a little more toned down or rounded in the green variant) -- the execution and balance could just use a little work in that drink.

But: what lady would make use of razor-sharp peppermint? Shall we just say, cue the cachaça!

You might think the bitters get a little lost here, they certainly aren't as featured as in La Dame de Chantilly. But, I think their Venus-in-Libra pleasing/harmonizing aspect comes out well here: the vanilla falls behind the scenes to smooth and unite what is otherwise a lime-bright and slightly mint-chalky mix while the spices contribute depth. Interestingly, the most prominent note from the bitters is the vegetal/black pepper damiana (the Mexican aphrodisiac herb), which matches with the cachaça's grassy notes.

Overall, it's a little Stinger, a little Bramble, a little Caipirinha. Cerebral with blackberry and sage, an Amazon waiting to explode under demure (natch) lacy wraps. Beware the lady's daggers.


Notes:

• Of the 3 cachaças available on PA shelves, Leblon is easily the most refined and ladylike (another brand of similar characteristics would be advised if a sub is needed). [UPDATE (02-28-2013): Having just made this recipe with my new bottle of Neisson Rhum Agricole Blanc, I would say the cocktail is markedly improved with this drier, lighter sugar cane spirit. I surmise any agricole might make for an improved quaff.] However, that means it needs a larger share of the ratio in order to not get lost in the other Big flavors: 4:1:1, instead of the standard 2:1:1 sour formula.
• The mint aspect was the hardest to get right. Straight white crème de menthe as the sweetener was perhaps a touch too sweet (Leblon being noticeably wetter than a London Dry gin in the comparable Bramble) and the sweetness dulled the mint's sharpness in the final cocktail -- a requisite given the name, ne? Given the need for a more thunderous mint, I reached out to left field for the mini of Rumple Minze I had in my fridge. There's an unspoken taboo about using any schnapps in proper cocktails (the connection to frat party pantydroppers ought to be good and well severed for those to whom discernment matters less), but here's a drier, high-proof, potent-flavored spirit of fine German craftsmanship*. In combination with simple syrup the sweetness balances just right, and the peppermint undergirds with a perceptible, perpetual frost.

*ranty MoD note: this is about the only place you'll see me use the C-word (e.g. in conjunction with 'German', from which the word originated and with which it still retains real meaning). MAKE. GOOD. COCKTAILS. Be confident, patient, persistent. All else flows from there. If you feel you have to associate yourself with a certain word (and in a world in which one can "Craft 2" at Qdoba) you're actually downplaying the quality of your work by qualifying it.