Impromptus: Lupus Dei and Golden Ratio

Lupus Dei

2 oz bourbon (High West American Prairie)

1/4 oz Benedictine

1 dash Orinoco bitters

rinse reposado mezcal

1/4 oz sloe gin

Rinse serving glass with the mezcal and chill until needed. Mix bourbon, Benedictine and bitters on ice and strain into serving glass. Sink sloe gin and serve.

A campfire nose, but turns to bright spirit (the most ethereal bourbon this side of Elijah Craig 12 Year) with a slight exotic dandy twist due to the sandalwood in the bitters. The sloe emerges on later sips - blood with an oh-so British lilt of juniper finds the tongue. Not as disjointed as the pieces might suggest.

Fitting for our friend Ethan Chandler from Penny Dreadful, riffed on the classic Derby Cocktail. (ok, not quite Ethan's bowler, but close)

Next, inspired by Venus' ingress into the sign of Virgo (yeah, I know this is late, she's now in Libra), a Triple Goddess threat (wheater - Demeter, grenadine - Perspehone, Strega - Hecate) plus Aphrodite and Apollo.

Golden Ratio

1 part Drambuie/Strega (lower proof/softer herbal liqueur)

1 part grenadine

2 parts lemon juice

3 parts calvados

5 parts wheat whiskey

Shake and strain. Lemon twist garnish. Eureka! </Square1>

The grenadine doesn't take over as much here as you might think, though it's a great companion to the calvados, as those acquainted with the Jack Rose would appreciate. The wheat whiskey is reedy and blends seamlessly with calvados' fruit; the lack of rye in the mash bill for this mix is pleasant. Drambuie's honey lies in wait in the background, inoffensive but not the wrong ingredient. Choosing Strega instead adds a bit more brightness and zest.

As you might note, we've got a Fibonacci sequence of a recipe, though it's effectively just a 4-1-1 Sour ratio. Hail Venus, flower of the 5s, Mistress of the Golden Ratio!

The NOLA Variations: Infernal Negotiations

Infernal Negotiations
1 oz rye whiskey
1 oz Maker's 46 bourbon
1/2 oz tawny port
1 tsp falernum
2 dashes Peychaud's bitters
1 dash smoke tincture
1 rinse absinthe
lemon twist for garnish

Rinse and freeze. Stir. Strain over a big rock. Garnish.

The smell of a humid backroom, damp with smoke as the antique wire fan lazily wafts across the room. The men who gather there -- spared half the sun by heavy wooden Venetian blinds, eyes glinting against the black slats of shade -- mutter with grizzled vulgarity.

Ah, but the taste in the glass.. The Sazerac is too pure, too friendly. The lemon, the Peychaud's, the moody frisson of absinthe -- all these linger yet, but underneath a black stake of sternness, spice and smoke swirling through red fruit, caramel and 46 drops of black soul.


A handy method for all kinds of revenantion. I been dead longer than this blog's been around. Howdya THINK I came back, huh? *itch itch itch*

Falernum and Becherovka: Secret Message

And then, after all the talking yesterday, sometimes it's better to simplify, and then let the drink do the talking. Use this particular bourbon - seriously. Rye spice is overkill when what you want is smooth rippling undercurrent to our feature players. Too sweet? Hardly. A paper-dry finish.

Drink your Ovaltine!

Secret Message

2 oz Four Roses Small Batch bourbon

1/2 oz falernum

1/2 oz Becherovka

Shake. Strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with super-secret clove-lime decoder wheel.

If you use homemade Kaiser Penguin-style falernum like me, don't forget to add a splash of lime juice (just not too much).

NOTE (after the fact): the glass makes sense for the mix, but I would encourage using something more fluted to capture the glorious nose and ensure it isn't drowned out by ice chill or dissipation. The nose makes the cocktail.

Impromptu: Falling Sun Manhattan

I might as well face it: I'll always be trying to remake the Manhattan.

The Manhattan itself a dark seasons classic, I wanted to add some autumnal/festive-seasons richness with a brooding quality to the mix. The cassis and nocino had been calling out to me, so I chanced it:

Falling Sun Manhattan
2 oz Buffalo Trace bourbon
1/4 oz crème de cassis
1/4 oz nocino
1/4 oz sweet vermouth (Vya)
1 dash Bittercube Bolivar bitters
1 dash Regan's orange bitters
orange twist

Stir, strain, large ice cube, rocks.
Express and garnish.

It's a bit sweet, but it rises to blog-worthy status based on its well-illuminated complexity; the tart and bitter turns of each liqueur opens up the cocktail well beyond the standard Manhattan. (oddly enough, I tried subbing in Rittenhouse rye for half the bourbon for balance only to find the flavors collapsed) Buffalo Trace's structure and....I wanna say flavor clarity, it interweaves so well...does some heavy lifting, bringing not only its own wood notes as a foundation but enunciating the cassis and the bitter herbs underneath. Not every bourbon will be as successful, either; I know of several in my cabinet which would just be too blunt and inarticulate here. 

Also, keep the orange away from the cassis, lest you find them on honeymoon in your mouth! As if it weren't bad enough already with the bitters adding a degree of spice...

This would be perfect to drink while enjoying a Sagittarian sunset (which, come to think, start today). The dark hours grow earlier and the landscapes bleaker, but those sunsets... Royal blue and shaded gold melded into a full jewel-toned rainbow. The weariness in body and soul comes easier now, but the world and the year show us they are still pregnant as currant berries with unspent meaning. And that satisfies.

Mixology Monday, September 2013: SMOKE

Rock on! It's Mixology Monday! [cue the theme song!]

This month's edition is hosted by Elana of the très très chic Stir and Strain (seriously, it's like My Little Ponies dancing on your eyeballs in the best way possible - do go check out her marvelous and beautiful creations!). The theme? Ideal-for-the-season (and a great companion piece to last month's theme) SMOKE.

From the announcement post:

They say where there’s smoke, there’s fire– it isn’t necessarily true if we’re down to the smoldering embers, but, well, they say it anyway. In our case, where there was fire, now there’s smoke, and it’s time to stoke your enthusiasm for the next challenge.

Smoke has been everywhere this past year, from liquors to lemonades, to the hills here in Southern California(!); smoke in its many forms has been front page news.

For me, smoke is also a transitional element: it symbolizes the last summer bonfires, sitting around the fire pit making s’mores, and the start of the fragrant crackles from the fireplace announcing that fall is coming.

For September’s theme, I’d like to see how you interpret smoke. With your liquor or ingredients? Your glassware? Will you whip out a chemistry set to transform your cocktail into ghostly vapors? Do you own a home smoker, still in the box, that’s never been used? Well then, you’re welcome. Unpack those ideas and let’s set off a couple smoke alarms this month for MxMo.

When active, this link will send you to the summary post of this month's festivities.


This is a recipe I've had in the back of my mind since about May or so, when I first discovered fresh oregano. I quickly learned the herb is generally better-used dried - you won't get as much flavor as you might like if you muddle it fresh in a drink. So, with that little ditty on the backburner, when the Smoke theme came up the idea and image of oregano smoke sparked renewed interest ('cause dried oregano infused into spirits seemed more spaghetti western than straight western, knowwhatImean?).

But why stop at oregano smoke? I had also considered doing another western-y sage smoke cocktail, but the ingredients for that one are still out of sight in the ether... Oregano's all well and good, but what about some sage too? And maybe some homemade dried bitter orange zest for balance? And some wormwood while we're at it.. And and and...

How about Vermouth Smoke?

Originally dubbed The Melancholy Heart of the Ancient Desert, maybe something a touch less dramatic was in order for all the mixed herbals involved. Elana's one to post a song of the day on Twitter, and I've started doing a once-monthly #FridayMuse series beginning with MxMo hosting duties last month, so a song seemed in order. I had thought to perhaps name the sage smoke cocktail after a similar-themed song, Horse with No Name by America, but that name was already claimed. Second best, The Distance by Live, off one of my favorite albums The Distance to Here, also worked well. The transformative smoke fit just right with the message.

Let's go to the recipe:

The Distance

1 oz Buffalo Trace bourbon

1 oz añejo tequila

3/4 oz tawny port

vermouth smoke (recipe below)

1 small sprig oregano planted in a bourbon cherry for garnish

Stir the first 3 ingredients on ice.

On the lightest heat possible, gently heat the vermouth smoke tea in a tin pie plate or similar on the stove or hot plate. Collect vermouth tea fumes (even lighter than regular smoke - you want to avoid char scent and flavor in favor of the vaporized essences of the herbs you use) in a jar for several minutes. AVOID IMPATIENCE, YOU'LL MESS IT UP.

Strain the cocktail into your smoke container, swirling for 15 seconds or so.

Immediately pour into chilled cocktail glass.

Add garnish.



Notes:

• This is one of those cocktails that turned out almost-right the first go-around (a 1/4oz less port and it was just right). The original mix prior to the smoke is pretty good itself: buttery toffee, agave and warm bourbon, with port's depth. The Distance starts a little jumbled as the smoke integrates itself, but as you get into your sips, the alchemy takes over. It's difficult to say when you get beyond the initial nose, but shortly after you find a sip on your palate you swear was either vermouth or a cocktail made with vermouth. The vanillas in the barrel-aged spirits and the bit of cherry from the garnish add to the impression, but so do the herbs and the orange zest too. It seems a deeper sort of flavor melding than even, say, the emergent-unique-flavor of a Manhattan, probably because of how the smoke binds it all together into something new. As a bonus, the nature of smoke itself dries the cocktail out, and the slight bitterness of the herbs negates a need for a dash of bitters. (any herbals would get in the way of the smoke effect, frankly)
• I would avoid a Smoking Gun here because that would require actually burning the tea - it's great for various types of wood smoke, but would blunt more delicate aromatics.
• There's something wonderfully westernly world-weary about Buffalo Trace - it's like bourbon imbued with the dry dust on the hooves of its mascot. If you've got a bourbon like that, by all means, but otherwise I recommend this particular one. I used Don Julio añejo and Sandeman tawny port, but use as your preferences and availability allow (though a nice black pepper note on the port would be quite good here).

Vermouth Smoke Tea
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp dried sage
1/4 tsp coriander seeds
10 dried rosemary needles
1 petal star anise
1 nickel-sized (1.5 cm diameter) piece of dried bitter/sour/Seville orange zest, chopped
1 small pinch dried wormwood
1 small pinch dried centaury

Grind all into a tea with a mortar and pestle.
By all means, omit wormwood if wary of it.

Cheers to Elana for a delicious theme and for hosting, and to Fred of cocktail virgin slut for the cat (and possibly marsupial)-herding!

Disco Buffalo

If ever a cocktail needed a pimp hat garnish, it would be this one.

This ain't no disco...wait a sec, yes it is!


In homage to the late lamented Disco Duck, Feu de Vie is pleased to bring you this little number. Get on down to the dance floor, stomp your hooves and raise your glass (and watch out for sharpshooters!). You'll be feeling fine and more than a bit worldly.

Disco Buffalo

2 oz blueberry-infused Buffalo Trace

1 oz Martini & Rossi bianco

1/4 oz Ramazzotti

2 dashes Fee Bros orange bitters

1 dash Stirrings blood orange bitters

lemon twist

Stir the first five ingredients on ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

Luscious. The blueberry comes through especially well here, with the bianco supporting that rather than being overkill. All the bitters and garnish glam things up nicely.

Click for larger

More on the blueberry-infused Buffalo Trace to come! Go make your own in the meanwhile: the above-linked is the best technique I've seen online*. And check out the rest of the snazzy and classy Post Prohibition while you're at it.

* if you don't mind giving the berries a quick double-boil to get them dark and glossy (without breaking them). Like Josh mentions, it brings their sugar to the fore. Berries seem to need some application of heat to bring out their best flavors.

My Favorite Things: Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With Strings

Sometimes these recipes write themselves.

Perhaps one of the best principles for creating a good cocktail is simply asking yourself: what would I want to drink? In this case, I saved this particular recipe name in the My Favorite Things series for my birth month, April. Who wouldn't want presents?! But, with my b-day otherwise occupied with tax-completing, I had to put off my indulgences for a little bit, which was beneficial.

This past week was nerve-wracking enough for anyone in the US, but especially those in Boston -- little did I realize that when I put in a supply order the Friday prior. As we all know now, all's well that ends well in greater things and small: my order, including a bottle of passionfruit syrup, came in -- maybe a little later than initially expected, but still quite timely in light of events -- many thanks to the fine folks at the Boston Shaker.

Now, passionfruit is quite possibly my favorite fruit: exotic and subtle, with hints of vanilla. It's just very soothing and mellow, even when concentrated. What's more, Aprils always seemed to have a monthly color of yellow, all the better for the fruit to fit.

In the meanwhile, my initial thoughts for indulgence trended towards Bourbon, accented with my homemade Vanilla Lace bitters. I haven't done a recipe with the bitters since January, and though I think they work fabulous in almost any recipe, I've wanted to be judicious in using them in recipe posts. Combine the bourbon and bitters with vanilla-hinted passion fruit syrup (and a serious one from B.G. Reynolds at that, much better than I could make at home) and you've got the fixings for a mighty tasty drink.

But something seemed missing. I mentioned before how a Yankee Candle series partially inspired this cocktail series, and here reminisces of lily scents and the very clean orderly notes of brown wrapping paper itself came to the fore: if not lily, perhaps almond to round out the cocktail? Not amaretto-almond, either, but something understated and milky without being thick, lest the nuances of bourbon and bitters be lost. Almond water? Or...or maybe I'll treat myself to a soda carbonating machine and get a bit fancy (nevermind the other plans I have for it later on..). If the ingredients aren't brown themselves, they do indeed come in brown paper packages!

Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With Strings

2 oz bourbon

1 tsp passionfruit syrup

3 dashes Vanilla Lace Bitters

3 oz unsweetened almond soda

Stir the first three ingredients dry in a rocks or highball glass, then add ice cubes and almond soda. 

Finish with an extra dash or two of Vanilla Lace bitters.

Somewhat a cross between a Tiki Old Fashioned and a highball. As good as the recipe reads, and even more ethereal.

A few weeks back I was at Whole Foods when I came across Victoria's Kitchen Almond Water. It seemed an interesting cocktail ingredient, so of course I bought it. It's quite delish, but it's difficult to work with because it comes pre-sweetened. So what's a girl to do but attempt to make her own, despite there being a general dearth of online recipes on almond water. (there are Chinese almond tea recipes, however, which is more of a dessert recipe thickened with rice starch)

My general impression on how to make this is: make orgeat, leave out the sugar.

Unsweetened almond soda
100g blanched almonds
3 cups water

rose water
Lactart

Making almond whey.

In a food processor, finely blend the almonds and water (perhaps as little as a cup if your blender is small, adding the rest of the water post-blending). Let this mixture rest an hour or so, then, as if you were making orgeat, strain through cheesecloth, wringing out the chopped almond. Bring the extracted liquid to a boil on a pot on the stove, then add back in the wrung-out chopped almond to continue extracting almond oil. As soon as you add the almonds back, remove from the heat, cover, and let rest until cool. You want to avoid using the stove to cook the almonds because that results in a starchy cooked-almond flavor.

Making almond clotted cream.

Once cool, strain the liquid through cheesecloth and a fine strainer a few more times to get the large particles out. Then, strain the liquid through a coffee filter. "Almond milk" really isn't a misnomer: the liquid tends to separate into curds and whey, the purified whey being what we're after. Let the liquid rest in the fridge until you're ready to use it; if more particles clump, coffee filter strain again (there's no over-straining this almond whey, all the better to carbonate).

Once you've obtained the whey (my batch resulted in a little over 2 cups of liquid when all was said and done), mix as follows to prepare the almond soda.

Per 1 cup of almond whey add 1 cup water, 1/2 tsp rose water and (post-carbonation) 2 tsp Lactart. (Gently!) carbonate using your device of choice; depending, this may go against your warranty, so cocktailer beware.

The soda is ready for use in the cocktail as-is. Add some simple syrup if you'd like to enjoy it by itself.

Also? Happy milestone, Feu de Vie. Post #50 and still going strong!

Chicks and Mother Hen

You never know what you might find on an Easter egg hunt..

Would you believe that I've been sitting on these recipe ideas for over a year? (and I won't repeat that often, but from here on out it's quite possible an idea got triaged from an earlier year, just for time, scheduling and resources) Frankly, it's about darn time these chicks hatched!

In this case, I had a very late special order of advocaat -- a brandy-based egg custard liqueur that's a traditional digestif in the Netherlands -- to contend with. Naturally, it's especially popular around Eastertime, though I'm somewhat surprised more hasn't been done with that angle. There's a Fluffy Duck recipe (more on that later in the week), but that's as close as advocaat gets to an Easter theme. So let's change that, and give you an option a little more naturally-flavored than Peeps.


Chick shots
1 part Advocaat
1 part apricot nectar*

Depending on how many shots you're making, add a cube or two of ice to the shaker along with the 2 ingredients, to help agitate. Shake and pour into shotglasses. Shoot these little low-alcohol sweet eggy bursts of yumminess to your heart's content!

*seriously, don't fret about using the canned stuff. You'll be lucky enough to find non-cardboard-tasting apricots in peak season in late summer, let alone at Easter time. Any store taking the chance of stocking apricot nectar will stock decent stuff for our purposes here. Besides, when mixing with advocaat, all we really want is sweetness and a bit of flavor.

But now then, now that we have the baby recipe down, what say we find what happens when baby loses its fresh-from-the-egg qualities and grows up?

Mother Hen

1 1/2 oz bourbon
1 oz dry-ish madeira (sercial or verdelho)
3/4 oz apricot brandy
2 dashes Dandelion & Burdock bitters
1 dash aromatic bitters

Stir all on ice and strain into a chilled cocktail coupe. Garnish with a brandied apricot.

On what I used: Bulleit bourbon; Blandy's 5yr Verdelho; homemade apricot brandy (from the recipe at bottom here) using Remy Martin VSOP, from which I obtained my garnish; and Fee Bros. Old-Fashioned Aromatic bitters (careful on this: it's easy to overdo with the angostura bark notes). If without homemade apricot brandy with the apricots still in to use as garnishes, try simmering some dried apricots in brandy until slightly darker and plump, about half an hour or so.

If you want to work the full Hen pun glory, use the Kickin' Chicken itself, Wild Turkey 81 bourbon (yes, 81 and not 101: females are smaller than males) plus use Hennessy for the apricot brandy. Madei- is already close to Madre, so the fortified wine's covered.

The bourbon sets the tone with the apricot brandy's fruit notes (passionfruit and apricot) prominent, with the acidity of the Madeira rounding the edge and the bitters' savory, warm spice and barnyard notes providing texture and depth (barnyard as in straw and hay, not that dressed-up tasting note for manure - I almost used this combo for the Bull's Meadow, there's something wonderfully pastoral about it). I can't comment on brands of apricot brandy, but I found my homemade apricot brandy (using Sun-Maid dried Mediterranean apricots) led with big notes of passionfruit -- a fitting connection to Easter, natch.

In all, you get some down-home on the farm with the bourbon, some Sunday aperitif with the Madeira, and a light sweet warmth from the apricot brandy, with some spice and mussed feathers thrown in for good measure.

Happy Easter!

Ti(n)sanity!: Lullaby Sangaree and Insufferable Creole Minx

Welcome back to the March Madness portion of Ti(n)sanity!, the series exploring all the unique ways you can use herbal tea in cocktails, featuring Celestial Seasonings Tension Tamer tea (tisane, natch) as the Maguffin/common denominator.

As you might expect when it comes to teas or tisanes in cocktails, they're primarily utilized in various forms of infusions. Our previous three entries explore straight water infusions (that is, how you'd normally brew tea or tisane). The first baby step beyond that is to brew the tisane as normal, but then add a sweetener: a tisane syrup.

Syrups in cocktails tend to be restrained in usage: a quarter to half an ounce is generally considered plenty of sweetening for one drink, unless the syrup is to be the star of the cocktail (overmuch sweetness has a tendency to mask flavors too - and what's the point of putting something in a drink if you're not going to get a sense that it's in there?). Syrups also have the inherent problem of diminishing the alcohol level of the cocktail, so too much will limit the kick of the drink.

Let's start by making the syrup, and then getting to its applications:

Tension Tamer syrup
1 cup (8 oz) strong-brewed Tension Tamer tea (2 teabags)
1/4 cup mild honey

Pour the boiling water over the teabags and let steep until cool. Remove and squeeze out the tea bags, then combine the tea and honey in a sauce pot on the stove, stirring and heating gently until reduced to 1/2 - 3/4 cup. Let cool, bottle, then store in the refrigerator until ready to use.


To shake things up a bit for this series, I'm going to offer two different recipes to highlight different syrup usages. Now, before I really got started mixing in earnest, the first thing I did was follow a hunch by pairing the syrup with some Rainwater Madeira I had on hand. Match. Made. In. Heaven. It's like the Madeira rejoiced at evolving into a slight vermouth.

But one of the flaws of Tension Tamer tea as an ingredient is its delicacy: cocktails need to be kept simple and on the light side in order to best highlight it. And the first cocktail I worked on here didn't do such a good job. So, I retreated back to that basic Madeira/syrup combination and pushed it just a little further into a Sangaree.

No! Not the Bronze Age Batman pirate rogue. A Sangaree, which isn't too far etymologically or ingredient-wise from Sangria, tends to use fortified wine (or ale, or porter, or regular wine) plus a small amount of fine sugar, crushed ice, and a couple of citrus wheels or zest all shaken together then poured into a serving glass. Some classic, but more modern recipes will use a liquor as the base, though generally a fortified wine will be included in the mix too.

For this Sangaree, I figured soft and simple was best, not to mention it would make a fitting toast to my newborn nephew, barely one day old today.

Lullaby Sangaree

3 oz rainwater madeira

1/2 oz Tension Tamer syrup

1 or 2 red grapefruit wheel halves

strawberry fan

Shake the first three ingredients with crushed ice and pour mix and ice into a chilled tumbler. Taking Mr. Ellestad's suggestion to include fresh berries, garnish with a strawberry fan.

Nutmeg is the traditional garnish for a Sangaree, but the Tension Tamer serves as the spice in this case -- nutmeg would only overpower anyhow. Madeira is the first set of flavors you taste, with the herbs sneaking in in bouts of sweetness, counterpointed by glancing sour and bitter grapefruit notes and tart strawberry on the nose.


For the first cocktail I developed, with the Tension Tamer syrup meshing so well with Madeira I wondered how a take on the Creole Lady would work. The Creole Lady was a recipe I saw while researching Madeira back in January, which happened to use a syrup, albeit grenadine. For some reason when researching, though, I swore I saw two different versions of the Creole Lady, one with bourbon and one with gin; it probably didn't help that I conflated the Creole Contentment --and the notion of unfixed base spirits-- into the same family, either. Turns out, both versions of the Creole Lady exist on the Internet but the gin variant appears to be an aberration of mysterious provenance while the bourbon (or whiskey, generally) variant has roots back to 1937 (at least).

The clarification on that point didn't happen until well after the recipe development, however, and when mixing, neither the gin nor the bourbon were just right. I also happened to have the Suffering Bastard, no doubt prompted by Dagreb's recent inversion, the Flourishing Heir, floating around in my head -- the bourbon and gin an intriguing combination I had never tried before, until now of course. 

Insufferable Creole Minx

1 oz bourbon (Elijah Craig 12)

1 oz gin (Citadelle)

1 oz rainwater madeira

1/2 oz Tension Tamer syrup

1 dash cherry bitters 

grapefruit zest

Stir all on ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass, garnishing with a grapefruit twist.

You'd think gin might not be a good match for other herbal notes (though that never stopped the Martini), but here the gin and syrup work on different levels, all while sharing a couple of botanicals so as not to be completely disjointed. The bracing dry gin is out at the fore, leaving the sweet herbal syrup to linger as an undertone revealed on the finish. Further, the bourbon, Madeira and syrup do blur into one another with shared cinnamon, wood, nut and sweet notes, but the dry gin helps to break that up, all the better to appreciate the mix.

The cherry bitters are a nod to the Creole Lady's dual-cherry garnish and single dash of bitters - one dash should be all that's necessary, before you start drowning out the other flavors. The grapefruit zest bridges many of the disparate ingredients, while punching them up to a new level, plus adds a little extra bitterness in case you need it (somewhat reminiscent of a Brown Derby).

In all: malty, rich, bitter, with a surprise around every turn.

Stay tuned dear readers! Tomorrow our Maguffin makes the big leap to alcohol infusions!

[Update: Hi, dear readers! I couldn't help but notice how popular this post has been. If you'd care to leave a comment, I'd be curious to know which of the recipes you like or what drew you to follow the link. Best, MoD]

Previous Ti(n)sanity recipes:

T. T. Punch (rhum agricole)
Me-tea-orite (single malt scotch)
Introduction and eThéreal Toddy (grappa)

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.

Rudolph Steps Out & Maccabee Sling

It's company holiday party time, and as resident Cocktail Girl I've been asked to whip up a few recipes with some bare requirements: a Christmas cocktail with red and green colors, and a Hanukkah cocktail with blue and white colors. In addition, we were pairing drinks with the beginning of a lovely multi-course Italian meal at a local culinary school, so I wanted to include Italian spirits and elements where possible. Here's what I wound up doing.

Rudolph Steps Out
1 oz bourbon (Elijah Craig 12 year)
1 oz sweet vermouth (Martini & Rossi)
7/8 oz Ramazzotti
1/8 oz (barspoon) Solerno
bourbon cherry skewered on rosemary sprig*

Stir ingredients on ice and strain into a(n ideally chilled) cocktail glass. Garnish with a bourbon cherry skewered on a rosemary sprig. Bonus points if garnish is twisted reindeerly and Rudolphly.

*bourbon cherry a modified take on Dr. Adam Elmegirab's cocktail cherries, using Buffalo Trace and subbing half an orange's zest for vanilla bean

I originally wanted to use Cynar instead of Ramazzotti in the drink because in coordinating with dinner there were several earthy rustic-style options, including some artichokes in the appetizer course. Trying to think to my audience, however, Cynar has a particular long bitter finish, which, while good as an aperitif function, might not agree with the audience (also, that drink veers very close to a Colonel Carpano). I've had Ramazzotti on my to-get list for awhile now, so testing was a great excuse to bring it into the fold. Ramazzotti's bitter/sweet ratio is on par with Averna and the gentian similarly stands out among its bittering agents, but I like how its famed cola flavor comes through. Some would say it's more root beer/citrus, but while I do get root-i-ness, it's, well, less dour than Averna. That cola note (and, if we're getting highly aesthetic, the red and white label coloring -- and the word "cola" with its rounded shapes evoking images of red glass ball Christmas tree ornaments) just has a friendly let's-get-down-and-boogie feel to it that finishes a sip on par with the bourbon and vermouth, perfect for a holiday party.

So overall, this is a Boulevardier variation, along the lines of my Doe's Path. Solerno is the orange liqueur here - opulent, regal, ornament-invoking. Along with the green rosemary, red cherry and general red tint of the cocktail, this fit the Christmas criteria


Maccabee Sling
1 oz Magellan gin
1/2 oz honey-ginger-lemon sour mix
top with prosecco (about 3 oz)
Fuji apple garnish

Shake gin and sour mix with ice, strain into a champagne flute and top with prosecco. Garnish with Fuji apple cutout or sliver.

While not a "sling" cocktail per se (more of a champagne cocktail), the Maccabee Sling riffs on the French 75 using classic Jewish flavors apple and honey. With this drink I wanted a lighter and drier cocktail to provide variety up against ol' Rudolph up above. Magellan gin is a French-style gin that utilizes orris root and blue iris flowers during its final distillation, rendering the gin a pale sky blue (if unavailable, substitute Citadelle gin and a smidge blue food coloring). To add white to the equation: delicate-flavored Fuji apple. The apple along with the ginger-honey add hints of flavor around the edges but not as to dampen the gin's multitudinous aromatics.

Honey-Ginger-Lemon sour mix
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup honey (a lighter honey helps the cocktail remain gin-forward)
1/2 tsp powdered ginger (McCormick has a new interesting roasted ginger powder out at the moment)
1 cup lemon juice

Blend water, honey, ginger in a pot on the stove and bring to a boil. Immediately strain through a coffee filter into a container to cool. Refrigerate until ready to use. Blend syrup half-and-half with fresh-squeezed lemon juice just before cocktailing.

Old Summer

The air fills with gold and the evening is a never-ending twilight.
T-shirts get covered with long sleeves.

The garden's about done for the year:
A few greens left on scraggly vines.

Summer's winding down, falling into rest.
Hints of smoke in the air, the gains soon to be spent.

Everything gets busy again,
Except for these moments.


[PICTURES REDACTED.
DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND READ NO FURTHER.
THIS COCKTAIL IS UNDRINKABLE.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED - the management]


Old Summer
1 oz bourbon (I used Wild Turkey 101)
1 oz Applejack
1/2 tsp demerara sugar
3 dashes Dr. Adam Elmegirab's Dandelion and Burdock bitters
1-2 wedges fresh grilled or pan-fried green tomato

Muddle green tomato wedge(s) with demerara sugar, bitters.
Add bourbon and applejack, stir with ice. Double-strain into a serving glass over large cube.
Garnish with an extra tomato wedge, skewered and lightly drizzled with molasses.

Notes:

• The tomato I used was slightly larger than a golfball, so I used a couple quarters. Obviously, your mileage may vary, size-wise. As always with green tomatoes, don't mistake green heirlooms for immature tomatoes: immature greens will be firm and not soft to the touch.
• Since I don't have a grill or hibachi, I did a simple pan-fry à la this recipe. A bit of sugar/salt should help the flavor better emerge either way you cook them.
• Beyond that? This is just a simple, down-home recipe. Grab whatever bourbon you like, doesn't have to be fancy. I used D&B bitters because I felt that fit, but any kind of spicy/aromatic/citrus bitters would work here as well.
• The green tomato's interesting for the "green apple" flavor it imparts. There's a fair amount of tanginess among the ingredients, but they all flow together.

Just a little something for winding down on the stoop, the deck, the fire escape and enjoying the last of the good weather, maybe something to warm you as a bit of chill wends its way into the air.

Bull's Meadow

[Update 11-07-2012, see below]

This is one of my more modest efforts (same as the Smokemont I would contend since it's an Old Fashioned riff). And really, I'm not the only one thinking along these precise flavor combinations (for the inevitable de-linking/menu change: The Blue Goat, Richmond VA, Perfection Takes Thyme: Bulleit Bourbon, local honey, thyme, ginger beer).

What I would offer is a slight tweak to the above, grown out of my own tweak to the Basil Hayden's Last Stand. The combination of Bulleit bourbon and ginger beer is a natural. The Dandelion and Burdock bitters builds on that base to create an incredible synergy - this is a case where no substitutes will do.

Beyond that, pull the squeeze of lemon from the Last Stand to compliment and highlight the flavors. And then, to work the Meadow angle, a bit of pungent honey and thyme.

Seriously. Rare flavor magic. God's honest truth.

*gets out of the way*

Bull's Meadow

2 oz Bulleit bourbon

1 barspoon honey*

4 dashes Dr. Adam Elmegirab's Dandelion and Burdock bitters

ginger beer

lemon wedge

thyme sprigs

*preferably something bold that won't fade into the drink - I used a local wildflower variety

No, that isn't Reed's Ginger Beer back there.

In a chilled highball glass, add the Bulleit and honey and bitters. Stir to dissolve.

Fill with ice, top with ginger beer.

Squeeze in the juice from the lemon wedge, then give the glass a quick spritz and rim-wipe with the zest.

Roll some thyme sprigs between your palms to wake them up, then add as a garnish.

Give everything a quick stir to combine and enjoy!


One Note: know the flavors of the honey and ginger beer you're using in order to better control sweetness - you may want to play around with amounts for both. I would recommend a drier ginger beer (Reed's is a good brand for that). I'm not saying I've had all ginger beers out there, but a good rule of thumb would probably be to check the nutrition label for sugar grams: Reed's has 37.4g of sugar according to its label; compared with a few other brands I've had, anywhere in the < 40g sugar per 12oz ballpark and you'll most likely be in dryness-land.


[Update, 11-07-2012: For one reason or another I've been getting specific hits on this recipe out of proportion to when I published it, and in googling to see if it went viral I happened across the actual ancient usage of Bull's Meadow, of which I had formerly been unaware: Cluain-Tairbh in the Gaelic, or, modernly, Clontarf, a suburb of Dublin, Ireland. Ye in the spirits-know might also recognize Clontarf as a brand of Irish whiskey. Why didn't I think of this in the first place?!?! Well, mainly because I was working that particular spirit-bitters synergy. I can confirm, however, that using Clontarf Black Label produces a similar yet divergent cocktail, that connects Clontarf's tropical fruit notes (pineapple, passionfruit, mango, possibly papaya) with the pineapple juice used in Reed's ginger beer for another stellar combination, with the ginger, thyme, lemon and bitters making blendiferous cameos. That Clontarf also possesses brown sugar Bourbon-wood notes perhaps ropes the cocktail in from deviating the recipe into unworkability.]

Virginia Sakura

[Update, 03-20-2013: Call it a rookie mistake, explicitly naming a cocktail with a brand name (without so much as asking). I was delving into my love of bourbon by exploring the different brands available --including Jefferson's-- and, as you might expect, with love comes inspiration. With this particular bourbon I noticed an interesting swiss chocolate note that truly reminded me of cherry blossom trees for some reason, so I wanted to play that up in a cocktail, deliberately skirting actual cherry flavor in favor of the "everything else" of the tree. When it came time to name the cocktail, well, if you google, you'll see scads of recipes with "cherry blossom" in their name (which miffs me because they tend to have a straight cherry flavor: cherry blossoms don't taste like cherries, cherries do!). Given my focus on Jefferson's Bourbon, all other potential names tended to fall short of "Jefferson's Cherry Blossom", noodle on this though I did.

I've stuck with this name for about 9 months now (not so comfortably), and I think it's overdue for a fix for the longer term. Recently I've received some feedback on the recipe using a different bourbon (Bowman's), and it sounds like it turned out quite well with the substitution: "etherealized bourbon" summed up the impression. I imagine any classic/not-too-spicy profile bourbon would also work well in the cocktail. This recipe/post's link has to remain "Jefferson's Cherry Blossom" due to Blogger's set-up (all previous links will continue to function, natch), but given the cocktail seems to hold up with substitutions and I still have on my mind the third president and the Washington D.C. cherry blossoms of my youth, it shall henceforth be called Virginia Sakura.]

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. ..." 
- Declaration of Independence, authored by Thomas Jefferson

Virginia Sakura

2 1/4 oz  Bourbon (Jefferson's)

1/2 oz Umeshu (plum sake - I used Choya)

1 tsp Maraschino liqueur

5 drops Bittercube cherry bark vanilla bitters
Cherry-Mint blossom garnish


Stir liquid ingredients on ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass in which the garnish is already placed.

To prepare the garnish:

1. Take a preserved cherry (ideally a Luxardo or homemade maraschino cherry, or a homemade bourbon cherry), remove the stem, and with a paring knife cut 5 roughly equal-sized "petals" while being careful not to cut all the way through the base - it needs to hold together.
2. Select a mint sprig with tiny just-starting leaves at the very top and second-level leaves just larger than your cherry - break off the sprig just under those second-level leaves. With your cut cherry, gently roll and poke the baby leaves through the hole at the cherry base, leaving the second-level leaves to flutter prettily in the breeze behind the cherry.
3. If the garnish is a tad bit juicy, that's perfectly all right. A few cherry-flavored drops will round the drink out nicely.