Rye-Tai

Story

There are a lot of cocktails online that call themselves "Rye Tai".  It will surprise no one that I like Sother Teague's version.  This Rye-Tai is obviously inspired by the classic Mai-Tai, with rye taking the place of rum.  The Mai-Tai combines different rum types to get the advantages of each, and the same trick is used here.  The recipe uses Rittenhouse Rye and Old Overholt rye, but I used Russell’s 6-year in place of the latter.
The cocktail has the citrus sparkle like a margarita but with a silkier mouthfeel from the orgeat and the spice from the rye.  I had read about orgeat, which is a sweet syrup made from almonds, sugar, and a little orange blossom water, but this is the first cocktail in which I tried it.  Big fan.  You can make orgeat at home, but it looks like quite a process so I went with the store-bought stuff.

Recipe

1 oz fresh lime juice
1 oz Rittenhouse Rye
1 oz Old Overholt Rye (or Russell’s 6-year)
0.5 oz orgeat
0.5 oz cointreau
-Add all ingredients to shaker.

-Whip shake with a small handful of cracked or pebble ice. Dirty pour into rocks glass over crushed or pebble ice. Garnish with a spent lime half.  I drink it with a straw.

Whip shake: The whip shake is a technique used to chill and aerate a drink, often used in tiki-style cocktails.  To do it, just add the ingredients to a cocktail shaker with a small amount of ice and shake it until the ice completely melts.  It’s easy to tell when this happens because it stops smacking against the inside of the shaker.

Dirty pour: In contrast to the usual process of straining a shaken drink while pouring it into the glass, the dirty pour is just dumping the contents of the shaker directly into the glass.  Also known as a party pour or just dumping.