The Sherpa

 

Story

Sasha Petraske is someone we should all know about.  He’s credited with inventing modern cocktail culture in the early 2000’s and is mentioned frequently by other bartenders who refer to him simply by his first name.  He opened the famous Milk & Honey bar in 1999 and was a creative partner in nearly a dozen other bars around the world.  Sasha had a famous and fantastic set of house rules at Milk & Honey that were on bronze plaques mounted outside the restrooms.  He trained many of the world’s best bartenders and was known for a meticulous attention to detail that bordered on obsessiveness.  He died young (age 42) in 2017 but his influence lives on.

This recipe is a strong but terrific sipper that evolves over time in the glass as the ice melts.  Neither the allspice dram nor the curacao stand out independently but instead they round out the bourbon and create a lovely overall effect, like a citrus old-fashioned.

Recipe
2 dashes orange bitters
0.25 oz Pierre Ferrand Dry Curaçao (or Cointreau)
0.25 oz allspice dram
2 oz bourbon
Lemon twist
-build the drink in order in a rocks glass starting with the bitters.
-add a large cube of ice and stir a few times.  Garnish with lemon twist.