Wooden Ship

 

Story

As someone who really likes the movie Master and Commander, I was always going to make a cocktail called Wooden Ship.  This is the 2011 creation of Thomas Waugh, another bartender at Death & Co.  The template is of course that of an old fashioned (spirit + sugar + bitters) with a split base of gin and genever.  There’s another similar drink farther along the same family tree called a Fancy Gin Cocktail, which appeared in the 19^th century.  The base spirit was, unsurprisingly, gin, sweetened by a liqueur (curacao or Maraschino) and seasoned with bitters.  The Wooden Ship uses a more modern liqueur along with a little cane sugar syrup to balance the maltiness of the genever, and the result is something much more interesting than I would have expected.  The nose on this one is all citrus.  The gin greets you first on the sip, but the genever adds enough balanced complexity that you want to roll it around and figure it out.  There’s just the right amount of sweet and bitter and the slightest hint of malt.  Then, like the HMS Surprise, it’s gone before you know it.   For England, for home, and for the prize  -- cheers!

Recipe

1 oz Tanqueray Gin
1 oz Bols Genever
0.5 oz Grand Marnier
0.5 tsp cane sugar syrup
1 dash Fee Brothers old fashioned aromatic bitters
-Stir ingredients with ice.  Strain into chilled rocks glass. Express lemon twist over drink.  Garnish.