Trident

 

Story

Steven Wright had a bit back in the 80s: “I got up the other day and everything in my apartment had been stolen and replaced with an exact replica.”  This drink is kind of the equivalent of that for the Negroni.  Each ingredient has been swapped out, not for an exact replica, but for a distant cousin.  Aquavit replaces gin, Cynar subs in for the Campari, and sherry takes the place of vermouth.  A couple dashes of bitters to connect everything and you’ve got a harmonious blend that’s both familiar and completely different.  The complex aquavit starts things out both savory and sweet, closely followed by the nutty amontillado sherry.  Then the Cynar shows up and closes out the sip with some welcome herbal bitterness.  Lovely.

Recipe

1 oz aquavit
1 oz Cynar
1 oz dry sherry (amontillado)
1 dash orange bitters
1 dash peach bitters
lemon twist
-measure ingredients into mixing glass with ice.  Stir to chill. Strain into coup or Nick & Nora.
-express lemon twist and discard.

Port Manhattan

 

Story

I’ve got a secret – sometimes I don’t like sweet vermouth.  Don’t get me wrong, it features in a lot of my favorite cocktails. But at times the spirit and the vermouth line up in such a way that it reinforces some flavors that don’t match my palate.  This version of the Manhattan sidesteps that occasional issue by swapping out sweet vermouth for port, which was the first drink I fell in love with.  Port is a fortified wine that’s made in the northern part of Portugal.  It seems that they start making wine the usual way, then at some point they dump in a neutral grape spirit called aguardente (Portuguese for “burning water”).  This stops the fermentation process early, which prevents the natural sugars from being consumed.  It also increases the alcohol content, because they just dumped in a bunch of alcohol.  Port comes in a variety of styles, of which ruby is the most common. 

This cocktail doesn’t have a dozen layers of complexity or spiced syrups or unexpected ingredients, but sometimes being amazing is enough. 

Recipe

2 oz rye (Rittenhouse)
1 oz ruby port (Warre’s Warrior)
3 dashes orange bitters
orange twist
-stir ingredients in a mixing glass with ice to chill. Strain into chilled Nick & Nora or coupe.
-express orange twist and use as a garnish.

Ford

 

Story

The Ford goes back a little ways, first appearing in the book “Modern American Drinks” by George Kappler in 1895.  The drink predates Henry Ford so the theory is that it was named after Malcolm Webster Ford, a famous decathlete in the 1880s. Both the Ford and the modern martini, along with a number of other famous drinks, evolved from the common martini recipe in the 1800s.  The Ford features old tom gin, which is a mellow, sweetened type of gin that fell out of favor for decades but has had a revival only recently. Our old friend Benedictine makes an appearance here, along with two orange components.  Together, they make a citrusy, herbaceous drink that’s light and easy to drink but has underlying complexity.  I used Fee Brothers Orange Bitters, which are made with glycerin.  They add a smoothness to the mouthfeel that rounds out the drink nicely.

Recipe

1 oz old tom gin
1 oz dry vermouth
0.25 oz Benedictine
3 dashes orange bitters
orange twist
-stir ingredients in a mixing glass with ice to chill. Strain into chilled Nick & Nora or coupe.
-express orange twist and use as a garnish.

Night Shift

 

Story

This is another cocktail from Maggie Hoffman’s book, “Batch Cocktails”.  It’s a split-base Manhattan variant with allspice dram instead of bitters.  Complex and citrusy, it’s got a clear rum undertone with soft notes from the allspice in the background.  I love it.

Jamaican rum is a key player here.  Like most rum, it’s made from molasses.  It’s fermented in casks and then distilled in pot stills. These copper stills work more slowly and less efficiently than column stills.  In practice this means that more of the non-alcohol fermentation products (congeners) remain in the rum after distillation.  These congeners lend distinctive flavors to Jamaican rum that are lacking in more completely-distilled rums.  These flavors create the oft-referenced Jamaican rum “funk”, with notes of tropical fruit, wood, smoke, spices, and caramel.

The Night Shift was created by bartender Sean Kenyon at American Bonded in Denver.

Recipe

1.25 oz cognac (VS)
1 oz Jamaican rum
1 oz Carpano Antica sweet vermouth
1 tsp allspice dram
orange twist
-measure ingredients into mixing glass with ice.  Stir to chill. Strain into rocks glass over fresh ice.
-express orange twist and use as a garnish.

Ti' Punch

 

Story

English sugar plantations were established in the Caribbean in the early 1600s and molasses, which is an industrial waste product from sugar refining, was in plentiful supply.  Sometime in the 1640s, plantation workers in Barbados realized that molasses could be fermented and distilled to create a powerful spirit that they called “kill-devil” or “rumbullion” – later shortened to “rum”.  Caribbean colonies quickly became major producers.  Due to global economic changes in the late 1800s, the market for refined sugar shrank precipitously, and the innovative producers began distilling fresh sugarcane juice instead of molasses. The resulting spirit was called “rhum agricole”, French for “agricultural rum”. Rhum Agricole has a distinct earthy, grassy flavor that varies significantly depending on where the sugarcane was grown. 

Ti’ Punch is the national cocktail of the French Caribbean islands Martinique and Guadeloupe (ti’ is short for “petite”).  It’s made with sharp, vegetal white rhum agricole if enjoyed early in the day, and with a mellower aged rhum agricole in the evening.  Ice is optional and locals typically enjoy Ti’ Punch without it.  I tried it both with and without ice, and I’m going to ask you to trust me and try it without.  Sipping a nice Ti’ Punch puts me in mind of sitting on a beautiful beach at dusk, feeling the breeze and watching the world go by.

Recipe

Lime wheel
1 tsp cane sugar syrup (Steen’s)
2 oz rhum agricole (aged or white; I used aged)
-squeeze lime wheel into a rocks glass; drop the wheel into the glass
-add the cane sugar syrup and stir to combine
-add rhum Agricole and stir briefly to mix

Montenegroni

 

Story

The story of the Negroni is like a lot of classic cocktail history – vague.  There are several reasons for this murkiness.  Cocktails are invented in bars, where there are few precise records. As such, cocktail stories are often muddled in the memories of people who were actively drinking when collecting the information.  There are a number of stories about how the Negroni came to be, but none can be verified.  The evidence is that the base drink appeared in the 1920s. The modern version (equal parts Campari, gin, and sweet vermouth) first showed up in a book in 1953, although that drink was stirred rather than built in the glass, was served up, and was garnished with a lemon twist.  The International Bartenders Association’s modern recipe is built over ice in a rocks glass and garnished with an orange slice.

There are books full of Negroni variants. This one swaps out the Campari for Amaro Montenegro.  Both are bittersweet Italian liqueurs, but the Montenegro is darker, smoother, and more floral.

Recipe

1 oz gin (London dry)
1 oz Cocchi Vermouth di Torino (sweet)
1 oz Amaro Montenegro
orange twist
-measure ingredients into mixing glass with ice.  Stir to chill. Strain into rocks glass over fresh ice.
-(alternative: build in a rock glass over ice; stir)
-express orange twist and use as a garnish.

National Treasure

 

Story

I heard Sother Teague say on a podcast that the only misuse of bitters is to miss using bitters, and I got to wondering about some of the great Club drinks that don’t include them.  Then I learned some definitions that I didn’t know.  An extract is made by soaking a single flavoring agent in alcohol (e.g., vanilla extract).  Tinctured bitters (aka non-potable bitters) are an extract with the addition of multiple flavors and a bittering agent.  These are the little bottles like Angostura bitters that are used to season a drink.  If you add sugar to the mix, you get potable bitters, which are intended to be sipped alone or mixed into a drink.  The different types of amari (Campari, Averna, Montenegro) are examples of potable bitters.  “Amaro”, it turns out, is Italian for “bitter”.  So if we’re using an amaro, the bitters component is already there.

This week’s cocktail is a variant on the Boulevardier (1.5 bourbon / 0.75 sweet vermouth/ 0.75 Campari).  Here the base is split between rye and apple brandy, the Cynar adds some earthy bittersweetness, and the ratios are shuffled a bit to create balance.  This is another drink where each sip is a journey through different flavors.  

The recipe way created by bartender Brian Kane during his time at the now-shuttered Abe Fisher in Philadelphia.  I learned of it in the excellent book Batched Cocktails by Maggie Hoffman.  Maggie is formerly of Serious Eats and now has her own site, The Dinner Plan.

Recipe

0.75 oz bourbon (Rittenhouse)
0.5 oz apple brandy (Laird’s)
0.5 oz Carpano Antica sweet vermouth
0.5 oz Campari
0.25 oz Cynar
-measure ingredients into mixing glass with ice.  Stir to chill. Strain into rocks glass over fresh ice.
-express lemon twist and use as a garnish.

McKittrick

 

Story

I continue to be amazed at how a couple of little nudges can move a simple cocktail into a completely new zone.  The McKittrick is obviously a type of old-fashioned because it’s just booze, sugar, and bitters over ice.  In this case, though, the sweetness comes not from a sugar cube or simple syrup but in the form of Pedro Ximénez sherry.  This is not a brand – it’s the name of the white Spanish wine grape used to produce a rich, dark sherry.  It brings flavors of dried fruit, dark chocolate, and roasted coffee, rounding out the bourbon.  The mole bitters lean into those flavors and add a hint of cinnamon.  The combination yields a drink that I would sip in a private library full of leather-bound books on towering mahogany shelves.  The McKittrick was invented by Theo Lieberman, former head bartender at Milk and Honey.  It’s named after the “McKittrick Hotel”, a performing arts venue in New York that’s themed as a hotel and is in turn named after the hotel in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo.

Recipe

2 oz bourbon
0.5 oz Pedro Ximénez (PX) sherry
2 dashes (0.25 tsp) Bittermens Xocolatl Mole Bitters
-measure ingredients into a rocks glass, add a rock of ice, and stir seven times
-garnish with cocktail cherry

Remember The Maine

 

Story

This cocktail in the Manhattan family but also shares aspects of the Red Hook (due to the cherry liqueur) and the Sazerac (due to the absinthe).  The recipe was first recorded in Charles H. Baker, Jr’s 1939 book The Gentleman’s Companion.  The name refers to the sinking of the US Navy battleship in Havana Harbor, which contributed to the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898.  The cocktail itself is strong, but there is a sweet counterpoint going on underneath.  Both the cherry liqueur and the absinthe blend into the overall flavor rather than standing out.  Some versions use the absinthe as a rinse in the glass, but I like leaving it in there for the extra bit of complexity. 

Recipe

2 oz rye (Rittenhouse)
0.75 oz sweet vermouth (Cocchi Vermouth di Torino)
0.25 oz cherry liqueur (Heering or Luxardo Cherry)
1 dash absinthe (1/8 tsp)
-measure ingredients in a mixing glass with ice; stir to chill
-strain into chilled coupe
-garnish with cocktail cherry

Chet Baker

 

Story

This cocktail is named after the jazz trumpeter and vocalist who was nicknamed the “Prince of Cool”.  The Chet Baker cocktail was created by Sam Ross, the of Milk & Honey in New York, in 2005.  It looks like a bourbon drink, but it’s actually aged (gold) rum, which has smooth flavors of vanilla, cinnamon, and caramel.  Honey syrup lends a subtle sweetness while a touch of vermouth adds texture and complexity.  I’m not a huge fan of honey (my grandma used to mix it with lemon in hot water for me to drink when I had a sore throat as a kid), but the flavor is very subtle here.  Plain honey thickens and won’t dissolve when it hits ice, but a 3:1 honey to water syrup, made in advance with hot water, solves that nicely.  The Chet Baker is essentially a rum old-fashioned, and it’s perfect for the warming weather.

Recipe

2 oz aged (gold) rum
2 teaspooons sweet vermouth (Carpano Antica)
1 teaspoon honey syrup (3 parts honey, 1 part hot water; cool before using)
2 dashes angostura bitters
-build the drink in a rocks glass.
-add one large cube of ice and stir seven times.
-express orange twist over the drink and use as a garnish.

African Flower

 

Story

I found this recipe in the book Unvarnished by Eric Alperin, a bartender who worked at Little Branch in New York and then opened the famous bar The Varnish in L.A.  (Both of those were also Sasha Petraske joints, btw.)  The African Flower was one of the 100+ recipes a bartender had to memorize before flying solo behind the bar at The Varnish.  It was created around 2008 by Becky McFalls-Schwartz, another Little Branch bartender who has since moved on to open Bar Moga, yet another place I really need to visit in New York.  The African Flower is a bourbon-forward sipper with interesting complexity.  When I tasted it, I wrote that it seemed like the subtle cola and chocolate flavors “reinforced the edges” of the bourbon in this Manhattan variant.  It’s an odd mental picture, but there you have it.  Re-reading this paragraph, I see that I haven’t communicated how much I love this drink.  That’s on me.

Recipe

2 oz bourbon
3/8 oz Ramazotti Amaro (or CioCiaro Amaro)
3/8 oz dark crème de cacao
1 dash orange bitters
-build the drink in a rocks glass.
-add one large cube of ice and stir seven times.
-express orange twist over the drink and use as a garnish.

Si-Güey

 

Story

This is another drink from the book Regarding Cocktails, assembled by those who worked with Sasha Petraske.  According to the book, “si-güey” is both Mexican slang that means something akin to “hey bro” and a pun on the word segue. Sasha and the other bartenders at Milk & Honey would say this to each other periodically throughout a shift.  This cocktail is a great sipper that’s built around the excellent flavor of reposado tequila, which is aged in oak barrels to give it a smooth flavor with hints of vanilla and caramel. Islay Scotch is named for the island of Islay off the west coast of Scotland and is known for its smoky flavor.  The recipe calls for floating the scotch, which means to carefully pour it over a bar spoon so it layers on top of the rest of the drink.  To be honest, though, scotch doesn’t float very well, so you can get away with just pouring it in.

Recipe

3 dashes orange bitters
0.25 oz Pierre Ferrand Dry Curaçao (or Cointreau)
2 oz reposado tequila
0.25 oz Islay scotch whisky
-build the drink in a rocks glass, starting with the bitters and ending with the tequila.
-add one large cube of ice and stir.
-finish by floating the scotch on top of the drink

Home on the Range

 

Story

This drink is based on a recipe found by veteran Australian bartender Michael Madrusan in the 1941 book Crosby Gaige’s Cocktail Guide and Ladies’ Companion.  Madrusan worked under the legendary Sasha Petraske at New York’s famous Milk & Honey.  Madrusan modernized the cocktail by swapping out the original Dubonnet rouge in favor of sweet vermouth.  Sasha liked this cocktail so much that it appeared on the menus of all of his many bars.   Home on the Range is a strong cocktail that to me is like an Old Fashioned with a cool citrus note.  It’s great over a single large cube of ice, to be sipped as it evolves in the glass.  I honestly like it better after it sits for a few minutes so the flavors open up.

Recipe

3 dashes Angostura bitters
0.25 oz sweet vermouth (preferably Cocchi Vermouth di Torino)
0.25 oz Cointreau
2 oz bourbon
Lemon twist
Orange twist
-build the drink in a rocks glass, starting with the bitters and ending with the bourbon.
-add one large cube of ice and stir a few times.  Garnish with lemon and orange twists.