rosemary's baby

2 oz Applejack (Laird's Bonded)
3/4 oz Cynar
3/4 oz Grand Marnier
1 dash Orange Bitters (Regan's)
1 dash Grapefruit Bitters (Homemade)
Rosemary

Place a quarter-sized amount of rosemary leaves in a mixing glass. Add Grand Marnier and set on fire. Once the fire dies off, add the remaining ingredients and ice, stir, and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a rosemary sprig.

While at the Cure bar in New Orleans, I was looking through their Rogue Cocktails book that I had just bought and spotted the Rosemary's Baby cocktail. It seemed rather alluring with its use of Cynar and apple brandy; however, I turned the page and forgot about the recipe since our home bar lacked Grand Marnier. A few days later at the On the Fly competition sponsored by Grand Marnier and Navan, I had scored a few nips of Grand Marnier and stowed them away in my backpack without much thought. It was not until we were back in Boston that I flipped through the Rogue once again and made the connection between the recipe and my swag pile! So for our Bastille Day cocktail, I bought some fresh rosemary sprigs and set to work.
The fire was certainly spectacular during the making of this cocktail and it added a certain toastiness to the end result. The Grand Marnier was not all that orangy in the mix but complemented the apple taste and seemed to decrease the Cynar's magnitude. The rosemary worked well with the Cynar's botanicals and with the fruit flavors in the apple brandy. Overall, the cocktail was rather intense from the theatrics in the beginning to the bitter notes of artichoke liqueur at the end.