dulchin

2 oz Pisco (Macchu Pisco)
1 oz Apricot Eau de Vie (Blume Marillen)
1 oz Lime Juice
2 tsp Grand Marnier
1 tsp Grenadine

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

After my Jerez Flip at Craigie, I was going to call it a night. However, I have been on a mission lately and asked Tommy whether he had any dry apricot brandy behind the bar since I needed to have a Dulchin in the next few weeks to complete the Anvil's 100 Drink list and I did not want to buy a bottle for just this drink (especially at $35 for a half bottle). The last four bars I asked in did not have it on their shelves, but Tommy claimed that a bottle of Haus Alpenz's Apricot Eau de Vie from Blume Marillen was misdelivered and had showed up earlier that day! What serendipidity, and luckily Tom was game to mix up the recipe which we procured via Andrea's iPhone.

According to David Wondrich, the Dulchin was created for an heir of a New York hardware company who could not drink grain distillates and was getting bored of rum. Pisco, a grape brandy, combined with two other fruit-based spirits, namely dry apricot brandy and Grand Marnier, round out the drink that was created for him. As soon as Tommy was done shaking the drink, he straw-tasted it and did not seem all that pleased with the results. He asked if he should add more "orange" to it. At first I figured it was a commentary about the rounded-ness of the fruit flavor, but what he really was getting at was the sweet to tart balance in the drink being off. I replied that I wanted to experience the drink as the recipe intended it to be.
The Dulchin had a very strange dry fruit flavor with a lime bite at the end. The pisco flavors were not all that evident at first, but as the drink warmed up, more pisco smokey notes were apparent on the nose. While the Grand Marnier added to the complexity of the citrus, its sugar and that of the grenadine did not balance the acid content in the lime. Unquestionably, it was a touch too puckery and I told Tommy that his idea of upping the liqueur or perhaps reducing the lime would have greatly improved the Dulchin; indeed, this struck me as odd since I am more likely to complain that drinks are too sweet than too tart. Apparently, I am not alone since others have reworked the recipe to swap out the lime for passion fruit juice to make the drink softer and more approachable.