Thursday, January 28, 2016

winnie the pooh

1/2 oz Banks 5 Island Rum
1 oz Campari
1 oz Gancia Bianco Vermouth (Dolin Blanc)
1/2 oz Cynar
1/6 oz (1 tsp) Fernet Branca
3 dash Fee's Orange Bitters
3 dash Regan's Orange Bitters

Build in a rocks glass, stir with ice, and garnish with an orange twist.

Two Thursdays ago, I ventured into my copy of the Experimental Cocktail Club, a collection of recipes from the various E.C.C. bars across the world, and found a recipe from the E.C.C. in New York's Chinatown. That recipe, the Winnie the Pooh, was a Negroni riff that included both Cynar like the Negroni Tredici and the Double Double and Fernet Branca like the Southpaw and the Countless Night along with the Campari. There is also a base spirit- and vermouth-free combination of these three bitter liqueurs as a Negroni riff in the Bottecchia, but here in the E.C.C. number, the spirit is a half part of rum.
The Winnie the Pooh started off with an orange oil aroma with hints of Campari. Next, a white grape flavor on the sip transitioned into a complex bitter medley ranging from funky Cynar notes to bitter orange Campari ones on the swallow with a Fernet menthol finish.

4 comments:

Tammy Coxen said...

Looks like a riff on Eeyore's Requiem to me: http://www.kindredcocktails.com/cocktail/eeyores-requiem

Although I object to the naming. Eeyore's Requiem is a brilliant name for that bitter (and delicious) cocktail, and it should take more than cutting the Campari a bit and swapping rum for gin to make it match Winnie the Pooh's personality so well!

frederic said...

Thanks for reminding me of ER! I remember the name and just that I never got around to making it (probably since half is Campari with little (on paper at least) to balance the bitterness like salt).

Tri2Cook said...

The Eeyore's Requiem is one of my personal favorites so I'll definitely be giving this one a try. It'll require a little liberty-taking because Banks 5 Island isn't available in Ontario and mail order booze isn't a thing in Canada... but I'll toss something else in and see what happens.

frederic said...

Don't worry about substitutions -- the rum plays a backbone role at best here with all of the more flavorful ingredients.