Thursday, July 29, 2021

cold was the ground

1 1/2oz Apple Brandy (Laird's Bonded)
1/2 oz Bourbon (Wild Turkey 101°)
1/2 oz Zucca (Sfumato)
1/4 oz Pedro Ximenez Sherry (Oxford 1970) (*)
1 dash Fee's Walnut Bitters (2 dash Strongwater Walnut)

Stir with ice, strain into a double old fashioned glass with a large ice cube, and garnish with an orange twist.
(*) With Sfumato, the sherry could be upped to 1/2 oz for balance.
Two Thursday ago, I was leafing through the recipes on Kindred Cocktails when I latched onto a rabarbaro recipe called Cold Was the Ground. The drink was created by site user Applejack from Chicago in 2018 and named after a Blind Willie Johnson song. In the glass, the Cold Was the Ground proffered orange, roasty smoke, and raisin aromas. Next, grape and roast notes on the swallow led into apple, Bourbon, and bitter smoky flavors on the swallow with a raisin and char finish. Overall, the drink needed a little additional sweetness and roundness, so perhaps upping the sherry to a half ounce would benefit the balance here; it did even out a touch with a little ice melt over time.

1 comment:

ApplejackTAC said...

Thanks for trying the drink and your comments, Fred.

I looked through my notes on this one and I did try it initially with .5 oz of PX, but the few people I bounced it off thought it was a touch too sweet. That could simply be a difference in palates, or a difference in ingredients. As you indicated, Sfumato is a bit less sweet than the Zucca I originally used. I also used St. George Reserve Apple Brandy when putting this together, which is significantly more lush and rich than Laird's Bonded, which could also explain the difference in perceived sweetness. Maybe a fat 1/4 oz or 1/3 oz is the dialed in amount. I'll definitely revisit this, as well as your rye & mezcal variation. Thanks again!

Todd (aka Applejack)