1919 cocktail

3/4 oz Rittenhouse Rye
3/4 oz Old Monk Rum
1 oz Punt e Mes
1/2 oz Benedictine
1 dash Bittermen's Xocolatl Mole Bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

Last night, Andrea and I came back from a day of shopping in Kittery, Maine, followed by the requisite stops in New Hampshire at the Portsmouth Brewery for dinner (their bar also look well stocked and there's a lounge downstairs, but alas, we have not sampled anything besides their beer and ciders) and the state-run liquor stores (we stuck to the two-hand rule and only bought 209 Gin and Booker's Bourbon, although Saturday's two-hand rule was ruby port and JM Rhum Blanc ($20/liter at Kappy's!)). Since shopping is hard, we decided to treat ourselves to cocktails at Drink.

We grabbed seats at Misty's bar who was tending at the ice station. This means the drinks she was making used ice from 1 foot cubes from a pond in Gloucester which she picked, chipped, and smashed into the proper sized pieces. To our left was The Boston Shaker himself, Adam, who runs a cocktail supply store of various bitters, syrups, and mixing hardware. When Misty asked what I was thinking about drink-wise, I said that I could go either way with rye or rum. Instead of choosing, she did both!

The drink she made me was the 1919, a drink that Ben Sandrof taught her named in reference to what I assumed was the start of Prohibition. Bartender Aaron Butler later commented on this post, "The 1919 is in reference to the Great Molasses Flood of the North End on Jan. 15th, 1919 - the day before the 18th Amendment was ratified. The drink celebrates the molasses notes of Old Monk Rum." I was not wrong in my assumptions for the molasses flood was tied into scaled up production before Prohibition enforcement began. The first note of the beverage was the chocolate scent. The Bittermen's Mole bitters worked better in this cocktail smell-wise than they have in others for me where they were stronger taste-wise. The Rittenhouse Rye gave the drink a very pleasing spiciness, and the vanilla from the rum and the botanicals from the Punt e Mes and Benedictine filled in the gaps. Overall, the 1919 was rather rich, flavorful, and pleasing to the nose and mouth similar to say a Vieux Carre cocktail.