the bentley

2 oz Dubonnet Rouge
2 oz Laird's Applejack
1 dash Fee's Orange Bitters

Shaken with ice and strained into a cocktail glass.

Last night, Andrea and I were in Union Square in Somerville to satisfy her hunger for Indian food. Afterwards, we went over to the Independent for an after dinner drink. New on the menu was the Bentley, a simple 50-50 Dubonnet-applejack cocktail. I was able to find the recipe in three 1930's cocktail books: Savoy, Boothby's, and Cafe Royal. Generally, the cocktail is shaken for some reason instead of stirred and no garnish is given; often, it is made with Calvados. More modern re-tellings of this cocktail include a lemon or orange twist or orange bitters such as was the case with the cocktail Liam made me. A column that Gary Regan wrote for SfGate hints that the drink came into existence shortly after a Bentley automobile won the Le Mans in 1927 and the first reference in print was the 1930 version of the Savoy. The end product was a more red winy and less sweet version of the Marconi Wireless, and more aperitif (with a boozy kick) than a cocktail proper.