so-so

1 oz Dry Gin (Beefeater)
1 oz Sweet Vermouth (Dolin)
1/2 oz Calvados/Apple Brandy (Laird's Bonded)
1/2 oz Grenadine

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

For our Sunday night pre-dinner cocktail, I searched Patrick Gavin Duffy's The Official Mixer's Manual and found the So-So, a drink that first appears in the literature in the 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book. When Andrea heard the recipe, she thought it would need an assertive gin so we went with Beefeater. With this gin choice, the juniper notes delightfully hit a certain fruitiness that came from a combination of the sweet vermouth, apple brandy, and grenadine. The gin's botanicals were surprisingly rather apparent in this drink and the gin choice seemed to be affect the drink more so here than in many recipes. Overall, the So-So was pretty rich and complex enough to make for a good aperitif cocktail.