coffee cocktail

1 oz Port
1 oz Cognac
1 tsp Sugar
1 Whole Egg (Small or Medium)

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Grate nutmeg over the top.

After the raucous "Sugar Cane Spirits" seminar at Tales of the Cocktail on Thursday, we headed to the third one of the day entitled "Port: Not Your Grandpa's Drink Anymore" which was a bit more sedate. They did try to shake the stodginess of port and offered the alternative title for the seminar of "Taking the Bullshit out of Port." The two products that were discussed in terms of cocktails were Fonseca Bin 27 which donates a lot of fruit flavors to drinks and Croft Pink which is a pink port thanks to new technologies in port production. A lot of the seminar was on how to market port and port cocktails to your customers including how to move an opened bottle of vintage port before it passes its prime and how naming a drink can remove the word port from the title and hence the mind of the drinker. With the latter point, many people still think of port solely as an after dinner drink never to be mixed.

One classic drink that was served at the seminar was the Coffee Cocktail which first appeared in the 1887 Jerry Thomas Bartender's Guide and printed above with a slight modification (the presenters served this as an equal parts port to cognac ratio). Despite the name, the drink has neither coffee nor bitters in the ingredients, but when properly prepared, it does look a bit like coffee. However, it pleasantly tastes like a thick grapey nog. The presenters again suggest Fonseca Bin 27 port for this drink over some of the other less fruity and more expensive styles.

There were two Croft Pink cocktails made, the Bubbles & Pink by Gary Regan and the Smoking Gun by Neyah White. These two drinks highlighted the versatility of the new product in cocktails.