dolores

1 oz Sherry (1/2 oz each Lustau East India Solera & Don Nuño Dry Oloroso)
1/2 oz Jamaican Rum (Appleton 12 Year)
1/4 oz Dubonnet Rouge
1/4 oz Orange Juice
1 dash Aromatic Pepper (3 Peppercorns)

Muddle peppercorns in rum. Add rest of ingredients and ice, shake, and strain into a cocktail glass. Recipe given provided as fractions of a glass (one glass total). We did not fine strain the drink, but aesthetes might consider doing so.
Last night before dinner, I started flipping through Albert Crockett's The Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book in the section after the main listing of cocktails. In the last portion of the book are random lists of drinks such as Cuban and Jamaican cocktails. The "Jamaican Jollifiers" section was provided to Crockett by Mr. T.G.S. Hooke who had worked at hotels in Jamaica. One recipe that stood out was the Dolores. This Dolores recipe, unlike some of the others I later found, had the ingredient of "aromatic pepper" which I was not fully sure of how to interpret. Since I had prepared an on-the-fly pepper syrup by muddling black peppercorns in simple syrup to make a drink (see the Lila here and feel free to vote for my Square Dance while you're there) for the past Thursday's TDN, I went with a similar idea using the rum to help extract flavors.

The other attractive part of the cocktail was sherry as a main ingredient with a rum to give it a little bit of backbone. We opted for a blend of sherries to give more character and provide the right level of sweetness. While Lustau's East India Solera is delicious, it is rather sweet for us especially if it were to compose half the drink. And their dry oloroso, on the other hand, is a bit too dry but does add some delicious nutty notes; therefore, we went with an equal part mix of the two with great success. Otherwise, the Dolores had a delightful orange and sherry flavor on the front of the sip followed by the pepper's spice on the swallow, and it served as a good before dinner drink.