paradise cocktail

1/2 Gin (1 1/2 oz Beefeater)
1/4 Apricot Liqueur (3/4 oz Rothman & Winter Orchard Apricot)
1/4 Orange Juice (3/4 oz fresh squeezed)
1 dash Lemon Juice (1/2 tsp)

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

Yesterday I had the last of the Anvil's 100 cocktails that I was trying to finish up before the year's end. I started Bobby Heugel's list in late August and had nearly 30 drinks to mix up and taste. Some recipes added new bottles to my shelf like Drambuie to make the Rusty Nail and Irish Whisky to make the Blackthorn, some had me in the kitchen making up syrups such as for the Knickerbocker, and others send me scurrying around town looking for a bar that had an odd reagent like dry apricot brandy for the Dulchin. This week saw the final push with the Death in the Afternoon, the Americano, and the Stinger, which left one on the list. When there were still a handful remaining, I decided that the Paradise Cocktail would be the way to go out especially since some of the others were simpler drinks.
The Paradise Cocktail also gave us a good excuse to use part of the wedding present my brother and sister-in-law sent us: a set of vintage Old Crow Whiskey glasses. The drink started with a sweet orange flavor and finished dry on the swallow with an intense apricot flavor in the middle and gin notes at the end. It was interesting how the apricot and gin became more overlapping in flavor with successive sips. And as I finished the last of the Paradise, I put the hundredth mark on the list. Cheers to Bobby for creating the list to get me to try both some classics I had neglected and some drinks I had never heard of before!