fox shot

1/5 Angostura Bitters (1/4 oz)
1/5 Brandy (1/4 oz Château de Plassons VSOP)
1/5 Sweet Vermouth (1/4 oz Dolin)
2/5 Gin (1/2 oz Junipero)

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. I added to the recipe a Luxardo Maraschino cherry garnish.

For our second drink on Wednesday, I went with an oddity, the Fox Shot, that I had spotted in Jacques Straub's Drinks from 1914. The Fox Shot uses a considerable portion of bitters in the recipe; while it uses less Angostura than Charles Bakers' Angostura Sour (or Giuseppe Gonzales' more modern Trinidad Sour), it pre-dates it by a few decades.

The Fox Shot ended up an intense red hue from the significant portion of Angostura Bitters and presented the nose with cherry and allspice aromas. The sip was rather dry and spicy with a strong clove taste and a minor allspice one; furthermore, this flavor rather reminded Andrea of Pimento Dram. Surprisingly, the gin's juniper was rather minor in the flavor profile. While the vermouth and Angostura played well together, it was not as magical as when the Angostura Bitters were paired with citrus in the Angostura and Trinidad Sours.