the jake walk

3/4 oz Reposado Tequila (Lunazul)
3/4 oz White Rum (El Dorado 3 Year) (*)
3/4 oz St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur
3/4 oz Lime Juice
2 dash Peychaud's Bitters

Shake with ice and strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with an orange twist(*).

For a drink on Friday evening, I spotted the Jake Walk in the current issue of Imbibe magazine. The cocktail was created by David Wondrich as the signature cocktail for the Jake Walk restaurant in Brooklyn, NY, and I was drawn to it partly by my fascination with four equal parts recipes besides wanting to see what Wondrich had invented.
In making the Jake Walk, I was out of oranges, so I garnished with a lemon peel instead. The nose was full of tequila notes and citrus from the lime juice and twist. The tequila and lime juice stood out on the sip with Peychaud's Bitters and the lime's tartness on the swallow. The St. Germain mixed rather well with the lime juice, and the combination produced a slightly sour grapefruit flavor. The rum did not stand out very much in the flavor profile, but may have functioned to mellow out the tequila without reducing the drink's final proof. Perhaps a more flavorful white rum such as Pritchard's would have stood out more; however, El Dorado 3 Year is not that subtle of a rum. Overall, the Jakewalk was pretty dry and the combination of St. Germain and bitters took the drink in a very different direction than the traditional Margarita; moreover, given today's date, I must add that the Jakewalk would make for a rather good Cinco de Mayo cocktail!

(*) The above recipe was the one found in the magazine. However, an article about the drink mentions that the restaurant uses a white rhum agricole, namely J.M. Rhum Blanc, which would be more distinctive of a rum. That recipe also garnishes the drink with candied ginger instead of a citrus twist. The ginger is symbolic for the Jake Walk which was a Prohibition era ailment from drinking bogus Jamaica Ginger (a/k/a Jake). Jamaica Ginger was a medicine that was allowed to be sold during Prohibition, and people desperately took advantage of its 140 to 160 proof contents. Bootleggers of this medication (not to fake the medicinal aspect so much as to allow their alcohol to be sold) utilized a chemical compound to fool the treasury department's assays. The tri-ortho cresyl phosphate they used turned out to be a neurotoxin which significantly affected the user's gate into what became known as the jake walk.