bulldog

3/4 oz Matusalem Rum
1 1/2 oz Cherry Heering
1/2 oz Lime Juice

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a cherry.

Often I can look at a list of ingredients on a cocktail menu and accurately predict the general recipe, especially when I know the bar and what their "standard proportions" are. I had always skipped over the Bulldog on Green Street's large A-to-Z menu for it seemed like a Cherry Heering instead of simple syrup Daiquiri variant similar to the Haitian Witch. After having a taste of rum in the Between the Sheets, I decided to give the rum-containing Bulldog a go. When bartender Derric Crothers presented the drink, I was quite surprised when he told me the recipe was more than half Cherry Heering! I was expecting something along the lines of:

Tahoe Cocktail / Olympia
• 1 1/2 oz Light Rum / Dark Rum
• 1/2 oz Cherry Liqueur
• 1/2 oz Lime Juice
Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Source: CocktailDB.

The Cherry Heering-heavy recipe reminded me a drink from Pioneers of Mixing at Elite Bars's liqueur section, the Pinto. Although unlike the Pinto which uses the Cherry Heering to balance the dominant Fernet Branca in the drink, here the cherry flavors are the dominant note. Indeed, the Bulldog was a sweet cherry with undertones of lime crispness and rum. When I gave Andrea a sip, she commented that it tasted "like cherry coffee... really weird" and how the rum and Heering combined to create this coffee note. Overall, I cannot decide which I enjoyed more -- the flavor of the Bulldog or the absurdity of the recipe.