ponce de leon

1/2 oz Grapefruit Juice
1/2 oz Cointreau
1/2 oz Gold Rum (Appleton Reserve)
1/2 oz Cognac (Martell VS)

Shake with ice and strain into a champagne saucer. Top with Champagne. I used a flute and added an orange twist to the recipe.

On Wednesday while reading David Embury's The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, I spotted the Ponce de Leon. Ignoring all of Embury's negativity about it being a waste of a good Champagne, the drink seemed interesting for it was very similar to the Between the Sheets cocktail (*). While the Between the Sheets contains a tart lemon juice component, the Ponce de Leon uses a softer citrus, grapefruit, and supplements it with the crispness of dry sparkling wine.

The Ponce de Leon's nose was fill of citrus notes from the Cointreau, grapefruit juice, and orange twist. Fruit flavors from the juice and liqueur were in the sip along with some sparkling wine notes, and the swallow was rather crisp and contained rich aged rum flavors. Indeed, the sparkling wine did augment the acidity of the grapefruit juice to approximate the lemon juice of the Between the Sheets.

(*) Also, this Ponce de Leon has little to do with the Eastern Standard cocktail of the same name that I wrote about last year.