glasgow

2 oz White Horse Blended Scotch
1 barspoon Caol Ila 12 Year Scotch
1 oz Noilly Prat Dry Vermouth
2 dash Peychaud's Bitters
1 barspoon Henri Bardouin Pastis

Stir with ice and strain into a rocks glass. Twist a lemon peel over the top.
For my second cocktail at Rendezvous, I asked bartender Scott Holliday for suggestions on my next drink. He mentioned that the restaurant's sous chef Ben rather likes the Glasgow; Ben learned about the drink in Esquire and was drawn to it when David Wondrich called it the Crispin Glover. Wondrich explained, "Only through the Glasgows of this world do the Manhattans truly become what they are. Without its Crispin Glovers, high school would not, in esse, be high school." Just like Ben, when I heard that it was the Crispin of Cocktails, I too needed to try one.
The Glasgow greeted me with a lemon oil aroma coupled with a briny, smoky Scotch note. A semi-mellow malt flavor on the sip was chased by smoke from the Scotch, anise from the pastis (the original calls for absinthe), and bitter notes from the vermouth and Peychaud's on the swallow. Lastly, the Glasgow was rather dry from the French vermouth combined with a lack of sweetener (save for the small amount of sugar from the barspoon of pastis). While the drink was an odd ball that could be made more standardized with sweet instead of dry vermouth or by the addition of a muddled up cube of sugar, it was definitely not the newer Crispin Glover vintage that casts a movie full of Down Syndrome actors or rats, but the earlier Back to the Future oddball days. To summarize the essence of the drink with a quote, Mr. Glover said, "I do like things that are not necessarily a reflection of what is considered the right thing by this culture. Somehow, promoting that status quo I find uninteresting."