bernardino's bulleit

1 oz Bulleit Bourbon
1/4 oz Fernet Branca
1/4 oz Lemon Juice
3/8 oz Black Pepper Simple Syrup (*)
1 tsp Goya Mango Jam

Shake with ice and double strain into a rocks glass filled with fresh ice. Garnish with a lemon twist.
(*) While I did not ask Misty how she made her syrup, an adaptation of Todd Thrasher's recipe is 1 cup water, 1 cup sugar, 1/4 cup coarsely cracked black pepper corns. Bring water to a boil, add sugar and stir until dissolved, add pepper corns, and turn off heat. Let stand for 20 minutes, strain, bottle, and refrigerate. 3/4 oz of vodka will help preserve the syrup. In a pinch, muddling a few pepper corns and letting them sit with the Bourbon for a few minutes would probably work (in conjunction with regular simple syrup).

On Thursday evening, I attended the Diageo Happy Hour. The theme was "cocktails around the world" replete with a passport book akin to the drink golf parties back in college. Except here, instead of 18 holes, there were 42 plus a few hydration stations where you could get a stamp as well. A few people wondered why I was entering my own stamps at the stations; I had to explain that I was making tasting notes and the stamp section was great white space. Needless to say between good conversations and needing to be somewhat sober enough to enjoy dinner at the Green Goddess later that evening, I only tried a fraction of the drinks. Out of those, I picked 4 to report on: two from Asia, one from Central America, and this one from Drink's Misty Kalkofen from South America.
Misty's Bernardino's Bulleit had two elements from South American cuisine. The most obvious one was the mango jam which contributed a great flavor and mouthfeel to the drink. The other was the Fernet Branca which is one of the favored spirit of Argentina; the Bernardino part of the drink's name made reference to this for Bernardino Branca was the creator of this elixir back in 1845. Once mixed, the drink provided a citrus bouquet with lemon oils from the twist that combined with an almost orange-like aroma from the mango. Next, the sip was a mango-citrus flavor that had a thickness from the jam's pectin content, and the swallow contained the Bourbon with an element of spice and bitterness from the black pepper syrup and Fernet Branca at the end.