bitter peach

1 oz Gran Classico Bitter (Campari)
1 oz Lemon Juice
1 oz Peach Syrup (*)
1 small Egg White

Shake once without ice and once with. Strain into a coupe glass and garnish the egg white froth with a dash of Peychaud's Bitters
(*) I made my syrup by heating a 10 oz bag of frozen peach slices with a cup of water and a cup of sugar. Bring to a boil, simmer for 10 minutes, cover, and let cool for an hour or two. Strain through a tea towel, bottle, and refrigerate. To make the syrup last longer, add 1 oz of vodka to the empty bottle, shake the alcohol to sterilize the inside, add the syrup to the vodka, and mix.

After making the 19th century Gin Fix recipe, it was time to try something modern. One of the drinks I spotted in a recent Esquire article was from Derek Brown and Brian Tetorakis, bartenders at the Columbia Room and Rogue 24, respectively, in Washington, D.C. With a pile of peach scraps available to them, they made a syrup that they discovered worked well with Gran Classico's bitterness. Derek described how they created, "a great aperitif cocktail: sweet, sour, bitter, and low-alcohol. It's a perfect pre-dinner drink, especially for an end-of-summer feast. It reminds me of a fluffier, more accessible Negroni."
One of the alluring aspects of the drink was that it would utilize the peach syrup that I had made for the Temperance-era Georgia Mint Julep which I wrote about on the Four Pounds Flour website. While I did not have Gran Classico, I figured that the less artisanal Campari would substitute well here. Once mixed, the drink presented a Campari aroma spiked with the Peychaud's Bitter's anise notes; the anise was strong enough to make Andrea inquire if the drink contained some absinthe. The sip was a rather pleasing creamy lemon-peach flavor, and the Campari entered in on the swallow. Indeed, the peach did pair well with the Campari but their flavors were for the most part temporally separated in the sip and swallow.