fino swizzle

(a) 1/2 oz Pierre Ferrand 1840 Cognac
1/2 oz Graham's Six Grapes Ruby Port
3/4 oz Syrup from Luxardo Cherry Jar (*)
1/4 oz Lemon Juice
(b) 2 oz Gutierrez Colosia Fino Elcano Sherry
5 dash Fee's Whiskey Barrel Bitters

Add ingredients in (a) with crushed ice in a Collins glass (do not fill with ice). Swizzle until the glass is frosted. Top with ice, float sherry, and garnish with bitters. Add a straw.
(*) Perhaps if you do not have enough syrup from the jar, using Cherry Heering or other sweet cherry liqueur might work well to supplement the syrup.

Two Sundays ago, Andrea and I finally made it over to Hawthorne, Jackson Cannon's newest establishment to round out the trilogy with Eastern Standard and Island Creek Oyster Bar. Manning the main bar that night were bartenders Scott Marshall (ex-Drink) and Katie Emmerson (ex-Death & Co.), and Ryan Lotz (ex-Lineage) was apparently at the side bar in the other room. Off of the ever changing short menu of around ten drinks, the Fino Swizzle called out to me. Therefore, I asked Scott for the "$5 milkshake" and he understood the movie reference and that I wanted the $16 drink that was pricier than the other selections. Perhaps one reason that the drink that Nicole Lebedevitch created was a step above was that it contained a half jigger's worth of syrup from Luxardo Maraschino cherry jars. Nicole explained that in a waste-not want-not mindset, she reserved the precious syrup from the big cans of Luxardo cherries that the bar orders and utilized them in this drink. Or perhaps it was a step above since I have never had a bartender in a swanky suit make me a swizzle before.
The Fino Swizzle's bitters donated a delightful cinnamon note to the swizzle and their flavor would not appear until the later part of the drink. The sip was a cherry note from the syrup along with the port's grape and a little crispness from the lemon. The cherry continued on the swallow where it mingled with the Cognac notes. Later, the sip got quite a bit drier from the fino sherry, and the bitter's cinnamon entered in on the swallow. Moreover, the fino and the bitters paired rather well together along with the residual flavors from the bottom part of the drink.