la bateleur

2 oz Beefeater Gin
3/4 oz Punt e Mes
1/2 oz Strega
1/4 oz Cynar
1 dash Angostura Bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

After Alex Day's Gran Paradiso, I recalled another one of his recipes that I had spotted in Gary Regan's Bartender's Gin Compendium called La Bateleur. La Bateleur was a drink that Alex created while he was still at Death & Co. in Manhattan. The name translates into the magician and is one of the cards in the Tarot deck; since Strega means witch in Italian, the drink's name made sense.
The cocktail began with an aroma of the gin and lemon twist with perhaps hints of the Punt e Mes. The sip presented a sweet spiced grape flavor that was followed by Cynar and Punt e Mes in the beginning of the swallow and Strega and gin at the end. Indeed, the rather herbal swallow began with bitter notes and ended with spiced ones including a wormwood-cinnamon sort of note.