always crashing the same car

1 1/2 oz Laird's Bonded Apple Brandy
1 1/2 oz Bonal Gentiane Quina
1 tsp Green Chartreuse (1/6 oz)
1-2 dash Aromatic Bitters (Angostura)

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Twist a grapefruit peel over the top and discard.

Two Saturdays ago for a nightcap, I selected a drink from Colin Shearn from Philadelphia's Franklin Mortgage and Investment Company called Always Crashing the Same Car. I found the recipe in an article from Philly.com about apple brandy drinks, and I was lured in by the use of Bonal and the David Bowie reference. The drink was named after a song where the lyrics express the self-loathing of making the same error time and time again. Moreover, with a base resembling the Marconi Wireless, a drink we named one of our cats after (as seen here), it would be hard for us to avoid this number. I was later informed that the drink was based off of the Bentley, an equal parts apple brandy and Dubonnet Rouge recipe; exchanging one automobile reference for another and one quinquina for another, the Always Crashing the Same Car took shape.
The Always Crashing the Same Car presented itself with a grapefruit aroma that mingled with Bonal's bitter grape notes. A dry apple and grape sip led into Bonal's bitter and the brandy's barrel aging notes, and the swallow rounded off with Green Chartreuse and Angostura Bitters at the end. Indeed, the drink worked excellently as a dark and brooding Marconi Wireless with perhaps shades of Coppa's Marconi Wireless #2's bitter tribute entering in my mind.