rudderless

2 oz Dry Red Wine (Bear Flag)
3/4 oz Batavia Arrack
1/2 oz Lemon Juice
1/2 oz Pineapple Syrup (*)
1/4 oz Becherovka Liqueur
1 dash Angostura Bitters

Shake with ice and strain into an Old Fashioned glass or small Highball glass filled with ice. Garnish with a long orange twist and freshly grated nutmeg.
(*) In a pinch, a 1:1 syrup of pineapple juice:sugar would do no harm as a substitute here.
For Thursday Drink Night on Mixoloseum two weeks ago, the theme was "w(h)ine." The duality of the event title was parsed as creating a recipe using a wine product as an ingredient and naming it after a gripe of some sort. Since I recalled that Batavia Arrack pairs quite well with wine products ranging from port to white wines, I decided to take an old nautical approach to the drink with a Punch or Cooler style. For a thematically appropriate drink name, I dubbed it Rudderless to represent the whine of lacking direction in life. The Rudderless began with an orange, nutmeg, and red wine aroma. On the sip, the citrus and fruity grape notes joined with hints of pineapple. Next, the swallow offered up the Batavia Arrack's funkiness and the wine's tannins, and after a few sips, the Becherovka's clove began to surface on the finish. Indeed, the Batavia Arrack and red wine combination proved to be a solid one. The most amusing comment about the drink came from Dan of the KindredCocktails drink database who declared that the Rudderless was like, "a tiki Wine Cooler drizzled down a buttered stripper pole"; I am still pondering that one.