black friar

1 1/2 oz Plymouth Gyn
1/2 oz Benedictine
1/2 oz Cocchi Americano
1/2 oz Lemon Juice
1 dash Angostura Bitters

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

About a month ago, I submitted a recipe to a Plymouth Gin cocktail contest which was in honor of their new bottle design. The object was to use either their gin or sloe gin to celebrate the distillery's history. In researching the distillery, the building used to be where the Black Friars' monastery had been. Since the Black Friars were a Dominican order, I latched onto the idea of using Bénédictine, a liqueur made by another Dominican order in France. To that, I added lemon juice to counter to the liqueur's sweetness as was done in the Frisco Sour as well as Cocchi Americano and Angostura Bitters to round out the drink. Overall, the recipe's structure took the form of the Genever-based Zeeland.
The Black Friar had an herbal and lemon oil aroma that led into a citrussy sip from the lemon juice and Cocchi Americano. Finally, the drink ended with a pleasant combination of the Benedictine's complexity, gin's botanicals, and lemon's tartness.