yellow bird

1 1/2 oz Light Rum (Caliche)
3/4 oz Lime Juice
1/2 oz Galliano
1/2 oz Triple Sec (Cointreau)

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

Two Sunday afternoons ago, Andrea was in the mood for a cocktail. For an idea, my eyes latched onto one of the recipe sheets from the Boston USBG-sponsored talk about aperitifs and digestifs that I attended at Backbar about a month ago. There I found the Yellow Bird, a drink that we served at an International Migratory Bird Day party that we threw in 2008 (and I wrote up here). The Yellow Bird was one of the 20 bird-themed drinks on the menu, but it never made it onto the blog. The recipe provided by Bols-Galliano was somewhere between the sweeter 2:1:1:1 recipe we made that night (unsure now as to which book was the source) and the crisper 3:2:1:1 recipe in Stan Jones' Complete Barguide. Of course, when we made the Yellow Bird the last time in 2008, it was with the old Galliano (the New Coke-like) formulation, and this time it would be with the new (the Coca Cola Classic-like) one.
The Yellow Bird shared an orange, anise, and vanilla aroma. A citrussy lime and orange sip gave way to a rum swallow with a mint-like and star anise finish. Indeed, the Yellow Bird came across like an herbal Rum Sidecar.