tamboo

1 oz St. George Terroir Gin
1 oz Sutton Cellars Brown Label Vermouth
1 oz Elcano Fino Sherry
1 dash Celery Bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail coupe. Garnish with an olive and twist an orange peel over the top.

For my first cocktail at Sarma, I asked bartender Vikram Hedge for the Tamboo. I figured at first that the name was a hybrid of Terroir Gin and the classic aperitify Bamboo Cocktail, but I was curious for I know Vik is a bit craftier than that. I discovered that the tamboo bamboo is a precursor of the steelpan drum invented in the Caribbean, and while it is antiquated, it still gets use in Trinidad at carnival. It was originally created to get around the European colonizers' ban on drumming, and bamboo of different lengths and hence pitches are thumped against the ground to generate the notes.
The Tamboo's orange oils contributed greatly to the nose. A white grape sip shared hints of citrus and savory flavors, and the swallow offered the gin tempered by the savory grape notes. Even with the addition of the gin, the Tamboo still worked perfectly as an aperitif.