the diamond queen

1 1/2 oz Fords Gin
1/2 oz Encanto Pisco
3/4 oz Noilly Prat Dry Vermouth
1/4 oz Liber & Co. Pineapple Gomme Syrup

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail coupe.

Two Saturdays ago, I decided to remake my Tales of the Cocktail 2017 official cocktail competition: the Martini entry called the Diamond Queen that I had submitted earlier in the year. For inspiration, I started with the Madame Lou from Boothby's 1934 book which was an inverse Martini with a barspoon of pineapple syrup. I then decided to merge the Martini with aspects of another classic, and I described the drink in my entry as, "A Martini cross with a Pisco Punch with a nod to the Madame Lou." Since Madame Lou was Lou Graham who ran a famous brothel in Seattle, I stuck with the profession as a naming convention and dubbed this one the Diamond Queen after Lulu White who ran a brothel in New Orleans' Storyville.
The Diamond Queen began with pineapple aromas that mingled with those of the pisco's floral grape and the gin's pine. Next, a smooth grape sip had just enough sweetness to come across as gentle, and the swallow showcased the gin's juniper and other botanicals transitioning into the tropical pisco-pineapple combination.