call of the wild

1 1/4 oz Rittenhouse Rye
1 1/4 oz Gin Lane 1751 Old Tom Gin
1/2 oz Benedictine
1/2 oz Yellow Chartreuse
2 dash Orange Bitters

Stir with ice, strain into a cocktail coupe, and garnish with lemon oil from a twist.

For my shift drink two Saturdays ago, I had planned out a mashup of two stirred drinks: the Alaska and the Frisco. The Frisco is the lesser known variation of the Frisco Sour that lacks citrus that I traced back to Boothby's 1934 book, and it seemed like the lemon-containing version that perhaps first appeared in Embury's 1948 book won out. What links the recipes together are two factors: first, the structure of spirit balanced by liqueur (the Alaska does have orange bitters while the Frisco does not (with Angostura, the Frisco becomes a Monte Carlo)), and second, both were sites of American gold rushes. For a name, I dubbed this one after a Jack London book, Call of the Wild, set in the more Northern rush.
The Call of the Wild sought out the nose with lemon, pine, and honey notes. Next, honey, lemon, and malt gently filled the sip, and the swallow was a bit rougher with rye, spice, and minty herbal flavors. Overall, the combination of Yellow Chartreuse and Benedictine paired rather well as they have since the duo was first published in 1895 in George Kappeler's Modern American Drinks with the Widow's Kiss in George Kappeler's Modern American Drinks and a few years later in Edward Spencer's 1903 The Flowing Bowl with the Colleen Bawn.