pax sax sarax

2 oz Glenmorangie Single Malt (Kavalan Whisky)
1/4 oz Peychaud's Bitters
1/4 oz Cherry Heering

Stir with ice, strain into a cocktail glass pre-rinsed with absinthe (St. George), and garnish with 3 cherries (1 cherry).

Two Thursdays ago, I decided to make a drink by Jamie Boudreau that was a riff on Leo Engel's 1878 Alabazam; the idea had been spurred on by ones of Gary Regan's recent email newsletters. I was able to track down the recipe by searching Jamie's old blog, Spirits & Cocktails, where he wrote about this drink before Bobby Burns Night in 2009. That drink was called the Pax Sax Sarax, and like the Alabazam, it has a decent amount of bitters in the mix. Whereas Engel's had a teaspoon of Angostura Bitters to flavor the brandy, Boudreau's had a quarter ounce of Peychaud's to accent the Scotch. In his blog post, the drink name was depicted as a magic phrase during Elizabethan times to prolong orgasm.
The Pax Sax Sarax greeted the nose with anise, cherry, and whisky aromas. Next, malt with a fruitiness from the Cherry Heering filled the sip, and the swallow combined smoky whisky, dry cherry, and anise flavors. Overall, it came across as a more spiced and bizarre variation of Eric Alperin's Highlander (2 oz Scotch, 1/2 oz Cherry Heering) that Robert Simonson described in his book The Old Fashioned (I surmise they they were unaware of each other's recipes).