old number one

1 oz Aged Apple Brandy (Laird's Bonded)
1 oz Blended Scotch (Cutty Sark Prohibition)
1 oz Sweet Vermouth (Cocchi)
2 dash Angostura Bitters

Stir with ice, strain into a cocktail coupe, and garnish with a cherry.

Two Saturdays ago, I was working on my cocktail article on apple drinks for the Fall 2022 issue of Edible Boston and Edible Worcester, and I need to test out a recipe. I wanted to riff on the Marconi Wireless – a cocktail "I love so much that I named one of my cats Marconi." I later wrote, "One of the earliest recipes that I fell in love with was the Marconi Wireless as an apple Manhattan of sorts. Here, I riffed on that classic by adding a Scotch element to the mix [and swapping the bitters from orange to Angostura] to generate the Old Number One named after the world's first telephone at Charles William Jr.'s house on Arlington Street in Somerville, MA." That location is under a mile from my home, so it has been part of our city's tapestry of pride along with Marshmallow Fluff.The Old Number One began with smoke, apple, and grape aromas. Next, grape notes on the sip transmitted smoky Scotch, apple, herbal, and clove flavors on the swallow with a smoke and allspice finish.