Tuesday, January 16, 2024

precursor

1 oz Bols Barrel-Aged Genever
1 oz Ransom Old Tom Gin
1 oz Cocchi Sweet Vermouth
1/4 oz Luxardo Maraschino
2 dash Orange Bitters (Angostura Orange)

Stir with ice, strain into a cocktail coupe, and garnish with an orange twist.
Two Tuesdays ago, I found a collection of online recipe flashcards from the now closed Tiger Mama in Boston, and I decided to make the Precursor as a Martinez riff. I estimate the drink to have appeared on the menu circa 2015 given the other recipes in the deck such as the Long Eclipse and the time period of the bartender who posted the set. The Precursor started off with orange, cherry, and malty aromas. Next, a grape-driven sip flowed into malt, pine, and nutty cherry flavors on the swallow with a bitter finish from the Genever.

3 comments:

Jil Wrinkle said...

That Cocchi Sweet Vermouth is a red vermouth then? Or more like Cocchi Americano? (I'm just wondering, because the drink in the photo doesn't seem to be the color one would expect from something that is one third red vermouth.)

frederic said...

Yes, the sweet red. The full name is "Cocchi Vermouth di Torino" and I write sweet vermouth so folks don't have to google that to find out what it is. On this blog for vermouth, I use the terms sweet for red, dry for white, and blanc/bianco for sweet white.

As for color, it's a very wide and shallow coupe glass, and it is what it is.

Jil Wrinkle said...

Tried this. I had some genever shipped in last week, and this is the first cocktail I have made with it. I don't have Old Tom gin, so I just used Tanqueray. (You'll have to tell me how important Old Tom is to the mix versus regular gin.) My red vermouth selection is limited to just Martini/Rossi since I don't use it too often. Anyway, I was surprised at how much the genever is able to push through in flavor. It's a lot stronger than I expected it would be. Thanks for this recipe.