scotch hearst cocktail

1 1/2 oz Caol Ila 12 Year Scotch
1 1/2 oz Cinzano Sweet Vermouth
1 dash Fee's Orange Bitters
1 dash Peychaud's Bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a rocks glass. Twist a lemon rind over the top, rim the edge with the oils, and discard.

On Sunday night, Andrea and I went to Rendezvous to visit Scott Holliday. When I asked if Scott had any ideas for my first cocktail, he said that he was curious to try out a Scotch variant of the Hearst, for the gin version has been one of his favorites lately. The Scotch that Scott selected was a 12 year old Caol Ila, one that reviewer Michael Jackson described as juniper on the nose with a bit of spice on the finish. With a description like that it is no wonder the whiskey choice worked rather well as a gin alternative.

The lemon oil in the drink served as a nice lead in to a smooth first sip. The smokiness of the Scotch came on after the first few minutes but was not overwhelming, and this was followed by the next wave of flavor dominance which was the sweetness. The sweet vermouth yielded just the right amount of sugar content to the drink to make it a pleasure to drink. The large share of vermouth makes the drink different than the often drier Rob Roy (although I have seen some recipes that are 2 to 1), although I found a few on CocktailDB that are equal parts. Scott could not come up with the proper Scottish dignitary to rename the drink, so I will just keep the drink named after the newspaper mogul until otherwise alerted. Feel free to suggest away if anything comes to mind...

manhattan-to-little italy

2 1/4 oz Old Overholt Rye
3/4 oz Martini & Rossi Sweet Vermouth
1 dash Angostura Bitters
4 Ice Cubes with Cynar centers

Stir with normal ice cubes and strain into a rocks glass containing 4 Cynar ice cubes.

After my foray with the Trinidad Sour at Drink last night, Sam Treadway came by to make me my third drink. There was a pause in both of our thinkings of where oh god do we go from here. Until Sam remembered his cache of Cynar ice cubes. Not pure Cynar since that would have problems freezing due to the alcohol content, but an ice shell with Cynar in the middle. The idea came to him when he saw some imperfect Kold Draft ice cubes that had a divot from where it was filled in the machine. And from there, he sought out these ice cubes, perhaps expanded the flaw, filled the center with Cynar (approximately 1/4 oz or so), chilled, and carefully layered water over the top to seal the Cynar in during the cubes final trip to the freezer.
Sam had previously used these cubes in a tall drink, but we bandied about ideas until he decided he wanted to make me a Manhattan that turns into a Little Italy (see recipe below). The Manhattan he made for me was delicious -- and I was glad to discover that my taste receptors were still able to enjoy Angostura bitters after having had the Trinidad Sour. I think that Sam overchilled (well, properly chilled) the Manhattan before adding it to the Cynar ice cubes in the rocks glass, for the ice shell took a while to melt. I nursed the drink while reading and tasted it every page or so. And then one sip by surprise, my mouth realized that one of the cubes had been breached and released its quanta of Cynar goodness. The drink was now more bitter and complex like a Little Italy. Each cube lysed at their own rates with the partially exposed ones going slower than the submerged ones. Towards the end of the cocktail, the drink entered a third stage of being mainly Cynar on ice as the last Cynar time bomb exploded. With perhaps only a partial stir on regular ice (if any initial cooling at all), this drink could have been enjoyed without the wait. No complaints since it was my last cocktail and stretching it out was not such a bad thing; moreover, the end result was very much worth experiencing.

Little Italy
• 2 oz Rye
• 1/2 oz Cynar
• 3/4 oz Sweet Vermouth
Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with two cocktail cherries skewered on a pick.

trinidad sour

1 1/2 oz Angostura Bitters
1 1/2 oz Ferrara Orgeat
1 oz Lemon Juice
1/2 oz Rittenhouse Rye

Shake with ice and strain into a coupe glass. And yes, those are the correct volumes (Update: close, see below).

Trinidad Sour (via Giuseppe Gonzalez)
• 1 1/2 oz Angostura Bitters
• 1 oz Orgeat
• 3/4 oz Lemon Juice
• 1/2 oz Rye Whiskey<
Source: Liquor.com & Punch. The former has a lemon twist and the latter has no garnish.

For my second cocktail at Drink last night, the honorable Ben Sandrof came by to chat. We began speaking about how much bitters you could drink straight without getting sick and then how much you could put in a cocktail and still have it work. Excluding some of the sweeter bitters out there like Fee's or Stirrings, the most I have ever seen was in the Woodpecker, a drink I left off of our menu at the International Migratory Bird Day cocktail party where we served bird-inspired cocktails, due what seemed like an absurd recipe:

Woodpecker
• 2 oz Vodka
• 15 dashes Angostura (or Peychaud's) Bitters
Serve with 4 ice cubes or with crushed ice in a rocks glass.

Ben countered that he had two cocktails that he thought I might like to change or at least challenge my mind. The one I went with was a sour created by Giuseppe Gonzales of the Clover Club in Brooklyn and brought to Ben by way of Daniel Eun. Well not just a sour, but an inversion of a standard sour recipe such that the rye, which you would assume is the base spirit, becomes the flavor enhancer, and the bitters instead of being the accent become the drink's base. One of the pleasures of Ben's bartending is that while he can conjure up and serve perfectly regular drinks, he will gladly throw in a level of perversity if you are game, and accepting the perversity gauntlet often pays off grandly. For example, one of the most memorable drinks I had at No. 9 Park was a 1794 cocktail that Ben made for me with some xanthum gum-thickened Campari (almost a jelly) that yielded a cocktail with a rather fun and full mouthfeel to it. I figured that this would be a drink bold enough to match the Scotch Sazerac I had just finished.
I was in utter awe when the drink appeared in front of me. It was rather red with a thick froth on top. On the nose of the drink, there was a great deal of cinnamon, spice, and almond/orgeat aromatics. Upon the first sip, it was surprisingly very citrusy with more of a lime taste to it due to something in the bitters modifying the lemon's flavor. The ounce and a half of Angostura bitters a priori sounds like a disaster and my mind had a preconceived opinion of the flavor profile. However, it worked in a very delicious way, and not only that but the cherry wood in the Angostura's botanical mix brought out a great cherry-fruit flavor. Lauren Clark of DrinkBoston was at the ice bar behind me and Ben made her one as well. Lauren said she initially attributed the cherry flavor to her mind tricking her into thinking the drink was cherryish due to its incredible red color a la cherry juice. Over all, I was quite pleased with this drink both as an experience and as a drink itself. It was indeed an intense cocktail but very different type of intense from my Ardbeg Sazerac.

scotch sazerac

2 1/2 oz Ardbeg Scotch
1/4 oz Water
Sugar Cube
2 dashes Peychaud's Bitters
1 dash Tiki Bitters
1 dash Mole Bitters
Benedictine (Rinse)

Muddle the sugar cube, bitters, and water until the sugar is mostly dissolved. Add Scotch and ice, stir, and strain into a rocks glass pre-rinsed with Benedictine. Twist an orange peel over the drink and discard the peel.

Last night I went solo to Drink and I found a seat at the center bar. When Sam Treadway made his way over to take my order, I asked what new drinks he had been making. He replied that he was pretty excited by a drink he made during a recent garnish challenge (apparently a regular occurrence where a few patrons show up with a garnish such as circus peanuts and see what the maestros at Drink can do) where the goal was to match a drink to beef jerky. Luckily for me he was all out of jerky, so I went with this Scotch drink sans garnish.

The cocktail was a take on the traditional Sazerac where the Peychaud's were complemented by a pair of the Bittermens' bitters and the Herbsaint was replaced by Benedictine. Those two changes were not as great as the swapping of the traditional Cognac or rye for Scotch. And not just any Scotch, but a bold one: Ardbeg. The drink itself started with a wondrous orange oils on the nose which led into the smoke flavors at the beginning of the sip. The Scotch somewhat overwhelmed the bitters and Benedictine, but they were indeed there in the swallow. And they were there with just enough force to make the drink complex enough to keep me captivated until my glass was drained.

In terms of the Sazeracs I have had, which include rye, Bourbon, Cognac, and gin, the Scotch Sazerac was one of the bigger departures due to the dominance of the base spirit. However, it was just as balanced and easy to drink as its more standard siblings. I could see how the smokiness of this drink would stand up rather well to some beef or other jerky with all of its smoke and spice; however, if you would like that experience at Drink, just remember to BYOJ.

[sin-gin-cyn]

1 3/4 oz. cynar
3/4 oz. gin
1 oz. sweet vermouth

Build in a rocks glass, add ice, stir, garnish with a lemon twist.

Last Sunday (3/8/09), I finally managed to drag Fred to Chez Henri. Beyond that, I had one primary mission on this most recent trip: to try a cuban sandwich. Fred and I walked into a mostly empty bar, and found seats at the far end nearest the kitchen. When I mentioned that I had only ever been to Chez Henri once, and that I'd never had the cuban sandwich, Rob (Other Rob) astounded me by remembering my name. I barely even needed to look at the menu - once I spotted the Rhum Cocktail Marilene, my mind was made up. I asked Rob (Other Rob), what the cocktail's origin was, and I got a bit of a cagey answer. They used to serve this cocktail at the B-Side, but it was called something else, so I'm still in the dark about who actually named the cocktail. I couldn't taste any Angostura in Rob (Other Rob)'s version, which shouldn't surprise me since he'd said the cocktail was a Haitian rhum version of a caipirinha.

While I ate my cuban sandwich, I glanced at the Duke-Maryland women's ACC basketball game on the television (it was an excellent game, and Maryland won in OT). Below the television sat an almost empty bottle of Cynar; it mocked me. So for my second cocktail, I told Rob (Other Rob) to empty it into my glass. He measured out 1 oz. of the Cynar, shook the bottle a little, and I had to encourage him to dump the remaining 3/4 oz. in (though he shook his head dubiously at that). He kept the sweet vermouth to 1 oz., as per Imbibe's Cin-Cyn recipe, but backed the gin off to 3/4 oz. He shook his head again and said he didn't think there would be any point in adding bitters. The lemon garnish was his attempt to add back in a little bit of the astringency that the normal proportion of gin would have provided. The resulting drink reminded me strongly of a straight swig of Autocrat coffee syrup (or at least my childhood memory of such). The artichoke flavor came in on the swallow. Overall I liked it very much. I don't know if Rob (Other Rob) was pleased with it, but I'm glad he was game for my little Cynar experiment.

p.s. Fred made me aware of the fact that numerous Chowhounds cruise our blog for ideas of what drinks to order at a bar (Drink here in Boston, in particular). That's great! However, our naming conventions for cocktails might not be so obvious, so I'll re-state them here. If a cocktail name is enclosed in brackets [], that means it is an extempore creation, and hence un-named by the drink's creator. I wish we had some way of similarly marking a bartender's specific creation in the title (meaning, expect to only get that particular drink at that particular bar), however we have gotten better at describing a drink's provenance in our write-ups. Hope you enjoy reading!

post post script 3/17/09: On my most recent trip to Rendezvous, Scott informed me (in no uncertain terms, in fact I think he said this shortly after saying "Hello") that the Rhum Cocktail Marilene is *his* invention, though I'm uncertain if it dates from his days at Chez Henri or not. Alas, the cocktail that Rob (Other Rob) made me was not a Rhum Cocktail Marilene, since it did not have any Angostura bitters in it; it was just a haitian rhum caipirinha.

jasmine

1 1/2 oz Gin
3/4 oz Cointreau
1/2 oz Lemon Juice
1/4 oz Campari

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with an orange wedge. This was the recipe Rob used with two other recipes provided below.

For my second drink at Chez Henri last night, I asked Rob not-Kraemer to go off the menu with a gin drink. After he rambled off a few, I went with one I had not had before, the Jasmine, which sounded very similar to the Pegu Club he initially wanted to make for me. Indeed, it also tasted very similar to the Pegu. The lemon and Campari in the Jasmine functioned very similarly to the lime and Angostura bitters in the Pegu Club -- they worked with the gin and Cointreau to generate a very similar phantom grapefruit juice flavor. In a way, it was a continuation of the Shiver with the grapefruit, Campari, and piny flavors. The version Rob made for me was a variation of both the original that Paul Harrington created in the 1990's and the one Robert Hess recommends:

Harrington's Jasmine
1 1/2 oz Gin, 1/4 ounce Cointreau, 3/4 oz Lemon Juice, 1/4 oz Campari. Garnish with a lemon twist.
Hess' Jasmine
1 1/2 oz Gin, 1 oz Cointreau, 1/2 oz Lemon Juice, 3/4 oz Campari. Garnish with a lemon wedge.

shiver

1 1/2 oz Campari
1 1/2 oz Grapefruit Juice
1/2 oz Eau de Vie of Douglas Fir

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with an orange slice.

On Sunday, Andrea and I went to Chez Henri to try their Cuban sandwich (veggie Cuban for me) and have a drink or two. We sat at the bar where B-Side alum Rob not-Kraemer was presiding. I picked my first drink, a Chez Henri original -- the Shiver, off of their cocktail list. I have noted before how well Campari and grapefruit work with each other and in the Shiver, it was no exception. The Eau de Vie of Douglas Fir added some rather gin-like accents to the drink and this added to the bite of the grapefruit juice and the complexity of the Campari. The Shiver not only served as a rather good apertif but held up to the food once the sandwiches arrived.

hoop la

The theme for this month's Mixology Monday (MxMo XXXVII) is "First Time" as chosen by the wonderful ladies of LUPEC Boston. The concept was not to re-create your own possibly awkward stumblings into the world of cocktails but to initiate someone else properly with style and grace. LUPEC's Pink Lady writes, "What drink do you suggest for the delicate palate of the cocktail neophyte? Something boozy and balanced, sure - but one wrong suggestion could relegate the newbie to a beer-drinker's life. To which go-to cocktails do you turn to when faced with the challenge?"

Looking back at the beginning entries of my journal of all the drinks I have made at home, one of the ones that stood out was the Hoop La, the first drink we made with our then newly purchased bottle of brandy. The Hoop La is very similar to the other drink I thought of as a starting point, the Side Car -- one of the first brandy drinks I had out at a bar, except the Hoop La has an extra ingredient of Lillet Blanc in the mix to make it more sublime. Lillet with its rich bouquet of citrus peel and other fruit notes aids in softening the drink while also adding a depth of flavor relative to its cousin the Side Car.

Hoop La
• 3/4 oz Brandy
• 3/4 oz Cointreau
• 3/4 oz Lillet Blanc
• 3/4 oz Fresh Lemon Juice
Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

I am not sure of the history of the cocktail other than it first appeared in print in the 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book, but the combination must have been a very popular one for there are three other drinks I have found with the same ingredients and proportions: the Frank Sullivan, the Hey Hey, and the Odd McIntyre cocktails. I remember how I was fooled into making what I thought was a new to me cocktail recipe, a Frank Sullivan, and then discovering that it was the same cocktail as the Hoop La I had a few months prior.
There are several reasons why the Hoop La stands out as a good gateway cocktail. First, the base spirit is brandy. Brandy, unlike vodka, has a flavor; however, it is not as initially objectionable to a novice drinker as gin, tequila, or whiskey, so it is a good way to teach someone that boozes themselves can taste good and are not something that they should try to mask with various mixers. Second, the drink falls into the pleasing class of "sours" but is well balanced enough to be not puckery from the lemon juice and not overly sweet from the sugar source, here mainly the Cointreau, in this recipe. Third, the Lillet Blanc is an aromatized wine and this can teach drinkers that similar products, namely vermouths, can make drinks taste better and not worse (although perhaps not in the vodka martinis cocktails they might have encountered in the past).

And lastly, the recipe is easy to learn (equal parts) and can easily be switched around to broaden one's drinking experience. For example, the Lillet can be swapped for rum or Calvados to make it a Between the Sheets or Deauville Cocktail, respectively. Or the recipe can serve as a gateway to gin by swapping the brandy for gin and adding two drops of pastis to make a Corpse Reviver No. 2 (which turns out to be the cocktail Paul Clarke chose for this MxMo). And to avoid the complications of the sometimes challenging anise flavors in the pastis, another gin possibility is to switch out both the brandy and Cointreau for gin and light crème de cacao (although double the gin proportion) to make the rather pleasing Twentieth Century Cocktail.

And to tie in the concept of making a drink for a cocktail virgin and Jess' original name of the blog (before she invited the rest of us on board), I went back in to her early entries and saw another drink that I thought of but passed on in favor of the Hoop La, Elephants Sometimes Forget, a very delicious sour cherry cocktail that can serve as a tasty introduction to gin, vermouth, and bitters. While not her first cocktail, it was one of the first few that she made for herself, and one I would enthusiastically encourage others to try:

Elephants Sometimes Forget
• 1 oz Gin
• 3/4 oz Cherry Heering
• 3/4 oz Fresh Lemon Juice
• 1/4 oz Dry Vermouth
• 1 dash Orange Bitters
Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

toddy week

Last week was hopefully the last extended period of cold-cold weather this winter. I guess it is fitting that I decided to drink hot toddies whenever we went out. At its most basic, a hot toddy is composed of 1-2 oz. of the liquor of choice, 1 tsp. - 1 Tbsp. of sweetener, 4 oz. hot water, and some sort of spice-infused citrus as garnish.

My first toddy of the week was a smoky-peaty scotch hot toddy, served at Rendezvous (2/26/09). Scott shocked us by grabbing the Caol Ila 12 year (instead of Famous Grouse) off the shelf to pair with a dash of Fee's orange bitters and a generous dollop of honey. I'd never tasted it except vicariously through reading about it in one of my favorite science fiction books - Diamond Mask by Julian May. The protagonist's family comes from Islay, and in the book they tour one of the distilleries.

Since it had warmed me up so nicely, I asked for another toddy variant. Scott came back with a version of the classic bourbon-based hot toddy. He sweetened this one with maple syrup, and added Fred's new Smoking Ban Bitters. This drink was an excellent showcase for the bitters, starting off very vanilla-y (from the bourbon and the generous amount of vanilla in the bitters reinforcing each other) and tobacco-y (maybe from the bourbon's charred oak combining with the tobacco leaf in the bitters), and finishing with a complex tartness. Both toddies were garnished with twisted-together orange and lemon peels studded with cloves.

On Sunday (3/1/09), a snowstorm was brewing, so we headed over to Drink to keep Sam, Misty, and John company. The bar was surprisingly crowded and a boisterous party was keeping Sam busy at the ice bar. Misty made me a hot toddy with 1 oz. of cognac, 1/2 oz. of yellow chartreuse, and 1/2 oz. of cinnamon simple syrup. The tingle of the cinnamon played off the syrupy-sweet chartreuse, and the cognac didn't get in the way like bourbon might have.

Today's weather in the Boston area is in the 50's, making us all feel that spring is imminent. Most of us who've lived here a while know better, so I'm hopeful that I might get one last opportunity to have a hot beverage before the daffodils pop up.