rabbit stick

2 oz Rittenhouse 100 Rye
1 oz Housemade Swedish Punsch
1/2 oz Noilly Prat Dry Vermouth
2 dash Angostura Bitters
2 dash Angostura Orange Bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a rocks glass; twist a lemon peel over the top.

Last Wednesday, Andrea and I ventured down to Central Square to get dinner at Rendezvous. For my pre-dinner cocktail, I asked bartender Scott Holliday to make me the Rabbit Stick which recently appeared on their cocktail menu. I was drawn to the drink for it contained Scott's new Swedish Punsch, and I was curious to see his version compared to Deep Ellum's, Clio's, and ours. When I asked about the drink name, Scott commented that it was a reworking of the Savoy Cocktail Book's Boomerang -- a drink we had made at home several months ago from the Café Royal Cocktail Book. The name stems from a type of non-returning boomerang that Aboriginals and Native Americans used to hunt small game.
The Rabbit Stick led off with the aroma of lemon oil and Swedish Punsch's aged rum. The sip was rather spicy from the Rittenhouse Rye, and a different sort of spiciness followed on the swallow from the Swedish Punsch. The bitters and dry vermouth's botanicals complemented each of these ingredients and helped to bridge the gap to smooth out the flavor transitions.

mara-amu

3/4 oz Lime Juice
3/4 oz Orange Juice
3/4 oz White Grapefruit Juice
3/4 oz Passion Fruit Syrup (Trader Tiki)
1/2 oz Light Puerto Rican Rum (Tommy Bahama White)
1/2 oz Gold Puerto Rican Rum (Tommy Bahama Gold)
1/2 oz Dark Jamaican Rum (Appleton V/X)
8 oz Crushed Ice

Add to a blender, blend, and pour into a tall glass or Mara-Amu mug. Instead of using a blender, I crushed ice in a Lewis Bag, added ingredients to a Collins glass, and swizzled to mix.
During last week's heat wave, our lack of air conditioning meant that it was Tiki time! I reached for our copy of Beach Bum Berry Remixed and found the light and refreshing-sounding Mara-Amu. This drink was created by Mariano Licudine of the Mai-Kai Polynesian restaurant in Fort Lauderdale a few decades ago, and their website proudly displays that the drink is still served there today. The Mara-Amu possessed a dark rum and fruity aroma. The flavor was mainly grapefruit and rum notes with crispness from the lime and sweetness from the passion fruit syrup. At times, the fruit juice and syrup mix gave a pineapple-like impression. While the Mara-Amu was hardly the most challenging of drinks, it did hit the spot to make the warm evening somewhat more bearable.

georgetown club cocktail

2 oz White Rum (El Dorado 3 Year)
3/4 oz Dry Vermouth (Noilly Prat)
1 tsp Falernum (Velvet)

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with an orange or lemon twist (orange).

My copy of Charles H. Baker, Jr.'s South American Companion: Up & Down the Andes with Jigger, Beaker, & Flask arrived a week and a half ago, and I was eager to try a recipe out of there. So on Monday last week, I selected the Georgetown Club Cocktail from Baker's travels to "the capital city of British Guiana." While the drink was not the most wild of the bunch, the concept of falernum as an accent to a white rum Martini or Manhattan seemed intriguing.
The Georgetown Club Cocktail started with an orange oil and vanilla aroma; the latter scent stemmed from El Dorado, despite being a white rum, spends several years in a barrel before being charcoal filtered to remove the barrel-donated coloration. Indeed, the vanilla note from the rum carried over into the flavor as well and was greatly complemented by the falernum's spice on the swallow. The dry vermouth functioned to bridge the gap between the spirit and the liqueur rather well; moreover, the Noilly Prat added floral hints to the flavor profile. Andrea commented that the drink did not seem all that strong and might make for a decent aperitif. Postnote 4/1/25: This is a drink that I thought about enough that I put on the menu at Loyal Nine in late Spring/early Summer 2016 and proved to be a popular patio sipper that Summer. The build that I utilized is shown below. The rhum agricole and falernum were batched so it was a quick 1/2 oz pour.

Georgetown Club (Loyal Nine)
• 1 1/2 oz Privateer Silver Rum
• 1 oz Dolin Dry Vermouth
• 1/4 oz Rhum JM Blanc 80°
• 1/4 oz Velvet Falernum
Stir with ice, strain into a coupe glass, garnish with a lime twist.

[claremont hotel]

2 1/2 oz Old Overholt Rye
1/2 oz Peach Simple Syrup
1 dash Nasturtium Bitters (*)

Stir with ice and strain into a rocks glass rinsed with Mathilde Pêches liqueur. Twist a lemon peel over the top. (*) For a bitters substitute, either a dash of Angostura Orange or a split of another orange bitters coupled with Fee's Aromatic or Whiskey Aged Bitters for the cinnamon notes. Perhaps Bittermens' Boston Bittahs for the floral notes.

For my second drink at the Sunday Salon, I asked bartender Ben Sandrof what whiskey ideas he had. When he suggested a Slope, I replied that I was suffering apricot liqueur fatigue and wondered if he had a similar idea with a different liqueur. Instead of a liqueur, Ben utilized the peach syrup he used in the CLT Peche highball and supplemented it with a small amount of peach liqueur.
My nose was greeted by lemon oil and a rich peach aroma. The sip contained the rye's spicy malt flavors, and this was followed by peach notes as well as cinnamon from the bitters. When I gave Andrea a taste, she commented that it was "like an alcoholic peach cobbler!"

cell #34

1 oz Beefeater Gin
1 oz Campari
1 oz St. Germain
2 dash Peychaud's Bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a rocks glass. Garnish with lemon oil.
Two Sundays ago, Ben Sandrof was hosting another of his speakeasy Sunday Salons at a local establishment's back room and we stopped by for a few rounds. The drink I started with was the Cell #34 off of the cocktail menu. In a way, the Cell #34 was a Negroni with the sweet vermouth swapped out for some St. Germain, but the St. Germain did a better job of taming the Campari than any vermouth (save for perhaps a Barolo Chinato) could do; moreover, the Campari did a good job in minimizing the sweetness of the St. Germain. The drink started with a lemon oil and Campari aroma that led into the citrus-like St. Germain elderflower liqueur flavor. The bitter flavors of Campari followed the St. Germain in the sip, and the St. Germain, perhaps coupled with the gin's botanicals, appeared again as a lingering grapefruit-like flavor.

sicilian sour

1 1/2 oz Rittenhouse 100 Rye
1/2 oz Averna
1/2 oz Galliano Ristretto Espresso Liqueur
1/2 oz Lemon Juice
2 dash Angostura Bitters
1 Egg White

Shake once without ice and once with. Double strain into a rocks glass and garnish with 3 coffee beans.

On Saturday, I met up with Andrea after she made an emergency Boston Shaker store delivery for a bar in Boston. We then decided to go to Drink after hearing that bartender Sam Treadway would be leaving Drink shortly, and we wanted to sneak in one last evening with him. Luckily, we were able to score a pair of seats at Sam's section and he filled us in on the news. Miami's John Lermayer, who helped set up the Woodward's bar here in Boston, was likewise hired by a hotel in Hawaii to develop their drink program. John insisted that he could bring along a manager to be on site to keep the program going after he returned to Florida. Thus, Sam got made an offer he could not refuse despite it requiring him to depart only two weeks later. In the meanwhile, Sam has been working on drinks for the menu including a muddled red bell pepper-cachaça tall drink that he made for Andrea.
One of the drinks Sam made for me was based off of the Sicilian Sour that he had in Paris, and I kept the name for his creation. While the Sicilian aspect referred to the Averna amaro, the other liqueur in the drink originated from a different part of Italy. This liqueur was a product from Galliano but not the classic vanilla-flavored yellow one; it was their new espresso-flavored liqueur in the same iconic tall and slender-shaped bottle. I would place Galliano's Ristretto closer in taste to Heering or Luxardo's offerings rather than Kahlua.

The Sicilian Sour started with a rye and coffee aroma. The whiskey's malt and the lemon juice filled the sip, and the swallow was dominated by coffee and Averna bitter notes. The egg white did an excellent job in smoothing out these rough and bitter elements into a rather polished and easy drinking cocktail. The Sicilian Sour reminded me a bit of the Orinoco that I had at No. 9 Park which also paired rye with espresso flavors.

emma goldman

2 oz Bols Genever
3/4 oz St. Germain
3/4 oz Carpano Antica Sweet Vermouth
2 dash Angostura Bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a rocks glass. Garnish with an orange twist.
Last Thursday, Andrea and I went down to the Franklin Southie for the Women's Equality Day celebration. Ninety years ago, the 19th Amendment was passed and women were officially allowed to vote, and last week LUPEC Boston decided to celebrate this occasion with cocktails and punches sponsored by Bols Genever and St. Germain. It was rather hard to pick a drink off of their menu since they all seem so delightful; therefore, I chose by name. I selected the Emma Goldman cocktail for it paid homage to one of my favorite anarchists. During her activism, Emma had been arrested for everything from distributing information about birth control to empowering the unemployed. She is often remembered for the quote, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution." While Emma may never have said or written that, it does sum up her goal to give all people the "right to beautiful, radiant things." Indeed, LUPEC Boston tried to symbolically honor that right by creating this cocktail with her namesake.
Bartender Peter Cipriani made me the Emma Goldman cocktail pictured above. A vibrant orange oil aroma coupled well with the malt and botanical notes of the Bols Genever. Moreover,the Genever paired rather well with the rich fruit and bitter notes of the Carpano Antica sweet vermouth on the sip, and the St. Germain appeared most prominently as a pleasant lingering aftertaste. The balance was not overly sweet although it did get sweeter once the drink warmed up a bit. Beside cocktails, the ladies of LUPEC had also assembled four punches. The one I tried, the Unsinkable Molly Brown, honored Molly's actions during the the Titanic tragedy where she tried to save additional passengers. This punch coupled St. Germain with Appleton Rum, lemon juice, demerara syrup, and Harpoon hard cider.

jupiter's acorn

1 oz Barbancourt 15 Year Rum
1 oz Nux Alpina Walnut Liqueur
1/2 oz Punt e Mes
1/2 oz Benedictine
1 Egg
1 dash Angostura Bitters
1 dash Mole Bitters

Shake once without ice and once with. Double strain into a coupe glass and garnish with freshly grated nutmeg.

On Wednesday, Andrea and I were in Central Square, and we decided to go over to Craigie on Main for a nightcap. I asked bartender John Mayer make me a Jupiter's Acorn for Andrea seemed to enjoy hers the last time we were there. The drink name is a reference to walnuts which biologically speaking are genus Juglans That Latin word was derived from the mythological Jupiter combined with glans, or more politely, a nut fit for a god.
The aroma of Jupiter's Acorn was mainly from the nutmeg floating on the egg foam. A creamy and rich rum sip was chased by Benedictine and other bitter notes on the swallow. As the drink warmed up, Punt e Mes' grape and Nux Alpina's walnut became more discernible in the flavor profile.

little branch cocktail

2 oz Lunazul Reposado Tequila
1/2 oz Lemon Juice
1/2 oz Ginger Honey Syrup
1 dash Housemade Aromatic Bitters

Shake with ice and strain into a rocks glass rinsed with Mezcal Vida (spirit not dumped after rinsing).

Monday last week, we headed off to Allston to get dinner at Grasshopper. Afterward, we rounded the corner to pay Deep Ellum a visit. There we found seats in front of bartender Jennifer Salucci, and I requested that Jennifer make me the Little Branch Cocktail off of their menu. The Little Branch Cocktail is the agave spirit sibling of the Scotch-based Penicillin Cocktail that Scott Holliday made me at Rendezvous almost a year ago. Instead of the Penicillin's blended Scotch with a smoky single malt accent, this cocktail calls for an aged Tequila to be punctuated by a smoky Mezcal. While the Penicillin Cocktail is credited to Sam Ross while he was at Milk & Honey in Manhattan, Sam also works at the nearby Little Branch bar.
The Little Branch Cocktail possessed a lemon oil and smoky agave aroma. The sip was dominated by Tequila, lemon, and honey flavors and was followed by ginger and Mezcal on the swallow. The most notable flavor combination was how well the ginger's bite paired with the Mezcal's sharpness. The Little Branch Cocktail was a bit of a showstopper, so afterward I switched to beer and ended the night with Clown Shoes' recent release, Eagle Claw Fist, which is an impressive Imperial Red Ale.