Cocktailians

The Dissociation

So. There have been some big news events lately, and everyone I know is on edge and processing A Lot Right Now.

A friend texted me the other day and asked me if it was at all possible that there wasn't already a cocktail named The Dissociation. Good question! I looked around and couldn't find anything...the closest was from BarGPT, which I'd never heard of. Apparently it's an AI that generates drink recipes. I was not familiar with this but didn't really like the sound of it:

A Drink That Disassociates

• 1.5 oz. gin
• 1/2 oz. green Chartreuse
• 1/2 oz. Cointreau
• splash lemon juice
• dash absinthe
• lemon twist
• sprig of thyme

Shake gin, Chartreuse, and Cointreau with ice, and strain into a chilled glass. Add a splash of lemon juice and a dash of absinthe, and garnish with a lemon twist and sprig of fresh thyme.

Or, to quote their AI directly, "This unique cocktail features a mix of flavors that will take your taste buds on a wild ride. To start, combine 1.5 oz of gin, 0.5 oz of green Chartreuse, and 0.5 oz of Cointreau in a shaker with ice. Shake well and strain into a chilled glass. Next, add a splash of fresh lemon juice and a dash of absinthe for a refreshing and slightly bitter twist. To finish, garnish with a lemon twist and a sprig of fresh thyme for an extra touch of herbaceousness. Sip on this sophisticated cocktail and allow its complex blend of flavors to disassociate your senses and transport you to a state of pure bliss." 

Gah. 

First of all, why are you shaking the spiritous ingredients, straining them into a glass, and THEN adding lemon juice and absinthe? Are you stirring after you add those? You're not measuring the lemon juice? 

The gin, Chartreuse, and Cointreau combo isn't a bad start - after all, the Bijou, which combines gin, Chartreuse, and sweet vermouth along with orange bitters, is lovely. Gin and Chartreuse play well together, most famously in the Last Word, which mixes equal parts gin, Chartreuse, Maraschino, and lime (but is endlessly hackable, with lots of interesting variants!) 

I decided to use this as a jumping-off point and see if I could make something that was more thematically and mixologically appropriate. I struggled a little with the choice of gin - originally I was thinking of using Amalga Distillery's gorgeous Juneauper Gin - it's not from Russia, but it is from Alaska, which can see Russia from its house. But I wound up settling on an ingredient I already had on hand: the very very good Hardshore Gin from Portland, ME, which I'd infused with dried orange wheels and orange peels.

Instead of Chartreuse, I went for the pure, uncut, concentrated essence of the stuff: Élixir Végétal de la Grande Chartreuse, which has been made since 1764 and is a super-high-proof (69% abv / 138º proof) concoction of the herbs in Chartreuse but with just a touch of sugar. You can use it like you'd use an absinthe wash or dash of bitters. It's amazing and is like Chartreuse turned up to 11. (More on Chartreuse TK very soon!)

I dropped the Cointreau to 1/4 oz to minimize the sugar, but added two dashes of Regans' Orange Bitters. And to add more bittersweet complexity, I added 1/4 oz. of Suze, the gentian liqueur.

To round it out and tame some of the bitter herbs, I added five drops of 20% saline solution. After all, as Dessa (she's awesome! And has a cocktail book coming out soon!) pointed out in "551", "Met her boyfriend at the bar, said he'd stick to beer / Said I could keep the cocktails, Martinis taste like tears."

We've got bitterness, tears, and lots of orange. Seems appropriate somehow. The drink is yellow, but unlike Ogden Nash's Martini, it is decidedly not mellow. And I think that's okay for our needs at the moment.

The Dissociation

• 2 oz. orange-infused gin
• 1/4 oz. Cointreau
• 1/4 oz. Suze
• 5 drops Élixir Végétal
• 5 drops 20% saline solution
• 2 dashes orange bitters

Stir all ingredients with ice, strain into a chilled coupe, and garnish with a lemon twist.

Honey Deuce

Much like the Triple Crown races, tennis's U.S. Open has an official cocktail, the Honey Deuce. (Not to be confused with the Honey Fitz, which I wrote about in "Festive Drinks.")

The drink was commissioned by Grey Goose, the official vodka supplier of the Open, from mixologist Nick Mautone. The brief was for something refreshing and tasty, sure, but above all something that would be easily batchable in bulk, given the size of the Open crowds. And it couldn't hurt if it was eye-catching, one of those instantly appealing drinks that, when you see one go by, makes you desire one of those. As Mautone told Vogue a couple years ago:

Mautone constantly mulled it all over that summer, turning his Hamptons house into a test kitchen of sorts. One failed version included rosemary syrup, another muddled lemons. But one afternoon, during a trip to a Shinnecock farmers market, a carton of mini spherical honeydew melons caught his eye. “I thought. . . those look exactly like iridescent tennis balls.”

Even after hitting on the honeydew idea, Mautone took it through several iterations to ensure its simplicity and high-volume batchability, as he told Forbes:

"I made several variations that did not make the cut; many proved too hard for the venue to produce in large format," he says. This careful consideration ensured that the cocktail could be made at scale, easily prepared and served to the large crowds at the U.S. Open, always while delivering a quality, refreshing product.

I'm not generally a vodka fan, but it has its place, and there's nothing wrong with something crisp...especially if you're imbibing while sitting in the Flushing sun in August. If you pick one up at the Open, it'll run you a cool $23, but you do get to keep the souvenir cup. This is a buck more than last year's Open, and the cocktail cost $12 when it made its debut in 2007. As Sportico pointed out a couple years ago, the drink's price has historically risen faster than inflation:

Between 2012 and 2022, the drink’s cost went up 57% (from $14 to $22), while the Consumer Price Index rose 29%. The biggest hike came between 2017 and 2019, when the price went from $16 to $18, a 12.5% raise, while the CPI went up only 4%. CPI measures the average price change over time in a fixed market basket of goods and services, including food and drinks, but not expensive cocktails.

They even went on to graph the rise!

The price wasn't much of an obstacle, however; last year there were 957,387 fans in attendance at the Open. And, they sold 450,000 Honey Deuce cocktails, netting a cool (refreshing?) $9.9 million. (As CNBC points out, that's well over the combined $7.2 million prizes awarded to the winners of the men's and women's tournaments.)

And people go nuts for everything Honey Deuce - not many cocktails have their own merch, but this ones does. Per Newsday:

Mary Ryan, senior director of merchandise and licensing for the USTA, said that Honey Deuce items are available on the USTA’s website and that there will be more on-site as this week unfolds.

 

“They throw them out of the warehouse in the morning and then we sell through them, so we’re continually pulling them out of the warehouse,” she said. ”I don’t know how much more inventory I have to support it through the tournament.

 

“I’d love to hold back a bit just so we can have some for finals weekend. We want to make sure those folks also see what happened earlier.”

 

After the early run on shirts and hats wiped out supplies, it was far easier to find someone drinking a Honey Deuce than wearing a Honey Deuce. . .

 

(A USTA spokesman said the shirt and hat were the two biggest-selling merchandise items during Fan Week.)

I couldn't even find a working link to the shirt for sale on the USTA's site, but they are still selling a $40 trucker hat...and even a melon-baller and garnish-pick set for $24. Cocktail Courier will even deliver you a canned Honey Deuce set in NYC or Chicago. 

Grey Goose has gone all-in, understandably, on the drink. Here's a Honey Deuce Locator to tell you where you can get one in New York, besides the U.S. Open. And they've not only published the recipe, but also variations such as a Frozen Honey Deuce and a pitcher-sized scaled-up version serving 9.

Honey Deuce

• 1 1/4 oz. vodka (Grey Goose of course suggests that you use their brand. It's a good one.)
• 3 oz. lemonade (Fresh made is always better, but store-bought will work just fine.)
• 1/2 oz. raspberry liqueur (I'd use Chambord.) 
• 3 honeydew melon balls 

Fill a highball glass with ice and build the drink in the glass. Garnish with the melon balls.

UPDATES:

• Serena Williams has done the Deuce and extols it, though hers was made with tequila instead of vodka, which is...rather a big change;
• CNN's Kate Bolduan says it sounds good but argues that "the melon baller is the most useless kitchen gadget ever created";
• Amanda Schuster is not a fan;
• Nor is Gabriella Ferrignine of Salon:

My other friend didn’t mince words. “It tastes like basic fruit juice. I can hardly taste the vodka. I think it’s mid,” she said with a straight face. As the realization of the Honey Duece’s undeniably average taste sunk in, I too sank lower in my seat. The cocktail wasn’t bad by any means, but the amount of hype it’s received led me to believe that it would have been a strong level up from some of the better well-drinks I’d been poured in college. 

A refreshing bite of a melon ball — which my friends and I all agreed was the drink’s highlight in taste and aesthetic — did little to redeem the Honey Deuce. It only got worse when I inadvertently knocked my remaining balls clean off the top of my drink, leaving them to sit sadly in the aisle until an attendant swept them away at some point over the next three hours in [sic] change. 

Thinking and Drinking

The Cocktailians tend to be Jeopardy! fans; co-author Tony Hightower is, as has been previously noted here, a former J! champion who mentioned this li'l ol' blog in one of his chats with Alex. (And, your humble correspondent was a Season 17 one-and-done.) Of course, one of our favorite categories would have to be Potent Potables.

So here's the story on my @jeopardy TOCktails:

The SuperChamp mule is inspired by Matt's CT being home state of the Moscow mule, modified for Mattea with a Canadian Rye and floated on top with the national drink of the Bay Area for Amy: Fernet Branca.

The other one is purple. pic.twitter.com/Si50gAA8xA

— Austin Tyler Rogers (@austintylerro) November 2, 2022

Which made us especially interested when the show posted this lineup of "TOCktails" themed to the show's currently airing Tournament of Champions. The drinks were created by 12-game superchamp Austin Rogers: trivia host, bartender, and owner of the Gaf West bar in Manhattan. The first drink, the Super-Champ Mule, was inspired by the geographic origins of the three biggest superchamps of Seasons 37 and 38: Amy Schneider, Matt Amodio, and Mattea Roach. (They each got a first-round bye in the TOC, and played an exhibition game tonight.) As Austin explains it:

Austin, the owner of the Gaf West in Manhattan, looked to Matt Amodio’s hometown of Hartford, Conn., to come up with the base for the first cocktail, the Super-Champ Mule. 

“I did not know the Moscow Mule had origins in Connecticut,” Austin said. “But that’s the beauty of being a Jeopardy! fan—you get to figure these things out as you go along.”

To put a Tournament of Champions twist on the classic mule recipe of vodka, ginger beer and lime juice, Austin turned to Mattea Roach’s home country of Canada. 

“Canada is really famous for their rye [whiskeys], so the next part is we take out the vodka from the mule and supplant it with a nice hardy Canadian rye,” Austin said. 

To balance out the recipe, Austin added a bit of Amy Schneider’s hometown of Oakland into the mix with a dash of Fernet-Branca, an Italian-style bitters that’s widely enjoyed in the Bay Area.

“The Bay Area consumes more fernet than anywhere else in the world except for maybe Argentina,” Austin explained. 

Super-Champ Mule

• 2 oz. rye
• ½ oz. fresh lime juice
• ½ oz. honey syrup (honey diluted in hot water 1:1)
• Ginger beer
• ½ oz. Fernet-Branca

Shake rye, lime, and honey syrup, strain into highball glass with fresh ice. Top with ginger beer and float Fernet-Branca on top, garnish with lime wedge.

I did some tweaks to this recipe; the original mixed "parts" of rye with half-ounce measurements of the lime, honey syrup, and fernet. I think Rogers meant to use ounce measurements throughout. I also switched the mixing method from the originally-specified stir to a shake since it incorporated citrus juice. Also, I wasn't aware that the Moscow Mule originated in Connecticut; there are varying stories, but most seem to agree that John Martin, president of the Heublein Company of Hartford (which imported Smirnoff vodka), got together with Jack Morgan of the Cock N' Bull Tavern in Hollywood (which produced (and still produces) ginger beer), and came up with the recipe, which is essentially a Mamie Taylor with vodka subbed for Scotch. This happened either at New York's Chatham Hotel or at the Cock N' Bull in Hollywood, but at any rate it was mentioned in the press as early as December 1942.

Rogers also supplied a low-abv version of this drink, using strong tea instead of rye, and vanilla extract instead of Fernet-Branca; I didn't try it but think that tea may not substitute well for whiskey on its own. Also, a warning to the teetotal (such as J! host Ken Jennings): half an ounce of vanilla extract isn't exactly alcohol-free (vanilla extract has to be at least 35% alcohol per federal law, the same 70 proof as Southern Comfort or Captain Morgan!) And, vanilla extract has a really strong flavor! I'd think I might go with ginger beer, aromatic bitters, and a squeeze of lime.

The other drink, served at J! 5-game champ Tyler Rhode's watch party for his own Tournament of Champions game (and mixed up by Alexa Geltzeiler) was a little different; as Rogers explained it, he was thinking of a drink to match one of Jeopardy!'s colors, and got some assistance from Gaf West mixologist Corey. "The second drink I was actually averse to. . .I did not want to make a drink that emulated the colors of Jeopardy! because I think colored drinks are cheesy. But better wisdom prevailed, and Corey said 'let me convince you to go otherwise.' . . . It's got a nice rich purple color, which is a Jeopardy! legacy color, and a cool frothy top. I think it's just sweet enough that it'll be [palatable] to the people out there who have a sort of sweet tooth for their cocktail but it's definitely boozy enough for someone who wants to get a kick out of it."

Make It A True Daily Double

• 2 oz. vodka
• 1 oz. creme de cassis
• ½ oz. fresh lemon juice
• ½ oz. triple sec
• dash grenadine

Shake all ingredients with ice, strain into chilled coupe or cocktail glass, garnish with lemon wedge.

I also haven't tried this one as I'm not generally a fan of vodka drinks, but it seems like it'd be tasty and fruity, as long as there's enough lemon to keep all the sugary ingredients in balance. 

Enjoy your Daily Double Shot!

Infinity Bottles

I've never been one to jump on a bandwagon. (for one thing, I just keep falling off.) So now that the cool kids over at PUNCH have declared them passé, last week I started an infinity bottle. Not to create a house blend or as a mode of self-expression: the much more prosaic truth is that I realized I had a bunch of whiskey bottles with only a bit left in them, and I don't have a ton of shelf space. I did have a couple of old one-liter 86 Co. bottles on hand, though. 

That first PUNCH link above led me to the Infinity Bottle app, well worth the $2-3 it costs, which lets you record what you've stocked your bottle with, how much of each spirit you put in, and will even keep track of the running proof, volume, pours, and any notes you might have. Though one of my rules for myself was NOT to overthink this, it's kinda neat to see the cumulative effect of all these different whiskeys, and I imagine it'll be interesting to chart the bottle's evolution. I actually started two infinity bottles, one with bourbons and one with ryes. (though I really like High West's Bourye, I thought it wiser not to attempt combining the two, at least for this novice blender.) My only other rules were to try to mix the rarer whiskeys with the more common ones, and not to crack open any sealed bottles just to add them to the infinity bottle. (When I get around to opening some things I have on the shelf, such as the Elijah Craig 12 I snagged before it went NAS, or the Willett Family Estate Bottled Rye, they'll be fair game. I don't want to be precious about this. When I next open a bottle of new stuff, I'll throw in a couple ounces too.) And I'm happy to mix the top shelf with the very-good-but-hard-to-find (I miss the days when Buffalo Trace wasn't allocated and was readily available) and the more-prosaic-but-still-very-drinkable. After all, like a solera system, every pour from an infinity bottle contains at least a trace amount of everything that's ever been in there, so I'm getting a teensy bit of Stitzel-Weller whiskey from the Blade & Bow, for instance, and a bit of the Michter's 20 Year Single Barrel. And on the rye side, every sip will get a little bit of Red Hook Rye, one of the most spectacular whiskeys I've ever been lucky enough to taste. (I looked up what a different bottle from the same barrel as mine sold for at auction...gulp. No regrets, though, as this is special stuff that's meant to be enjoyed.)

Since I took the above screenshots, I've tasted an ounce from the bourbon infinity bottle. Not bad! A little burny, but has that mellow sweetness and baking spice, with a smidgen of pepper as well. This does make me respect master blenders even more; blending whiskey is an art, even when you're not trying to ensure consistency from batch to batch and across multiple barrels. I'll never forget attending a Spirited Dinner at Tales of the Cocktail one year, in which Trey Zoeller of Jefferson's Bourbon gave a talk about blending bourbon (N.B.: he's very, very good at it) and invited some participants to blend their own live on stage. Suffice to say that his years of expertise very much showed.

It's nice to have the pressure off, though: this is something for me and for my friends. I don't need it to be amazing. I like that it's an ever-changing history of the things I've tried, and that's good enough.

Hot Buttered Rum

After work last night, I was trying to get my daily 10,000 steps in, so I walked from the far West Side of Manhattan over to East 34th Street, then took the East River ferry to Astoria, Queens and walked home from there. It was cold - not the 9°F of this weekend, but the wind chill took the apparent temperature to around 20°F, especially over by the river and while I was on the water. 

So when I got home, all I could think of was having a winter warmer, something with some oomph, which naturally led me to the Hot Buttered Rum. (Listening to the appropriate episode of one of my favorite drinks podcasts while en route helped nudge me in that direction, tbh.) There are two main schools of thought on how to build the HBR: one involves making a "batter" with sugar and butter and spices (and sometimes vanilla ice cream!), and then adding a knob of that batter to rum and hot water. This seems like it would work well at busy bars (and some bars have several different batters, all with different flavors, as riffs on the master recipe), but I was home, and cold, and who has time for that? The other school of thought is far more minimalist; for them, a Hot Buttered Rum involves (aside from a little sweetener) simply heat, butter, and rum. This is the approach adopted in New England, which is where they know from cold. And where they know from rum. As Bill Norris writes in Birth.Movies.Death.:

Not long after the colonists set foot upon Plymouth Rock and began to carve out a future in the New World, the Triangular Trade brought molasses in quantity into New England, and with excess of organic material comes distillation.  Up until the time of Prohibition, New England was a major rum producer and the label of origin on your casks or bottles of rum were just as likely to read “Providence,” “Medford,” or “Boston” as they were to read “Cuba,” “Jamaica” or “Guyana.”

In those days before easy rail, air or road shipping, great quantities of the stuff were consumed in the local market, and rum was the house pour as soon as you got north of New York or New Jersey.  Take your rum, and mix in sugar and water, and you have, for simplicity’s sake, a sling if the thing is made with cold water and a toddy if that water is hot.

For best flavor, go for a dark Caribbean rum, ideally with a little funk to it. A dark Jamaica rum like Myers's is good, but if you can get a Jamaica potstill rum such as Smith & Cross it's even better. Demerara rums from Guyana (try the El Dorado 8) are also very nice indeed. I used Cruzan Black Strap for its molasses/toasted-marshmallow notes. I probably didn't need to, as the Cruzan is fairly sweet as these things go, but I took this suggestion to add a bit of allspice dram to add even more baking-spice notes.

But wherefore the butter? In a cold damp clime, without benefit of good insulation, I'd think that adding some fat to the drink would stick to one's ribs and help warm you through, making a warming drink that much richer. The earliest citation for a buttered beverage I could find was somewhat medicinal - in 1584's The Haven of Health, Elizabethan doctor Thomas Cogan gives a recipe for "Buttered Beere, which is good for a cough or shortness of winde" (no guarantees about COVID-19 prophylaxis here):

(Transcribed, as the above is kind of hard to read: "Take a quart or more of Double Beere and put to it a good piece of fresh Butter, Sugar Candy an ounce, of liquorice in powder, of Ginger grated, of each a dramme, and if you would have it strong, put in as much long Pepper and Graines, let it boyle in the quart in the manner as you burne wine, and who so will drinke it, let him drinke it as hot as he may suffer. Some put in the yolke of an egge or two towards the latter end, and so they make it more strengthfull." Doesn't sound too bad, actually.)

Samuel Pepys' diary mentions "buttered ale" as a recreational drink three times, the earliest in 1662, less than eighty years after its medicinal application above. 

The traditional method of heating one's rum, or ale, is of course to plunge a red-hot poker into the drink, as in this recipe from Esquire. However, not having a fire (beyond the gas stove) in my fourth-floor walk-up apartment, I resorted to the electric teakettle, and built my Hot Buttered Rum as follows:

Fill a mug with boiling water. Dump it out after a few minutes, add a teaspoon or so of Demerara sugar and an ounce-ish of boiling water. Stir to dissolve the sugar. Add 2oz. rum, 1/2 oz. allspice dram, 2 dashes Angostura bitters, 2 dishes 18.21 Havana & Hide bitters, 2 dashes Crude "Big Bear" coffee & cocoa bitters, and a pat of unsalted butter (I did about a 1/4" thick slice from the stick). Fill the mug with more boiling water, stir briefly, and grate some nutmeg over the top.

Are you not warmed?

Festive Drinks

We're squarely in the middle of the holiday season, and I've got several festive drinks to consider. Whether you're hosting people for a party, want something rich to sip by the fire, or something crisp and light to accompany a feast, this selection will have you covered. 

Are you throwing a party? You're going to be busy and running around anyway to take care of everything and make sure everyone is having a good time, and you likely won't have the bandwidth to take drink orders or shake up custom cocktails. There are two ways to handle the drinks while preserving your sanity as the host - either do something large-format so guests can serve themselves, or set out a bunch of options (and provide a little bit of guidance) and let them roll their own. 

For the former, Punch is the way to go. It gets a party started, and people gravitate to the bowl, serve themselves, and loosen up as the conversations start and the "flowing bowl" works its magic. You don't want something too high-octane here; it shouldn't be the strength of a cocktail. The whole idea is that you'll have some, want a little more, and each time you go back for another ladleful you'll talk to someone else, and it'll be a lovely time.

• One of the most festive and showy punches – you set it on fire! – is also very easy. If you don't mind everyone congregating in the kitchen, Charles Dickens's Punch is wonderful. You can serve it either hot or cold, but I like it best hot. Here's drinks writer David Wondrich describing the punch, walking you through the recipe, and even suggesting talking points for your guests. 
• Another punch I like is Admiral Russell's Punch, which was first made for a Christmas party in 1694. Royal Navy Admiral Edward Russell, who was forced to overwinter his fleet in Cádiz, Spain. Unhappy about the prospect of spending the winter so far from home, he resolved to throw an enormous blowout party at the local governor's estate. It reportedly featured 800 waiters serving 150 dishes, but the star was the Delft-tiled fountain in the garden which had been cleaned and filled with nearly 800 gallons of Punch, and the ship's boy in the rowboat in the fountain who paddled around and served the guests. Here's a recipe for a scaled-down version, but it's certainly a fun story to tell. 
• Another very easy and very, very popular punch is Wondrich's Royal Hibernian Punch, involving Irish whiskey and rainwater Madeira. People love this stuff and it tends to disappear quickly whenever I serve it. It's so straightforward the recipe fits into a tweet!

Another large-format drink that's a little less well-known these days (unless you're from certain parts of the Midwest)  is Tom & Jerry. It's a very old drink, having recipes in print since at least 1827, and it's kind of a soothing, boozy hot eggnog that's rich and delicious. In a 1932 short story, "Dancing Dan's Christmas," Damon Runyon praised it:

This hot Tom and Jerry is an old time drink that is once used by one and all in this country to celebrate Christmas with, and in fact it is once so popular that many people think Christmas is invented only to furnish an excuse for hot Tom and Jerry, although of course this is by no means true.

It was all the rage through the second half of the 19th century, but fell out of style around the turn of the 20th. It's a little bit of work; you separate eggs and make kind of a batter with the yolks, sugar, spices, and booze, then lighten the batter with the beaten egg whites. To serve, dollop a generous spoon of the batter into a mug, add rum and brandy and top with not-quite-boiling milk. A lot of work? Sure. Festive? Indubitably. I like the variation by Audrey Saunders of New York’s Pegu Club. (It closed last May. I miss it.)

The other approach mentioned above is to just set out a bunch of different options for your guests, and let them mix and match to their hearts' content. If you choose things that go together well (think apple-y things, red wine, and baking spices), it's what CNN's Eatocracy blog dubbed the Garanimals of holiday drinks.

Of course, there's always eggnog – and you can do way better than the too-thick, annato-colored sludge sold at the grocery store. Making your own is super-quick and it's fresh and tasty. Cocktail blogger and ace bartender Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s recipe is simple, fairly light in texture and has an intense, eggy flavor tempered with brandy and spiced rum. You make it in the blender, and it’s a snap to put together. (Just don’t use a commercial blender, as it can heat the contents. Sweet scrambled eggs don’t make a tasty holiday treat.) Jeff told me that it ages well, so I'm trying that now for the first time - I made it a couple weeks ago, and am tucking it into the fridge until Christmas Eve. (is it safe? Sure is - Rockefeller University microbiologists tested eggnog aged for three weeks and found that it was sterile, with less bacteria than the store-bought stuff! It's all about the booze.)

For a big holiday meal like Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, I tend to steer away from cocktails to accompany the feast. Too boozy. Too strong and intense. You're in a marathon, not a sprint. My pick requires a little bit of work ahead of time, but it's delicious: Eve, a very simple infusion of McIntosh apples in dry vermouth. Slice six apples thin with a mandolin, cover them with a liter of dry vermouth (Noilly Prat is perfect for this, but any will do), and let it sit in the fridge for five days, giving it a gentle shake every day.

Sometimes, though, a traditional cocktail is what you want for your holiday libation. It doesn't have any particular connection to holidays except in my mind, but one of my favorites that I tend to serve is the Honey Fitz, a delectable sour from Jackson Cannon that's a variation on the older and more famous Brown Derby and De Rigueur cocktails. The Brown Derby uses bourbon, the De Rigueur uses blended Scotch, and the Honey Fitz uses aged rum, mixing them with grapefruit juice and honey syrup. The Honey Fitz also accents its flavor with a dash or two of Peychaud's Bitters, the complex, tart New Orleans-derived bitters that are a must in any proper Sazerac. The recipe calls for Ron Zacapa 23, which is completely delicious and works very well, but for extra-special occasions, I break out the very good (and slightly illicitly obtained) Havana Club 7 from Cuba. Fresh-squeezing the grapefruit juice also really elevates this particular drink.

And the last holiday cocktail I'll leave you with is the Réveillon, created by my friends Chuck Taggart and Wesly Moore. Named after the New Orleans (and French) tradition of long, luxurious holiday dinners, the Réveillon combines dry apple and pear brandies with spicy sweet vermouth, allspice liqueur (often referred to as allspice dram or pimento dram), and aromatic bitters. Fee Brothers's Old-Fashioned bitters work the best in this drink, with their heavy cinnamon note, but Angostura bitters also work well and add clove and other baking spices to accent.

Happy holidays to you and yours!

Imbiber's 100, Revisited

I guess Facebook Meta is good for something after all, as it reminded me that I posted this 13 years ago today: Darcy O'Neil posted "The Imbiber's 100" -- a list of 100 beverages you should try before you die -- over at The Art of Drink, and I added up my score. 

Since then, I've added nine more to my 2008 list (XO Cognac, Fernet-Branca, PX sherry, vintage Port, El Dorado 15, Soju, pulque, Cuban rum, and akvavit), bringing my total so far to 84. And I enjoyed all of the nine that I've added! 

Brandy Trivia! Part 4

As seen here earlier, I recently put together a trivia quiz all about brandy. Here are the next few questions, along with my discussion of the answers. As before, I've obscured the answers by putting them in white text on a white background; just highlight the area between the brackets to see what's there, and click on smaller images to embiggen them.

10.  The Spanish Brandy de Jerez is aged in oak sherry casks. The aging system involves filling bottles from the oldest of a range of casks, which are refilled with brandy from the next-oldest cask, which is refilled from the next-oldest cask after that, and so on, with new distillate placed in the youngest cask. In theory, traces of the very oldest brandy, and of all the ages, can be found in the finished product. In Sicily, where it’s used to produce Marsala, this system is called in perpetuum. In the Banyuls area of France, it’s called sostrera. What is this system called in Spain, where they also use it for sherry?

[SOLERA]

“The [solera] system of aging Spanish Brandy works so well because it marries younger, more vigorous spirits with older, mellower spirits in a deliberate process, thereby reaching a balance of virtues,” explains Paul Pacult, brandy expert and editor/publisher of Spirit Journal.)

I tried to explain the [solera] system in a clear yet succinct way, and the testers were very helpful in refining the wording. It’s most often encountered with sherry, but it’s an interesting approach to aging spirits as well - Zacapa 23 rum, Hillrock bourbon, and Glenfiddich 15 Scotch, among others, all use the solera system.

I need to get more familiar with Spanish brandy, as it sounds interesting and I am enjoying learning about sherry. Here are primers on Brandy de Jerez from Eric Twardzik of Bevvy and from Inka Larissa of On The Sauce Again.

11.  The Curaçao style of orange liqueur is based on brandy. One of the greatest is a blend of 51% Cognac and 49% house-distilled orange liqueur, bottled in pot-still-shaped bottles, and its most common expression is decorated with a red ribbon or cordon rouge. Originated by Louis-Alexandre M. Lapostolle in 1880 and named by his friend hotelier César Ritz, what liqueur is this?

[GRAND MARNIER]

The M. in Louis-Alexandre Lapostolle’s name stood for “Marnier,” of course. The Grand Marnier line of liqueurs is first-rate. (I once was lucky enough to get to taste the full line of their expressions, including the mind-bogglingly spectacular Quintessence, made with Cognacs ranging from 25 to 100 years old.) Mostly I use the much cheaper Cordon Rouge which is also pretty darned delicious.

The universe of orange liqueurs is pretty huge, and ranges from triple secs to Curaçaos to rum-based liqueurs such as Creole Shrubb. [Grand Marnier] is amazingly consistent, considering how much they make of it and that just over half of it is a careful blend of Cognacs, which can of course vary from batch to batch and with the vagaries of aging. (It’s downright astonishing, actually, that the various Cognac producers achieve such consistency and quality in their blends, given that everything they’re working with is a pot-still distillation, aged for varying lengths of time.)

The MCWA by far was the estimable Cointreau, which is delicious itself and arguably more versatile than [Grand Marnier] (I tend to use it in more mixed drinks than I do [Grand Marnier], unless I really want to play up the brandy and oak-aged vanilla flavors that [Grand Marnier] brings to the table.) Cointreau is a triple sec, and it’s based on neutral spirit distilled from sugar beets. (In an apparent nod to [Grand Marnier]’s success, Rémy Cointreau (formed in 1990 by a merger between the family companies that controlled Rémy Martin and Cointreau) introduced Cointreau Noir in 2012; it combines 70% Cointreau and 30% Cognac from the House of Rémy Martin, as well as some natural walnut and almond flavoring.)

(This question originally included this bottle shot, but I took it out because it was fairly easy without it and a downright gimme with it.)

12.  Applejack isn’t the only apple brandy out there. Some of the greatest comes from northwestern France, and it can include pears alongside apples (at least 30% pear content in the Domfrontais region.) When it’s made in Brittany it’s called lambig; what is the name – after the département where it’s produced – for apple brandy from neighboring Normandy?

[CALVADOS]

It seemed appropriate to wind up this quiz with a digestif, and what better than a [ Calva ]? The best apple brandies aren’t necessarily sweet, but have astonishing power, fruit aromas, and depth from careful aging. A recent trip to Brittany and Normandy was great fun - I sampled lots of cider, lambig and [ Calvados ], visited distilleries in both regions, and wished I could have carried many more bottles home. (I also hadn’t known that Calvados was a département until I saw it on a road sign.)

I had originally included the map found here of the [Calvados] growth regions, but it wasn’t necessary for the question.

Some extra questions cut from the first draft of the quiz:

X1.  The Old-Fashioned is typically a whiskey drink, except in Wisconsin, where the Brandy Old-Fashioned reigns supreme, especially in supper clubs. After the bartender muddles cherries and oranges with sugar and bitters, and adds a slug of brandy, patrons usually specify one of three styles for the drink: sweet (when it is finished with 7-Up), sour (when it is finished with sour mix or Squirt), and what third option, which is usually finished with half 7-Up, half club soda?

[PRESS]

The Wisconsin-supper-club-style Brandy Old-Fashioned is indeed a unique take on a drink, and the reason why so much California brandy winds up in the Upper Midwest.

But the “press” variation is apparently far less common than the “sweet” or “sour” styles, and this question was already dangerously far into YEKIOYD territory, as it was so regionally specific.

X2.  There aren’t a ton of cocktails that rely on crème de menthe. What crème de menthe and brandy cocktail’s name is redacted from the following passage? (Note: it’s not “Irving.”)

[STINGER]

The other crème de menthe and brandy drink is, of course, the Grasshopper, and the “Irving” references this hoary old joke. I added the reference when testers wisely raised concerns about differentiating it from the other drink with the insectoid name, but it was ultimately easier to get rid of it entirely.

The quote is from David Wondrich’s marvelous book Imbibe!, which goes on to note that the [Stinger] was the favorite drink of Reginald Vanderbilt (father of Gloria, grandfather of Anderson Cooper), who would mix them up for guests in his Fifth Avenue mansion, standing behind a marble bar he’d imported from a Norman coaching inn. Here are some variations on the classic recipe. [Stingers] have been enjoyed by high society types, but they've also been ordered by Cary Grant’s character in “Kiss Them For Me” and James Bond. (Much like Bond’s Martini, [Stingers] are one of the very few all-spirit cocktails (i.e., no juices) that’s shaken with ice rather than stirred.)

Brandy Trivia! Part 3

As seen here earlier, I recently put together a trivia quiz all about brandy. Here are the next few questions, along with my discussion of the answers. As before, I've obscured the answers by putting them in white text on a white background; just highlight the area between the brackets to see what's there, and click on smaller images to embiggen them.

7.  Slivovitz, Țuică, eau-de-vie de Quetsche, and Mirabelle brandies are made from what fruit?

[PLUMS]

Fruit eaux-de-vie are a big part of the brandy universe, though grape brandies tend to get most of the attention. Central and Eastern Europe are especially known for their fruit brandies (though Oregon’s Clear Creek brandies are extraordinary - covered here several years ago), and other giants of the form include Poire Williams and Kirchwasser.

If you recognized the varietal names of Mirabelle or Quetsche [plums], this was an easy in, and slivovitz can be amazingly good. Țuică is [plum] brandy from Romania, and I still want to taste that sometime.

8.  What brand of Cognac does Jay-Z partially own, together with Bacardí? He reps it enthusiastically, drinking it out of a Grammy in 2013, and mentioning it in several tracks: (Note: NSFW lyrics)

Jay-Z Cognac montage

[D’USSÉ]

I wanted to include a question that touched on Cognac's popularity among the African-American community and specifically within hip-hop culture, and there are certainly a ton of Hennessy (and to some extent Rémy Martin and Courvoisier) mentions that seemed fairly obvious. I thought Jay-Z’s partial ownership of D’ussé (produced by Otard, a subsidiary of Bacardí), provided an interesting in, and he certainly has embraced the brand; here he is drinking it out of a Grammy as mentioned in the question.

The montage was fun to put together and consists of, in order, excerpts from Hova’s “Part II (On the Run)”, his verse on Justin Timberlake’s “Suit & Tie”, his “F.U.T.W.”, his verse on Beyoncé’s “Drunk In Love”, and his verse on Rick Ross’s “The Devil Is a Lie.” I tried to find lyrics that would lead you to “D’ussé” with the rhymes, assonance, or wordplay. (Here are just a few more mentions.)

9.  The Sidecar, a perfect marriage of Cognac, Cointreau, and lemon juice, is arguably the most famous brandy cocktail. An ancestor of the Sidecar, though, has been called “the absolute pinnacle of the nineteenth-century bartender’s art.” It’s kind of halfway between an Old-Fashioned and a Sidecar, and is possibly named for its glass’s sugared rim; what word has been redacted from the following recipe?

[CRUSTA]

The Brandy Crusta is a great drink that really lets the Cognac shine, but also accents it with the Cointreau and just a splash of lemon juice. The drink is from 1840 and Joseph Santini, manager of the City Exchange bar in New Orleans. The picture and recipe cited here are from the 1862 edition of The Bar-Tender’s Guide: How to Mix Drinks or The Bon Vivant’s Companion by Jerry Thomas, the first bartending book published in America. The [Crusta] rates one of only a handful of illustrations in the entire book, no doubt because of its striking presentation with the full lemon peel and the sugared rim.

The quote dubbing it "the absolute pinnacle of the nineteenth-century bartender's art" comes from this great piece by drinks historian David Wondrich, the authority on pre-Prohibition drinks (and a good deal more besides), and it's worth reading in full. (And you can go here to watch Dr. Wondrich prepare a Brandy [Crusta], in a video from Google Play when they released an enhanced edition of Thomas's book with added commentary.)

Later on, the Sidecar would evolve - it’s something like a daisy, a sour with a liqueur added, but also something like the Fancy Brandy Cocktail, which was essentially an Old-Fashioned cocktail made with brandy, but in a fancier glass and with a piece of lemon peel added. The Sidecar increases the amount of lemon juice, and possibly borrows its sugared rim from the [Crusta].

But let me encourage you to try a Brandy Crusta if you haven’t had one, as they really are wonderful. (I think I’ve run across them on a menu in only a couple bars - it’s made my day each time.)

Brandy Trivia! Part 2

As seen here yesterday, I recently put together a trivia quiz all about brandy. Here are the next few questions, along with my discussion of the answers. As before, I've obscured the answers by putting them in white text on a white background; just highlight the area between the brackets to see what's there, and click on smaller images to embiggen them.

4.  American apple brandy is often sold as “applejack”, which these days is a blend of apple brandy and neutral spirits. The largest producer is Laird & Company; the family-owned business claims to have produced spirits since 1698 and once provided their recipe to George Washington at his request. Laird’s distills in Virginia, but their aging, bottling, packaging operations, and headquarters are located in what agricultural state?

[NEW JERSEY]

This question originally sought the company name (with this redacted bottle shot), but testers pointed out that it really was deep into YEKIOYD territory, so I reworked it at one tester’s suggestion to ask for the state where they’ve been operating since 1698. The first federal distillery permit was issued to Laird & Co. in 1780, and the company is currently run by the ninth generation of Lairds to make apple spirits. Laird’s bought the former Virginia Fruit Distilling Company distillery in North Garden, VA in the 1940s, and wrapped up distilling in the [Garden State] in 1972 due to dwindling apple orchards.

Their facility in Scobeyville in [New Jersey]’s Monmouth County, just down Laird Road from Bruce Springsteen’s massive horse farm, has aging warehouses and bottling operations as well as the family house that serves as the company’s offices.

(They sell unaged apple brandy as “Jersey Lightning”; it’s soft and fruity and interesting, though I’m partial to their Bottled in Bond Straight Apple Brandy and their 7 ½ Year Old. Try an American Trilogy cocktail with the Bottled in Bond.))

5.  One country’s brandy industry was seriously disrupted during the pandemic when the government imposed four separate bans on the sale of alcohol. Producers affected included KWV and Van Ryn’s, which produce their brandy in the Paarl and Stellenbosch regions respectively. What country is this?

[SOUTH AFRICA]

[South Africa] is known for its wine industry, but less so its spirits; I think much of its brandy production is enjoyed locally rather than exported. And much of the brandy produced occupies the “value” category and is often drunk with cola. However, the longer-aged vintage brandies can be very good indeed, holding their own with those from Europe. (I sampled a flight of the Van Ryn’s expressions at their distillery, and especially enjoyed the 15 Year Old, and Roger Jorgensen’s 15-year-old Savignac brandy is downright special.)

The COVID bans really did a number on the country’s spirits industry, and I hope that it can recover, and I look forward to greater availability of vintage [South African] brandy in the US.

I mentioned the regions and the producer KWV to clue in oenophiles who may have recognized the [South African] names. (It makes sense that the Netherlands was the MCWA for this question, given the links between Dutch and [Afrikaans].)

6.  Unaged grape brandy from Peru and Chile is typically known by what name? It’s most commonly served in its namesake cocktail, a delicious classic sour with (in the Peruvian version) egg white and bitters.

[PISCO]

Both Peru and Chile insist that theirs is the true pisco, though there are differences in region, grape selections, and aging. Peruvian [pisco] tends to be more available, though both are exported. I remain agnostic, only choosing to enjoy the stuff in many forms, including the delectable pisco punch and the wonderful [pisco] sour, which can be made in a Peruvian or Chilean style.