File Under: Stuff With Gin, Limes, Rum And Crème De Cassis

Latest cocktails tried . . .

Solomon Sling (Mr. Boston, page 95): six parts gin, three parts lemon juice, two parts simple syrup, two parts Kirschwasser, one part Cherry Heering, one dash Angostura bitters. Good.

Angel’s Share (Mr. Boston, page 171): six parts bourbon, two parts Amaro, one part crème de cassis, one dash orange bitters. Overlooked this recipe in the book for a while because I don’t know why. We used Amaro CioCiaro and this old cassis sort of forgotten in the liquor cabinet. This was good, too; worth returning to.

Junior (PDT, page 154): eight parts rye, three parts lime juice, two parts Benedictine, two dashes Angostura bitters. We had a bunch of limes in the fridge so I put them to use. Was OK, if memory serves.

Romeo y Julieta (PDT, page 228): eight parts rum, two parts sweet vermouth, two parts Campari. Like a Left Hand but with more rum. Definitely didn’t add the four spritzes of diluted Aftel Tobacco Essence, though, so who knows.

The Old Hail Mary Never Works . . . Except When They Do!

There’s a cocktail in The PDT Cocktail Book called the “Pearl Button” (page 204) which has Cachaça, Lillet and lime juice (along with some other garnishes/additions that weren’t immediately handy). We didn’t have Cachaça, so I guessed that tequila might be good. Here’s what we did:

2 oz. tequila
3/4 oz. Lillet
1/2 oz. lime juice

It was good!

The second time we added a dash of Angostura bitters. Fine but it probably tastes better with some simple syrup, too (ours got funked the other day and I never made more).

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There’s a cocktail in the PDT book called the Nouveau Carré that’s a riff on a Vieux Carre/homage to New Orleans post Katrina. It’s six parts tequila, three parts Lillet, one part Bénédictine and three dashes Peychaud’s. I finally bought some Lillet in part (or mostly because) there are a bunch of cocktail recipes using it. This one was pretty good. What Lillet actually is is described in this unhelpful Wikipedia entry. It uses phrases like this: “The mix is then stirred in oak vats until perfectly blended. During the ageing process, Lillet is handled as attentively as any great Bordeaux wine (undergoing fining, racking, filtering etc.). Lillet belongs to a family of aperitifs known as tonic wines because of the addition of Quinine liqueur.”

That’s Amaro

I’d been seeing recipes for cocktails using Amaro CioCiaro and finally got a bottle. The first recipe I rooted around and found was this Triborough cocktail in the PDT book.

For some reason there are all these borough-based cocktails. Manhattan — obviously. But there’s these Brooklyn and Bronx cocktails, too. In the David A. Embury book he quips that “Every borough of Greater New York has to have its special cocktail. . . .” That line is preceded by something called a “Westchester Special.” Maybe at one point people tasted the treacly Sweet Tart taste of maraschino and automatically thought “Brooklyn,” but it’s hard to discern what that might be. Whatever. And I actually like maraschino.

So anyway, the Triborough (not “Triboro”) is a recent creation from the PDT people*: Rye, kirschwasser, Punt e Mes**, Amaro CioChiara and Angostura bitters. Four parts, then one part for everything else: 3.5 ounces. Plus one dash. And . . . it’s good!

This, by the way, seems like a nice primer on the matter of Italian bitters.

*It’s Nate Dumas, who now is part of New York Distilling Company, an all-star dream spirits team who, as far as I know, have been doggedly trying to open the first distillery in the New York area for like a gazillion years.

**And, we don’t have Punt e Mes, but apparently you can recreate this by combining two parts sweet vermouth with one pat Campari).

This Is A Very Good Cocktail

The Duboudreau Cocktail (PDT, page 110), created by Jim Meehan based on some other mixologist’s recipe, is eight parts rye, three parts Dubonnet Rouge, one part Fernet-Branca and one part Elderflower liqueur. We don’t have Fernet-Branca, because whenever I think about buying it it seems kind of expensive. Jen suggested substituting Cynar for it, which I did. This is a very good cocktail.