This drink travels directly to...The Twilight Zone.

I was reading an old Thursday Drink Night post earlier this evening from late February, dealing with adding rinses to the inside of your glass before adding the cocktail itself...and I got to pondering...last night we played around with Pernod and noted that between that and the gin, there were a ton of extracts and herbal ingredients in it. So how many varieties of multiple extracts could I have in one drink and still have it taste good? I decided that I was just crazy enough to find out, and so I created another drink tonight! There's no photo, because it's really nothing special to look at, but it's worth trying if only to see if it cures your bursitis or something.

The Potential Monteleone Cocktail

For the rinse:
6 drops pimento dram
6 drops spice extract or falernum
6 drops Pernod
2 drops Peychaud's bitters

For the drink:
1 3/4 oz jenever-style gin
1/4 oz bourbon
1/4 oz dry vermouth
dash orange bitters
dash Angostura bitters

Swirl the rinse around in your prettiest cordial glass as far up the sides as possible, then pour out the rest. Shake the remaining ingredients with ice and strain into your glass.

This is really a weird, but good concoction. The nose is so at odds with the flavor that it's got this weird little cognitive dissonance thing going on, which I really like. The scent is very spicy, sweet, all nutmeg and allspice and cinnamon and star anise...and then the flavor is very dry and ascerbic, with a little bit of sweetness from the bourbon and a little fruit from the orange bitters. I'd almost use this as a digestif in its current size, or double it and have it with a splash of club soda as a larger size cocktail.

If you're in an experimental, mind-warp kind of mood, you could do worse than this drink. Not bad for a made up on the spot drink.

UPDATE! Dateline: El Cinco De Mayo 2009 [insert newsroom sound effects here] I'm entering this drink in a contest, and it has thus been renamed. It was "The Voodoo PuPu Platter" but it is now the "Potential Monteleone Cocktail" to reflect the contest in question.