"May I have your Attention, please?" "No, get your own!"

Um…Hi. Remember me? Yeah, I know I haven't checked in with you guys in about five months, but I still love you. And now I'm back… This time I really mean it.

But yeah, it's high time I acknowledge my limitations and say that truthfully, this blog's heyday is over. I no longer have the time I had two years ago to lavish on this, posting drinks every night or…you know, once a month or something… but I'm not giving up on it, so don't worry about that. I'm just stating flat out that I just don't have the kind of time I used to that enabled me to go crazy with this thing. That being said, I still plan and hope to post new drinks periodically, and rest assured, I'm still reading a metric butt-load of material on cocktails and spirits and the like…I just don't get a chance to blog about it much. But I hope that doesn't mean we can't still be friends. And that you'll still stop by when I do have something new.

Like tonight!

I have something new! Several somethings, in fact. First off, I have new ingredients, secondly a new camera with which to photograph them! A camera that can do fancy things, like shoot in RAW format! Which means prettier pictures, and better control of them.

So. The new ingredient. It's finally available again in the US after having fallen into shadow disuse and neglect over the years. It is crème de violette, and it's made of the eponymous flower. It tastes, yes, like the eponymous flower. It's also very pretty. Haus Alpenz has brought it back for us, so let's thank them, shall we?

Which brings us to tonight's drink. It is a new one that I stumbled across on DrinkBoy's website. He modified it from 1917's "Recipes for Mixed Drinks" by Hugo R. Ensslin, but modified the proportions from equal measures of all the main spirits…that would've been pretty ghastly, I think. But it makes for quite the lovely drink as DrinkBoy, er…Robert has described (I've scaled it up slightly for a larger glass):

Attention Cocktail
2 ¼ oz gin (I used Beefeater 24)
1 ¼ oz dry vermouth
⅜ oz crème de violette
3 dashes absinthe
3 dashes orange bitters

Stir all with ice, strain into cocktail glass. If you wanna be really fancy, spritz the inside of the glass with lemon extract before you pour it in.

Yes, it's a modified martini, but it's nice and herbal and floral and such a beautiful amethyst color…and you really should go make one…