"Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye"

And after yet another lengthy delay, I'm back. Again. Really.

Stop laughing!

Seriously, what can I say, gang, besides "I'm sorry?" My work schedule is never really the same twice, so I'm constantly working early, or getting home late, or both on consecutive days, or vice versa. And so, while I do mix myself a nightcap more often than not, I really never can convince myself to photograph it or blog about it. I may tweet about it every now and then, but...

Anyway, on to the booze. Today I went to my local hooch parlor looking for a new whiskey that my friendly area distillery has released. Sadly, they didn't have it on the shelves yet, but I did find something else that had piqued my interest previously...

OK, you know and I know that I'm not a huge fan of vodka. I often think of it as training wheels for booze, as something that's just so bland. It's the Muzak of the liquor world, right? And FLAVORED vodka? Why not just dissolve a handful of Jolly Ranchers in a bottle of Popov and save yourself a bunch of dough, right?

Well, I will admit that I had been curious about a certain variety. Absolut occasionally mixes up some vodkas named after a region or another; New Orleans, Los Angeles, Boston, Brooklyn. And, as Camper English over at Alcademics.com has pointed out, those regional drinks often end up becoming a regular player; New Orleans became Absolut Mango, Los Angeles became Berry Acai, Brooklyn has transmuted into Orient Apple, and Boston is now Absolut Wild Tea. It was Wild Tea, with it's black tea and elderflower flavoring, that had attracted me.

Elderflower cordial, like St Germain, is tasty, but a bit too sweet sometimes, for my liking. Black tea is a flavor that you don't get too often with booze (sweet tea, on the other hand...) but put 'em together? Hello, Novelty! And so I picked up a bottle, and sipped a shot poured over ice. I'll be damned. Tasty. A little astringent, a little floral, not too sweet at all. And very smooth.

And VERY botanical. It got me thinking about other botanicals, and then I had the bright idea to try mixing it with green Chartreuse, chock full of botanicals. And then, because I'm a theatre geek, I named it after a character from Shakespeare that I once played, who was similarly obsessed with botany.

The Friar Lawrence Cocktail
2 oz Absolut Wild Tea vodka
1/4 oz green Chartreuse
2 dashes acid phosphate
10 drops Bittermens Boston Bittahs
2 drops absinthe

Stir all well with ice and pour over a single large ice cube.

Green. Vegetal. Slightly sweet, a hint of citrus, and herbs. Quite fitting for Friar Lawrence, the Franciscan in "Romeo and Juliet" who got zapped with a phaser set to "Sudden Interest in Botany." I still remember entirely too much of his monologue, given that I played him more than 10 years ago, but here's the relevant section relating to botanicals...(Act II Scene 3, for those of you reading along at home):

Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,
The day to cheer and night's dank dew to dry,
I must up-fill this osier cage of ours
With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers.
The earth that's nature's mother is her tomb;
What is her burying grave that is her womb,
And from her womb children of divers kind
We sucking on her natural bosom find,
Many for many virtues excellent,
None but for some and yet all different.
O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities:
For nought so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give,
Nor aught so good but strain'd from that fair use
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
And vice sometimes by action dignified.

Ah, memories! Yes, kids, the good Friar was picking herbs and flowers and quite possibly creating something akin to Chartreuse, or Benedictine, or Fernet Branca, or Strega...medicine in alcoholic form. Now I'm not claiming that the Friar Lawrence Cocktail will be any kind of curative agent, but as a libation? Pretty damn tasty.

Spring has sprung, the grass is riz...

...I wonder where dem boidies is?

Today was finally spring-like weather in my neck of the woods, topping 70°F, and generally being pleasant and agreeable outside. The trees and lawns have greened up nicely, and there's enough pollen in the air to put an allergic elephant down.

Therefore, in such a time as this it is most meet to trot out an appropriately themed libation. And I just so happened to pick up one of the ingredients today, as a reward to myself for donating blood and being such a swell guy (plus it was on sale!); Plymouth Gin.

Plymouth is a little different from a lot of other gins on the market today...I find it hard to quantify the differences, but Wikipedia notes that "[i]t has a distinctively different, slightly less-dry flavour than the much more commonly available London Dry Gin, as it contains a higher than usual proportion of root ingredients, which bring a more 'earthy' feel to the gin, as well as a smoother juniper hit." Plymouth themselves credit the flavor to a unique blend of juniper berries, lemon and orange peel, orris root (the root of an iris plant), angelica root, cardamom, and coriander. All are traditional gin ingredients, but they play up the earthiness and sweetness of the blend, and dial back the juniper a bit. Still, a most excellent drink, especially in a Gin Pahit (pink gin).

Anyway, on to tonight's drink:

Spring Feeling Cocktail

3/4 oz lemon juice
3/4 oz green Chartreuse
1 1/2 oz Plymouth gin
dash of Grapefruit Bitters

shake all well with ice and strain into chilled cocktail glass.

Truly a green and spring-like drink. Herbaceous, tart, bracing. Yes, this will do quite nicely. Greetings, o springy cocktail! Would you like to ride with Batman? Yes, you'd like that, wouldn't you?

Er, sorry. Got carried away there a bit.

Not much to say about such a simple drink, apart from "GO MAKE ONE!"

"Sittin' here in Avalon, lookin' at the pouring rain..."

Look! I'm back! And I have a drink for you!

Yes, I know it's been an entire month since my last post, and it's horrible, and you've gone un-tippled for entirely too long. My apologies. As I said in my interstitial update a couple weeks back, I've been busy and broke. But I rummaged through my remaining booze inventory and the list of drinks I've wanted to post but haven't yet, and I came across a wonderful convergence of the two.

This is one of those drinks that's more than the sum of its parts...you look at the ingredient list and go "Oh, no. It'll be too sweet/too herbal/too sour/too weird." But no. It turns out to be some impossible balance of all of those. This is a true Prohibition-era cocktail, and it's called:

The Last Word

3/4 oz London dry gin
3/4 oz green Chartreuse
3/4 oz lime juice
3/4 oz Maraschino liqueur

Shake all with ice, strain into chilled cocktail glass

All of those unlikely ingredients work together in an most unlikely harmony, and it's really sort of magical. Typically, using that much Maraschino is a death sentence on a cocktail, making it syrupy sweet and repugnant, but here it counteracts the grassy herbal nature of the Chartreuse and the sourness of the lime juice. For a switch up, Paul Clarke over at "The Cocktail Chronicles" suggests swapping rye for the gin and lemon juice for the lime. That sounds like it'd bring it into swinging distance of The Scoff Law Cocktail, but still, different enough.

Give it a whirl. And no, despite the ominous drink name, I'm not going anywhere...I'm just working to get some more money so I can buy more ingredients.

"Excuse me, I'm John Smith!" "John Smith 1882?" "My mistake."

It happens sometimes...you show up at the bar, and there's another girl there wearing the exact same outfit as you. Let's try that again. You show up at the bar, order a drink, and get something that's nothing at all like what you were expecting. Before you haul off and smack the bartender, consider this: there may be multiple drinks with that name that bear some passing similarity to each other, but are different enough that your bartender may have heard of one but not the other. I'm not just talking about different recipes (see part one of an ongoing series that hasn't gone on yet regarding variants on the Singapore Sling), but drinks with maybe an extra space, or a slightly different spelling, or even no difference at all that are nevertheless different.

Tonight I made a drink called the "Scoff Law Cocktail," which is not to be confused with the previously featured "Scofflaw Cocktail." Confused yet? No? Good, then I can introduce you to a new ingredient being used on here for the first time tonight; Chartreuse.

"Wait," I hear you say, "Isn't that a color?" Why, yes it is. It's a shade of a sort of yellow-green hue. However, Chartreuse-the-spirit comes in two colors. Green Chartreuse and Yellow Chartreuse. Kind of like how, in the southern US, you might get this little exchange in a diner or restaurant:

Customer: "And can I get a Coke?"
Server: "Sure, what kind ya want? We got Pepsi Coke, Sprite Coke, orange Coke..."

In this case, Chartreuse refers to the spirit, not the specific color. As a matter of fact, the color was named after the spirit, as it's been made since 1605 or so. Now are you confused? Good. You'll want a drink to settle your addle-pated mind. Make this one.

Scoff Law Cocktail

1 oz rye whiskey
1 oz dry vermouth
3/4 oz green Chartreuse
3/4 oz lemon juice
1-2 dashes orange bitters

Stir all with ice, strain into cocktail glass.

If you've never had Chartreuse, it's really nearly impossible to describe. There's 130 different plant flavors in there, and the few that can be agreed upon are anise and hyssop. It's very vegetal, but a little sweet. There's a little spice in there, to boot. A very complicated flavor. In our drink, it melds with the spice of the rye, the sour of the lemon, and the botanicals from the vermouth. It's really a hard flavor to pin down, but that complexity makes for a very interesting cocktail. If your local bar has a hidden stash of Chartreuse, see if they can make this particular version of the Scoff Law.