Happy Anniversary to Me!

Tonight makes it the First Anniversary of this little ol' cocktail blog. And so far, I've not made any Cosmopolitans. And I've not used any wire hangers. And I aim to keep on with that.

But for tonight, I thought I'd go back to the early days of this endeavor and correct a horrible wrong I did to a poor, defenseless drink. The very first drink I posted, in fact. I mixed up, on the morning of March 30th, 2009, the day after I created the blog and posted the introductory entry, a makeshift version of a cocktail from David Wondrich's "Esquire Drinks" wherein I substituted bourbon for brandy, dropped the amount of dry vermouth in accordance with what I had on hand, and added lemon juice. Yeah. That turned out to be okay...but it was not the drink that it purported to be.

So I thought tonight I'd rectify that, and post a properly made version of this drink tonight. So that you can see what it should be, rather than the strange, mutant bourbon sour it wound up being. And so, I give you the proper version of the Metropole Cocktail. Named after a "somewhat lively" hotel in New York that went bankrupt in 1912, a scant week after it saw one of its regulars murdered. Morbid as that is, it always makes me think of The Happiness Hotel from "The Great Muppet Caper." Only without Muppets getting killed (we'll leave that to "Meet the Feebles").

The Metropole Cocktail

1 1/2 oz brandy
1 1/2 oz dry vermouth
1 dash orange bitters
2 dashes Peychaud's bitters
cherry for garnish

Stir all save cherry with cracked ice and strain into chilled glass. garnish, if desired, with cherry.

I'll admit to not being much of a brandy connoisseur...my uncle drinks it like it's going out of style, and my home state is one of the biggest consumers of brandy, per capita, in the US. We even make Old Fashioneds with brandy and mashed up fruit. But I digress. Despite the rosy hue, this is not a girly drink. Nor is it sweet. It winds up being quite a dry drink...very acerbic, not sweet at all, but very layered...there's the vermouth and the faint anise notes from the Peychauds, and a touch of sweetness from the brandy, a little citrus from the orange bitters, but nothing really dominates the drink. I think that makes it really interesting, frankly. It's complex and sort of mysterious. I like it!

Thanks for sticking with me for this first year of blogging, everyone, and I hope that I'll continue to hold your interest. If I don't, well, it's not like I'm puttin' a gun to your heads or anything. You'll just miss out on all sorts of new and interesting drinks.

Mixology Monday XLII: Dizzy Dairy

It's time for another Mixology Monday! This month's theme is dairy, which for the purposes of the challenge, will allow milk, cream, eggs, butter, cheese, yogurt, curds, and anything else you can think of (kefir martini, anyone?). I've seldom had any milk-based drinks...the last one I tried was a White Plush cocktail, I think, made with gin, milk and Maraschino liqueur (it foamed all over my counter after shaking). So for this challenge, rather than risk mopping up gin and milk afterwards, I opted to try a different drink, another old recipe from Charles H. Baker Jr.'s "The Gentleman's Companion: Being an Exotic Drinking Book, or Around the World with Jigger, Beaker and Flask," which proved to be tasty, though very rich.

Tiger's Milk No. III

1 1/2 oz brandy
1 1/2 oz Jamaican rum (I used Appleton)
2/3 cup half & half
simple syrup to taste
Dale DeGroff's flip spices to garnish (cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves and orange zest)

Shake all but spices with crushed ice and pour into a large goblet. Sprinkle with spices to garnish.

As I said, this is an incredibly rich drink, as you're sipping half & half cut with two shots of liquor...oddly, though, it doesn't feel strong, just rich. The spices really add to it, and help it from being too one-note. I'd say this is a great one for late fall or winter, but this close to the autumnal equinox, it's still a little heavy. Tasty, though.

This one had me worried...

Sometimes you'll look at a drink and go "Errrr...I dunno about that." This one, I suspected might be far too sweet, cloyingly so. Still, the other ingredients might balance it out, so I decided to give it a go. I'm glad I did.

Gilroy Cocktail

1/2 oz lemon juice
1/2 oz dry vermouth
1 oz Cherry Heering (or other cherry-infused brandy-based liqueur)
1 oz London dry gin
dash of orange bitters

Shake or stir very well with ice, strain into a cocktail glass

As it turns out, this is definitely not cloyingly sweet. In fact, it's a remarkably well balanced drink...the dry vermouth and lemon juice strike just the right balance again the Cherry Heering, and the gin adds a little extra zip. The only odd quality is that, compared to some cocktails, it's a little more viscous on the tongue. That may just be because I opted to stir it rather than shake it (it was late when I made this, and the windows were open. I didn't want grumpy neighbors) but still, it's a very tasty drink. In fact, if you wanted to do this as a sort of cooler, I'd suggest pouring it, unstrained, into a Double Old-Fashioned glass and adding a couple ounces of seltzer or club soda. Could be tasty!

Okay, now I'm really confused.

I put a poll out in the field earlier this afternoon, and since two people answered it, I can call it unanimous. Tonight's drink is the Singapore Sling. Easy enough.

Which one, though?

There's more recipes out there for the Singapore Sling than you can shake a swizzle stick at. Some with club soda, some without. Some with citrus juice, some saying if you add citrus it's no longer classified as a sling. Some with gin, some with brandy, some with both. It's very perplexing. So I'm going to mix up one version of it tonight and perhaps revisit its variants in the future. Tonight's version is the one David Wondrich takes on in "Esquire Drinks":

Singapore Sling (Wondrich version)

2 oz London dry gin
1/2 oz Cherry Heering cherry brandy
1/2 oz Bénédictine

Stir all well with 2-3 ice cubes, pour unstrained into highball glass, and fill to taste with club soda (or ginger beer, if you're of a mind to).

In this one, I taste the gin more than anything. The Heering and the Bénédictine round it out a little bit, and give it some depth, but it's really relegated to the background. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad drink, but it kind of lacks something. I'll be very interested to try some of the other versions and see what they bring. But first, I'll need to get a new bottle of Bénédictine, as this drink took the last few drops from my miniature "fun size" bottle (and since when is getting less of something "fun?"). Fortunately, my friendly neighborhood liquor emporium has a half size bottle that won't break the bank. Tune in next time, true believers!

Well, for the first drink post, let's venture back to last night...

I should point out for the benefit of my readers (all three of you right now) that I'm currently out of work. I was laid off last November along with a third of the company I worked for in a bout of downsizing. So I've had to go with cheap hooch and a slim variety. Lately, I've been dealing almost entirely with bourbon, rye and gin. Which is good, because those three spirits are very very versatile.

Thanks to an awesome article by David Wondrich, rapidly becoming one of my heroes in the world of cocktails, I learned some good base spirits for the frugal lush. So, on his advice, I've been using Evan Williams for bourbon, Gordon's London Dry Gin, and Old Overholt for my rye. All are really quite good for the money, although as Wondrich points out, the Gordon's is a little too weak, both flavor-wise and proof-wise, for anything like a martini. Best to leave it to play off of citrus.

So last night, I was perusing one of my cocktail books, the inimitable "Esquire Drinks" by the aforementioned Wondrich, when I spotted an interesting one called the "Metropole," named after a rather, erm..."colorful" hotel in New York City that went bankrupt in July, 1912. Normally, this one contains an ounce and a half each of brandy and dry vermouth, a dash of orange bitters and 2 dashes of Peychaud's bitters (they're big in New Orleans, as they're a staple in a classic Sazerac).

The problem was, I had only an ounce remaining of my dry vermouth, and no brandy. So I subbed bourbon for the brandy, still used equal measures of each (so an ounce) and bunged in a half ounce of lemon juice.

It turned out to not be too bad. It wasn't very well balanced, but it was definitely drinkable. It was pretty understated and dry (not to mention weak, as there wound up being less than a full shot of hard liquor in there) but the lemon juice and Peychaud's made it almost martini-like in its dryness. It seemed, oddly, almost British in its austerity, but there was a little tickle of spice in the back of the mouth from the bourbon. It wound up being an interesting concoction, though perhaps not one I'd try again without being able to make it a closer to full-strength. All that being said, it still was nowt more than a glorified Whiskey Sour. The addition of the Peychaud's and vermouth kept it from being too sweet, and made it a bit more interesting, was all.