"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…

I give you Carte Blanche on this blog...

Yes, it's been ages. Shut up.

I'll have you know, in the pursuit of mixology, I've suffered a most grievous wound. Well, one requiring stitches anyway. There was an incident whilst slicing cucumber with a mandoline for a cucumber martini...I- I don't want to talk about it. It still hurts.

Tonight's drink is not quite so perilous, though it does require cucumber (slice carefully, everyone!). It is yet another modification...but it works! That's the beautiful thing about a blog, you don't have to suffer through my failures, just my successes.

The Carte Blanche (modified)

2 oz Hendrick's Gin
2/3 oz lime cordial (bonus points for homemade, but that's another show post)
3 slices cucumber, reserved
1/4 oz dry vermouth
2 dashes orange bitters
3/4 oz tonic water

Muddle all save for 1 slice of cucumber, gin, and tonic water. Add ice and gin, shake well to mix. Double strain into cocktail glass, add tonic water, garnish with remaining cucumber slice.

It's vegetal, it's refreshing, it's tart. It's fantastic. You could alternate these with Pimm's Cups and have a bloody wonderful day. And you should.

And now for something completely different

So. This is a drink that I just threw together tonight. I snapped the photo with my iPhone. It's not as well prepped as the previous ones have been, but I wanted to try to get one up with less than a month elapsing since the previous one. Mission accomplished.

This drink is cut from the same cloth as the Hanky Panky Cocktail, but it's got enough changes in proportion that I feel justified in calling it an original. However, bearing in mind its provenance, in lieu of calling it a Hanky Panky, I am, instead, calling it:

The Cat's Pyjamas Cocktail
2 oz dry gin (I'm using Small's Gin tonight)
1/4 oz Fernet Branca
1/4 oz dry vermouth
13 drops Bittercube Bolivar bitters

Stir all with ice, strain into a coupe, garnish with an orange twist.

So yeah, we're swapping up the proportions a bit, using dry instead of sweet vermouth, and adding Bittercube's Bolivar bitters, redolent of dried fruit and chamomile. It's very subtle when held up against the Fernet, but it's there…

Anyway, I like this one. It's crisp, bracing, forthright, and yet still a bit nuanced. It's a nice spring thaw drink. Here's hoping that thaw comes soon…

Not the "chirp, tweet" kind.

I managed to get to a great liquor store in my area, one that has the widest selection of amari (bitter liqueurs, traditionally Italian) that I've found anywhere nearby. And in lieu of getting a $29 bottle of Campari, even though I really wanted to get one, I opted instead for a little more than kin and at a price more kind...Luxardo makes a similar product called, simply, Bitter. Both Campari and Luxardo Bitter (and their lower-proof cousin, Aperol, which is also owned by the Campari group, now) are bitter apertif liqueurs, that have a lot of flavorings in them, lots of herbs, and a noticeable bitter and sweet orange note. The most famous drink that's made with Campari (or its substitutes) is a Negroni; equal measures of gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari. It's good, but I tend to find sweet vermouth to be a little cloying sometimes. And so I nosed around a little more and found this relative. Not quite 1:1:1 ratios of the three ingredients, it's named, I presume, for its color, and most likely for the clergy who wear it. Less likely is the notion that it's named for the bird. Though red, the avian Cardinal is not italian and likely does not drink. I add a dash of orange bitters just to bring out that note a little more in my Luxardo Bitter.

The Cardinal Cocktail

1 oz London dry gin
3/4 oz dry vermouth
3/4 oz Luxardo Bitter/Campari/Aperol
dash of orange bitters

stir all well with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

The Bitter is certainly bitter...there's a note in there that recalls Fernet Branca...but it's also sweet, and citrusy, and refreshing. It's a surprisingly subtle drink, and one that I think will fare very well over the summer, as temperatures rise and the sun beats down and turns my skin the color of Campari. Pass the lidocaine.

I'm like a crackhead, but for ginger.

I made a trip to World Market today. And I bought a whole bunch of ginger stuff. Ginger candy, ginger cookies, sodas with ginger as an ingredient. Also the new cocktail glass featured tonight. And then I went to the grocery store on my way home to get lettuce for my pet rabbits, and lo and behold, there was a new ginger liqueur there, made by Stirrings. I can't find anything on their website about it, but they had some other liqueurs, as well; pomegranate, triple sec, peach, apple, and one other one that I can't recall at the moment. All proclaimed that they were natural, and all looked pretty good (although the apple liqueur was that alarming shade of green we've sadly come to expect from apple-flavored anything. Curse you, Jolly Ranchers!). So I picked that up and decided to experiment with it.

I can't find out what the base is, but I'm assuming it's neutral grain spirits, rather than the cognac that Domaine de Canton is made from. The nose, however, is a much sharper, stronger ginger than the Canton. It's got a little fire to it! I used a drink called the Chatham Cocktail as a starting point for this, but since I'm not using ginger-flavored brandy, I made this one mine. Named after an area that's now part of NYC's Chinatown, I'm calling it:

The Chatham Square Cocktail

2.5 oz Plymouth gin
.75 oz Stirrings Ginger Liqueur
.75 oz lemon juice
3 dashes Fee Brothers orange bitters (cheaper than Angostura's but not as good. They're what I've got on hand, though)
3 drops Peychaud's or Angostura bitters, for garnish

Shake all save for the Peychaud's/Angostura with ice, strain into a 7.5 oz cocktail glass, and gently float 3 drops of your choice of bitters on top.

The ginger is very very strong with this drink...kitty wants to play! I really like it, though, because it stands up well to both the Plymouth and the lemon juice. The orange bitters round out the citrus notes a bit, and depending if you go with the Angostura or the Peychaud's, you'll get a slight spice or anise nose from the drink as you bring it up for a sip. I quite like it!

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.

MxMo XLVII: Punch

The challenge posed by Hobson's Choice for this month's Mixology Monday is punch! Now, I used to consider myself quite the expert on punch, back when I was about 10, and my grandmother and I used to mix up non-alcoholic punches for New Year's Eve. I knew that it had to be sweet, but not overly so. Tangy, but not too sour. Fizzy was good. A sort of creamy mouth-feel was sought after, but not a prerequisite. I was, as it turns out, looking for all the criteria of a great punch with alcohol, as well, though I wouldn't know it for another decade-plus.

In trying to come up with an original punch (or, if not original, at least one I hadn't read about specifically), I went back to the well of all punch wisdom, and dredged up that hoary old formula; 1 part sour, 2 parts sweet, 3 parts strong and 4 parts weak (plus spice, as Alton Brown recently pointed out on "Good Eats"). Well, being the crazy tinkerer that I am, I decided to take a few liberties with the formulation. I was remarkably faithful, but in lieu of using grated nutmeg or cinnamon for the spice, as is tradition, I used a homemade tincture of mine.

Then, of course, I struggled with a name. My concoction draws from so many disparate influences, it's really hard to find an overarching theme. Finally I decided to name it after the tincture I used to add that final bit of flavor, and thus I give you, for March's Mixology Monday:

Donn's Gin Punch

1 part lime juice
scant 2 parts limoncello, plus a dash of Maraschino liqueur
3 parts London dry gin
4 parts ginger beer
2 dashes per cup Donn's Tinc
1 dash per cup Blood Orange syrup (optional, for color. I used Torani's version.)

Combine all save for Donn's Tinc with a large block of ice in a punchbowl. Dash in Donn's Tinc to each cup, then ladle in punch mixture. If using Blood Orange syrup, add dash after punch has been ladled into cup. For an individual serving, assume 1 part is 1/2 ounce.

I think this is a wonderfully balanced drink. Sweet, sour, spicy from the ginger, botanical from the gin, ever-so-slightly fizzy, and just a bit of funk from that wonderful Maraschino. I'm tremendously pleased with how this turned out, and I think it could make a nice change from the classic rum- or bourbon-based punch. Come summertime, it certainly would make for a refreshing take on this classic concoction.

Mixology Monday XLVI: Absinthe

So, I missed a couple of Mixology Mondays, but I'm back in the game with this one! The focus this month was on crafting drinks with absinthe, as suggested by Sonja over at the "Thinking of Drinking" blog. I happen to have a locally distilled absinthe that I'm quite fond of, and I figured "Hey, let's use that!"

So I set about looking for a drink to feature this time. I initially planned on making one up, but my first attempt fell rather ignominiously flat (should have worked in theory, did not work in practice) and so I turned to reworking an already extant drink. There's a very simple tipple called the "Foggy Day" that uses just gin and absinthe, with a twist of lemon for garnish. I decided to tweak that a little bit, and make it my own. So I now give you:

The Foggy Day in Kingston Cocktail

1 1/2 oz Tanqueray No. Ten gin
1/4 oz Amerique 1912 Absinthe Verte
dash of limoncello
2 dashes Jamaican bitters

Shake all with ice, pour over ice in a small glass. Garnish with lemon twist.

The grapefruit and spice notes of my Jamaican bitters really meld with the anise notes of the absinthe, plus the citrus of the Tanqueray No. Ten and the limoncello (there's such a tiny amount that I wasn't about to call the limoncello brand) blend quite harmoniously, as well. I think it's quite a nice take on the classic Foggy Day, and a little more interesting than the original, to boot.

Thanks again to Sonja for hosting this month's MxMo. She's one of the geniuses behind Chicago's North Shore Distillery, and they make some AWESOME stuff (no that's not a plug, just a declaration of love) so try it if you have access to it!

"Ensign authorization code 9-5-wiktor-wiktor-2"

So, it should come as no surprise to regular readers that I'm doing yet another show. This time I'm working a little bit behind the scenes as a dialect coach, in addition to the on-stage role I've got. One of our actresses has to do a Russian/Ukrainian dialect (doesn't have to be perfect, just suggestive) and so I got to thinking about Russian drinks. I looked through my collection, and I found one that sounded intriguing (if slightly risqué), and I served it up at rehearsal tonight (relax, it was just a table reading...we weren't stumbling around on stage. We'll save that for performances!) I present it to you now.

The Vladivostok Virgin

1 1/2 oz London dry gin
1 1/2 oz vodka
1 oz grapefruit juice (canned is traditional)
dash of Angostura bitters (I threw a dash of my Jamaican bitters in, as well, just for kicks)

shake all well with ice. Garnish with a cucumber slice, or, failing that, a lime slice

Tart. And herbal. And vodka-y. You all know I'm not a huge fan of vodka...I sort of consider it the Muzak of the liquor world...there to fill space, but not really bringing anything to the drink. And here, it really serves to just dilute the botanical notes of the gin, sending it into the deep background. Still, though, the grapefruit juice does something kind of interesting, and makes an almost basil or tomato leaf flavor pop into the drink, and that's kind of cool, though I have no idea how it does that.

All in all, it's tasty. I'm not sure exactly what's virginal about it (maybe it looks like it's blushing?) but it's still a tipple worth sampling.

Oh, I'm gonna get letters about this one...if only for the name...

It didn't occur to me until literally this minute, as I write this post, what the name of this drink could refer to. And now I'm almost scared to post it. So let me get this out of the way right now. The name of the drink is "Roman's Scandal" and at first, I was thinking "Oh, how cute, it's sort of titillating in an ancient history sort of way." But then I thought, "Uh oh. What if it's 'Roman' as a first name, say, of a film director who did a very bad thing a few decades ago." Suffice it to say, I'm going to assume that this drink doesn't have anything to do with that Roman, and proceed from that starting premise.

Remember the orange-flavored gin I mentioned back in the "Flying Dutchman Cocktail?" The stuff I said was too esoteric, too hard to find, and too expensive? I found it, cheaply, on a trip to a Woodman's Market near where I work, and snatched up a bottle at a very good price. (Did you know Seagram's also has an apple-flavored gin? I'm a little scared of that...). And so I set about looking for drinks that I can use my 1.75 liters of orange gin in, and I stumbled across this one.

Roman's Scandal

1 1/2 oz orange-flavored gin
1/2 oz sweet vermouth
3/4 oz dry vermouth
1/2 oz kirsch
2 dashes Angostura bitters

Stir all well with ice, strain into cocktail glass or serve on the rocks, as desired.

I think this bears a similarity to the Martinez, with kirsch instead of maraschino, but it does a little something else, too, which I like. The orange gin doesn't really blare its orangeness at you, but sort of hangs back. There's really a depth to this drink that you usually don't expect from gin drinks...it's not as crisp as you'd expect, and has a surprising subtlety. I'm especially pleased with how the kirsch stays well away from the realm of the cloying, which it will zoom straight to, given half a chance. All in all, a most surprising drink, and one that I wouldn't hesitate to try again.

Pearls before swine?

No, I'm not calling you all swine. Please, put the baseball bat down, Mrs. Higginbotham.

Thank you.

There are very few funny quotes about pearls. I don't know why. But I needed something relevant to the drink, so you get that one up there.

Tonight's drink is one that I found on one of the many cocktail blogs I read...Bibulo.us featured it the other day, and pointed out it was one made by the inimitable David Wondrich, one of my all time cocktail heroes. I did, however, tinker with it, because that's what I do. The original used vodka, I swapped in gin for a little more complexity. The original used a strip of lemon peel, but I dashed in some of my Jamaican bitters. I like to think mine holds a candle to the original, but you be the judge.

The Pearlescent Cocktail

2 1/2 oz gin (originally vodka)
2 teaspoons orgeat syrup
1 teaspoon Maraschino liqueur
2 dashes Jamaican bitters (originally a strip of lemon peel)

Combine all with ice and shake viciously. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

It's sweet, but not cloying. It's vaguely vegetal, faintly citrusy, and it has a little bit of funk from the Maraschino. I like it! Plus it's this really cool color, the eponymous Pearlescent sheen. Tasty.

Y'arrr, it be a ghost ship!

Battling my way through some sort of head cold, I bring you a new drink! Yay!

Tonight's drink is named after the ghost ship of legend, the Flying Dutchman. The good news, as Ted Haigh puts it in "Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails," is that this is a most interesting variation on what's normally a bland drink. The bad news is that you'll have to buy a new ingredient; orange gin. Haigh found Seagram's Orange Twisted Gin, which he says has an unfortunate name, but otherwise tastes pretty good. I've only been able to find that in 1.75 liter bottles, and I didn't really want to rush in to get one only to discover no uses for it. But I did find something at my liquor store (and on sale!) that I think will make an adequate substitute; Stellar Citrus Crush Gin. Apparently it has 6 different citrus fruit flavors in it, so I figured it'd do a comparable job.

Here's how to make it:

The Flying Dutchman Cocktail

2 oz orange gin (or the Stellar Citrus crush stuff)
juice of 1/4 orange
juice of 1/4 lemon
2 dashes Angostura bitters

Shake all with ice, and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish, if desired, with an orange twist.

Yes, it's a glorified gin 'n' juice. No, it doesn't taste like crap. It's supercharged with citrus, to be sure, but it's really quite tasty and nuanced. The bitters do a lot on that front, I'm sure. If you know of a place to get orange gin, grab a bottle and give this a taste. It's certainly easy enough to make, and innocuous enough that most anyone will like it.

And there’s a hand my trusty friend! And give us a hand o’ thine!

And we’ll take a right good-will draught,
for auld lang syne.

For our New Year's Eve post, I'm of course using champagne, but I'm doing a little something different with it. Not a lot of non-lushes realize that champagne makes a great mixer. You get the effervescence of club soda with the flavor of wine, plus hell, anytime the champagne gets broken out, it's a party in and of itself.

This drink has many many stories as to it's origin, but it seems most likely that it originated just after World War I. Some say it was first made with cognac, which I can see, because cognac and champagne would have a lot of similar flavors going on, both being grape-based spirits, but my version, which could perhaps be considered the British version (as I am an unrepentant Anglophile), is made with gin. Named after the rapid-firing artillery piece that proved so useful to the French in WW I (contrary to popular belief in the US, the French are not the cheese-eating surrender monkeys they're so frequently portrayed as), I present to you, the last drink on this blog for 2009...

The French 75 Cocktail

1 oz gin
3/4 oz lemon juice
2 bar spoons simple syrup
champagne to top

Shake the first three ingredients with ice and strain into a small champagne flute. Add champagne to top. Garnish, if desired, with a lemon peel spiral and/or maraschino cherry.

Rather than the single-minded sweetness that so often plagues champagne, this really is a complex drink. The gin adds a little crispness that's most welcome here, and the lemon juice and small amount of sugar syrup also tweak the flavor profile of your champagne, making for a really interesting drink. The only problem is that it's waaaaay too easy to down two or three of these in rapid succession. And then, well, the eponymous machine gun may feel like it's opening fire on your sobriety...but hell, it's New Year's Eve!

Thanks for sticking with me so far, dear readers. I hope to keep things lively and interesting for you well into 2010 and beyond.

"And of course, you remember the Gray Rabbit and the Blue Chipmunk?"

First of all, if any of you know what movie the line I used for the title came from, I'll be very much surprised. If you do, drop me a line so I can applaud you.

Now, on to the drink. I must say up front that I would never have tried this drink were it not for scomorokh over at "Science of Drink." He featured this one about a week ago, and I sampled it and quite enjoyed it. He also takes photos that put mine to shame. Go on. Look at them. I'm almost ashamed to post mine, but no matter. I tried something new with my photo on this one, and I think you'll find it amusing.

This drink is sort of a herbal, woodsy flavor in a glass. With a cherry. It's called...

The Yellow Daisy

1 1/2 oz London dry gin
1 1/2 oz dry vermouth
3/4 oz Grand Marnier
a few drops of absinthe

Shake all with ice, strain into chilled glass. Add a cherry.

Simple enough, but it's really quite interesting. All those botanical notes from the gin, the vermouth and that little bit of absinthe in there really go to work, pairing up and sounding off just like some sort of alcoholic square dance (and I'm of the opinion that if you plan to go square dancing, you're going to need some alcohol to live with that decision). The little bit of the sweet orange flavor from the Grand Marnier shines through, and the cherry is just sweet dyed icing on the cake. Try it out.

"In a pagoda, she orders a soda; banana-fanana...hey diggity!"

OK, first, before you wonder if I'm having some sort of transient ischemic attack and talking funny, watch this video. I'll wait.



All done? Excellent. The song is an old one, as evidenced by it's presence in the "Jeeves and Wooster" universe...it's called "Nagasaki" and dates back to 1928. I figured, since in my last post I was experimenting with reconstructing the old Jamaican Ginger, sans paralytics, I might as well make one up of my own creation. And so I give you tonight's drink:

Hot Ginger and Dynamite

3/4 oz lemon juice
3/4 oz Dubonnet
3/4 oz London dry gin
1/4 oz Jamaica Ginger (or equivalent. I wound up using a barspoon each of ginger syrup, ginger beer base and ginger extract)

Shake all with ice, strain into small cordial glass.

It's small, it's spicy, it's complex, and it'll make a great digestif. The gin and Dubonnet work nicely together, as always, the lemon and ginger play along, and all in all, it makes for a really interesting little concoction. I think if I had a spicier ginger extract, things would be even better. I'll have to keep plugging away at that.

If you make it with shoddy knockoffs, is it an Astroturf Cocktail?

This was the third drink option at Thanksgiving this year, and before you even ask, I have no idea from whence the name springs. It doesn't look like grass, it doesn't taste like grass, and it certainly isn't kicked up by the cleats of football players (US football or the rest of the world football...this is one happy area where the terms overlap). It does, however, make for a very good drink.

Turf Cocktail

2 oz London dry gin
3/4 oz dry vermouth
1/4 oz Maraschino liqueur
dash absinthe
dash citrus bitters (orange, grapefruit or Jamaican are all good here, in their own ways)

Build all in mixing glass over ice, stirring well to combine and chill. Strain into cocktail glass, garnish with lemon zest.

It's herbaceous, which I suppose could contribute to the name...but more than that, it's got a clean, crisp, woodsy character to it that really fit in well with the fall weather on Thanksgiving Day.

Now, of course, it's moving into winter, and more hearty drinks will have to be mixed. Perhaps some mulled wine or hot buttered rum is in the cards? Or a Tom and Jerry? Who can tell? Stay tuned, true believers!

Aw, how can I stay away from you guys?

Ok, I stumbled across a drink that sounded too interesting to keep under my hat until after Turkey Day here in the US...I went looking for drinks that might use some of the 1/3 remaining bottle of Dubonnet in my fridge, and while this one takes only two barspoons of it, that's still two barspoons I don't have to contend with anymore. Plus, it's sort of unusual in its proportions, so that's worth something, as well. And third, it's got an interesting name, and thus I bring it to you this evening.

Alfonso (Special) Cocktail

1 dash Angostura bitters
2 dashes Jamaican bitters (or 2 dash Bittermens Grapefruit bitters...this is my addition but it works)
2 barspoons Dubonnet (or, lacking that, sweet vermouth)
1 oz London dry gin
1 oz dry vermouth
2 oz Grand Marnier

Shake well with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

With two full ounces of Grand Marnier, you may think that a sweet citrus flavor would dominate, and it's there, make no mistake...but the bitters and gin and dry vermouth and even the Dubonnet to a degree help temper that, and while the predominant flavor is of course orange, it's still got enough other things going on in there that it's not too monotonous. It has some other citrus notes in there, some spice, and some botanicals. As long as you serve it in a scrupulously chilled glass after no less than 30 seconds of shaking, it's a great drink...it just functions best when ice cold.

Adventures in horrible drink names

I was just hanging out in the chat room for Tiki Bar TV, and an unofficial challenge was hanging in the air. Create a drink or shot themed around "sweat." I decided to go with something that I've termed:

Frog Sweat

1 oz absinthe
1/2 oz gin
3 dashes Jamaican bitters (or Bittermens grapefruit bitters if you don't feel like waiting a week while your homemade Jamaican bitters mature)

build in a chilled shot glass.

Very spur of the moment, but the name's kinda whimsical, in that absinthe is traditionally associated with the French, those Frenchy-froggy-froggy-Frenchies. Tastes good, though.

Here's a quick photo I snapped off of it.

For the full list of Sweat themed cocktails (some of which may not be very good...they wound up drifting toward the theoretical), please visit www.tikigeeki.com. Dogs and cats, living together...mass hysteria.

If this drink is Irish, then Sean Connery's a Spaniard...

As promised, I'm bringing you a drink this time that's about as un-Irish as you can get, despite it's name. You see, this one is named, I suspect, for it's color, not it's cultural awareness. You'll see why when you run down the list of ingredients...gin, Cointreau, and green curaçao. Yes, green curaçao. Remember, it comes in many colors, but only one flavor. If you don't have green curaçao and don't feel like tracking down a bottle of it, just use triple-sec (which, if you'll recall, is "white curaçao") and add a couple drops of green food dye to it. That way, you can mix up your own:

Hibernian Special

1 1/2 oz London Dry Gin
1 1/2 oz Cointreau
1 1/2 oz green curaçao (or your homemade equivalent)
splash of lemon juice

shake all with ice, strain into cocktail glass. toast in the direction of the Auld Sod, or possibly the Caribbean.

Yes, as Data said about Aldebaran Whiskey in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "It is...it is green." I suspect that's what made this drink's creator think of Ireland. Perhaps he was homesick, perhaps he was just really quite drunk, who knows. That being said, it's not bad tasting...it's very orangey, but you get the botanicals from the gin and the sourness from the lemon keeping it out of cough-syrup territory. Worth a shot. But then please wash it down with something authentically Irish...Jamesons or Guinness or something. Even a wee dram of poitín, if you've a mind...