*insert accordion and Gallic shrug here*

Tonight's drink is just over 60 years old, at least since it's first publication. It appeared in Charles H. Baker Jr.'s seminal drink guide, "The Gentleman's Companion: Being an Exotic Drinking Book, or Around the World with Jigger, Beaker and Flask," published in 1946. It's another way to use some of that kirsch that I proved to be less than enthralled with. First things first...it wants you to use shaved ice. As I'm not in Hawai'i, land of shave-ice, I don't have any means of making it, so I crushed the ice, and then blended it with the liquid ingredients...not perfect, but it got the job done. Anyway, here we go:

The Parisian Cherry Ripe

1 1/2 oz London dry gin
3/4 oz kirsch
3/4 oz Cherry Heering

Blend with shaved ice (or blend well with crushed ice), pour into tumbler, float two bar spoons of Cherry Heering.

It's nice, I'll say that. The Cherry Heering tempers the funk of the kirsch nicely. That said, it's a little flat and a little sweet; next time I'll add a splash of lemon or lime juice to it, just to tart it up a little.

Certainly is un bête beaux, however.

In which I create a drink and name it for a celebrity.

So, on the heels of the "RumDood's Revenge" of the other night, I decided to create another cocktail, but name it after a real celebrity this time. (Sorry, Matt...you're only famous in our mixology circles.) And I figured, who better to name it after than a person who's interest in classic drinks is quite well known. We've already seen David Wondrich name a drink for a broadcaster famous for "truthiness," so let's name one after another newscaster. Ladles and Gentlemints, I give you...

The Maddow Sling

1 oz Plymouth Gin
1/2 oz ginger liqueur (mine's homemade, but Domaine de Canton will work, too)
1/2 oz double-strength Earl Grey Tea
1/4 oz Cherry Heering
1/4 oz 2:1 simple syrup
1/8 teaspoon Fernet Branca
dash orange bitters
2 oz seltzer, to top

Build all except soda over ice in an Old-Fashioned glass. Stir to combine, then top with seltzer.

It's really a nice, subtle drink. Not one-dimensional, lots of flavors in there, but all working together. Ginger naturally pairs with bergamot and tea quite well, so that's the Earl Grey right there, the Cherry Heering brightens the whole thing, and that tiny bit of Fernet Branca adds a little more complexity. I quite like it, and if she's reading this, I hope Rachel Maddow likes it, too.

It's not a drink, per se, but it's got booze in it!

I decided earlier this week to try to make my own ginger extract/liqueur. I haven't tried it yet, but I wanted to document it before I forgot. So here's what I did...

On Monday, I took pretty much the remainder of my bottle of J. Wray and Nephew White Overproof rum, about 300 ml or so, added 2 oz of shaved ginger (unpeeled) and let it sit, covered, but shaking it periodically, until Thursday night, when I added another ounce of crystallized (candied) ginger chunks. I let those sit in there until tonight (Saturday), when I strained it into a clean bottle, mixed up some simple syrup in a 3:4 water:sugar ratio, and poured that in, shaking to combine.

By my back of the envelope calculations, it should still be about 40% alcohol by volume, plenty strong to be shelf stable, There's about 16 or 17 ounces of liqueur in there, so I may try a rye and ginger tonight, and we'll see how it turns out. If it's good, there's be some posts in the future featuring it. If it sucks, well, at least you'll have had some entertainment making this for no good reason whatsoever. Maybe you could use it as a marinade, or something...

EDITED TO ADD: Oh, yeah, that's nice and spicy. That'll be a featured drink soon!

Admit it, after last night's "Colbert Report," you knew this was coming...

I saw it, it was made by one of my cocktail heroes, so I've gotta make it and try it out. I made one substitution out of necessity, but it's still awesome. I give you the drunk custom-made for Stephen Colbert...

The Colbert Bash

1 1/2 oz Plymouth gin
1 oz Cherry Heering
1/4 oz lemon juice (I used lime because I had it on hand, still works)
generous splash of soda water/seltzer

Build first three ingredients over ice in a tall glass, top with seltzer, and gently swizzle to combine.

David Wondrich made this up for Stephen last night on The Colbert Report and it's damned tasty. Here's the footage of Wondrich's appearance:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Colbert Bump Cocktail - David Wondrich
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Tasers

The drink is damned tasty...well balanced, tart but not overly so, light and slightly fizzy from the seltzer, and as red as the blood of the bears that Stephen Colbert has personally wrestled into submission and then skinned. If this catches on, and it should, I'll be a happy man.

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!

No photo tonight, but I will give you a novelty drink!

I came up with this utterly ridiculous drink about 5 years ago, when I was still working at my old restaurant, and we were entertaining the notion of movie nights in the bar. We were thinking about running trilogies every week, and the Star Wars series came up, and we started brainstorming what sorts of drinks we could serve. I suggested one solely for the name, and then we had to figure out what it would consist of. I present to you, the Flaming Wookiee.

Flaming Wookiee
serves two
2 oz amaretto
1 oz orange juice
dash of Angostura bitters

Shake over ice to combine, strain into two shot glasses. Float a layer of overproof rum on top of each shot glass and light.
Encourage patrons to extinguish before drinking.

Sometimes you've just got to cut loose, make a goofy drink and make no apologies. What would've been really bad is if we devised a "Flaming Anakin."

EDIT! A dear friend, code name "Earl," has pointed out a perfect confluence of events surrounding this drink. Not only are Star Wars Weekends occurring presently at Disney's Hollywood Studios park in Orlando, but we're also coming up on Gay Days in the Florida parks. "Flaming Wookie" is the PERFECT drink for the festivities! Drink up, me hearties, yo ho!

Another experiment...don't ya love 'em?

In the spirit of last night's "drink all the rye whiskey because we need the empty bottle" entry, tonight we've got a "drink all of the mini bottle of Grand Marnier because we need that empty bottle too" entry.

It may seem exceedingly peculiar to flash back to childhood when thinking about alcoholic beverages (unless you're a former child star, in which case it's expected, really), but I was thinking about Kool-Aid. Purplesaurus Rex, to be precise. That was, if I recall correctly, artificial grape and artificial lemon flavors. I was thinking about similarly unlikely combinations, and settled upon this:

Blueberry Cordial
1 heaping tablespoonful frozen wild blueberries (my local Costco carries Wyman's brand, which are superb)
3/4 oz Grand Marnier
1 1/2 oz London dry gin
1 dash Peychaud's bitters

Shake all with ice, let stand 30-60 seconds, shake again. Double strain into a small cordial glass.

There's really nothing that can match the flavor of wild blueberries. It's almost a flavor avatar of summer...that sweet, tart, musky, and above all, blue flavor that coats your tongue is unmistakable, and impossible to replicate. I used the orange notes of the Grand Marnier to emphasize the tartness of the berries, the Peychaud's to compliment their fruitiness, and the gin's botanicals to augment the "wild" nature of the berries. I'm very happy to say that it's a success...you get an emphatically blueberry experience in this drink, but one with a bit of depth and subtlety to it. I'm very pleased with how this turned out. If you have access to wild blueberries, try this one out and see what you think.

We got to move these refrigerators, we got to move these color Tee-Vees!

I pledged that I'd bring in a couple empty bottles as props in the show I’m doing. The only problem is that at the moment, I have no empty bottles. Only one thing to do!

They need a whiskey bottle, and I can oblige that with an empty of rye whiskey. In order to have that ready to go, I'm going to make a simple drink, but a good one. It's called the Approve Cocktail, and it's very easy to make. Three ingredients, a shake, a strain and you've just used up 3 oz of rye. Here we go!

Approve Cocktail

3 oz rye whiskey (or Canadian Club, if you prefer)
2 dashes Angostura bitters
2 dashes curaçao (Cointreau could be used here)

Shake all with ice and strain into a wineglass (well-chilled, if possible).

Lest there be any doubt, this is very much a sipping drink! While you've added a few aromatic notes with the bitters and the curaçao, it's still pretty much ice cold whiskey. Which is wonderful, don't get me wrong! You get the added spice flavors from the bitters and a tiny bit of bitter orange from the Contreau, and it really serves the rye well. I'd almost think, if you've got orange bitters on hand, that swapping a dash of Angostura for a dash of orange would improve it further, bringing the orange flavor to the forefront a bit more. All in all, not a bad libation. There's certainly bound to be worse ways to dispose of rye whiskey. I endorse, recommend, advocate, and yes, approve of this cocktail.

Yellow journalism, red drink.

William Randolph Hearst was a newspaper magnate who never let the facts stand in the way of a good story. He's got a drink named after him already, though, so we'll move along. One of his enduring legacies, however, was "yellow journalism," wherein legitimate news was soft-pedaled, and attention-grabbing, sensational headlines were elevated to above the fold. Perhaps the most egregious example was how the unverified (and as yet unproven) assertion that the USS Maine exploded in Havana harbor due to a bomb or torpedo, an assertion which helped to touch off the Spanish-American War. A popular rallying cry became "Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain!" Not terribly clever, but catchy. So much so, it seems, that "Remember the Maine" became the name of a cocktail. And it tastes pretty good, too.

Remember the Maine

2 oz Bourbon whiskey (or rye, which I prefer)
3/4 oz sweet vermouth
1/4 oz Cherry Heering
dash of Pernod
2 dashes of Angostura bitters

Stir all with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Between the spiciness of the rye, the sweetness of the vermouth, the back of the throat tartness of the Heering, and the anise notes of the Pernod, you've got a lot going on in this drink. Happily, the elements work pretty harmoniously, as long as you don't overdo the Pernod. I wouldn't make a habit of drinking this every day, but it's one to keep in mind for an occasional tipple, especially when you want something a little different.

Should've saved this one for Columbus Day...

I have a whole slew of cocktail blogs that I read. Mostly for fun and enlightenment, but occasionally I'll poach a drink from them for later use. This one comes courtesy of "batgirl," a participant in the weekly "Thursday Drink Night" over at the Mixoloseum. It's a complex, but ultimately quite tasty little (ok, not so little) concoction called the Columbus Rum Sling.

Columbus Rum Sling

1 oz Appleton XO rum (I didn't have it on hand, so I mixed equal parts of Bacardi 8 and Coruba)
1/2 oz Myers rum (I subbed Cruzan Blackstrap rum)
1/2 oz London dry gin
1/2 oz Cherry Heering
1/2 oz Cointreau
1/2 oz lemon juice
1/4 oz simple syrup
1/4 oz ginger syrup (I used my ginger beer base)

Shake all with ice, strain, and top with tonic water. Garnish with grated nutmeg.

Holy Ferdinand is this thing good. It's also huge and strong, but good. There's so many things going on here that it's really impossible to pick any one element out, but it's tremendously satisfying.

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!

I love happy accidents in the lab.

Last night I was playing around with Tiki drinks, because I just got this nifty little iPod Touch app called Tiki+ (link opens in iTunes), which features more than 150 tiki drinks that Jeff "Beachbum" Berry has dug up over the years. So I was looking through them for inspiration, and, well, I wound up going a little "mad scientist," what with a dash of this and a little of that, and just generally experimenting. And I'll be frank, sometimes when I just mix stuff together, it really really sucks. But sometimes you can surprise yourself, and I'm delighted to report that this was one of those times.

And, since I made it up, I got to name it, which is one of my favorite parts of the process. So, since it's just some random thing, I went with the Hawaiian pidgin equivalent of "whatchamacallit," which is "da kine" (it's been described as "the word you use when you don't use the word")

Da Kine Cocktail

1/2 oz pimento dram
1/4 oz falernum
1/4 oz orgeat syrup
dash of vanilla extract
juice of 1/2 lime
slice of lemon
1 oz white Puerto Rican rum (I used Bacardi)
1 oz dark Barbados rum (I used Gosling's Black Seal)
dash of orange bitters

Combine all ingredients in shaker with lots of crushed ice, squeeze in the lemon juice and drop in the slice, and shake well. Pour, unstrained, over the juiced lime half, into a favorite Tiki mug, or boring old glass.

Brok'da mout*, da buggah is ono**! This turned out to be a great drink in the spirit of all the Tiki drinks it drew inspiration from...sweet, sour, full of spice, complex in character. Oooh, man. You gotta make this. Drink more than a couple of 'em, though, and you'll be pau***!

*"Brok'da mout" = "It's so good, it broke my mouth"
**"Da buggah is ono" = "This wicked little thing is delicious"
*** "pau" = "done" or "finished"

"I don't know, I made it up, I made it up!"

Much like elementary school students, or Agador in "The Birdcage," if I'm faced with the need to post an entry and no idea what to feature, I just make something up. Happily, the drink I came up with is much more palatable than Agador's "Sweet and Sour Peasant Soup." And it does not feature chreemps shrimps.

Halema'uma'u Cooler

1 1/4 oz London Dry gin
1/4 oz grenadine
1/2 oz triple sec
1/2 oz Maraschino
1/2 oz lime juice
1/8 tsp homemade spice extract
dash of Angostura bitters
tonic water

Combine all except the tonic water with ice in a shaker, shake to mix well, strain into a small tumbler with one solitary ice cube. Top up with tonic water, garnish with a thin bit of orange twist.

I was struggling for a name to put to this one, so I reached back in my mind to a decade ago when I visited Hawai'i. Most of my time was spent on Oahu, but I did visit the Big Island and nose around Volcano National Park. This was before Kilauea had started erupting regularly again, and I was able to hop around the caldera, and look straight down into the Halema'uma'u Crater, home to Pele, goddess of fire in the Hawai'ian tradition. I remembered that they used to have a Volcano House drink (a hot buttered rum) at the overlook before the lodge went dry (likely when it became part of the National Park) and it turns out I lifted a couple elements of that (Maraschino and some spice) without even realizing it. I basically started out planning some variant on a gin and tonic. I threw in a little triple sec, a little lime, a little bitters, and a little grenadine for color, the aforementioned Maraschino and spice, and Aia hoʻi! Turned out to be quite a nice sipping drink, ideal for looking out over the caldera (assuming you smuggle it into the park in a hip flask, or something). Just watch out for the erupting magma. And Agador's seafood chowder, come to think of it.

Hey gang, long time no see!

So...I'm into rehearsals, and the play is going to be awesome. But you're not here for news about my theatrical career, you're here for drinks! And to oblige, I'm offering a tiki drink, from Don the Beachcomber's vault, way back in 1941. It's called the Test Pilot, and it's made as follows:

Test Pilot

1/2 oz fresh lime juice
1/2 oz falernum (use a scant 1/2 oz if homemade like mine)
1 tablespoon Cointreau
dash of Angostura bitters
1/8 teaspoon Pernod
3/4 oz light Puerto Rican or Cuban (-style) rum (I cheated this a bit and used Pyrat XO Reserve)
1 1/2 oz dark Jamaican rum (cheated this a little, too, and used Gosling's Black Seal)

Blend all with 1 cup of crushed ice for 5 seconds, then pour it into a double old-fashioned glass. Add a little more crushed ice to fill, and garnish as you like, though a cherry is pretty much all you need.

Now I know you're all going "a blender drink?!" And usually I'm not crazy about blender drinks, because they make noise and are a pain to clean up after, and generally imply that you're going to take inferior ingredients and make a liquor-filled smoothie out of them. However, it is possible to have good blender drinks, and the Test Pilot is a stellar example of one. First off...it's COLD. Which is always good. Secondly, you've gotten a little bit more air in there, and made some of the more inaccessible flavors open up a tiny bit. Third, you've got tiny bits of ice melting all at once, helping to dilute the drink...and it needs it...there's a fair amount of liquor in this puppy. The bitters and Pernod sort of skulk around like good little henchmen, making you aware that something's there, but not really identifying themselves. The two rums, the falernum, the Cointreau and the lime all chime in at various points, making for a tremendously complex but ultimately awesome drink. Do take it out for a spin, won't you?

Strike, yer colors, ye brazen wench! No, not you, mom...

Ah, Mother's Day, when mom's everywhere endure crowded restaurants filled with grumpy children (of all ages), sub-par brunches, and mimosas made with cheap champagne. I know it's the thought that counts, but I just can't stand the thought of enduring all of that just to show mom that she's important to me...she might get the wrong idea and think that I harbor a secret desire to torture her. I'm sure the Geneva Convention prohibits some of the conditions you can find in many restaurants on Mother's Day. Then again, my mom just like sweet rolls, coffee, and the paper. Must be a Midwest thing.

And speaking of Midwest things (how's THAT for a segue?!), this latest drink is inspired by a recipe from a Milwaukee-based music journalist, one that I found in Beachbum Berry's Intoxica!, a great source for all sorts of exotic drinks. I just swapped in two different varieties of rum and added some orange bitters. The interesting thing is, in it's original incarnation, The Marlin, as it was called, was blue. However, with the rums I used, it darkened and tended rather more towards green. So since I changed the rums and changed the color, I figured I'd change the name, too.

El Pirata Y el Perico

1/2 oz fresh lemon juice
1/2 oz fresh lime juice
1/2 oz Maraschino liqueur
1/2 oz orgeat syrup
1/2 oz blue curaçao (or use a good triple sec and add a little blue food dye)
2 dashes orange bitters
1 oz Pyrat XO Reserve rum
1 oz Gosling's Black Seal rum

Shake all with ice, and strain into an Old-Fashioned glass or snifter filled with crushed ice.

I'll admit it, I geeked out a bit and named the drink after a spot at Walt Disney World, an eatery that's closed as often as not. But it's got a great name, and considering its meaning ("The Pirate and the Parrot") it fits with this drink, as well. I mean, rum and tiki elements and as green as a parrot? Yeah, that works!

In terms of flavor, the lemon and lime do a great job of balancing out the sweetness of the orgeat, the Maraschino similarly baffles the tastebuds (in a good way, of course) and the two different styles of rum really add a lot of depth. If you wanted to experiment a little more, you could add maybe an ounce and a half of a good strong ginger beer or ginger ale to it...might make things even more spicy and delicious. Really, half the fun of modifying recipes is trying variations on them.

I'm my own grandpaw!

There's a drink that inspired the Martini, but looks like a Manhattan. It tastes like the illegitimate lovechild of both, though it predates at least one. And it's got another funny name. Well, funny for a cocktail, anyway. Ladles and Jellyspoons, meet the Martinez!

Martinez

1 1/2 oz gin
1 1/2 oz sweet vermouth
2 barspoons Maraschino liqueur
2 dashes orange bitters

Stir all ingredients well with ice, strain into cocktail glass. Garnish with orange twist and a flamed orange peel (if desired, but highly recommended)

As you may expect, it's a sweeter drink than the Martini, and not as knock-you-on-your-butt as a Manhattan. It's a well behaved little thing. That said, it's also not as boring as you might imagine. The botanicals in the gin complement the orange really well, especially the caramelized notes a flamed orange peel add, and the Maraschino's "funk" keeps it from being a one-note song. If you've got a small-batch gin, or one that's distilled with some unusual botanicals, I'd recommend using it in here...it'll make it a lot more interesting. If you want to play around with proportions, go for it...one of the earliest guides for this drink calls for sweet vermouth to gin in a 2:1 ratio! A little sweet for modern tastes, but tasty in it's own right. But don't settle for your grandfather's version...make it your own.

Drinks that should suck but don't

Much as bumblebees continue to confound all known laws of aerodynamics by not only bumbling this way and that but by actually becoming airborne in the first place, so too are there drinks that you'd think would taste truly vile, but manage to surprise you. Thus, a good rule of cocktails (and gastronomy in general) is "don't knock it til you've tried it." I offer tonight's drink, the Argentina Cocktail, as an illustration.

Picture, if you will, a 1:1 gin martini, that is, equal measures of gin and dry vermouth (purists should already be cringing). Add a quarter as much each of Cointreau and Benedictine, and a dash each of orange and Angostura bitters. Chill, and serve, garnished with an orange twist. Horrified yet? OK, now taste it.

Not bad, eh? In fact, it'll probably grow on you. It's another one of those drinks that sounds lousy on paper (or on screen) but has the potential to pleasantly surprise you. The dryness of the gin and vermouth sort of tempers the sweetness of the Benedictine, but the different herbal blends in each play quite nicely. The orange bitters and the Cointreau also complement each other, and the Angostura bitters just adds a few more spice notes to it. It's definitely a sweeter drink than some I've featured, but it stays just on this side of cloying. All in all, it's quite the pleasant tipple. Theoretically you shake and strain and serve it up in a cocktail glass, but I like serving some on the rocks, just to be contrary.

Argentina Cocktail

1 1/2 oz gin (the drier, the better)
1 1/2 oz dry vermouth
3/8 oz Cointreau or other good triple sec/white curaçao
3/8 oz Benedictine
dash orange bitters
dash Angostura bitters

Shake all ingredients well with ice, strain into cocktail glass. Or, to be difficult, pour unstrained into a glass of your choosing.