AMERICAN BEAUTY .75 oz. brandy (Pierre Ferrand cognac) .75 oz. dry vermouth (Dolin) .75 oz. orange juice .25 oz. white crème de menthe (Tempus Fugit) 1 oz. port (Taylor Fladgate 10-year-old Tawny Porto) A few drops of grenadine Brian: Check out this laundry list of ingredients: vermouth, brandy, orange juice, port, grenadine! Eric: That sounds…
KITCHEN SINK: A PLAY IN FOUR ACTS ACT III “AMERICAN BEAUTY” A cold feeling of hopelessness descends upon the two men in the kitchen. Or maybe it’s just the advancing chill of night as the sun retreats behind the earth. The counter is littered with bottles and spent fruit. One man recites the next recipe…
The ALLIES cocktail relates to World War I with the English, French, and Russians representing the Triple Entente. The recipe uses English gin, French vermouth, and Russian kümmel. The naming of this cocktail works wonderfully but does it taste good? ALLIES 1 oz. gin 1 oz. dry vermouth (Dolin) 1-2 dashes kümmel (Combier) Combine with ice;…
Many sources reachingly attribute the ALLEGHENY cocktail to the brave-hearted pioneer slog over the great Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania. Along the way these pioneers picked blackberries and lemons and then added them to the glorious bourbon they distilled after they settled. Or something like that. By the way, my father loves to ridicule people from…
This week’s recipes require two new ingredients: blackberry flavored brandy and Russian kümmel. Both of these items have the potential to sit ignored on my shelf for years to come and it’s no surprise I can feel my feet dragging behind me these days. Can’t we just skip these drinks or make some intelligent substitutions…
Let’s consider the ALGONQUIN, named after the Manhattan hotel that hosted the celebrated gang of literary drinkers Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Harold Ross, Edna Ferber, Harpo Marx, Heywood Broun, and others, for most of the Roaring 20s. The Algonquin Round Table is the subject of the underappreciated 1994 Alan Rudolph art film, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious…
The ALFONSO SPECIAL has some good things going for it in the naming department. Brian may disagree—he has written about cocktail naming before—but I think it the Alfonso Special gets points for having an interesting person or place featured in the name and I like the traditional nature of the “special”, which of course makes one…
One thing this Rituals project has taught me is that a cocktail’s name is actually important. Previously, it didn’t matter much whether the drink was called an Attaboy or a You’re Gonna Get It or a Ronda Rousey (all fictional, by the way). The ingredients were there to speak for themselves, right? Who cared what…
The AFFINITY is a Perfect Rob Roy for somebody with a vermouth fetish. A Rob Roy is a Manhattan with Scotch, and a Perfect Rob Roy divides the normal sweet vermouth allocation into equal parts sweet and dry vermouths. But while a proper Perfect Rob Roy usually combines 2 parts Scotch with 1 part vermouth (half dry and…
The ADONIS was created by New York City’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in 1884 to promote a long-running burlesque show called, well, “Adonis.” Punchdrink.com says “Adonis” is often credited as the first-ever Broadway musical, which makes this cocktail’s history pretty special. Finally, a cocktail with a pedigree. This is our first encounter with a sherry-based cocktail, however, and we are,…
Tonight’s session is a low-stakes affair, with only three cocktails on the schedule: the ADONIS, the AFFINITY, and the AFFINITY COCKTAIL. There is port to be purchased and there is dry sherry to be purchased, and once again we are confronted with the utter foolishness of this endeavor. We buy bottle after bottle of obscure…
ADMIRAL COCKTAIL 1 oz. Bourbon (Grass Widow) 1.5 oz. Dry Vermouth (Dolin) .5 Lemon Combine with ice; shake. Strain. Squeeze in the lemon’s juice, stir, and drop in the peel. Add ice. Why is this a drink!? You cannot taste the booze. I might as well eat a lemon and take a shot of booze….
Previously on the Rituals: We dutifully marched through the ADDINGTON (a nothing drink) and the ADIOS AMIGOS (a worse-than-nothing drink) without feeling any sense of life fulfillment. But we still need to meet the Admiral—or three creepy versions of the Admiral, anyway, like some boozy version of The Prestige. So, like gluttons for punishment, we soldier on to…
We have all had bad liquor at some point in our lives. When you were young what was the first booze you tasted? Peach schnapps? Communion wine? In college you didn’t go out and buy Jewel of Russia vodka or Bambu rum to make jungle juice. No you went and bought whatever was the cheapest….
ADDINGTON 1.5 oz Sweet Vermouth (Carpano Antica) 1.5 oz Dry Vermouth (Dolin) Club Soda (Q) Combine everything (except the club soda) with ice and shake. Strain; add ice and club soda. Add a twist of lemon plus the peel. To look at the recipe you would never know the complex subtlety of this drink. At…
Prohibition was a double-edged sword. Organized crime and bootlegging were bad for the United States but they were great for the world of cocktails. Would we have the cocktails we have now if there was no Prohibition? Questionable. If I had a DeLorean that could take me back in time to the days of Prohibition…