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…
Salt Lake City has quietly become a fantastic place to drink. Who would ever have expected these words to appear in print? The city’s restrictive and byzantine liquor laws have historically made Utah a tough place to imbibe, but these codes are slowly relaxing and a solid core of legitimate cocktail programs have emerged over…
The AFFINITY COCKTAIL replaces the dry and sweet vermouth of the AFFINITY with dry sherry and port. The Internet knows nothing about this particular variation, although FinestCall.com says: “Incorporating sherry or port into a Manhattan adds tremendous body, depth of flavor and complexity to the drink. Port is a sensational replacement for sweet vermouth. On the…
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…
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…