Beginning of the End (Difford's Guide)

 

This wonderfully balanced cocktail combines some of my favorite things: aged rum, sherry, sweet vermouth and Amer Picon. The rum might not be spiced, but the cocktail is with vermouth, amaro, and flamed orange peel--it makes for the perfect winter sipper.

One of the new ingredients on my bar is George Bowamn dark Caribbean rum from the Bowman Distillery in Fredricksburg, Virginia. This rum has a great small batch, island produced flavor that really works well with American colonial-style cocktails. Rum, sherry, a quinine spirit to ward off malaria--these ingredients, taken from all over the world, came together in America through colonial trade and make up the flavor profile of our nation's cocktail history.

This is a Difford's Guide recipe that plays on the Fin de Siecle, or "End of The World," a classic cocktail with similar proportions of ingredients but uses gin instead of aged rum. 

• 1 1/2 oz. aged dark rum (George Bowman used)
• 1/2 oz. Antica formula vermouth (Cocchi di Torino used)  
• 1/3 oz. Amer Picon (homemade used)
• 1/3 oz. Oloroso sherry
• flamed orange peel garnish

Combine liquid ingredients in a mixing glass with ice. Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. To flame the orange peel, cut a piece of orange zest. While holding a flame over the drink, squeeze the zest to release oils onto the flame to produce a flash and burnt orange oil fregrance. 

 

Stars And Stripes

This is another Pousse-Cafe layered drink. It is actually one of the easier ones to do and I might recommend it as an introduction to making Pousse-Cafe. That is because the ingredients are all very different and tend to stack with the help of a half-teaspoon measuring spoon.

The problem I had is that the recipe is wrong, and I knew it before I started. To get a red-white-and-blue cocktail for Independence Day or President's day celebration, you need to have the cream in the middle. But cream is fatty and I already knew it was lighter than both other liqueurs that have so much sugar in them. So after trying and failing at the recipe, I did it again in the order shown below. This might make a better drink for Bastille day, but at least it works.

• 3/4  oz. Cherry Heering
• 3/4 oz. blue curacao
• 3/4 oz. half-and-half

Pour each layer carefully over the back of a measuring spoon into a Pousse-Cafe glass so that they remain on separate layers. Refrigerate for a half hour before serving.

Ten-Gallon Cocktail

Break out your big hats, 'cause we're off to the rodeo with the Ten-Gallon Cocktail. This is one among many cow and cowboy cocktails that involve coffee liqueur. But I'm not convinced that the Ten-Gallon is a dessert drink just because there's egg white.

If you have your own infusion of coffee and spirits, this is the time to use it. Kahlua is too sweet and you need bold coffee flavor here.

MurLarkey coffee whiskey is a cold brew of coffee and white whiskey. There's no added sugar so you can control for that. Use MurLarkey coffee whiskey with at most a half teaspoon of sugar. The sweet vermouth takes care of the rest. And again, Imagination gin is here because too much juniper would make this drink British. It's not. So drink American gin.

• 2 oz. gin (Imagination gin used)
• 1 oz. coffee liqueur (MurLarkey coffee whiskey used)
• 1 oz. sweet vermouth (Cocchi de Torino used)
• 1 egg white
• 1/2 tsp. sugar optional

Combine all ingredients in a blender with ice. (Alternatively try shaking with crushed ice.) Blend and pour into a chilled Old Fashioned glass. 

Columbia

There's little of South America about this cocktail. Rather, I choose to see it as a drink honoring the discovery of the New World, if not Washington D.C., which I'm pretty sure it is not for the latter.

Therefore, American brandy was called for. I appreciate that this drink had some lemon acidity but vermouth and brandy kept things on the sweet and boozy side.

• 2 oz. brandy (Christian Brothers VSOP used)
• 1 oz. sweet vermouth (Cocchi di Torino used)
• 1 tbsp. lemon juice
• 1 tsp. grenadine
• dash Angostura bitters

Combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.