Marie Galante

 

Marie Galante is not a person, its a place. A small Island in the French Caribbean that cultivates sugar and is famous for a chateau and windmills that used to operate on the estate. 

While this is a rum and grapefruit cocktail, it is  La Grande Passion that sets it apart from other drinks of similar design. It is at once exotic and very French. I like how elegant this cocktail is; it has a way of being unexpectedly bright and otherworldly in its look and flavor, as quality French spirits have a tendency to be. 

• 1 1/2 oz. light rum (Plantation 3-Stars used)
• 1/2 oz. triple sec
• 1 oz. grapefruit juice
• 1/2 oz. La Grande Passion
• 1/8 grapefruit slice optional

Combine liquid ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with grapefruit slice if using fresh grapefruit.

China

 

I've made the Chinese Cocktail, which is also a red cocktail that is made with dark rum, colored with grenadine, and spiced with Angostura bitters. This is a little different and I think I might like it a little better if only because passion fruit really makes this cocktail pop. In fact, it is the only difference between the China and Chinese cocktails, and it is probably the only Asian ingredients. Of course I used my homemade La Grande Passion liqueur because it is hard to find passion fruit nectar right now. I kept the proportions the same, however, with the passion fruit flavor of my liqueur being strong enough--maybe even stronger than actual passion fruit nectar or juice.

Rum, for some reason, is the principal spirit in China-themed cocktails, including the Shanghai Cocktail that also includes grenadine to make it a flag-red color. Angostura bitters is full of Asian spices like clove, cinnamon, allspice and exotic barks. It tastes like Chinese five-spice mix!  Anise, in the case of the Pernod in the Shanghai Cocktail, is also a very Chinese flavor, so that also seems appropriate. I'm glad that I've been able to try all three of these very similar cocktails.

• 2 oz. dark rum (Pusser's used)
• 1 oz. curacao (triple sec used)
• 1/2 oz. passion fruit juice (homemade La Grande Passion used)
• several dashes grenadine
• several dashes Angostura bitters

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

Port Light

This is one of those majestic tasting cocktails that are only possible with highly specialized ingredients like La Grande Passion and honey whiskey. Of course, I make a lot of my own ingredients, so what you see here is a cocktail made almost entirely from my knocked off spirits collection. And honey whiskey isn't a requirement at all. The recipe I'm providing allows you to use hone and whiskey separately.

The advantage of honey whiskey for a bartender, however, is huge. Honey is very hard to work with in an environment where you cannot easily produce heat. Now that I'm mostly bartending in my kitchen, I have electrical burners. But you won't often see a bar where the bartender heats up something before adding it to a drink, which is what you have to do when you use honey.

Cold honey becomes a chunk of sugar when you shake it on ice. It gets left behind in the shaker and the drink comes out too tart. That is why honey whiskey exists in the first place. You skip a step when building a drink if you don't have to add hot water to your honey. And there are a lot of honey whiskey products out there--Irish Mist being my longtime favorite. But get your own bottle of whiskey and add two tablespoons of honey to it and let that expand into the spirit. You'll have your own infinitely more drinkable (if it was cheap) whiskey and a go-to sweetener to boot.

• 2 oz. bourbon (or honey whiskey)
• 1/2 oz. La Grande Passion
• 1/2 oz. honey (50:50 mixed with hot water if you don't have honey whiskey)
• 1 oz. lemon juice
• 1/2 egg white (or double the recipe, make two and drink them both)
• several mint sprigs

Combine liquid ingredients including egg white in a shaker with cracked ice. Shake vigorously and pour into Collins glass. Garnish with mint.

Grand Passion

I've seen this name before, referring to La Grande Passion passionfruit liqueur, but this is the first time I've seen it done this way: no juices and a heavy helping of gin. Unfortunately a dry and spicy gin competes with the soft armagnac and passion fruit flavors. To make it worse, Angostura bitters have such a strong baking spice blast that you have to try very hard to detect passion fruit.

I'd like to try different variations of this cocktail: one that uses an Old Tom gin and some kind of citrus bitters. That might take care of the balance problem that I found. Another trick might be to increase the la Grande Passion proportion, maybe invert it to two-to-one passion fruit to gin. For now I am going to post the recipe and encourage everyone to adjust it to your preference.

• 2 oz. gin
• 1 oz. la Grande Passion
• several dashes Angostura bitters

Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass with ice. Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. 

Michael's Passion

I want this to be a Saint cocktail. In my view, not enough saints have a cocktail named after them. Putting the name Michael and the word passion together just suggests a holy experience for the drinker, ala Bach's St. Michael's Passion. Instead, the cocktail is most likely named after some guy in a bar somewhere, as they usually are. The drink itself doesn't disappoint, however.

The spiciness of dry vermouth and gin in such high proportion really tamps down La Grande Passion's passion fruit bitter tang. That is alright, when the liqueur adds a balanced, sweet richness. The color, as you can see, is amazing, as well.

La Grande Passion is a French spirit that is no longer on the market. I made my own knockoff with real passion fruit, armagnac, sugar and chocolate.

• 2 oz. gin (MurLarkey ImaGination gin used)
• 1 oz. La Grande Passion 
• 1 oz. dry vermouth
• orange twist

Combine all ingredients except orange peel in a mixing glass with ice.  Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Twist the orange peel over the drink and drop it in.

Colloden Cheer (Revisited)

I'm returning to this rich passion fruit cocktail because I now have La Grande Passion, a liqueur that used to be made by Grand Marnier. I should say that I made La Grande Passion, because the armagnac and fruit liqueur is pretty much unavailable. My original attempt at this cocktail was with a syrup made with passion fruit and brandy. This is much closer to the real deal.

• 1 oz. Scotch (Highland Park Spirit of the Bear used)
• 1 oz. dry sherry (Lustau fino used)
• 1/2 oz. lemon juice
• 1/2 oz/ La Grande Passion (homemade liqueur used)

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

Bubbling Passion

This sparkling wine cocktail is the passionfruit edition of of a Kir Royale! It uses the now extinct la Grande Passion liqueur that Grand Marnier used to make. In this resurected drink, the passionfruit comes through the bubbles even better than cassis, and you can even taste the chocolate notes--not bad for an easy bubbles cocktail.

• 1 1/2 oz. la Grande Passion liqueur
• sparkling wine or champagne
• lemon twist

Pour la Grande Passion into a chilled champagne flute and top with sparkling wine or Champagne. Twist lemon peel over the glass and drop it in.

Apassionata

Another French/Florida cocktail, the Apassionata is a blended drink using grapefruit juice, a nutty liqueur and the now extinct La Grande Passion. It has all the mistique of exotic fruits like passion fruit and grapefruit juice (the forbidden fruit of the new world) all in a setting where the legendary fountain of youth was rumored to be hidden--the Spanish colony of Florida.

• 1 1/2 oz. La Grande Passion
• 3/4 oz. amaretto
• 4 oz. grapefruit juice
• maraschino cherry

Combine liquid ingredients in a blender with cracked ice. Flash blend and pour into a chilled wine goblet. Garnish with cherry. 

La Grande Passion Cocktail

This is the signature cocktail of La Grande Passion, a passion fruit liqueur designed by Grand Marnier as a specialty item back in the 1990s. It didn't sell well and was costly to make, but La Grande Passion appeared in classic and tropical recipes in cocktail books published in the two or so years that it was on the market.

I've recreated as closely as possible the original recipe, keeping in mind that Grand Marnier's recipe is a product of distillation and not infusion. Still, a strong infusion and careful straining and sweetening can copy such a meticulously crafted distilled spirit. More on how to make this spirit later. First the cocktail recipe:

• 1 1/2 oz. La Grande Passion
• 1 oz. Grand Marnier
• juice of 1/2 a lemon
• sugar syrup to taste (optional and proportionate to the size of the lemon)

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

Now for the La Grande Passion recipe:

• 10 passion fruits
• armagnac
• 1 oz. dark chocolate shavings
• 1/2 cup sugar syrup

Add the seeds and pulp of 10 passion fruits to a large jar and fill the jar with a quality armagnac like Larressingle. Shave chocolate into the jar and store it in a dark and cool place for 30 days.

Strain the passion fruit and chocolate out of the infusion with cheese cloth, then strain out the smaller particles by pouring the infusion through a coffee filter.

Cook a 1:1 white sugar simple syrup and allow it to cool. Add 1/2 sugar syrup, stir and seal for 15 more days. (At this point you can transfer the infusion to a bottle for storage.)