19th Century (Death & Co. Recipe)

 

Trying to encapsulate a century in a cocktail sounds like a difficult task, but not when you consider that France made the cocktail what it is today before the 20th century. As spirits moved from punches of port and rum to single servings of cognac and whiskey mixed with juices and liqueurs, the French contributed with aromatized wines and cremes. 

This recipe works with Byrrh, Dubonet Rouge. or Lillet Rouge--all are brilliant ruby wines bittered up with quinine and citrus. These wine spirits give drinks their tannin traction on the tongue where otherwise they would feel extremely silky (which isn't always a bad thing.) 

Creme de cacao is more of a sweetener, but it adds a candy chocolate depth that makes the overall experience less acidic and better rounded.

• 1 1/2 oz. bourbon (Ancient Age used)
  
• 3/4 oz. Lillet Rouge (or other French red aromitized wine) 
• 3/4 oz. white creme de cacao
• 3/4 oz. lemon juice

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

Crazy Crossing

 

This beauty of a cocktail is intentionally French. It calls for Dubonnet rouge, which is an aromatized wine from Paris, but having none, I intentionally went with another French aromatized wine that fits the bill--Byrrh.

I've mixed with Byrrh before and found it a little softer than Dubonnet, and a little less fruity. All the fuss about it being made with many kinds of quinine botanicals seems overplayed. Byrrh is mild and floral and adds a lovely rouge color as well.

This is the first time I've mixed with Citadelle gin from France, and I have to say it has such a fresh botanical scent and flavor. Eighteen botanicals puts it in league with the Botonist from Scotland or Glendalough gin from Ireland, and it has that same kind of freshness I associate with the UK gins. I don't know if Citadelle is unfiltered, but I would assume that its brightness comes from not filtering away the brightest juniper and citrus notes.

The cocktail? This is a very French version of a Martinez. An impressive gin and several kinds of sweet and dry vermouth as well as Mandarine Napoleon to give it rich cognac and spiced mandarin orange notes instead of using orange bitters. In fact, it is a Martinez down to the maraschino liqueur, which I love.

• 1 1/2 oz. gin (Citadelle used)
• 3/4 oz. Dubonnet rouge (Byrrh used)
  
• 3/4 oz. dry vermouth (Dolin used)
• 1/3 oz. maraschino liqueur (Luxardo used)
• 1/12 Mandarine Napoleon (homemade used)
• maraschino cherry (Bada Bing used)

Combine liquid ingredients in a mixing glass with ice. Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a speared cherry. 

Princess Marina

 

This classy cocktail is named after the princess of Greece and Denmark who married England's Prince George in 1934 to become the Duchess of Kent. The drink combines Scandinavian and British spirits in a sort of homage. It is also imbued with sweet and bitter fruit flavors from apple brandy and orange spirits.

Light orange notes and citrus spices characterize this cocktail. It is rich and thick, with lots of wine and herbal traction from gin, Swedish punsch's clove and cardamon, and Dubonnet Rouge's bitter oranges. Despite that, there is a lightness with whiffs of citrus zest and sweet oranges in the triple sec. It is a royal treat and one I imagine few have had the pleasure of enjoying. 

• 1 oz. dry gin (homemade used)
• 1/2 oz. calvados (Laird's Applejack 86 used)
• 1/2 oz. Dubonnet Rouge
• 1/2 oz. Swedish punsch (homemade used)
• 1/2 oz. triple sec
• orange zest twist

Combine liquid ingredients in a mixing glass with ice. Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Twist the orange zest over the glass and drop it in.

Oom Paul

 

I'm so glad I chose this egg-shaped glass for this lovely aperitif cocktail. I had no idea that an Oom Paul was a style of smoking pipe: picture the curved bowl of Sherlock Holmes' pipe that he smokes while working a case. 

Applejack and Dubonnet Rouge are a perfect match and appear together in many cocktails. This drink really doubles down on that fact--highlighting the apple flavor of both spirits and accenting them with the cinnamon and clove of Angostura bitters. It is like drinking pie. Despite that, the drink isn't so much overly sweet as it is rich. Some of the earthy herbs of the Dubonnet still stick out, but for the most part the drink is balanced, dry and good for before or after dinner, perhaps while smoking pipe in your smoking jacket.

• 1 oz. applejack or calvados (Laird's Applejack 86 used)
• 1 oz. Dubonnet Rouge
• several dashes of Angostura bitters

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

Escoffier Cocktail

 

This cocktail is named after the famous French chef school started by Auguste Escoffier. The concept is simplicity and elegance, like French cuisine. A lot of French cocktails, made for cafe sipping, are pro-forma calvados or apple brandy mixed with some aperitif wine, and this is no exception. Laird's Applejack 86 is as rich as any apple brandy. And while it doesn't have that dry French oak whiff of Normandy calvados, there's nothing wrong with mixing it with Dubonnet rouge and bittering it up with Angostura. 

• 1 1/2 oz. apple brandy or calvados (Applejack 86 used)
• 3/4 Cointreau (triple sec used)
• 3/4 Dubonnet rouge
• dash Angostura bitters
• maraschino cherry (Bada Bing cherry used)

 Combine liquid ingredients in a mixing glass with ice. Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with the cherry. 

Mobay Cocktail

 

This is another one of those internationally-styled club cocktails like the Clover Club or Pendennis Club. These cocktails tend to be brightly colored and easy to consume. They virtually advertise themselves at the clubs and advertise for the clubs when ordered elsewhere. 

The name comes from Mobay Club on Montego Bay, but there's not much of the beach involved here. No tropical fruits, no wild island-themed garnishes--besides the Jamaican rum, this cocktail is strikingly French. There's the mistakable ruby color of Dubonnet rouge and the rich candied orange flavor or Grand Marnier--a favorite ingredient of clubs and hotels worldwide. 

The only substitutions I've made (and they are minor) is that I'm using Pusser's dark rum instead of something from Jamaica, and that I use Royal Combier (another French orange cognac liqueur) instead of Grand Marnier. As my last drink of the day, I found it overly rich, however. I'm not sure if it was the ingredients or the fact that the Movay seemed incongruent with other Jamaican-themed cocktails with a lemon twist as its only fruit. 

• 1 1/2 oz. dark Jamaican rum (Pusser's dark rum used)
• 1/2 oz. Dubonnet rouge
• several dashes Grand Marnier (Royal Combier used)
• lemon twist

Combine all liquid ingredients in a mixing glass with ice. Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Twist a lemon zest over the glass and drop it in. 

Chocolate Soldier

This cocktail has an enigmatic name until you realize that Chocolate Soldier is a breed of peony that has this exact color. The color comes from Dubonnet Rouge, a rich--and appropriately chocolatey--fortified wine from France.

The other ingredient, besides lime juice, is gin. For this post I decided to show off my homemade bathtub gin. My first batch of the stuff was questionable: oversteeped and bitey, it had all the tannin and none of the freshness of a proper gin. I'm happy to say that this latest batch came out remarkably well.

• 1 1/2 oz. gin (homemade used)
• 1 oz. Dubonnet Rouge
• 1/2 oz. lime juice

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

Rue de Rivoli

The famous street in Paris that runs beside the Louvre and Sainte Chapelle and offers views of the Cathedral Notre Dame is the namesake of this cocktail. I don't know what that has to do with oranges, but there's plenty of orange in this cocktail.

More and more, I'm deciding that some whiskey drinks, especially when they are mostly wine or juice-heavy ingredient lists, do not need rich or characterful whiskies. Instead, you can assume that the point of the cocktail is the juicy flavors and that the whiskey you use can bolster those. In this case, I added MurLarkey orange whiskey to go with the orange juice and citrus in the wine spirits.

• 1 oz. whiskey (MurLarkey orange whiskey used)
• 1 oz. dry vermouth (Carpano dry used)
• 1 oz. Dubonnet Rouge
• 1 oz. orange juice
• orange slice

Combine liquid ingredients in a mixing glass full of ice. Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with the orange slice. 

Red Rooster

Simple and elegant with a brilliant ruby hue, the Red Rooster is a rare breed! It is a majority wine cocktail, calling for three ounces of Byrrh, St. Raphiel, or Dubonnet Rouge. The latter is the reddest, and all three are French aperitif wines with sweetness and bitterness added.

If you only get one ounce of whiskey in a recipe, make sure it has character. That's why MurLarkey Heritage whiskey with its corn scent and white wine finish makes for a great aperitif cocktail whiskey.

• 1 oz. whiskey (MurLarkey Heritage used)
• 3 oz. red wine aperitif (Dubonnet Rouge used)
• several dashes lemon juice
• orange or lemon twist

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

Vincennes

Whiskey takes a back seat to richness, here with Ricard and Dubonnet taking over. Every drink needs its "thing." In this case that thing is lime peel. Im not sure what that's about, but the overall experience is one of those licorice cough drops you got at the druggist and your mom ate all of them, even though you had a cough and she didn't. It all comes together in this Quasi-French experience, and perhaps the experience of people my age who went to druggists for penny candy as children once did.

• 1 1/2 oz. blended whiskey (Proper Twelve whiskey used)
• 1 oz. Dubonnet Rouge
• 1/2 oz. triple sec
• dash Pernod (Ricard used and totally acceptable as a substitute, maybe even preferable)
• lime twist

Combine liquid ingredients in a mixing glass with ice. Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Twist lime zest over the glass and drop it in. 

Dubonnet Manhattan

I'm making a lot of Manhattan variations to prove that there are many ways to make this classic cocktail. This one falls in the Sweet Manhattan category, using the sweet Dubonnet Rouge instead of Italian Sweet vermouth. Vermouth and Dubonnet are both bitter wine spirits, but Dubonnet adds even more richness, and that is easy to appreciate.

I grounded this Manhattan in the U.S. with MurLarkey Heritage whiskey. So that while this is a French Manhattan, it tastes very Virginia. Heritage is a straight whiskey, but it is so different from bourbon or rye that it is kind of its own thing. It has a strong corn presence, so I felt it was ideal to use it in a drink with Dubonnet, which tends to smother base liquors in cocktails.

• 1 1/2 oz. blended whiskey (MurLarkey Heritage used)
• 1 oz. Duboennt Rouge
• maraschino cherry

Combine liquid ingredients in a mixing glass with ice. Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with the cherry.

Sanctuary (Revisit WIth Homemade Amer Picon)

The Sanctuary is one of the first cocktails I made for this blog when I thought I had a suitable substitute for Amer Picon--a very difficult to find French Amaro that bartenders now have to recreate in order to get the strength of flavor of the original recipe. All this fuss over the Amer Picon, one tends to overlook the Dubonnet Rouge, another seldom seen classic cocktail ingredient. In fact, at two ounces, the Sanctuary is really a Dubonnet Rouge cocktail more than an Amer Picon cocktail.

Dubonnet Rouge (Love the new label!) is an aperitif wine spirit that is fortified and flavored with a secret blend of herbs and spices. Unlike Lillet, it is not purely an orange flavored wine, though there is some citrus in Dubonnet Rouge. There are chocolate and roasted cabbage notes in the aperitif as well. So with that depth, this wine cocktail gets punched up with Cointreau, a 40-proof triple sec made with bitter and sweet oranges, and Amer Picon, a bitter orange liqueur. The result is a complex cocktail that keeps changing as you drink it. As it warms it takes on a chocolate orange character and continues to be extremely rich, despite having a lower ABV than most cocktails.

• 2 oz. Dubonnet Rouge
• 1 oz. Amer Picon (DIY Amer Picon used)
• 1 oz. triple sec (Cointreau used)
• lemon twist

Combine all ingredients except lemon twist in a mixing glass (The NY Bartender's guide says to shake, but I really think that makes the Dubonnet Rouge cloudy and it's unnecessary so I stirred) with ice. Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with the lemon twist. 

Soul Kiss

I know I've done this drink before. It's a great one, the cocktail that I bought my first bottle of Dubonnet Rouge just to do. I remember being excited to try it. But now when I search for it on my website, it is not there. All the other Dubonnet drinks I've done are there, but not this one. I guess I'll just have to have it again. Sigh!

Soul Kiss is another word for French kiss. It is the title of a lesser-known Olivia Newton John song, by the way, and I think of it as a French cocktail in the Kiss series with the French Kiss, another bourbon drink, and the Kiss Me Quick.

I've got better ingredients this time around. Fresh squeezed orange juice helps a lot. So does Filibuster dual cask bourbon aged in oak and French sauvignon blanc casks. Then the spicy notes of Rivata dry vermouth are really interesting. This drink is foremost a bourbon drink, but Dubonnet Rouge gives it this bright red color and an herbal and sweet flavor that is hard to miss.

• 2 oz. bourbon (Filibuster dual cask used)
• 1 oz. dry vermouth (Rivata used)
• 1/2 oz. orange juice
• 1/2 oz. Dubonnet Rouge

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

Peggy Cocktail

There's something Mad Men and French at the same time about the Peggy Cocktail. Might be the name, but the french part is clearly from all the quintessential French liqueurs present in this drink. I like that the dominant flavors are spicy gin and bitter wine flavors. There's not much Pernod present to tip the scales, so it is very balanced for some of the more squeamish drinkers, particularly those with an aversion to absinthe.

So there's Dubonnet Rouge as well as sweet vermouth. And I bucked the Italian trend for sweet vermouth and grabbed my Byrrh. This floral and not too bitter wine aperitif is so French that it takes most ordinary drinks to an unrecognizable exotic place.

• 2 oz. gin
• 1/2 oz. sweet vermouth (Byrrh recommended)
• 1/4 tsp. Dubonnet Rouge
• 1/4 tsp. Pernod

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

Merry Widow Fizz

There's something very French and very cafe about the Merry Widow Fizz. It could be that it is a Dubonnet Rouge based cocktail, like a fizzy wine spritzer. But it could also be the low alcohol content and the way that such a fizzy drink can be enjoyed sitting outside on a boulevard cafe table in the afternoon. It is refreshing and rather satisfying and unlikely to make you feel tipsy. It is just so relaxing.

• 2 oz. Dubonnet Rouge
• 2 oz. orange juice
• 1 oz. lemon juice
• 1 egg white
• sparkling water (Perrier for Frenchness)

Combine all ingredients except sparkling water in a shaker with ice. Shake to chill and strain out the ice. Shake again to add fizz and pour into a Collins glass full of fresh ice. Top with sparkling water. 

Dubonnt Cocktail

I caught an error in the NY Bartender's Guide when I made this drink. The recipe calls for a cocktail glass, which makes sense. The image displaying the type of glassware shows an Old Fashioned glass. But the directions say to strain the drink. Not what you'd do with an Old Fashioned glass.

But back to the drink itself. Dubonnet Rouge does a lot to make this gin drink taste like a rich whiskey cocktail. It is a fortified wine with gentian that's spicy and bitter as welly as sugary sweet. That and the bitters mean that whatever gin you pick will be well supported.

• 2 oz. gin
• 1 1/2 oz. Dubonnet Rouge
• dash Angostura bitters
• lemon twist

Combine liquid ingredients in a mixing glass with ice. Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Twist lemon peel over the glass and drop it in. 

Wedding Belle Cocktial

I really appreciated how aromatic this drink is. Yes it is a dry gin cocktail, but the other spirits also shine. Kirschwasser has this dry brandy scent and Dubonnet Rouge does a lot to ground the drink with bitterness and sweet wine. Taken together, it is a perfect marriage.

• 2 oz. gin (Caorunn used)
• 1 1/2 oz. Dubonnet Rouge
• 1/2 oz. kirschwasser
• 1/2 oz. orange juice

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

Bentley

The Bentley is a part of the luxury car series of cocktails, along with the Monte Carlo, Rolls Royce, and Ferrari. Although these cars and car drinks are kind of worlds apart from each other.

The Bentley uses Dubonnet rouge as a spicy aperitif wine to blend with the apple brandy. Laird's good stuff makes this cocktail especially rich and spicy.

• 2 oz. apple brandy (Laird's used)
• 1 oz. Dubonnet rouge
• lemon twist

Combine liquid ingredients in a mixing glass with ice. Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with the lemon twist. 

Lafayette

I can see where this drink is going, and it all looks good on paper. Like the French martial hero in the American revolutionary war, this drink was supposed to combine French and American spirits. Dubonnet rouge and bourbon pair well together, so it would seem that a rich egg white bourbon cocktail would be the perfect combo.

Sadly, like actual wars, things are not always so clear cut, nor are all the best laid plans the most successful. Egg white covers the scent that Dubonnet gives to cocktails, making it smell a little too much like dairy and not enough like spice. Doing the drink on the rocks also means that the foam on the drink is obscured, defeating the point of the egg white. I can see trying this with half an egg white, or one for two drinks, and serving it up in a coup glass. That way there would at least be a foam to sip through without pushing around ice cubes with your lips.

• 2 oz. bourbon
• 1/2 oz. dry vermouth
• 1/2 oz. Dubonnet rouge
• 1/2 tsp. sugar
• egg white

Shake all ingredients on ice and pour into a chilled Old Fashioned glass. 

Princess Mary's Pride

A deliciously complex cocktail with apple brandy and Dubonnet. The recipe calls for 1/2 oz. dry vermouth, but I have Dubonnet blanc I need to use. The quinine bitterness of Dubonnet, especially the blanc means you don't need to have bitters for this cocktail to be interesting.

• 2 oz. apple brandy (Laird's used)
• 1 oz. Dubonnet rouge
• 1/2 oz. dry vermouth (Dubonnet blanc used)

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