Yeoman Warder (Death & Co. Recipe)

A yeoman was a master woodsman, leader of the hunt and a skilled fighter with a yew bow. Picture Robin Hood in green garb standing around in the woods. With all the herbaceous flavors going on in this cocktail, you can taste that medieval trope right in the glass.

I picked up a bottle of Cynar 70-proof to make this drink, and I find that this new release of Cynar is even more flavorful than the original artichoke amaro. I don't know if that is because more flavor can be packed into an infusion of botanicals when the proof is higher, or it is just a more intense formulation. Either way, a little Cynar 70-proof goes a long way.

In addition to the vegetable notes of artichoke in the Cynar, I used my homemade gin that has asparagus as one of the botanicals. You notice it, but not as much as the spice and bitterness. Overall I'd say this drink is intense with all flavors dialed up to the max. Despite that, sweet and bitter, tart and spice, are all balanced and contribute to an enjoyable sip.

• 2 oz. dry gin (homemade gin with asparagus botanical used)
• 3/4 oz. Dolin dry vermouth
• 1/4 oz. Cynar (70-proof used)
• 1/4 oz. Luxardo maraschino 

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

 

Jesper Lind (Death & Co. Recipe)

Vesper Lind is James Bond's beau. This is the woman for whom he never married. And we all have had a Vesper or a 007 Martinii. This is different. In fact if I was to suggest a  Bond Enemy drink, this might be it. 

There is a lot of richness in the nose: vanilla and orange. When you sip it is full of raisin from the sherry and herbal notes from the gin and aquavit. And that last bit is where the name comes from: a common masculine name in Norway, Jesper. All of which hints at the addition of aquavit as a botanical ingredient. This is the dude drink to match Bond's woman. And I'm down with that. It's richer and more herbaceous. There's no vodka to tame it down. The flavor is full and ready. 

What it lacks is garnish, if that is even necessary. At a cool bar like Death & Co., I'd be surprised if that was even necessary. And truthfully, you don't need lemon oil from the twist or a cherry to throw off the perfection of the individual ingredients. 

• 1 1/2oz. dry gin (homemade bathtub used)
• 3/4 oz. Lustau East India Solera Sherry
• 1/2 oz. Linie aquavit (homemade used)
• 1 tsp vanilla syrup 
• 1 dash orange bitters

Stir all ingredients in a mixing glass with ice. Strain into a coupe glass. 

Strange Brew (Death & Co. Recipe)

  

I'm really enjoying beer with my cocktails lately. In some cases, as you may have seen previously, I also enjoy beer in my cocktails. The IPA craze has fueled a lot of creative bitter drinks that use beer for more than fizz. 

IPA is loaded with floral and citrus hop characteristics that make them taste almost juicy. This plays great with tropical flavors of falernum as well as herbal notes of gin. As I have done with previous cocktails, I'm using Stone IPA for its west coast style with more piney flavors. This is a good call when considering the pineapple and gin that goes into the Strange Brew. 

The Death & Co. recipe calls for Tanqueray 10, and I will echo that any high-botanical dry gin will hit the spot. Citadelle has 18 botanicals and it is in a luxury class of dry gin equal to Tanqueray 10. Sometimes you have to consider the quality of the gin, especially when making Death & Co. drinks, and even more so when mixing with beer. 

Overall, I loved how dry and bitter the drink was. It was refreshing and strong, like an IPA, but with lots of acidity and spice. If anything, I felt it could use more sugar; my falernum being a little drier than Velvet Falernum, so it did less to add sweetness. But I'm always appreciative when a Tiki (or near-Tiki) cocktail isn't heavy and doesn't shy away from the bitter and tart side.

• 2 oz. dry gin (Citadelle used)
• 3/4 oz. falernum
• 1 oz. pineapple juice
• 1/2 oz. lemon juice
• IPA beer (Stone used)
• 1 mint sprig garnish

Shake all ingredients with only 3 ice cubes, then strain into a pilsner glass filled with crushed ice. Top with IPA and garnish with the mint. 

 

After Hours (Recipe by Satvik Ahuja)

 

I was in the mood for kummel on a gray day last weekend and stumbled on this recipe on Difford's Guide. The drink makes me think of Covenant's song "After Hours" with its distorted electronic hum, slow beats and creepy stalker lyrics. And it was designed as an after dinner drink, but I found it much closer to an Aviation without the lemon juice. In fact, citrus notes are hinted at here, but omitted entirely for a spirits-forward punch sweetened by maraschino and honey in the kummel.

I'm working with my homemade kummel here, which is the same recipe as whatever akvavit I have on hand plus added honey syrup. I only make as much as I need on any particular day because it is a specialty ingredient. I also am having fun with the French gin, Citadelle. You could certainly go with a heavier gin, like an old tom or Ransom and make this a dessert drink. I felt that while Citadelle is a light, dry gin, it also has the heft of 18 botanicals that give it more weight in the nose than many American gins, especially after mixing them with Luxardo maraschino.

Difford's Guide is a good place to find new inventions like this, and many of the cocktails call for chilled water as an option. This is the first time I took that option, and I feel like it was a good call. The flavors are very packed in this cocktail and water gave them room to express. 

• 1 1/2 oz. dry gin (Citadelle used)
• 1/3 oz. kummel (homemade used)
• 1/3 oz. maraschino liqueur
• 1 dash orange bitters
• 1/3 chilled water
• maraschino cherry (Bada Bing used)

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

Oh, Cicilie! (Difford's Guide Recipe)

What a lovely rocks sipping cocktail! Part Negroni and part Old Fashioned, this drink combines the bitter citrus of sweet Italian Amaro and French Amer Picon with spicy angostura bitters and gin.  Of course I've made a lot of these ingredients, like the Amer Picon, of course, and a dry gin. I'm also showing off Don Ciccio & Figili's Ambrosia. This is a nice stand-in for Aperol, but has a more honeyed citrus flavor. 

The cocktail drinks like an Old Fashioned, but the richness and spice of that classic drink opens up in the sip to citrus bitterness and honey. I love the thoughtful addition of a grapefruit twist, which really offsets the bitter orange of the Amer Picon. As stiff as Oh, Cicilie! is, I can see it being a nice afternoon aperitif cocktail, something to wet your appetitie for dinner. 

• 1 1/2 oz. dry gin (homemade used)
• 3/4 oz. Aperol (Don Ciccio & Figili Ambrosia used)
• 3/4 oz. sweet vermouth (Cocchi di Torino used)
• 1/4 oz. Amer Picon (homemade used)
  
• 1 dash Angostura bitters
• grapefruit zest

Combine all liquid ingredients in a mixing glass full of ice. Stir and strain into a chilled Old Fashioned glass full of fresh ice. Twist the grapefruit zest over the glass and drop it in. 

 

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.

Greta Garbo (Bows)

 

Because of the popularity of Swedish Punsch at the beginning of the 20th Century, there were a handful of Greta Garbo cocktails named after the Swedish film star. I'm researching and trying them all with my homemade Swedish Punsch.

This cocktail, sometimes called the Greta Garbo Bows, is almost an exact copy of the better known (but still very obscure) Biffy Cocktail. That was one I found really too tart for my liking. Either Swedish Punsch used to be insufferably sweet, or the intention of the bartender was to create something so tart that it was a feature and not a bug of the recipe. See Ink Street, for examples of this. While I get the concept, I often have felt that intensely tart drinks with a low component of spirits were really the stuff of inexperienced Prohibition era bartenders who were trying to divert the drinker's attention from the alcohol. 

Perhaps that is what happened with this cocktail. According to legend Greta Garbo asked a bartender for something that hid the taste of alcohol. When she tried this drink, she bowed to him. It would be something special if it turned out to be true. The drink would be even better with a bit of sugar, though. So I have included it in the recipe just as I did with the Biffy Cocktail. 

• 1 oz. dry gin (homemade used)
• 1 oz. Swedish Punsch (homemade used)
• 1 oz. lemon juice
• sugar syrup to taste (1/2 oz. used)

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

Dante (Lee Spirit's Forbidden Fruit Recipe)

 

This is an original cocktail offered by Lee Spirits, makers of Forbidden Fruit for the first time since the more than a century-old recipe disappeared. Here, though, I'm making use of my own forbidden fruit.

I like that this is both a light citrus and gin drink sweetened by cherry and more citrus, which comes from the Cheery Heering and Forbidden Fruit, respectively. Forbidden Fruit adds both bitter grapefruit and pomelo peel as well as a good heap of orange blossom honey. The effect is similar to a Bee's Knees but with lime juice and cherry flavors. 

Overall, it doesn't come across as rich or sweet, but a bit on the tart and dry side. The richness comes in the aftertaste, which is experienced as honeyed fruits and berries, including juniper from the gin. I went with a dry gin like Bulldog to ensure that the juniper notes would not be buried by the other ingredients, and I rather liked it.

• 1 1/2 oz. dry gin (Bulldog used)
• 1/4 oz. Cherry Herring
• 1/4 oz. Forbidden Fruit (homemade used)
• 3/4 oz. lime juice
• maraschino cherry garnish

Combine all ingredients except cherry in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. spear the cherry (the drink is cloudy and obscures sunken fruit) with a cocktail pick and use for garnish. 

Eve's Seduction

 

This French-style aperatif cocktail does not appear in any of my bar books. Instead, I found the recipe on Lee Spirits website for their revival of a liqueur known as Forbidden Fruit. It is almost winter, so I made a small batch of my own Forbidden Fruit recipe in order to try Lee Spirit's Eve's Seduction and other recipes. 

Forbidden Fruit is a brandy-based spirit that has bright citrus notes, particularly grapefruit (the original forbidden fruit, or so it is said). The liqueur itself is sweetened with honey, though this recipe calls for some honey as well. Since the amaro is not specified, I think Averna or Montenegro will suffice or maybe Amer Picon if you can make or find that. I had free choice to use Don Ciccio and Figili's Ambrosia. Now Ambrosia is the sweetest of their Italian bitters, with plenty of its own honey flavor, I felt justified in leaving out the additional honey for fear of creating a honey bomb. 

This drink turned out well. A perfect sipper before or after dinner. I was happy with the elegant look and color and put it in my cordial glass to show that off. Additionally, the flavor was a lovely blend of bitterness and sweet honey.

If you happen to buy a bottle of Lee Spirit's Forbidden Fruit, and I hope you do if you can get it, I'm including the recipe as it is printed on the website. I'm making a note, however, as to the use of a half ounce of honey. If you put that much honey in your shaker, it will solidify before you pour the drink. You should make a 1:1 ratio mixture of honey simple using honey and warm water. Then only use half an ounce of the honey simple in the cocktail. 

• 1 oz. dry gin (homemade used)
  
• 1 oz. Forbidden Fruit
• 1/2 oz. amaro (Don Ciccio and Figili Ambrosia used)
• 1/2 oz. honey syrup
• (lemon twist or slice as garnish recommended but not included on the original recipe)

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

Ambassador West

 

I'm not sure which historical figure that this drink's name refers to, but I bet it isn't the Ambassador West hotel. If I had to decide, I think I would go with the novel by the same name by Mark West. The fact that the book is about an assassination plot against South Vietnam's president in the 1960s is a not congruent with a Martini variation that makes copious use of brandy. 

As far as Martinis go, this variation is a winner. I really like how brandy changes the texture a little so that it is richer and a little silky. I knew that the brandy had potential to cover over the gin, however, so I went with a spicy gin that I made at home through infusion. This gin is high on juniper and as dry as 100-proof vodka that it is made from. There is some lemon peel and fresh herb garden notes, but overall, the gin is designed to stand out, and it should. The ingredients that flavor it were steeping in vodka for a week and their influence arrives in the glass. 

• 1 1/2 oz. brandy (Korbel used)
• 1 oz. gin (homemade used and dry gin recoomended)
• 1/2 tsp. dry gin (Dolin used)
• green olive

Combine liquid ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Drop the olive into the drink. 

Cannes-Cannes

This cocktail has a fun name, a pun on Cannes, France and the famous bawdy cabaret dance of Paris. I liked that it was a balanced and strong cocktail (the two seldom go hand in hand) with a double punch of rum and gin. Because the recipe specified light rum, meaning that there should be little barrel taste in the drink, I opted for Plantation's 3-Stars blend, though that is a pretty flavorful light rum. Then I was struggling with which gin to use for the second measure.

Old Tom sounded appropriate, but it would have been lost in all that grapefruit. So would a simple London dry style gin (although this is perfectly acceptable if that is what you have on hand.) Doing the smell test on several bottles, I arrived at my homemade dry gin. This steeped gin had the right piney and tannin notes to stand out past all of that juice. The combination was lovely and made this the best cocktail I had that day.

• 1 1/2 oz. light rum (Plantation 3-Star used)
  1 1'/2 oz. dry gin (homemade bathtub gin used)
• 3 oz. grapefruit juice
• 1/2 oz. Cointreau (triple sec used)
• orange slice

Combine all ingredients except orange slice in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a double Old Fashioned glass full of fresh ice and garnish with orange slice. 

Mandarine Fizz

What a nice fruity cocktail for a hot day! I was pleasantly surprised, though I shouldn't have been, at how good fresh mandarin juice tastes in a fizzy gin drink. This cocktail bursts with fruit and spice, but is juicy and light for summer drinking.

As I've said before, I can't get Mandarine Napoleon in Virginia, but I made it using my own recipe and, even if it isn't a perfect knock off of the original, it is pretty good stuff all the same. Together with Monkey 47 gin, there's a bright spicy kick behind that refreshing juice and soda.

• 1 oz. dry gin (Monkey 47 used)
• 1 oz. Mandarine Napoleon (homemade recipe used)
• 2 oz. mandarin orange juice
• 1/2 oz. sugar syrup
• club soda
• mandarin orange slice

Combine sugar syrup, juice and spirits in a shaker with ice. Shake and pour into a chilled highball glass. Top with soda and stir. Garnish with the orange slice.