Robert Johnson Swizzle (Death & Co. Recipe)

I have a bois lele (Caribbean swizzle stick) for my birthday and I'm excited to tackle the swizzle section of the Death & Co. cocktail book. Between crushing the ice and meticulous swizzling and freezing the glass, a swizzle is a lot of work. So I started by making some of the easier recipes. 

This recipe is good for people who love bourbon drinks. There's vanilla, whiskey bitters and some cirtus and fortified wine. What's not to like? 

Unfortunately I didn't have the Fee Brothers whiskey barrel-aged bitters, but that's okay considering I had all the rest. I used my vanilla vodka to flavor the simple syrup for the sweetener. And you can taste it just fine under the Peychaud's that you have to dash on top of the ice so that you smell them while sipping through the straw. 

• 2 oz. bourbon (Ancient Age used)
• 3/4 oz. tawny port (ruby used)
• 1/2 oz. lemon juice
• 3/4 oz. vanilla syrup
• 2 dashes whiskey barrel-aged bitters
• 3 dashes Peychaud's bitters
• mint sprig garnish

Add crushed ice to a chilled Collins glass and the shaking tin. Combine all liquid ingredients in the shaker and shake to chill. Pour into the Collins glass and stir with a bois lele, adding ice and continuing to stir until the glass freezes and the contents of the glass reach the top. Dash bitters on the ice and garnish with the mint. 

 

Winter Clove Cocktail (Diford's Guide)

 

Clove, that quintessential winter spice, is one of the few ingredients that can be infused on the spot to make for a richer cocktail. This recipe from Difford's Guide simply says to combine all the ingredients in a mixing glass and stir, and it works. You can really taste the cloves!

This was one of those after dinner drinks that really demonstrates how an all liquor cocktail can be balanced and deep at the same time. I emphasize balance because it is a balancing act of proportions to not blow this cocktail out with sweet mandarin liqueur or smoky scotch.

Chocolate bitters are a necessity here, and though these Aztec bitters are a little loaded with cinnamon compared to what Difford's specifies, I felt that the spice pulled the flavors together. If you have the bitters and the other ingredients you should do this cocktail. If you don't have the ingredients, (you can get away with triple sec instead of Mandarine Napoleon, it's hard to find everywhere) go out and get them this winter. You won't be sorry.

• 3 whole cloves
• 1 1/3 oz. cognac (Martell single distillery used)
• 2/3 oz. Mandarine Napoleon (homemade used)
• 1/6 oz. (1 tsp.) Islay single malt (Ardbeg 10 used)
• 3 dashes chocolate bitters (Fee Brothers Aztec used)
• orange zest twist

Combine cloves and liquid ingredients in a mixing glass with ice. Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass (snifter pictured) and garnish with the zest.

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. 

 

The Dead Reckoning (Smuggler's Cove Recipe)

 

This Tiki cocktail is part of the Tiki revival movement--balanced but rich, classic ingredients, but made for the new Tiki bar scene. According to Martin Cate, a lot of restaurants have adopted something similar to this popular cocktail on the menu at his Smuggler's Cove.

You don't see all that many Tiki drinks with maple syrup (behind the glass). Nor did old-school Tiki drinks feature infusions like Smuggler's Cove. This drink has a vanilla infused brandy. I got around it by adding some vanilla infused vodka (that I always keep around for these occasions) to some cognac for a more than passable substitute. 

The experience is like I said above--balanced. A modern Tiki has the richness of the rum flavor as well as the lightness of soda and fresh citrus and fresh squeezed pineapple juice. There are no artificial mixers or canned juices involved, and it shows. I'm featuring George Bowman rum for the first time on my home bar as a great blended aged rum with all the Caribbean flavors of Guyana and Jamaica. It's going to be my main aged rum until I finish it off. 

One last note on preparation: the recipe includes directions for a drink mixing machine, which I don't have, but I was able to replicate a flash blend with agitator cubes in a shaker with pre-crushed ice. I'll include the recipe as written, but the photo in the book shows that this use of the mixing machine really gives you varied sizes of ice, which you can see in my photo above. Some tiny chips, some chunks, and some pretty big cubes. Just pre-crush some ice into tiny chips and lightly crush some cubes and load all of the chips and some of the cubes into the shaker tin and shake. When you strain, open the gate to allow the small and medium-sized pieces to flow into a glass that's already half-full of crushed ice and you are golden.

• 2 oz. blended aged rum (George Bowman used)
• 1/2 oz. tawny port (Porto Morgado used)
• 1 oz. lemon juice
• 1 oz. pineapple juice
• 1/2 oz. vanilla brandy
• 1/2 oz. grade A maple syrup
  
• 1 dash Angostura bitters
• 1 oz. seltzer
• pineapple leaves and mint sprig garnishes

Add seltzer to a Collins or highball glass. Fill the drink mixer with rum, port, vanilla brandy, juices and syrup. Add 12 oz. of crushed ice and 4-6 agitator cubes and flash blend. Strain the contents over the glass and fill the glass to the top with more crushed ice before adding the garnishes

Lobby Cocktail

 

I got this fun and easy recipe off of Kindred Cocktails, a website similar to mine with a large cocktail recipe database. If you haven't noticed, lately I've been trolling the internet looking for modern recipes or twists on classics that I've not tried yet. There is a lot out there, but I've just about exhausted the classics and am looking for things to do with more unusual spirits. Today that was my homemade Mandarine Napoleon recipe.

So the Lobby cocktail seems to take its name from other hotel-themed cocktails like the Grand Hotel or Hotel Plaza. But really I found the experience of the Lobby Cocktail similar to the KGB, which is kirsch, gin and apricot brandy. It's that kind of heavy, all high-proof spirits experience that doesn't let up, or at least not at first, that this drink reminded me of. And it isn't surprising. Mandarine Napoleon is the only sweet spirit in here, like apricot brandy in the KGB, and that barely provides room for the other ingredients. Unlike other Hotel cocktails, there's no aromatized wine like sweet vermouth to thin out the high-proof stuff, so I recommend using wet ice or going with a splash of water in your mixing glass. 

Something else of note: this cocktail calls for Galliano (not pictured) and because I didn't have it, I couldn't put it in the photo. I do have a pretty reliable recipe to substitute for Galliano in a pinch. It wont do for Galliano drinks like the Harvey Wallbanger, but when all you need is a quarter of an ounce, then I suggest combining sweet 3 parts anisette (or anisette with a drop of sugar syrup) and 1 part vanilla vodka. This gets the herbal and vanilla notes of Galliano across when color and texture would otherwise be lost among other ingredients. For this cocktail, I used sweet Aguardiente as the anisette, not a pastis like Ricard or absinthe substitute. Those are playing a different ballgame than Galliano, and Aguardiente has the sweet herbal flavors (minus the vanilla) that I was looking for.

• 2 oz. gin (Citadelle used)
• 1/4 oz. Galliano (a mixture of 3 parts Aguardiente and 1 part vanilla vodka used)
• 1/4 oz. Mandarine Napoleon
• 1 dash orange bitters
• lemon zest twist

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

The Other Woman

 

This was a fun cocktail to try out more variations of Citadelle gin and Byrrh, two very French spirits that play well together. The Other Woman comes from London bartender, Lucy Horncastle, according to Difford's guide. It is a dry Sour with herbal bitterness, but orgeat makes it swing slightly creamy. Creole bitters like Peychaud's keeps up the herbal and citrus intensity, but despite it's strength, The Other Woman isn't a manly drink.

No, you'd think a quinine infused wine and dry gin would land heavily on spirits, but this is no Martini. Byrrh is the primary spirit, and gin takes a back seat. Even so, it's not an Upside-Down Martini either. Instead, I found it a bit like a gin Daiquiri, or something from the Daisy class of drinks with its sourness and almond smoothness, and that je ne sais quoi...floral loveliness that that speaks to nightlife in New Orleans and clandestine meetings backstage at the cabaret.

• 1 2/3 oz. Byrrh 
• 3/4 oz. dry gin (Citadelle used)
• 2/3 oz. lemon juice
• 1/2 orgeat syrup (Liber & Co. used)
• 2 dash Peychaud's bitters

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

A Few Of My Favorite Things

 

This isn't my recipe, though these are a few of my favorite things, that's for sure. Difford's Guide says that a British bartender Dale Bebington invented this, and I have to say it displays superior taste.

Last weekend it snowed in Virginia, and this recipe really called to me. Even the name from the Sound Of Music felt especially appropriate for winter. I had all the things for the recipe, essentially. Genepy is alpine spirit along the same lines as Chartreuse, it is even French, and I believe it comes from the many unsuccessful attempts to replicate Chartreuse back during a time when it was in short supply.

Other ingredients include Martel cognac, which was specified in the recipe as well as mildly sweet Amontillado sherry. Instead of Aperol, I have Ambrosia by Don Ciccio & Figili, amari makers in the U.S. capital. Lastly, a dash of Angostura bitters and orange bitters. It's like a stirred pie!

• 1/3 oz. Martell cognac
• 1/3 PX sherry Amontillado used
• 1/3 Aperol or red sweet Italian amaro (Ambrosia used)
• 1/6 green Chartreuse (Dolin Genepy used)
• 1 dash Angostura bitters
• 1 dash Hella orange bitters
• lemon zest twist
  

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