Posts from — September 2009

The French 75 cocktail is named after the 75mm howitzer artillery gun, a popular weapon during World War I.  Legend has it that fighter pilot Raoul Lufbery enjoyed champagne, but wanted to drink something with more of a kick.  So, naturally, he added booze to it.

The drink was said to have such a kick that it was similar to being hit by the 75mm gun.  Not surprisingly, the French 75 was popular with the “Lost Generation” of American ex-pats, including Ernest Hemingway, living in Paris post WWI.

Ingredients:

2 ounces gin
1 ounce lemon juice
1 teaspoon simple syrup
Champagne

Directions:

Shake gin, lemon juice and simple syrup with ice, and strain into a champagne flute. Top with champagne, and garnish with a long, thin lemon spiral.

A note on the photo: It’s my goal to take pictures before downing half the drink, but sometimes I get carried away.

Once every month cocktail fanatics band together to create a booze-soaked collection of recipes for Mixology Monday.  Our hosts for this month are the guys at eGullet, who chose “Dizzy Dairy” as the theme.  From Chris Amirault of eGullet –

Any drink using a dairy product is fair game: milk, cream, eggs, butter, cheese, yogurt, curds, you name it. Given the importance of dairy products in drinks dating back centuries, there are lots of opportunities for digging through vintage receipts for a taste of the past, and as always innovation is highly encouraged.

I’ve long enjoyed adding egg whites to cocktails as a means of justifying my drinking.  After all, who can’t benefit from some extra protein?

The Apple Blow Fizz is a cocktail that combines an egg white, fresh lemon juice and apple brandy.  It’s a veritable cornucopia of health foods, all rolled into one.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 ounces apple brandy
1 ounce fresh lemon juice
1 egg white
1 teaspoon sugar
Club soda

Directions:

Shake all ingredients except club soda with ice, and strain into a highball glass over ice.  Top with club soda.

The Blinker dates back to the 1930s and was traditionally composed of rye, grapefruit juice and grenadine.  After hiding in obscurity for decades, the Blinker has seen a resurgence of late due to its inclusion in Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails.

Ted Haigh’s alter ego, Dr. Cocktail, substitutes raspberry syrup for the grenadine, which lends the drink a distinctive sweetness and melds well with the tart grapefruit juice.

Ingredients:

2 ounces rye
1 ounce grapefruit juice
1 teaspoon raspberry syrup

Directions:

Shake with ice, and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a twist of lemon.

In the 1920s, the Pegu Club was a bar in Rangoon, Burma (at the time a British colony) that served a drink of the same name.  And while this drink was popular through the ‘30s, it largely died out after World War II.

Thankfully, the cocktail revival of the past few years has brought this classic drink back into the light.  And furthering its new notoriety, there’s a Pegu Club bar in New York City that pays homage to the Burma original and makes some tasty cocktails.

Ingredients:

2 ounces gin
3/4 ounces orange curaçao
1/2 ounce lime juice
1 dash Angostura bitters
1 dash orange bitters

Directions:

Shake with ice, and strain into a cocktail glass.

A classic but oft-forgotten cocktail, the Rusty Nail is a smooth, scotch-based drink that’s much tamer than its name suggests.

By adding Drambuie—a honey- and herb-flavored scotch liqueur—to scotch, you are able to cut some of the biting peat flavor of scotch and really mellow the drink.  Traditionally the Rusty Nail is made with a blended scotch, but if you’re a single malt kind of guy, feel free to use a single malt to suit your taste.  You can also play with the scotch to Drambuie ratio a bit depending on how much sweetness you prefer.  A two to one ratio does the trick for me.

Ingredients:

2 ounces scotch
1 ounce Drambuie
Lemon twist

Directions:

Add ingredients over ice to an old fashioned glass.  Stir until cold, and garnish with a
lemon twist.

The martini is one of the world’s best known and most popular cocktails, having been immortalized by such drinking greats as Winston Churchill, James Bond and Frank Sinatra.  However, nowadays, half the martinis made in a bar use vodka instead of gin, totally exclude vermouth, are shaken like hell rather than stirred and owe most of their flavor to olive juice.  A tragedy indeed.

As vodka is a flavorless spirit, and olive juice tastes like, well, olive juice, this poor beverage has become a bastardized victim, a shell of its former self unable to live up to its potential.

If you want to taste what a martini is supposed to taste like, use a good gin (Plymouth always treats me right) and a solid vermouth like Noilly Prat.  Since the vermouth balances out the gin and is very important to the flavor profile of the drink, I like to use three parts gin to one part vermouth.

A lesser known but classic addition to the martini is orange bitters.  Add two dashes of Regan’s #6, Angostura Orange or Fee Brothers for a nice touch of orange that blends perfectly with the other ingredients.

Ingredients:

3 parts gin
1 part dry vermouth
2 dashes orange bitters

Directions:

Stir (seriously, don’t shake it. Cocktails made with all spirits are meant to be stirred) all ingredients with ice until cold.  Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Skip the olives and twist a strip of lemon over the top to release its oils.  Drop it in, if you’d like, and enjoy.

The Vieux Carré was born sometime prior to 1937 in New Orleans at what would later become the Carousel Bar at the Monteleone Hotel.  According to Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, the cocktail was named for the old French term for New Orleans’s French Quarter—le Vieux Carré—which means “The Old Square.”

Ingredients:

1 ounce rye whiskey
1 ounce cognac
1 ounce sweet vermouth
1/2 teaspoon Benedictine
2 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters
2 dashes Angostura Bitters

Stir all ingredients with ice, then strain into an ice-filled Old Fashioned glass.  Garnish with a twist of lemon.

The Seelbach is a pre-prohibition cocktail that originated at the Seelbach Hotel in Louisville, KY.  Lost to drinkers for nearly 80 years, the recipe was rediscovered in 1995.

If you’re ever in downtown Louisville, head into the gorgeous Seelbach Hotel to taste the famous cocktail.

Ingredients:

1 ounce bourbon
1/2 ounce Cointreau
7 dashes Angostura Bitters
7 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters
Champagne

Directions:

Pour bourbon, Cointreau and bitters into a champagne flute, and stir.  Top with champagne, stir once more and garnish with an orange twist.

With the Kentucky Bourbon Festival two days behind me, my blood alcohol level is finally fighting its way back to legal levels of sobriety.  And while I may abstain from bourbon flights and bourbon pancakes for a few days, I left Kentucky, the drinking man’s mecca, with a newfound appreciation for bourbon.  Check out some highlights from this weekend:

Day One

• Life slows down when you’re sipping bourbon with the “Colonel” at the historic Chapeze House in Bardstown, KY.  Each glass of rare whiskey begets a story from the Colonel, which in turn spawns another story and likely another healthy pour of bourbon.  Drinking with the Colonel is a must for anyone traveling to Bourbon Country.

Day Two

• Touring the Maker’s Mark distillery with Master Distiller Kevin Smith was an incredible opportunity to learn about the distillation process of bourbon from the man responsible for making it.
• After the tour, I attended a party at the home of Maker’s Mark President Bill Samuels.  It was a rare opportunity to talk with the son of Maker’s Mark founder T.W. Samuels and to tour his home, a veritable museum of memorabilia that included rare pre-prohibition bourbons and the personal pistol of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

Day Three

• Day three started early with a behind-the-scenes tour of the Jim Beam distillery.  Led by Master Distiller and Jim Beam descendant Fred Noe, the tour was a telling insight into the sheer volume of bourbon produced at this booze factory.
• After the tour we tasted a brand new batch of Booker’s, a barrel-strength, small batch bourbon clocking in at a whopping 130.1 proof.  Although it’s the most potent of the Beam portfolio, Booker’s exhibits a remarkably smooth quality with sweet, tasty notes of vanilla.
• Friday night included a visit to Fred Noe’s house for a barbecue and some live entertainment.  Noe was a generous host, and the bourbon flowed freely.  He even led us through a tasting of each of Beam’s small batch bourbons — Basil Hayden, Knob Creek, Baker’s and Booker’s.

Day Four

• Continuing to eschew such social norms as sleep and non-alcoholic beverages, my troupe headed to Louisville for lunch and–you guessed it–bourbon.  Lunch meant a trip to the Brown Hotel for the famous, heart-stopping “Hot Brown,” a dish consisting of hot, melted cheese, bread, a thick slab of turkey, more cheese and several pieces of bacon.  While I appreciated this unparalleled gastronomic experience, this surely took years off my life.
• The Kentucky Bourbon Festival culminated with the Great Kentucky Bourbon Tasting and Gala.  The attendees’ tuxedos and evening gowns were no impediment to their swilling bourbon with no regard for their livers.  With nearly ten distilleries present and dozens of bourbon brands represented, there was something for everyone.
• At the gala I tasted the rare Parker’s Heritage 27 Year Old, the oldest bourbon on the market.  This gorgeous spirit is complex, yet well-balanced and mellow.  Another highlight was sipping the William Heavenhill 225th Anniversary Edition, aged 18 years and nine months.  With only 225 bottles originally available, all at the same location–Heaven Hill’s Bourbon Heritage Center in Bardstown, KY–it’s the most expensive bourbon on the market and will set you back $500.

If you’re still thirsting for some bourbon, check out my coverage from day one, day two and day three of the Kentucky Bourbon Festival.

Most recipes for the Gimlet call for Rose’s lime cordial, as opposed to fresh lime juice.  While I tend to use fresh juices and generally believe fresh juice is always better than artificially sweetened cordial, the addition of Rose’s does make for a pretty tasty cocktail.

But, a staunch opponent of scurvy, my preferred recipe stubbornly uses fresh lime juice, making up for the lack of Rose’s sweetness with some simple syrup.

Ingredients:

2 ounces gin
1/2 ounce fresh lime juice
1/2 ounce simple syrup

Directions:

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lime.