Category — Gin

While yesterday was a rye day, today was most definitely a gin day.  With an assortment of gins at hand (Plymouth, Tanqueray Ten, Sapphire, Aviation and Martin Miller’s) I wanted to drink either something new, or something I hadn’t had in awhile.  Enter Esquire Drinks.

I perused several gin-based cocktail recipes before landing on the Hearst, a fine cocktail that I haven’t had the pleasure of knowing for at least a few years.  Comprised of gin, sweet vermouth—rather than the classic dry vermouth and gin pairing—orange bitters and aromatic bitters, it’s a well-balanced cocktail that packs a boozy wallop.

The gin and sweet vermouth work together to create a gorgeous aroma and clean, crisp flavor.  I tried it with a few different gins, but settled on Plymouth, my go-to source for sustenance, inspiration and general happiness.

Hearst Cocktail Recipe:

2oz gin
1oz sweet vermouth
1 dash orange bitters
1 dash Angostura bitters

Stir with cracked ice, and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Bulldog Gin has partnered with bartenders around the globe to develop some refreshing cocktails as we prepare for warmer months ahead.

Adam Dennis, Bartender at Box 109 in Newton, MA debuted his drink, “Henry VIII,” a take on the Corpse Reviver #2.

Henry VIII

1.5 oz. Bulldog Gin
1.5 oz. Lillet Blanc
1 oz. Cointreau
2 dashes Kubler Absinthe
1 whole Squeezed Lime

Shake well and strain. Serve in a martini glass. Garnish with lime wedge.

Thomas Tripoulas, bartender at New York City’s Hudson Hotel created the “Tower of London,” which features Asian-influenced ingredients like green tea and sake.

Tower of London

2 oz. Bulldog Gin
1.5 oz. St Germain
2 oz. Green Tea
1 oz. Simple Syrup
0.5 oz. Sake

Shake well. Serve in a highball or Collins glass over ice. Garnish with lychee.

Juan Romo of London’s Drunken Monkey used passion fruit and cucumber to develop his summer drink, called “Blondie.”

Blondie

2 oz. Bulldog Gin
0.5 oz. Passion Fruit Liqueur
0.5 oz. Simple Syrup
1 piece of Cucumber
1 slice of Passion Fruit

Muddle cucumber and shake well. Serve in a martini glass. Garnish with passion fruit slice.

Along with the above cocktail recipes, Bulldog also premiered the winning recipe from its 2010 Cocktail Contest.  Raymond Bernard from Massachusetts fashioned the “Mint Cherry Jubilee,” describing it as a “simple, sweet and refreshing cocktail, complemented perfectly with Bulldog Gin’s complex and unique taste.”

Mint Cherry Jubilee

3 Bing Cherries
2 Mint Leaves
2 oz. Bulldog Gin
4 oz. Club Soda

Shake well. Serve over ice in a highball glass.

Click for a review of Bulldog Gin.

While doing a bit of light reading on the Aviation cocktail, I came across a drink created by Gary Regan that he dubbed the Moonlight Cocktail. 

According to Gary, “I merely took the Aviation formula and tweaked it a little. I used Cointreau instead of maraschino, and lime instead of lemon juice. Why lime? I had no lemons.”  Finding his reasoning sound, I went about crafting myself a cocktail.

I started with Plymouth Gin, which is my go-to gin when making a new drink, and Rothman and Winter’s Creme de Violette, a violet flower liqueur that became available to the U.S. market in 2007.  The end result was a pretty tasty cocktail, with the vibrant orange flavor of Cointreau and the soft, violet flavor of Creme de Violette complementing each other well.  Both were kept in check by the half ounce of lime juice, which tempered the drink’s sweetness to a very manageable, pleasant level.  Gary may be onto something here.

The Moonlight Cocktail

1 1/2 ounces gin
1/2 ounce Cointreau
1/2 ounce Creme de Violette
1/2 ounce fresh lime juice

Shake with ice, and strain into a chilled Champagne flute.

Last night I wandered into one of my favorite local cocktail spots and ordered an Aviation, that tasty, well-balanced drink with gin, maraschino and fresh lemon juice.  A few minutes later, when a nearly purple cocktail was placed in front of me, I assumed there had been some mistake.  But when your bartender quotes Gary Regan as to the authenticity of your purple Aviation, it’s hard to argue.

It seems the original Aviation included the little used and hard to find liqueur, Creme de Violette.  Gary Regan notes that a 1916 recipe called for two parts gin, one part lemon juice and a couple dashes each of maraschino and Creme de Violette, which “makes for a very sour drink indeed.”  Instead, Regan proposes using three parts gin and one part each of the liqueurs and the lemon juice.

While I still love the Aviation sans Violette, or with a more moderate proportion of the liqueur, this new-to-me concoction is quite good.  Plus, it gives the drink a more intense purplish hue.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 ounces gin
1/2 ounce maraschino liqueur
1/2 ounce Creme de Violette
1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice

Shake with ice, and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Mixology Monday is a monthly (well, almost monthly.  Heavy drinkers don’t  abide by the same calendar as mere mortals) online cocktail party that rounds up drinks pertaining to a particular theme chosen by a rotating host.  This month’s theme is “money drinks,” and our brave host is Kevin Langmack of Beers in the Shower.  From Kevin –

I feel a “Money” drink is something you can put in front of anyone, regardless of tastes or distastes about the spirits involved. Come up with a drink or a list based on spirits about drinks that would appeal to anyone,  Example: turning someone onto a Corpse Reviver #2 when they like lemon drops.

Depending on your spirit or drink of choice, one might have several money drinks, like a properly made Martini, Manhattan or Old Fashioned, to stick to the classics, that would convert even the most finicky drinker to well-crafted cocktails.  Personally, I feel a gnawing sense of frustration whenever someone bemoans a distaste for gin, and I’ve been known to order a friend a gin-based cocktail without her knowledge.  I stress “her” because it seems the women in my life have a natural aversion to gin.  Perhaps I need to surround myself with tougher women, but regardless, one such drink that seems to convert well is the French 75.

Composed of gin, fresh lemon juice, simple syrup and Champagne, the French 75 is a light, refreshing cocktail that subdues the wary gin-drinker while still packing a sizeable boozy wallop.  This tart, tasty concoction has made even the most dubious skeptic rethink their distaste for gin, without alienating fans of the spirit.

Ingredients:

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

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.

While there’s always a place for intricate cocktails boasting fun ingredients like Benedictine, Orgeat or Maraschino liqueur, sometimes you just want to simplify your life and your drinks.

Comprised of five simple ingredients found in any reasonably stocked home bar, the Bronx Cocktail is basically a perfect martini with orange juice added.  It’s a classic, pre-prohibition cocktail that’s a bit fruity—but not overly sweet—and its base spirit, gin, is a good carrier for both the sweet and dry vermouth.

This innocuous looking cocktail packs quite a punch, and the addition of OJ makes it a healthy alternative to not drinking cocktails.

Ingredients:

2 ounces gin
1/4 oz sweet vermouth
1/4 oz dry vermouth
1 ounce orange juice
1 dash orange bitters

Shake all ingredients with ice, and strain into a cocktail glass.

For a visual on how to craft the Bronx Cocktail, here’s a quick instructional video from Dave Harrison of Lush Life Productions – The Bronx Cocktail in 12 Seconds.

The Singapore Sling was invented around 1910 by bartender Ngiam Tong Boon at the Raffles Hotel’s Long Bar in Singapore.  And like many classic drinks, the recipe was lost decades ago, resulting in bartenders scrambling to make an interpretation of the original ever since.

Because this recipe is often misrepresented by bars and in recipe books, most drinkers have never had the original Singapore Sling, regardless of what they ordered.  So to continue that trend, below is the cocktail currently served at the Raffles, per a recipe card published by Drinkboy. Based on memories of former bartenders and scattered notes thought to be left behind by Ngiam Tong Boon, here’s hoping this is a close approximation to the original.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 ounce gin
1/2 ounce Cherry Herring
1/4 ounce Cointreau
1/4 ounce Benedictine
4 ounces pineapple juice
1/2 ounce lime juice
1/3 ounce grenadine
1 dash Angostura Bitters

Shake all ingredients with ice, and strain into an ice-filled Collins glass. Garnish with a cherry and slice of pineapple.

Many cocktails have predecessors, but perhaps none was quite as important as the under appreciated Martinez, a gin and sweet vermouth concoction that helped pave the way for the ubiquitous martini.

As with many cocktails, origins of the Martinez are a hazy mess of conflicting stories.  Some say it was created by a gent named Martinez, while others claim it was crafted by famed bartender Jerry Thomas for a fellow traveling to Martinez, California.  Both sound reasonable enough to me, but whatever its origins, it’s another good excuse to combine gin and maraschino liqueur, which work well in drinks like the Aviation and Last Word.

Proportions for the Martinez vary greatly, with some calling for a 2:1 ratio of gin to vermouth, and others calling for the opposite.  I tried a few different variations before settling on the one below, which offers plenty of sweetness but enough gin to maintain its integrity.  Orange bitters worked pretty well in place of Angostura, but I preferred the latter.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 ounces gin
1 ounce sweet vermouth
1/4 ounce maraschino liqueur
1 dash Angostura bitters

Stir all ingredients with ice in a mixing glass, and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

In appearance alone, Bulldog Gin, a newish premium offering out of London, offers something different.  Its charcoal gray bottle with purple hues is adorned with a spiked collar, which might be enough to entice your everyday purchaser of hooch.  But what really caught my attention is its interesting blend of 12 botanicals, including poppy, lotus leaves, lavender and dragon eye.

On the Nose

Despite its tough appearance, Bulldog’s bouquet offers a delicate fragrance of juniper with floral and citrus notes coming through.

The Taste

Drank straight, the taste is also gentler than expected with a subtle juniper flavor melding well with the many other botanicals.  Further tastes seem to unlock countless other notes, including poppy, lavender and a sweetness that I think can be attributed to the lychee-like flavor of dragon eye.  And among all these flavors, the juniper is never lost.

Mixing

Mixed into a martini (I used a 3:1 gin to vermouth ratio), Bulldog was a solid competitor.  It doesn’t quite stand up to Plymouth, my old martini standby, but with its unique blend of botanicals it makes for one hell of a flavorful, complex cocktail.

Overall

Bulldog is good stuff.  It offers a unique flavor profile without forgetting that at the end of the day, it’s a juniper-distilled spirit.  If you like gin, you’ll like Bulldog.  If you don’t like gin, this just might offer enough different flavor notes to change your mind, but I don’t see Bulldog reforming the “gin-tastes-like-pine-needles” vodka drinker.

Stats

-Quadruple distilled, triple filtered London Dry Gin
-40 percent Alcohol By Volume
-$30 for a 750ml bottle

Click for more liquor reviews.

Like so many good tiki drinks from the glory days of Victor “Trader Vic” Bergeron and Don the Beachcomber, the Fogcutter dwindled into obscurity for decades.  But after its turn languishing in obscurity, this drink has again begun to appear on select cocktail menus across the country.  Or course, in true cocktail fashion, very few recipes are the same.

The below recipes come from your friend and mine, Dr. Cocktail, and his book Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails.  This booze bible lists two recipes for the Fogcutter, with the earlier version of the two going something like this:

Ingredients:

1/2 ounce orgeat
2 ounces Bacardi Gold Rum
1 ounce Pisco Brandy
1/2 ounce Plymouth Gin
1 ounce freshly squeezed orange juice
2 ounces fresh lemon juice
1/2 ounce cream sherry

Shake all ingredients except sherry with ice and pour into a chimney glass.  Float the sherry on top.

Another version of the Fogcutter, found below, is the preferred recipe of famed bartender Tony Ramos, an original bartender at Don the Beachcomber.

Ingredients:

1 ounce white rum
1/2 ounce gin
1/2 ounce brandy
1/2 ounce sweet and sour mix
2 dashes simple syrup

Combine all ingredients with ice and blend.  Pour into a goblet and float some cherry-flavored brandy on top.

You might notice the ample amount of booze packed into this drink.  To quote Trader Vic himself: “Fog Cutter, hell. After two of these, you won’t even see the stuff.”