Category — Gin

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

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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.”

Now that October’s here, it’s finally starting to cool down in Texas.  Hell, I even spent some time outside yesterday.  And with the advent of fall’s welcome respite from the summer heat, I retire the Gin Rickey until the first hot day of next year’s summer, which, here in Dallas, has been known to start in March.

The Gin Rickey is a simple cocktail, composed of just gin, lime and club soda, but what it does to a hot day—which is to make it tolerable—should not be overlooked or underappreciated.  Nothing quite soothes the burn of a hot, sticky summer day in Texas than a refreshing Gin Rickey.  It’s crisp, tart and cold, like a tasty A/C in a glass.

Ingredients:

2 ounces gin
1/2 lime
Club soda

Directions:

Add gin and the juice of one half lime into a highball glass.  Fill glass with ice, and top with club soda.  Throw your lime in for garnish.

The classic Aviation cocktail is simple, well balanced and refreshing, plus it’s crafted with ingredients that one can easily obtain: gin, fresh lemon juice and maraschino liqueur.

Like many classic cocktails, history of the Aviation’s origin is a bit cloudy, but according to David Wondrich’s Imbibe, the recipe was first printed in 1916 in Recipes for Mixed Drinks by Hugo Ensslin.

Ingredients:

2 1/2 ounces gin
3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice
3 dashes maraschino liqueur

Directions:

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

The Negroni is similar to an Americano, but more stout, as it adds gin to the Americano’s sweet vermouth and Campari. While the Negroni is an aperitif and meant to stimulate the appetite before a meal, too many of these guys on an empty stomach will have you falling off your chair. 

1 ounce gin
1 ounce sweet vermouth
1 ounce Campari

Stir with ice in a mixing glass.  Strain into a cocktail glass, and garnish with an orange peel.

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.

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.

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.

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.