If you read my last post offering cocktail gift ideas for the 2017 holiday season, you know I’m a fan of shrubs and Chartreuse. This recipe – the Autum Breeze – shows you how to make good use of these things together.
The context for this recipe is my frame of mind when I was dreaming it up: thinking about the last days of fall and avoiding unpleasant thoughts of winter by imagining myself on a Caribbean vacation. This daydream inspired island ingredients like pineapple and rum on the one hand and warm autumnal flavors like smoky scotch and spices on the other. My ingredient list became clear: rum, scotch, a pineapple-allspice shrub by Shrub District, and yellow Chartreuse.
This is a spirit-heavy cocktail so I decided that stirring rather than shaking was the way to go. I stirred the ingredients with ice and strained into a couple glass and garnished with a lemon peel. And here was the result:
This is a sweet drink, with a pleasant complexity provided by the different flavors. The smokiness of the scotch and the herbal goodness of the Chartreuse come through clearly, offsetting what might have been an overpowering sweetness if the rum and pineapple flavors had been left alone. It definitely works as a fall sipping drink, but you could easily pour this over crushed ice and swizzle for a fine poolside (or seaside) drink and throw a number of these back quickly.
Here is the recipe:
Autumn Breeze
Ingredients
- 1 oz. aged rum I used Appleton Estate 12-year
- 1/2 oz. Laphroaig 10-year
- 1/2 oz. yellow Chartreuse
- 1 oz. pineapple-allspice shrub by Shrub District
- lemon peel
Instructions
- Combine the rum, Laphroaig, Chartreuse and shrub with ice in a mixing glass and stir.
- Strain into a coupe.
- Express lemon peel over the glass and add the peel as garnish.
Enjoy!