Tag: classic cocktails

Posted on

Classic Recipe with a Twist: Meet Me in the Woods at Midnight (a take on the Scofflaw)

You could do a lot worse than spend a week or two or your summer in Maine.  I’ve spent some time with my family up on Mount Desert Island the last few summers, near Acadia National Park.  One favorite activity there is hiking on one of the many trails on the oceanside mountains; another is making cocktails at happy hour with made-in-Maine ingredients.  This year is no exception, and after one of these hikes I wanted to make a cocktail that captured the beautiful Maine woods on a foggy, misty day – a drink I called Meet Me in the Woods at Midnight, which is a slight variation of the classic Scofflaw:

Meet Me in the Woods at Midnight

I always feature the drink first in these posts so you can see what you’re getting into.  But that makes this post sort of backwards because you’re seeing the ultimate creation before its inspiration.  So without further ado, let me share a bit of what I saw earlier in the day.  The first part of the hike featured a long stretch of woods immersed in fog – with living trees standing comfortably next to the dead.  The forest floor was covered with almost glow-green moss that added to the eerie effect.  It was a beautiful, almost haunted scene:

Continue reading “Classic Recipe with a Twist: Meet Me in the Woods at Midnight (a take on the Scofflaw)”

Posted on

Classic Recipe: Piña Colada

Today’s forecast is 95 and sunny, with more of the same (and even hotter) for the next two days.  When this part of the summer comes around, I resort to standard survival methods:  crank the air conditioning; put out the inflatable backyard pool; and blend up some frozen drinks.  To help you in your fight back against the heat and humidity, I offer you a recipe for the classic frozen cocktail:  the piña colada.

Piña Colada

The piña colada combines pineapple and coconut flavors with ice and rum and – through the power of these tropical flavors and the position the drink has come to occupy in the collective imagination – mentally transports you to a breezy tropical island.  Suddenly, the blazing heat and humidity of the Washingtonian jungle feels right – almost as if you really are at the beach:

Tropical island

Even if all you are really doing is filling your inflatable pool for that inflatable-pool party you’re hosting later (but trust me, this is a good idea – it helps with the tropical-island fantasy):

Continue reading “Classic Recipe: Piña Colada”

Posted on

Classic Recipe with a Twist: The Hot and Dirty Martini

Back in my review of the martini service at Requin, I promised you a “few posts” of martini recipes.  First I offered my take on the classic martini.  Then I interrupted our martini study to check out the Brothers and Sisters bar at the Line Hotel.  Now I’m back to deliver on the promise of multiple martini recipes.  As I’ve noted, the martini is an old drink that has enjoyed many iterations over the years.  In that spirit, I now offer you a twist of my own on the classic, the Hot and Dirty Martini:

Hot and Dirty Martini

The recipe begins with the classic gin and vermouth ingredients.  But as its name suggests, there are two modifications here:  heat and additional brine.  The heat is supplied by the spicy Ancho Reyes Verde, a green ancho chile liqueur.  It has a savory flavor, which is fitting for a martini.

The chile liqueur also pairs well with additional brine, which “dirties” up the drink.  The brine in this case comes from Gordy’s (of D.C.), which makes a Fine Brine intended for cocktails specifically.

There are several things I like about this combination of ingredients.  The first is that (as noted above) it adds an earthy, savory flavor to the drink.  Don’t get me wrong – I love the classic martini.  In my classic recipe, the prevailing flavor is the herbal profile of the gin, the main ingredient.  But if you’re someone who likes a good Bloody Mary or a martini with a lot of extra olive juice, I think you’ll like what Gordy’s adds to the drink.  And to me, the chile liqueuer was a natural addition.  The chile flavor is compatible with the vegetable-leaning profile of the drink, and I like adding spice to just about everything.  (If you are sensitive to spice don’t worry, it’s not overwhelming.)

The other advantage to this approach is that it’s a lighter drink than a traditional martini, meaning you can have more of them.  Gin comprises only half the recipe here, and the other ingredients are lower proof or nonalcoholic.

And finally, I think it’s good to have a few variations of the martini in your rotation.  You might want to host a martini night, for example, and new options help keep things fresh for martini diehards and might cast the drink in a new, better light for those who have not been won over by the martini in the past.

Here is the recipe:

Hot and Dirty Martini recipe
Print Recipe

Hot and Dirty Martini

Spice up the classic martini with this recipe, which starts with gin and vermouth but adds a chile liqueur and brine to bring you a Hot and Dirty Martini.
Prep Time5 minutes
Total Time5 minutes
Course: Drinks
Cuisine: Spirit-Forward
Servings: 1 cocktail
Calories: 147kcal
Author: Geoffrey Wyatt

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 oz. gin I used Botanist
  • 1/2 oz. Ancho Reyes Verde
  • 1/2 oz. dry vermouth I used Dolin
  • 1/2 oz. Gordy's Fine Brine

Instructions

  • Place two olives in a martini glass.
  • Combine the gin, Ancho Reyes Verde, vermouth, and brine in a mixing glass with ice and stir.
  • Strain into the martini glass.

Enjoy!

Posted on

Classic Recipe: The Martini

As promised in my recent review of Requin’s martini service, today’s post shows you how to make a martini at home.  This cocktail is a true classic, well more than a hundred years old.  In fact, by 1891, the Kansas City Star could chastise the “thirsty New Yorker” for being taken with the martini on the ground that the cocktail was “not very new.”  (The same article nevertheless acknowledged the versatility of the drink.  It conceded that the martini was the form in which “the casual, the occasional, the weary, the enthusiastic, the going-to-bed-now, or the just-up New Yorker takes his poison.”)

Not surprisingly, a drink with such history has enjoyed multiple iterations.  The typical recipe uses gin, for example, but some spies—er, drinkers, prefer vodka.  Proportions also vary, anywhere from a one-to-one ratio of gin and vermouth to essentially all gin, with vermouth supplied only (if at all) by an atomizing sprayer or, as Winston Churchill preferred it, by observation “from across the room.”  Garnishes, too, have varied, including lemon peel, olives, and cocktail onions.  Even the method of combining the ingredients – shaking or stirring – is subject to modification.

What follows is my preferred approach.  But the critical drinker may wish to take a cue from experience and tinker with the particulars.  My classic martini is made with gin, dry vermouth, and orange bitters, and garnished with an olive.  When done right, it looks like this:

Classic Martini

Here’s how to do it.  Put an olive or two in a martini glass or coupe.  Add a barspoon of olive brine (or more if you prefer a “dirtier” drink) to the glass.  In a mixing glass, combine a dash of orange bitters, 1/4 ounce of dry vermouth (I used Dolin) and 2 3/4 ounces of gin (I used Botanist).  Add ice to the glass and stir.  Strain into the glass with the olives.

Enjoy!

Classic Martini Recipe
Print Recipe

Classic Martini

This is a recipe for a great martini, my favorite cocktail, featuring gin, a tiny bit of vermouth, a dash of orange bitters, and a couple of olives.
Prep Time5 minutes
Total Time5 minutes
Course: Drinks
Cuisine: Spirit-Forward
Servings: 1 cocktail
Calories: 175kcal

Ingredients

  • 2 3/4 oz. gin I used Botanist
  • 1/4 oz. dry vermouth I used Dolin
  • 1 dash orange bitters I used Fee Brothers

Instructions

  • Place two olives and a bar-spoonful of olive juice in a martini glass.
  • Combine the gin, vermouth, and orange bitters in a mixing glass with ice and stir.
  • Strain into the martini glass.
Posted on

Classic Recipe: The Aviation

The Aviation is a classic cocktail, named after its unique hue – a light shade of something between blue and violet, reminiscent of the morning sky.  It is more than a century old at this point, reportedly printed for the first time in a 1916 book by Hugo Ensslin, the head bartender of the Hotel Wallick in New York.

Despite its early birthdate, the Aviation had faded into obscurity for a time due to the difficulty in obtaining a key ingredient:  crème de violette.  This violet-flavored liqueur gives the drink its signature color but, for many decades, was not widely available in the United States.  But renewed interest in the Aviation was sparked by Paul Harrington and Laura Moorhead’s 1998 book, The Drinks Bible for the 21st Century, which covered the Aviation among many other traditional cocktails.  And today, a number of crème de violette options are available, including one by Rothman & Winter, which is the ingredient used in this recipe.

The drink has a strong floral, herbal taste.  It shares three of its four ingredients – gin, Maraschino, and citrus (though here lemon instead of lime) with the Last Word, and as such there are some overlapping flavors here.  But the use of crème de violette instead of Chartreuse pushes the drink in a more floral direction.  Note that, for my preference, less is more with the crème de violette, so if you are tinkering with the portions here, you probably want to exercise restraint in increasing that ingredient.

Here is the recipe:

The Aviation recipe
Print Recipe

Aviation

Recipe for the Aviation, a classic, century-old cocktail with an herbal and floral taste, made from gin, lemon, Maraschino and crème de violette.
Prep Time5 minutes
Total Time5 minutes
Course: Drinks
Cuisine: Sour
Servings: 1 cocktail
Calories: 200kcal

Ingredients

  • 2 oz. gin I used Botanist
  • 3/4 oz. freshly squeezed lemon juice
  • 1/2 oz. Luxardo Maraschino liqueur
  • 1/4 oz. crème de violette liqueur I used Rothman & Winter
  • cherry

Instructions

  • Combine the gin, lemon juice, Maraschino and crème de violette with ice in a mixing glass and stir.
  • Strain into a coupe or martini glass.
  • Garnish with a cherry.

Enjoy!

Posted on

Recipe: The Thanksgiving Boulevardier

Searching for an aperitif to round out that fantastic Thanksgiving dinner you have been planning?  Try this twist on the Boulevardier, a classic cocktail based on the Negroni, but with whiskey instead of gin as the base spirit.

The traditional Boulevardier recipe calls for 1 1/2 ounces of bourbon and an ounce each of Campari and sweet vermouth.  But Thanksgiving can involve more drinks than the average meal so I dialed back the bourbon just a touch to 1 ounce.  I also replaced the sweet vermouth with Kina l’Aero d’Or (more on this fantastic aperitif wine here).  And I added 1/4 ounce of lemon juice to balance out the sweetness just a touch.  Stir these ingredients together, strain into a rocks glass, express a lemon peel and add the peel as garnish, and you get something like this:

The cocktail works nicely as a Thanksgiving aperitif because the tangy flavors of Campari and lemon combine in a way that pleasantly previews the cranberry sauce to come.  And as noted above, the drink isn’t so strong that you could not have a couple of them if the dinner takes a little bit longer to get to the table than anticipated, as is often the case at Thanksgiving.

Here is the recipe:

Thanksgiving Boulevardier recipe
Print Recipe

Thanksgiving Boulevardier

Looking for the perfect Thanksgiving aperitif?  Try this twist on the classic Boulevardier cocktail to round out that fantastic dinner you have planned.
Prep Time5 minutes
Total Time5 minutes
Course: Drinks
Cuisine: Spirit-Forward
Servings: 1 cocktail
Calories: 245kcal
Author: Geoffrey Wyatt

Ingredients

  • 1 oz. bourbon I used E.H. Taylor
  • 1 oz. Campari
  • 1 oz. Kina l'Aero d'Or quinquina
  • 1/4 oz. freshly squeezed lemon juice
  • lemon peel

Instructions

  • Combine the bourbon, Campari, quinquina and lemon juice with ice in a mixing glass and stir.
  • Strain into a rocks glass.
  • Add a large ice cube.
  • Express lemon peel over the glass and add the peel as garnish.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted on

Classic Recipe with a Twist: The Old Fashioned

It’s old fashioned week, where we celebrate a cocktail that (per the preceding source) has roots as far back as 1802.  The classic cocktail uses classic ingredients:  whiskey, sugar and bitters, along with some muddled fruit or at least a cherry, depending on what you have handy.

But after 215 years of the same old recipe, @theoldrefashioned thought it was time for an update.  This Instagram feed invites followers to submit their variations on the classic, and I couldn’t resist joining in the fun.  Expanding on the use of fruit and sugar in the original, and with the fall season on my mind, I started by smoking a rocks glass with orange peel and cinnamon, which I torched over a maple wood plank (I found an assorted set of planks here):

For the recipe, I kept the traditional sugar, bitters, whiskey and fruit ingredients, but I added a bit of amaro and Maraschino liqueur.  I muddled and mixed and added a big cube of ice, and it came out looking like this:

(Ignore the gridlines. Oops.)

I really liked the way this tasted.  The smokiness was subtle but definitely there – there was a hint of cinnamon on the nose the whole way through.  And the amaro and Maraschino combination combined with the fruit in a very pleasant way to make this an exceptionally smooth old fashioned.

Here’s the recipe:

Geoff's Old Re-Fashioned recipe
Print Recipe

Geoff's Old Re-Fashioned

A new twist on the classic Old Fashioned recipe in celebration of the "Old Re-Fashioned" thread honoring Old Fashioned Week.
Prep Time7 minutes
Total Time7 minutes
Course: Drinks
Cuisine: Ancestral
Servings: 1 cocktail
Calories: 200kcal
Author: Geoffrey Wyatt

Ingredients

  • 2 oz. bourbon I used E.H. Taylor
  • 1/2 oz. amaro I used Averna
  • 1/4 oz. Luxardo Maraschino liqueur
  • 3 dashes old-fashioned bitters I used Fee Brothers
  • cinnamon stick
  • orange slice
  • lemon peel
  • cherry
  • sugar cube

Instructions

  • Smoke a rocks glass by holding it upside down over an orange peel and cinnamon stick while torching the ingredients over a maple wood board.  Let the orange and cinnamon catch fire before removing the flame and place the rocks glass over them while they continue to smolder.
  • Turn the rocks glass right-side up.  Add sugar cube, three dashes old-fashioned bitters, the orange slice, and a bit of lemon peel.  Muddle the ingredients.
  • Add the bourbon, amaro, and Maraschino, and mix the ingredients.
  • Add the cherry.
  • Add a large ice cube.
  • Optionally, garnish with the burnt orange peel or cinnamon stick.

Try it out and let me know what you think – and please share your own takes on the old fashioned!