This recipe was posted over at the Drinkboy forum by Rafael.

I’ve always been a big fan of mai tais, but sometimes I’m just not in the mood to go to that much effort to put one together. This is simply a variation on the daiquiri, using orgeat syrup for the sweetener. Orgeat is one of those old-school syrups that crops up in places like Jerry Thomas’ guide and Trader Vic’s recipes, but unlike many of the things popular back in the day (Bogart’s bitters, anyone?), it’s pretty easy to find. This one’s good enough to rank above the “interesting novelty” category that so many drinks seem to fall into; I can see myself pulling this out on occasion, when the idea of a regular daiquiri doesn’t excite me but I lack the motivation to go the full mai tai route.

Mai Daiquiri

• 2 ounces white rum
• juice of half a lime
• around 2 tsp orgeat, to taste (you can also add a dash of simple syrup, if your lime has a lot of juice)

Shake with ice & strain into chilled cocktail glass.

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Tags: Drinks, Rum by Paul
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Bars, liquor companies push weird cocktails
Friday, July 08, 2005
By Nancy Keates, The Wall Street Journal

On a recent evening at Vault Martini Bar in Portland, Ore., customer Ann Samiee had to negotiate a cocktail menu with almost 100 choices that included a Badhattan, with bourbon and red wine, and a Pad Thai, a drink made of ginger-infused vodka, basil, lemongrass and lime juice. Ms. Samiee settled on a “Blue Basil,” a mixture of vodka, vermouth and basil, plus olives stuffed with blue cheese that created an oil slick on top. “I felt like it should have had croutons,” says the stay-at-home mom.

Across the bar, flight attendant Jenni Tompkins ordered a “Cherry Cheesecake” with vodka, vanilla liqueur and cranberry juice. Her verdict: “It tastes like cough syrup.”

If there’s a redeeming factor to all this mixological silliness, it’s in the form of the growing cavalry of forward-thinking bartenders that are rallying ’round the quality-cocktail flag, waved fearlessly as always by Robert Hess, aka Drinkboy:

Now that the trend has gone nationwide, it’s creating a bit of a backlash among some purists. “I cringe when people call anything in a martini glass a martini,” says Robert Hess, who along with some other stalwarts started the Museum of the American Cocktail. Its bar will soon serve only “authentic” drinks, made from 19th-century recipes. Audrey Saunders, a well-known mixologist, refuses to use recipes from liquor brands. When Ms. Saunders opens her new bar Pegu Club in New York this August, she’ll be making the same gin-based drink served at the famed British officer’s club in Rangoon in the 1900s.

Some cutting-edge bars and restaurants — such as Bar Americain, a new Bobby Flay restaurant in Midtown Manhattan — also are shunning the more-is-better take on drinks and paring menus down to include only classics like sazeracs. Employees Only, a bar in New York, is making its own vermouths, bitters and infusions from preprohibition recipes.

Making its own vermouths, bitters and infusions…hold it a sec, I feel a chorus of the Battle Hymn of the Republic coming on….

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Tags: Folderol & Blather, General by Paul
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If a drink could inspire me to send love letters to its creator, this would be one of them. Not that I’m in the habit of sending anonymous, bourbon-perfumed mash notes to innovative mixologists—that particular level of weirdness is several steps beyond where I normally live my life—but in the twisted, confused world of creative drinking, it’s a lovely thing to know with certainty the name of the person responsible for crafting a well-composed concoction.

This one’s from David Wondrich’s Killer Cocktails, and was originally devised by Mr. Wondrich for the bar menu at 5 Ninth, a watering hole in Manhattan just a few blocks from the West Village apartment where I spent most of the 1990s. If bars like this—if drinks like this—could be found just up the street back when I called the neighborhood home, it’s quite possible I’d be there still.

William Hamilton compared this drink to a gramophone rag played on digital equipment. With its robust depth and gentle complexity of flavor, the Gansevoort Fizz is a wonderful drink to keep in mind when you really want to capture the attention of a jaded palate.

Gansevoort Fizz

• 2 ounces medium-bodied rum (Wondrich suggests Appleton V/X—I agree wholeheartedly)
• 1 ounce fresh lemon juice
• 1 ounce Drambuie
• 2 dashes Peychaud’s bitters

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled glass; top with 2 or 3 ounces chilled soda water (NO ICE PLEASE! Fizzes are meant to be consumed rather quickly, while the bubbles are still lively in the glass.)

Tags: Drinks, Rum by Paul
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A while back, I mentioned the Police Gazette Cocktail, an excellent drink I came across in the back pages of William Grimes’ Straight Up or On the Rocks. Since this discovery, the drink has entered my regular rotation–and I’m pleased to report that I’m not alone.

Slakethirst has a very nice writeup regarding the Police Gazette (and notices the lack of a recipe for this drink on CocktailDB.com). Ensuring the writer a permanent place in my heart, and my will (should I ever have something to leave behind, save a dog-eared copy of David Embury and a down-at-the-heels cocktail shaker), the recipe posted calls for Old Overholt rye, and cites a preference for the lively flavor of Fees Old-Fashioned Aromatic Bitters.

Then, just tonight, I received an e-mail from a friend who lives in DC’s Maryland suburbs, who reports that he celebrated Independence Day by putting together a Police Gazette (using Old Overholt, bless his heart), then firing marine parachute flares into the sky over an industrial park. My source reports car alarms being heard from great distances away (once the ringing in his ears stopped), and a growing desire for more Police Gazette Cocktails.

Keep spreading the good word–

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Tags: Drinks, Folderol & Blather by Paul
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