Giving Thanks for Whiskey
Just in time for Thanksgiving, the good Dr. Cocktail has given us a brief history and erudite assessment on the status of whiskey in America, posted over at Martini Republic.
Read it here: As Thanksgiving Hurls
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Widow’s Kiss
When I was about four years old, I fell madly in love with Jacqueline Kennedy. My older brother had a children’s book about JFK that was filled with photographs–Jack playing football; a gaggle of well-mannered, near-identical looking children clustered on some expansive Massachusetts lawn; PT-109. Our house was a house of books, and after I’d tired of Mammals do the Most Amazing Things! and Green Eggs and Ham, I’d find myself lying on the carpet, flipping through the photos of the Kennedys.
I had yet to start kindergarten, so it’s not surprising I found little of interest in most of the book. But on one of the first pages was a clear color spread: Black sedan convertible. Men in brightly colored shirts and Brylcreemed hair and women with scarves and cats-eye sunglasses, lining the street. Pearls and a pink pillbox hat. Dallas.
They were both smiling and waving.
She looked happy and beautiful in that photo, and to my four-year-old eyes, the color of her hair and the shape of her face made her look more than a little like my mother. I coveted that photo. In hindsight, it must have been jarring to my parents–Texans, both, and lifelong Democrats–to have seen their child staring in bliss at an image from that November day. But I had no idea of the weight that photo carried. I just loved the sweep of hair across her forehead as she squinted into the sun, one gloved hand raised in a wave to the adoring crowds.
The Widow’s Kiss
- 1 1/2 ounces calvados
- 3/4 ounce yellow Chartreuse (green works, too, but it’s a little more intense)
- 3/4 ounce Benedictine
- 2 dashes Angostura bitters
Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a cherry.
The Widow’s Kiss predates Camelot by a good 65 years. In Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails, Ted Haigh credits George Kappeler’s Modern American Drinks, from 1895, with first publishing a recipe for this drink. Harry Craddock, Patrick Gavin Duffy and “Cocktail” Bill Boothby all list the same recipe in their early 20th-century bar guides (though in Old Waldorf Bar Days, Albert Stevens Crockett lists a recipe calling for equal parts Parfait d’Amour, yellow Chartreuse and Benedictine, with the beaten white of an egg positioned on top and adorned with a slice of strawberry).
Built upon the heady foundation of calvados, and with the complex aromatic firepower of not one, but two venerable herbal liqueurs, the Widow’s Kiss is a drink to nestle into. In his book, Haigh calls the Widow’s Kiss the most evocative drink ever, a cocktail suited for late fall edging toward winter. On a chilly November evening, post-Dallas, post-Watergate, post-Florida, post-9/11, and not-yet-post-Iraq, there’s no small amount of satisfaction to be found in a drink that calls up a honeyed past, and provides a moment’s distraction from the bitter present.
Red Hook
Just when I started to think that every combination of classic ingredients must have been tried, along comes a drink like the Red Hook. This variation on the classic Manhattan is a fairly recent creation, credited to Enzo Errico, bartender at Sasha Petraske’s Milk & Honey in New York. Named for the neighborhood in South Brooklyn–a former industrial zone with cobblestone streets and Civil War-era brick buildings, now yet another revitalized urban area–the Red Hook is a little more rugged than your typical Manhattan. The Punt y Mes has a bitter component, kind of a cross between sweet vermouth and Campari, that gives the drink a kind of serrated edge, but the healthy dose of maraschino manages to simultaneously tone down the Punt y Mes while adding its own complicated personality to the mix. In cautious balance on a base of rye whiskey, this flavor pairing manages to bring out the strengths in each modifier, without any one flavor becoming too dominant.
Cheers to Ben at Zig Zag Cafe for introducing me to this one. A dedicated Manhattan drinker and all-around rye-whiskey fiend, I think I’ve found a new favorite.
Red Hook
- 2 ounces rye whiskey
- 1/2 ounce Punt y Mes
- 1/4 - 1/2 ounce maraschino, to taste
Stir with ice, strain into chilled cocktail glass.
Stone Fence
Even though it’s still only mid-November, it feels like autumn is in its final days in Seattle. Last week’s wind storms blew most of the yellowed leaves from the maple in front of our house, so now a glance out the living room window finds a scraggle of bare branches destined to remain our primary view until April rolls around again. Venture out–a less pleasant effort now, with the temperature starting to drop and the rain whipping about–and it becomes clearer that winter proper has yet to set in, but autumn’s number has definitely been called.
On rainy November Sundays such as these, it’s important to remind yourself that it’s still autumn, and that winter’s monotony has not yet captured the day. To do this, I like to turn to aged spirits and the fruits of the season to keep things in perspective. Despite all my recent excitement over the allspice richness of pimento dram, I’m not yet ready to give up my Fallen Leaves and other calvados cocktails in favor of festive holiday-appropriate drinks such as Stingers and Tom and Jerrys. The time for those will be here soon enough; tonight, I need something rugged and autumnal, with enough muscle in it to beat back the chill of the night.
The Stone Fence is a drink of antiquity; it was old hat by the time Jerry Thomas set about writing his drinks guide, having been a mainstay at taverns and inns since at least the early 1800s. Easy to prepare–simply hard cider emboldened by a hearty dose of whatever amber spirit happens to be at hand–the Stone Fence is well-suited for a November evening. The drink takes the simple, honest purity of a glass of hard cider and touches it with a little savagery, making it a beverage that’s easy to approach, yet unforgiving when underestimated. As David Wondrich quipped in Esquire Drinks, the Stone Fence has “a name which hints at the effect produced by getting outside too many of these, which is not unlike that produced by running downhill into one.”
Take these gently–but on a nasty evening, take one.
Stone Fence
- 2 ounces brandy (or applejack, or Scotch, or bourbon, or rye, or rum)
- hard cider
Pour the spirits into a pint glass; add two lumps of ice and fill with cider.
Technorati tag: cocktails
Help Wanted
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not much of an innovator when it comes to creating cocktails. My collection of drink manuals is rapidly taking over my kitchen, and with these thousands of recipes to choose from, rarely do I venture into the unknown.
But sometimes, when I have a particular ingredient or a particular flavor in mind, there’s just nothing out there I can find. Usually, I think, somebody, somewhere has probably come up with the drink I’m searching for, but it’s not to be found in print (in my collection, anyway) or online. In these cases I’m left to fend for myself, just me and my mixing glass, along with the contents of my liquor cabinet and whatever imagination I can bring to bear to create a suitable drink.
This is one of those drinks.
Following on the experiments with pimento dram, the very first cocktail I made with the new stuff is one I had no reference base for. None of the many cocktail manuals I own have any drinks calling for allspice liqueur or pimento dram; only on CocktailDB have I found any satisfaction, and that only fleeting.
But this drink just seemed so obvious–a Jamaican liqueur, mixed with a nice aged Jamaican rum, with a little toss of bitters to bring out the cinnamon and spice. Elementary, eh? Yet totally missing from the mainstream literature.
Pity, that. I find this a truly enjoyable drink, the best base for enjoying pimento dram I’ve yet come across (and I apologize for tooting my own proverbial horn, here–but really, this is a damn fine drink, and it just seemed so obvious). Perhaps if this drink were to grace more published guides, demand for pimento dram would reach such a peak that the interested parties would see fit to make it widely available in this country. These are things I imagine while sipping this concoction–a spicy Jamaican liqueur, blossoming to such popularity that it pushes the Jagermeisters and Banana Schnapps of the world right off the liquor store shelves. A man’s gotta dream.
Oh, and the help wanted part? Along with my reluctance to create new drinks comes an absolute loathing of coming up with new names. I need help, people, and I need it from you. I’ll mull the idea over for a while, but should anyone come up with a good suggestion for a name for this drink (or know the actual name for an existing drink of this type), be sure to post it in the comments, or e-mail me so I can take it into consideration. But even if you’re as stumped as I am for a name, do try this drink, even if it means making your own pimento dram. It’s like a hammock in a glass.
[Your Name Here]
- 2 ounces aged Jamaican rum (Appleton V/X and Appleton Extra both work very well)
- 1/4 - 1/2 ounce pimento dram, to taste
- 1 dash Fee’s Old-Fashioned Aromatic Bitters
Stir with ice, strain into a chilled glass.
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