Now that the copyright-flogging, spam-blogging leeches of the Internet have officially entered the cocktail-blog realm — and my apologies for being cryptic, but if you have no idea what I’m talking about, you’re one of the lucky ones — I thought I should follow suit and start stealing from myself.

Here’s a drink I posted last Friday over at Serious Eats that’s worthy of a little more exploration. I was introduced to the Northern Spy a few weeks ago by Murray Stenson, who mixed one for me while I was in my customary clueless mode about what to drink next. The recipe sounded familiar — apple cider, applejack, lemon juice, liqueur (more on that in a minute) — and after refreshing my memory with the help of my good friend Google, I realized that Erik had recently posted the recipe on eGullet as part of his Stompin’ Through the Savoy journey, while mixing up some cocktails with San Francisco bartender Josey Packard at Alembic.

I had the good fortune to meet Josey last month while in San Francisco, and while I had only one drink at Alembic — the fault for which I lay on the residual Bourbon & Branch-induced hangover I was traveling with at the time — it was obvious that Josey knew her stuff. The Northern Spy just drives that point home: perfectly suited for late autumn and early winter, this drink is a match made for Thanksgiving. Josey says she serves this at her own family gatherings, and I’ll be putting together a round or two on Thursday, partially to enjoy the drink’s rich flavor but also to play with a few variations.

Josey’s recipe calls for using apricot brandy for flavor and sweetness (she even makes her own, macerating a pound of dried apricots in 750ml of VS or better brandy for a few days). I’ve used a couple of the better commercial versions out there — Rothman & Winter Orchard Apricot and Giffard Abricot du Roussillon — with fantastic results. She also says the Northern Spy works great with the royale treatment — topping the cocktail with an ounce or so of chilled champagne — which I’m definitely going to have to try this week.

But during my first introduction to the drink at Zig Zag, Murray pulled out a bottle of house-made pimento dram and used that in place of the apricot brandy; this swapped the elegant fruitiness of the drink for a deep, mellow allspice tone that really emphasized the Northern Spy’s autumnal character. Then tonight, just for laughs, I broke out the bottle of Giffard Ginger of the Indies liqueur and substituted that for the apricot, giving the drink an aura of spicy brightness.

(And since I’m horsing around with the recipe, you’ll note from the photo that I tried substituting the Clear Creek Apple Brandy — the two-year-old stuff, not the eight-year-old Eau de Vie de Pomme — for the applejack, with pleasant results.)

Josey’s got a great drink here, whether made her original way with the apricot or with the allspice or ginger variations. If you’re looking for a Thanksgiving drink — or holiday cocktail, or just regular autumn tipple — the Northern Spy is a good one to roll out.

Northern Spy (created by Josey Packard, Alembic, San Francisco)

• 2 ounces applejack
• 1 ounce fresh apple cider (flash-pasteurized is okay, but no preservatives!)
• 1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice
• 1/4 - 1/2 ounce apricot brandy, to taste, depending on brand*

Shake well with ice, strain into chilled cocktail glass that’s been rimmed with cinnamon sugar. Top with champagne, if you like (be sure to goose up the sweetness a little to compensate for the extra acidity), and for the holiday go ahead and garnish with a cranberry.

* or pimento dram, or ginger liqueur, or ……

Tags: Applejack, Drinks, Pimento Dram by Paul
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Or, “reason I hate living with a state liquor monopoly #8,437″

A rant for the locals, which neatly coincides with Raiders of the Lost Cocktail: as was pointed out to me recently by Jamie, the Washington state liquor board is reshuffling the list of brands and bottles it carries – meaning anything dropped from the list will soon be banished from the state, unobtainable short of ordering a (costly) special shipment or holding a commercial liquor license. On the latest list of casualties is Benedictine, the French herbal liqueur that matches so, so well with the flavor of whiskey.

The good news? (snark mode on): B&B remains on the list. (/snark)

Earlier this week I noticed the first orange “close-out” tags on the Benedictine shelf (the positive side: it’s now priced under $30), and the liqueur — never in huge supply — is starting to disappear from the shelves.

But while at first blush the news sounded like it could lead to the Frisco, the Widow’s Kiss and the Cocktail de la Louisiane becoming endangered species in the northwest corner of the country, Murray says not to worry – in state liquor hell, things vanish and then reappear all the time. Besides, he pointed out that bars and restaurants still have access to the wholesale liquor stockpile in downtown Seattle, which he gives me to understand is unaffected by the change.

So while you won’t be able to bring a bottle home, you can still get Benedictine cocktails while sitting at one of the small handful of bars where bartenders actually know what the stuff is for. Prompting Murray to ask, “Who’s your best friend now?”

Tags: Folderol & Blather by Paul
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Like any self-respecting cocktail fanatic, I’ve been dipping at the well of IMBIBE! for the past few weeks, trying out different drinks and occasionally latching onto one for a few torrid nights (hello there, Prince of Wales cocktail; good to see you again, Absinthe Cocktail; good evening, Sherry Cobbler, I’m sorry I haven’t called in so long).

This drink isn’t in the book.

Not completely, anyway. Certainly, there’s a close relative — an ancestor, I suppose — traveling under the name of the Fourth Degree. Simply a dry martini that’s been dosed with a dash of absinthe, the Fourth Degree is a very pleasant drink. At this level, the absinthe lends a flush of anise-tinted herbaceousness to the drink’s aroma and flavor, and it’s just enough to give the cocktail a cruel sneer and nothing more.

The Obituary Cocktail, however, takes this formula and turns up the volume — no longer playing a minor role, the absinthe shoulders its way forward, putting on the sap gloves and taking a firm grip on your collar. The absinthe still gives the gin and vermouth plenty of room to move around, and rightly recognizes that its flavor much benefits from doing so, but even though there’s four times as much gin in the glass as absinthe, the absinthe is the big gorilla in the room.

I don’t know when or where the step from Fourth Degree to Obituary Cocktail occurred. Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop in New Orleans claims to be the drink’s home, but the last time I had one of these at Lafitte’s it was made with Herbsaint (or Pernod — too damn dark in there to see what they were using), and was tepid and too sweet.

Herbsaint is useful in small doses as an absinthe substitute, but for drinks that require more than a couple of dashes of the stuff, Herbsaint (and other substitutes) can’t summon the seductively menacing glower that absinthe brings to a cocktail. While the absinthe substitutes are useful and even necessary for the bar, drinking a cocktail made with a substitute is like playing poker with your grandpa — it’s all good fun, but for a really lively game you need a competitor who’ll take a poke at you on occasion. With Lucid and Kubler now on the market in the U.S., and available by online order in most states, domestic drinkers should really make it a priority to lay in a bottle or two, for use in such concoctions. (Though be warned: in Canada and much of Europe, what’s sold as “absinth” or “absinthe” is frequently a nasty impostor. What you want is a decent French or Swiss brand; check the ratings and recommendations at the Wormwood Society and/or Fee Verte for suggestions).

I should note, of course, that “Obituary Cocktail” is also the name of a book by New Orleans photographer Kerri McCaffety, which surveys some of the city’s historic bars. I’m ashamed to say I don’t have a copy of this book (*cough* Christmas present *cough*), but from having seen it at Tales of the Cocktail, it looks absolutely gorgeous.

One last selling point about the Obituary Cocktail: should you decide to wrap up an evening in the company of these, you may be able to legitimately claim the need for Corpse Revivers the following day.

Obituary Cocktail

• 2 ounces gin (I’ll take Plymouth in mine)
• 1/4 ounce dry vermouth
• 1/4 ounce absinthe (or a substitute such as Herbsaint, if you must)

Stir well with cracked ice; strain into chilled cocktail glass. The drink’s light opalescence is its own garnish.

This round of Mixology Monday is hosted by Jay at Oh, Gosh! Step on over to Jay’s place in the next day or so to see how it all went.

Tags: Absinthe, Gin, Mixology Monday by Paul
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If I’m still swooning over David Wondrich’s new book, Imbibe!, it’s only partly because it’s a damn fine read. In addition to that, though, it has plenty of recipes that have had me breaking out the shaker over the last couple of weeks, often with very good luck.

The Prince of Wales’ Cocktail grabbed my attention right away. Part of the reason was because the illustration accompanying it is from an old catalog (I assume) detailing several types of champagne taps, which could be screwed through the cork of a champagne bottle and used to dispense the bubbly as needed. [On a side note — why the hell can’t we get stuff like that nowadays? Or if we can, where is it — I sure haven’t seen it.] As Wondrich writes, champagne was being splashed into every drink in sight back in the 1880s; this drink, which he sources from Private Life of King Edward VII, from 1901, is one of the success stories.

But the real appeal was the mix of flavors this drink promises, from the spicy zip of the rye to the bright fruitiness of fresh pineapple to the crisp effervescence of the champagne (I suppose that’s a sensation rather than a flavor, but you get my drift). It’s a decadent recipe to read, and the drink is obviously the work of someone who takes their refreshment very seriously, and has plenty of time and resources to do so. A prince, in other words.

Prince of Wales’ Cocktail (adapted from Imbibe!, by David Wondrich)

• 1 1/2 ounce rye whiskey
• 1/4 teaspoon maraschino
• 1 dash Angostura bitters
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 square of pineapple
• 1 ounce chilled champagne

Add sugar and bitters to a mixing glass and dissolve in a splash of water (or use simple syrup). Add rye, maraschino and pineapple chunk, pile in a bunch of ice and shake hard to crush the pineapple. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass — I think this one fairly cries out for a coupe — add champagne, and twist a piece of lemon peel over the drink.

Shazam, is that tasty. I’ve used both the bonded Rittenhouse and Michter’s in this drink with good effect, and a, um, affordable cava that didn’t seem to do it any harm. Wondrich writes that you can use a piece of canned pineapple in lieu of fresh (just be sure to shake off the syrup first). I used a couple of squares of frozen pineapple from Trader Joe’s; there’s no sugar added, and when thawed the fruit has a better texture, flavor and consistency than the canned stuff, so I’d suggest that as a good alternative to hacking up a fresh one or breaking into a can, if you have the option.

Tags: Drinks, Rye by Paul
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The next Mixology Monday is less than a week away. This coming Monday, November 12, let’s all get together with Jay at Oh, Gosh!, the host for this round. Jay has chosen Gin as the theme, and really, what’s not to like about that.

If you haven’t joined in before — or if you have, and just want to refresh your memory — the process is quite simple: just post a drink, any drink, made with gin, then let Jay know (check his site for more information). Be sure to have your post up by the end of the day on Monday (wherever you are), and in the next few days Jay will put all the submissions together and post a wrap-up.

We’ve had a fantastic turnout for the past few events, and with such a user-friendly theme this month, there’s no reason not to join in. (And if you’re the type to start working on things early, remember that December’s Mixology Monday is going to be on December 3, over at Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s place, where he’s working on events for Repeal Day.)

Tags: Mixology Monday by Paul
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