Writing about three drinks with a common element of French quinquinas may be leaping deep into cocktail geek territory, but hey — here, I’m among my people.

I’ve written in depth about the class of aperitif wines known as quinquinas a couple of times — here’s a piece from Imbibe, and another from the San Francisco Chronicle — so I’ll skip the long history lesson and get right down to the drinks.

Last spring, when Eric Seed’s Haus Alpenz began distributing two quinine-enhanced aperitif wines, much of the buzz in the blogosphere and beyond was about Cocchi Aperitivo Americano, long rumored in cocktail circles to be the best available substitute for the now-defunct Kina Lillet in drinks such as the Corpse Reviver #2 and the Twentieth Century. At the same time, though, Eric was also bringing in Bonal Gentiane-Quina; here’s what I wrote about Bonal in the Chronicle:

Produced in France since 1865, Bonal has a double-headed bitterness from cinchona and gentian. When combined with other ingredients in a base of mistelle - partially fermented grape juice mixed with higher-proof alcohol – its character is simultaneously juicy and bone dry.

If there’s a takeaway lesson I try to work in every time I write or talk about quinquinas, it’s that these aperitif wines are NOT simply a kind of vermouth. Similar, yes, in the way that Maker’s Mark is similar to Glenrothes in that they’re both grain-based spirits aged in oak barrels, but simply lumping Dubonnet or St. Raphael in with Noilly Prat is a disservice to both sides of the aperitif-wine equation, and can only be limiting when thinking about how to use these wines in a cocktail.

But instead of lecturing, as I have the habit of doing, let me show you what quinquinas can do in a cocktail, using Bonal as the running theme. We’ll start with the Bonal & Rye, from Todd Smith at Dalva in San Francisco, the recipe for which ran with my story in the Chronicle.

Bonal & Rye
from Todd Smith, Dalva, San Francisco

• 2 ounces rye whiskey (I like Wild Turkey 101 or Rittenhouse 100, if you’ve got a stash)
• 1 ounce Bonal Gentiane-Quina
• 1/2 ounce Cointreau
• 2 dashes orange bitters
• 1 dash Angostura bitters
• – Orange twist, for garnish

Stir with ice, strain into chilled cocktail glass, give it a good twist of the orange peel and use it as garnish

Between the Cointreau and the orange bitters (I used Angostura orange), this is like an uber-citrusy Manhattan. The difference, however, is that while a Manhattan would have a bit more sweetness and a herbaceous finish, thanks to the vermouth, Bonal brings its juicy/dry characteristic — it lends just enough bitterness to keep this cocktail on the dry side (even with the liqueur along for the ride), but it’s not an astringent bitterness — it’s akin to biting into a bunch of grapes, stem and seeds and all, so there’s a vibrant mix of bitterness and bright juice that makes everything balance out. A very worthwhile Manhattan relative (even if it’s a distant cousin, twice-removed).

I was in San Francisco in October, and while I didn’t have a chance to visit Dalva, I was introduced to another interesting Bonal drink by Jonny Raglin at Comstock Saloon. This isn’t on the menu (or at least it wasn’t at the time), and I’m not sure if it even has a name, but it’s basically a variation on a Brooklyn cocktail with a couple of little twists.

I’ve always been suspicious of the Brooklyn; for some reason, the mixture of rye or bourbon with dry vermouth has never seemed an auspicious pairing to me; the floral aspects of dry vermouth always seem discordant with the rich oakiness of the whiskey, and except for the Algonquin Cocktail (which complicates the matter with the addition of pineapple juice), I can’t think of another whiskey + dry vermouth drink I’ve particularly enjoyed.

Jonny remedied this clash by discarding the vermouth in favor of dry sherry — in his case, Lustau Palo Cortado, which is kind of a midway sherry between the bone-dry fino and the richer, nuttier amontillado. Also, since one of the Brooklyn’s signature ingredients, Amer Picon, is still a rarity in the U.S., Jonny swapped it out for Bonal and added a dash of orange bitters, so there’s still a little citrus ting to the drink along with a dry bitterness.

RECIPE NOTE: I didn’t get Jonny’s measurements from him, so I’m working with a classic Brooklyn recipe with the ingredient substitutions kept at the same proportions; it didn’t taste weird when I tried it, so hopefully I’m in the ballpark.

Brooklyn variation
by Jonny Raglin, Comstock Saloon, San Francisco

• 2 ounces rye whiskey (I used Wild Turkey 101)
• 3/4 ounce palo cortado sherry*
• 1/4 ounce Bonal Gentiane-Quina
• 1/4 ounce maraschino liqueur
• 1 dash orange bitters
• –orange twist, for garnish

Stir with ice, strain, twist & garnish.

* After 15 minutes of searching, I gave up on finding that bottle of palo cortado I bought and squirreled away somewhere, waiting for the right time to open it. Instead I used oloroso — I know, not the same, but hey — and the drink was still quite tasty, with more of that brown-butter nuttiness you get from the bigger-tasting sherry. In hindsight I should have mixed half oloroso with half fino, but I wasn’t really thinking at the time.

This Brooklyn variation is much more to my taste; the sherry’s nuttiness fits way better with rye than dry vermouth ever does, in my opinion, and the drink was dry but still rich-tasting, as opposed to a standard Brooklyn’s tangy florals. I’ll go with this version anytime.

One other drink I’d gathered for the Chronicle piece, but wound up not using for reasons of space, is an adaptation of a classic Quinquina Cocktail, the renovated version developed by Chantal Tseng from Tabard Inn in Washington, D.C. Chantal says she initially found the recipe in Trader Vic’s Bartender’s Guide from 1947, but that it also appears in “Cocktail Bill” Boothby’s World Drinks and How to Mix ‘Em from much earlier in the century. This tweaked version may be my favorite of the three drinks in this post.

Quinquina Cocktail (variation)
adapted by Chantal Tseng, Tabard Inn, Washington, D.C.

• 1 ounce brandy
• 1/2 ounce apricot liqueur (Rothman & Winter suggested)
• 3/4 ounce Bonal Gentiane-Quina
• 2 dashes Pernod (I substituted absinthe)
• –lemon peel, for garnish

Stir well with ice, strain into chilled cocktail glass, give it the lemon peel treatment.

This is really, really good — the plushness of the brandy and liqueur are offset just enough by the dryness of the Bonal. The quinquina’s bitterness is almost completely dispelled by the other ingredients, except for a light, lingering back-palate finish that reminds you that you did, indeed, have some quinine in there somewhere. I’d like to try this with a good peach liqueur, or perhaps pear; perhaps once I’m done with this 60/30 thing, I’ll have time to take this kind of scenic detour.

Tags: Brandy, Drinks, Rye, Sixty in 30 by Paul
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There’s something irrepressibly alluring about apple brandy. Cocktails made with Calvados or American apple brandy have been among my favorites ever since I first dabbled in the drinks world, and every autumn and early winter for the past five or so years, I’ve found myself besmitten with these drinks all over again.

Here are a few drinks with apple brandy that really hold their own.

A recent favorite in my rotation is the Royal Union, created by Boston bartender Carrie Cole from Craigie on Main. Carrie gave me this recipe a few months ago, while I was working on a feature on cocktail bitters for Imbibe (and thanks to Lauren Clark for pointing me in Carrie’s direction). We wound up not running the drink recipe in the magazine — a couple of the ingredients may take a little searching to find, though they’re by no means rare or obscure — but Carrie gave me permission to put it here on the blog instead, where my dozen or so remaining readers can check it out for themselves.

The Royal Union has a few things that make it my kind of ideal drink for this time of year: first, obviously, it’s made with Calvados; second, it has not one, or two, but THREE kinds of bitter liqueurs in the mix; and third, it’s dosed with Bittermens Xocolatl Mole bitters (which was the reason I’d approached Carrie for a bitters article). Details—

The Royal Union
created by Carrie Cole, Craigie on Main, Boston

• 1 ounce Calvados
• 1 ounce Averna
• 1/2 ounce Nux Alpina
• 1/2 ounce Amaro Nonino
• 2 dashes Bittermens Xocolatl Mole bitters

Stir well with ice until chilled, about 30 seconds. Strain into chilled old-fashioned glass – no ice, no garnish.

Even with three kinds of amari, the Royal Union is still very gentle. Amaro Nonino tastes to me like souped-up rosso vermouth, and Averna is rich and chocolatey, with a note I always think of as “cola” but whenever I bring that up to other people I get a blank stare in return. Nux Alpina brings this drink together — a walnut liqueur from Haus Alpenz, this pitch-black stuff has the back-palate bitterness of young walnuts, but a rich complexity that softens the finish, and the bitters add a little cinnamon zing to keep the dark, ponderous flavors in the glass from getting too serious about the whole thing.

A few years ago, while working on an applejack story for Imbibe, I was introduced to another Boston bartender who had an affinity for apple booze: Misty Kalkofen. Now at Drink, Misty is one of my absolute favorite people in the industry, and someone with whom I don’t get nearly enough opportunities to work.

At the time Misty was working at Green Street, and she’d come up with a rich, hearty drink that was perfect for cooler months, sweetened with maple syrup and given a French monastic touch with a dollop of Benedictine. At the time I wrote the piece, Misty and I were talking about applejack; nowadays I’m much more likely to use the Laird’s Bonded Apple Brandy in pretty much any drink calling for the American style of the spirit, and to my taste it works just dandy in this drink.

Fort Washington Flip
created by Misty Kalkofen, currently at Drink, Boston

• 1 1/2 ounces apple brandy
• 3/4 ounce Benedictine
• 1/2 ounce maple syrup (go for Grade B)
• 1 whole egg, as fresh as you can possibly manage
• – nutmeg, for garnish

Combine everything in a cocktail shaker and shake really hard, without ice, for at least 10 seconds, until the egg is pretty well mixed with the other ingredients. Add ice and shake again for at least 10 seconds; strain into chilled cocktail glass, and hit it with a few scrapes of nutmeg.

Another apple-brandy drink spent years on my “to try” list, but for whatever reason I’d never gotten around to mixing it: the Pan American Clipper. Unlike so many of the other drinks he wrote about in The Gentleman’s Companion from 1939, Charles H. Baker, Jr. shed little light on the Pan American Clipper, simply saying it’s “From the Notebook of One of Our Pilot Friends Who—when Off Duty—May Seek One.”

There’s a reason this drink took so long to cross the divide between recipe notebook and cocktail shaker: on paper it simply doesn’t sound that exciting. Basically just a Jack Rose with a single dash of absinthe, the Pan American Clipper seemed to offer little that was new or genuinely exciting; for years I looked at the recipe and thought, “I like the Jack Rose, and I like absinthe, but I don’t really feel compelled to mix this right now.”

Recently, though, I began a studious exploration of Baker’s books (or as studious as one can be while sampling through a cocktail book — hey, everyone’s gotta have a hobby), and the Pan American Clipper came up again. “Fine,” I thought. “A Jack Rose with an attitude, it is.” I twisted the knobs a little bit — Baker’s proportions are almost always kinda hinky, so I aimed for a little better balance — but otherwise the recipe is his.

Pan American Clipper
Adapted from The Gentleman’s Companion, by Charles H. Baker, Jr., 1939

• 1 1/2 ounces applejack (Baker recommends Calvados; I went with Laird’s bonded)
• 3/4 ounce fresh lime juice
• 1/4 ounce homemade grenadine (to taste, depending on sweetness)
• 1 dash absinthe

Shake well with ice, strain into chilled cocktail glass. Proceed.

What I’d forgotten was how effectively absinthe can change everything. The snappy, fruity tartness of a Jack Rose is still there, but the absinthe tinkers with every aspect of the flavor equation. First there’s the aromatic tangle of absinthe’s ethereal herbaceousness, and then the fat vivaciousness of anise is the first flavor to arrive, coming in just before the citrus can poke its acidic elbow into your palate. Then, on the finish, that anise richness and herbaceous flourish is back, riding out on the sweet fruitiness of the pomegranate syrup.

All in all, the Pan American Clipper is still simply a Jack Rose with a slightly different haircut. It’ll never be among my favorites, but it’s still pretty goddamn good.

Tags: Applejack, Calvados, Drinks, Sixty in 30 by Paul
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Two nearly identical drinks, born decades apart, both worth visiting (or revisiting) for their simple deliciousness. I’ll make this quick.

First, the classic: the Brown Derby. Vendome Club, Hollywood, 1930s; Douglas Fairbanks at the bar. We don’t even know what class is anymore.

Brown Derby

• 2 ounces bourbon
• 1 ounce fresh grapefruit juice
• 1/2 ounce honey syrup

Shake with ice, strain into chilled cocktail glass. For honey syrup, mix equal parts honey and hot water, stir until honey is fully dissolved.

I sometimes go for a year between Brown Derby cocktails, and every time I do I wonder why it’s been so long since the last time I had one. While rye is shouldering its way back into cocktail prominence, this drink is more relaxed, with the richness of honey, so the casual sweetness of bourbon is right at home. The drink is so easy to make, and the flavor is nothing elaborate, but neither is that of a daiquiri or a margarita, and how often do you visit those wells? I mixed a Brown Derby last night; remind me before another year passes that I should come back to this one again soon.

Next: the newcomer. I completely missed the Honey Fitz at Tales of the Cocktail this year. Created by Jackson Cannon from Eastern Standard in Boston, the Honey Fitz is a nod to Boston’s political heritage: John F. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald was a congressman and mayor of Boston this time last century, and grandfather to JFK, RFK & EMK.

I didn’t make it to the Diageo Happy Hour at Tales this year, so I didn’t have a chance to try the drink from Jackson, so I had to wait until I was back home to come across the recipe. Fred blogged about this drink back in August, and the recipe was carried into Zig Zag one night by Alex, a local cocktail geek and a regular. One night at the bar, Alex introduced me to the Honey Fitz, for which I owe him my undying gratitude.

Honey Fitz
created by Jackson Cannon, Eastern Standard, Boston

• 1 1/2 ounces Zacapa 23 rum
• 3/4 ounce fresh grapefruit juice
• 3/4 ounce honey syrup
• 2 dashes Peychaud’s bitters

Shake, strain, cocktail glass.

Zacapa was practically made to be mixed with honey. Already rich and luscious, the rum merges perfectly with the musky tang of honey. Grapefruit seems less acidic than lime or lemon, which would have given the drink a sharper edge, but the grapefruit leavens the sweetness just enough, while rounding out the flavor and giving the drink some brightness. It’s somewhat sweet, true, but not cloying or syrupy; the Honey Fitz is just extremely tasty and goes down way too easy.

Tags: Bourbon, Drinks, Rum, Sixty in 30 by Paul
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If there was a predominant recurring theme in this blog, and in my drinking life, back when it first started in 2005, it was the search for, or re-creation of, vintage cocktail ingredients that were no longer obtainable.

I don’t do that much anymore, for good reason: primarily because, thanks to folks like Eric Seed but also due to a groundswell of interest in these products, I don’t have to. No longer am I pestering friends and colleagues to mule back a bottle of crème de violette from Japan or ordering from shady-looking websites so I can lay in some pimento dram from Jamaica, and the longing to taste a Sazerac made with true-blue absinthe has long since been sated. True, there’s still no Amer Picon on the shelf of my local liquor store, but easy work-arounds exist, so it’s been quite a while since I’ve found myself really stymied by a cocktail recipe that calls for something I can’t lay my hands on. (That said, crème de noyeaux seems like a pain to make and every version I’ve tried in the U.S. seems kinda crappy, so if anyone has a line on a supply of good noyeaux from France, please let me know.)

Arrack Punch, or Swedish Punsch, is still in the work-around category for now, but since it’s traditionally a homemade concoction, you don’t have to worry about authenticity of flavor. For the past couple of years, ever since Erik Ellestad passed along his recipe for our “Make Your Own Ingredients” session at Tales of the Cocktail, I’ve been working off batches of his early version of Underhill Punsch, made with a base of rum (usually Jamaican, though Demerara can be an interesting detour) pumped up with Batavia arrack, the booze briefly infused with sliced lemons and sweetened with a syrup made with sugar and tea spiked with cardamom. Easy, easy.

But my bottle of homemade Swedish punsch recently ran low, right about the time that David Wondrich’s new book, Punch: The Delights (and Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl arrived in the mail. I’ve got a longer write-up of Dave’s book planned, complete with recipes for the punches I drank too much of at his Seattle book party on Tuesday night. But one of the recipes that caught my attention while reading the book was one of the simplest and most familiar, in a way: that for Cozzen’s Arrack Punch.

The mixture is simply a version of Swedish Punsch, made much in the same way that Erik does but with a couple of minor tweaks. First off, the flavor flourishes are eliminated — no tea appears in the syrup recipe, nor is cardamom or any other spice part of the equation. But, before you start thinking this version is going to be too boring, take a look at the liquor: there’s no rum to soften the edginess of arrack, so the primary flavor that’s coming out of this punch is that of unedited arrack. The recipe Wondrich cites is from F.S. Cozzens, and it appeared in Wine Press in June, 1854. The version he lists makes 8 cups of punch; I cut the recipe in half, since I don’t go through it all that fast (plus, I used up all the Batavia arrack in the house); here’s the smaller version:

Cozzen’s Arrack Punch
adapted from Punch, by David Wondrich

• 16 ounces Batavia arrack
• 3 medium lemons (go organic – they’re less likely to be coated in wax, and you’re using them peel and all)
• 16 ounces water
• 1/2 pound sugar, preferably something coarse like demerara

Thinly slice the lemons and let them soak in the arrack for 6 hours. While you wait, make a syrup by combining the sugar and water over medium heat, whisking until the sugar is completely dissolved; let the syrup cool before using. At the end of the soak time, gently strain the fruit from the liquid, taking care not to press or crush the fruit or do any of the other things you’re accustomed to doing when removing fruit from an infusion. Combine the syrup with the infused arrack and store in a jar. After a few days have passed, filter the punch for particles and sediment, then bottle and store.

Yes, it’s sweet, but that’s the point — you’re basically using this as a liqueur (or, if serving it on its own, you’re diluting it down so the sweetness is more manageable).

Anyway, now that you’ve got this stuff lying around, here’s a fine drink in which to use it: the Diki Diki.

This drink first popped up in Robert Vermiere’s Cocktails: How to Mix Them, which was first published in 1922 (I wrote an introduction for the reprint version of this from Mud Puddle Books, which came out in 2009). As Vermiere explains,

Diki-Diki is the chief monarch of the Island Ubian (Southern Philippines), who is now 37 years old, weighs 23 lb., and his height is 32 in. The author introduced this cocktail at the Embassy Club in London, February, 1922.

Vermiere’s recipe for the Diki Diki follows the classic 2:1:1 ratio of spirit:citrus:modifier. This version is bumped back a little bit in the Savoy Cocktail Book, where it appears as a 4:1:1 ratio. These are both pretty tasty ways to go, though I think I prefer the Savoy’s version, which lets the Calvados remain at center stage. But my favorite version of the Diki Diki is from the 2009 revised edition of Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails by Ted Haigh, the original edition of which I’ve raided many, many times for this blog over the years. Here’s Doc’s version:

Diki Diki
From Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, Deluxe Edition

• 1 1/2 ounces Calvados
• 3/4 ounce grapefruit juice
• 1/2 ounce Swedish punsch

Shake well with ice and strain into chilled cocktail glass. Done.

I really, really enjoy this drink. First, Calvados has a robust quality that carries over well even with sours; it gives the drink some gravitas, without being overwhelming or uncomfortable in the role as big-character whiskies can sometimes be. Between the grapefruit and the punch, there’s a complex ranginess in the drink, with the raw, gamy quality of arrack just barely held in check, where it can throw little barbs of funk into the drink without being offputting. As Josey Packard said when Erik mixed one of these with her, the Diki Diki is a very grown-up drink — this isn’t really for a novice, but at the same time it’s not quite as out there as some of the drinks making the rounds nowadays.

Tags: Drinks, Rum, Sixty in 30, Special Projects by Paul
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Before I even asked Jim Romdall from Vessel if he’d let me rip off a couple of his recipes for this month-long blog frenzy, I knew whatever drinks he prepared would have some ingredient guaranteed to freak out about 90 percent of the drinking public. I mean, look at the facts: the man’s Twitter handle is @ardbegfloat, he entered a cocktail in a vodka contest that mixed the obnoxiously toothpaste-esque 42 Below Feijoa with (if my fuzzy memory serves) green Chartreuse and Bowmore (and actually made a pretty interesting drink out of it), and who’s been known to deploy both absinthe and Caol Ila in a gin-based cocktail.

Jim’s also a good sport and even after I told him that these drinks were to be featured on a blog, and not in print or anything real or sexy like that, he still played along. And while I was a little disappointed that no Islay malts made their way into the mix — really, I was fully prepared to exit Vessel smelling like my coat was on fire — Jim did indeed go there with the buckets-of-knuckles ingredients, preparing both drinks with Fernet Branca, and one of them with white dog.

Here’s where he went:

Industry Sour

• 1 1/2 ounces cognac
• 3/4 ounce Fernet Branca
• 3/4 ounce lemon juice
• 1/2 ounce lime juice
• 1/4 ounce agave nectar
• 1 egg white
• Angostura bitters, for garnish

Combine everything except the bitters in a cocktail shaker. Dry shake for a good 10 seconds to work up the egg white, then add ice and go at it again. Strain into chilled cocktail glass; drip Angostura atop the foam and swirl it into pretty pictures if that’s what you like to do with your time.

Jim actually prepared this for me using Calvados, which was an interesting detour but as he said and I agree after trying the drink again at home, you really want the soft, fruity richness of grape brandy for a platform upon which the Fernet and the citrus can play.

Speaking of the Fernet: as anybody who’s ever mixed a drink with it knows, putting Fernet Branca in a cocktail shaker with other ingredients can be the rough equivalent of feeding crystal meth to a pit bull and putting it in a room full of bunnies: the results are bloody, messy and frighteningly savage. There are a few things that can partially defang Fernet, though; one, as I’ve mentioned, is a whopping dose of vermouth, but others include egg white, which helps soften and spread out the bitter impact, and citrus — well, the citrus is like distracting the tweaking dog by hitting it with a pillow while the surviving rabbits run for cover: it doesn’t so much soften the Fernet’s bite as much as it provides another aspect of the drink that keeps the liqueur from fully dominating. Anyway, as might be expected, this is a big, bold, gnarly drink, but still pretty appealing if you’re into big, bold, gnarly things.

Vessel is right next to the 5^th Avenue Theatre, and right now, as the holidays approach, the theater is featuring A Christmas Story: The Musical, based on the “you’ll put your eye out” movie from the 1980s. In case you’ve somehow missed catching the movie during the holiday-season heavy rotation it’s enjoyed on television over the past quarter century, there’s a key scene near the end involving a Christmas turkey and a pack of the neighbor’s dogs. Always one to support the next-door theater as well as to celebrate bad behavior on the part of animals, Jim created the next drink in their honor.

Bumpass Hound

• 2 ounces rye whiskey (he used Pikesville)
• 1/2 ounce unaged (or minimally aged) rye whiskey
• 1/4 ounce Fernet Branca
• 1/4 ounce simple syrup
• 1 dash Angostura bitters
• –orange twist, for garnish

Put ingredients in a mixing glass and yadda yadda if you’ve been to this blog before you know what to do. Up, cocktail glass, orange twist.

Jim initially tried this with an ounce of Headlong White Dog from the Woodinville Whiskey Co., which is made using a rye-free bourbon mashbill, and the new spirit was just too soft and sweet for this drink, so he started over with Wasmund’s Rye Spirit, cutting the dose back to 1/2 ounce compensate for the potency of this cask-strength raw whiskey (Jim says he’ll be using Corsair Wry Moon should this drink go into the regular rotation). If you’re playing along at home and don’t have any of these spirits, another (still somewhat obscure and kinda pricey) option is to use Old Potrero 18^th Century Style Whiskey, which is all rye, cask strength and very lightly aged.

Now this is something. The drink is basically a Toronto Cocktail with additional gaminess provided by the young whiskey. I have to confess to a bit of white-dog fatigue; sure, it’s interesting stuff, but I rarely find myself actually wanting it in my glass. But in this drink, the young whiskey really plays a good role: it takes the potency of flavor that’s so engaging in a Toronto, and adds another dimension, giving the drink a new identity. The young rye also lends support to the base of aged rye, waking up the whiskey’s flavor, and in the process it erects an obstacle to keep the Fernet from stealing the show.

Anyway, thanks to Jim Romdall for playing along with my little blog project. Go see him at Vessel and buy a bunch of drinks.

Tags: Brandy, Drinks, Establishments, Rye, Sixty in 30 by Paul
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