Last spring, while working on a liqueurs article for Imbibe, I interviewed Toby Maloney, a veteran of a number of bars, notably including The Violet Hour in Chicago. While talking about Campari, Toby suggested a drink that he’d placed on the spring bar menu, and described it as a “Campari gateway drink”.

I’ve been a fan of Campari for years, but my first encounters with this garnet aperitif were not exactly pleasant — I recall one grueling experience in a Munich bar about 20 years ago, trying to gulp down a Campari and soda so as not to embarass myself in front of some new acquaintances who were absolutely in love with the stuff. More recently, after the booze bug bit, I powered through a string of Negronis and Americanos until I developed a taste for Campari (my discover of the Jasmine helped, a lot), and now I heart the stuff.

Toby’s Riviera is not only a great introduction to Campari for amari beginners, but it’s a fantastic spring cocktail. I don’t have a picture as the drink’s main component — a mixture of assorted booze and fresh pineapple — takes a couple of days of soaking time, and the morning sunshine coming into my living room just reminded me that the season is right to put together another batch. Anyway, I’m off to the store this afternoon to pick up some pineapple, and this is what I’ll be drinking later in the week. The recipe makes a large batch suitable for parties, but you can size it down if you just want to have it around the house for a couple of days (don’t let it linger too long, though — as the pineapple oxidizes, it gets a funky flavor). Let me know if you made this last year after the recipe ran in Imbibe, or if you’re giving it a shot this season.

Riviera, by Toby Maloney

The base:

• 4 cups gin (use an old standby like Bombay, Beefeater or Tanqueray)
• 2 cups maraschino liqueur
• 1 cup Campari
• 1 pineapple

Skin the pineapple and cut into wedges, then soak in a big jar filled with all the booze for at least 24 hours, and no more than 48 hours. Strain out the pineapple — it’s actually pretty tasty if you start snacking on it — and refrigerate the base until ready to use.

The drink:

• 2 ounces base mixture
• 3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice
• 3/4 ounce simple syrup
• 1 egg white

Combine ingredients and shake hard without ice for a good 10 seconds to aerate the egg white; add ice and shake again for another 10 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass; garnish with a mint leaf and a few drops (not dashes) of orange bitters.

This drink is part of 30/30, a series of 30 drinks in 30 days — or as much as I can keep up before collapsing in a weary, booze-addled heap.

Tags: Drinks, Gin, Thirty in 30 by Paul
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While I’m spouting off about drinks made with good sloe gin, I should bring up the Charlie Chaplin. This recipe comes from Old Waldorf Bar Days by Albert Stevens Crockett, first published in 1931. Crockett indicates this is an original drink from the Waldorf, “named in [Chaplin's] honor when he began to make the screen public laugh.”

This was another drink I’d overlooked when Plymouth Sloe Gin first came on the market, based on a quick read of the recipe: equal parts sloe gin, lime juice, and apricot brandy (a bit of a misnomer; usually “apricot brandy” refers to an apricot liqueur, not an apricot eau de vie). The combination looked way too sweet, so I tut-tutted and moved on with my recipe search. Thanks to Los Angeles uber-bartender and consultant Marcos Tello, who I spoke with while working on the sloe-gin story for Imbibe, I went back and took a closer look, and was pretty damn pleased with what I found.

Here’s where I initially went wrong: I approached this, and other sloe-gin recipes, with a flavor profile in my mind that was based on the cheaper versions of the spirit, which are usually oversweetened and mawkish. While I had that flavor in mind, thinking of a drink made with sloe gin and another liqueur made me want to drop the book and brush my teeth.

But a good sloe gin such as those from Plymouth or The Bitter Truth have a flavor ruled by the tart, astringent quality of the sloe berry, without the heavy sweetness found in lesser sloe gins. Combined with a good ounce of lime juice and an apricot liqueur such as the Rothman & Winter Orchard Apricot, which is less sugary than some other brands on the market, the Charlie Chaplin is crisp and tart, with a rich stone-fruit flavor akin to that of the Savoy Tango that makes the drink so endearing.

Charlie Chaplin

• 1 ounce sloe gin
• 1 ounce fresh lime juice
• 1 ounce apricot liqueur

Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker and fill with ice. Shake well and strain into chilled cocktail glass.

This drink is part of 30/30, a series of 30 drinks in 30 days — or as much as I can keep up before collapsing in a weary, booze-addled heap.

Tags: Drinks, Gin, Thirty in 30 by Paul
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We’ve come across them before: the Blood & Sand, the Last Word, the Cameron’s Kick — drinks that look like a train wreck on paper, but in the glass, have a lot more character than you’d think.

The White Lily isn’t quite in the same class as these three cocktails, but for something that looks nigh-untouchable in print (at least to me), it actually ain’t too bad.

The recipes comes from that old standard, The Savoy Cocktail Book, and hits a couple of unpredictable points for me: first, it successfully combines equal parts rum and gin, which is quite a challenge; second, it matches rum and absinthe, another infrequent pairing.

I first tried the White Lily last month, at the Green Hour event hosted by the Wormwood Society. Gwydion had listed it as a drink he’d like to serve, so I mixed one for myself, just to see what we’d be in for. It’s actually a fairly nice drink; the base spirits are the only drying agents, so the Cointreau places the drink on the sweet side (but not excessively so), and the absinthe serves its seasoning-ingredient role well. This is a case like the Corpse Reviver #2 in which you only want to use the merest dab of absinthe — too much and it easily takes over — but a few drops or a judicious dash and it helps tie everything together. For this version, I used Brugal white rum and Martin Miller’s Gin, which has recently supplanted Bombay as one of my default mixing gins.

White Lily

• 1 ounce gin
• 1 ounce white rum
• 1 ounce Cointreau
• 1 dash absinthe

Combine ingredients in a mixing glass and fill with cracked ice. Stir well and strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with orange twist.

This drink is part of 30/30, a series of 30 drinks in 30 days — or as much as I can keep up before collapsing in a weary, booze-addled heap.

Tags: Absinthe, Drinks, Gin, Rum, Thirty in 30 by Paul
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For a once-obscure drink, the Last Word sure gets around. I first posted about it way back in ought-six, and since then a good chunk of the boozy blogosphere has also hailed this excellent drink. The Last Word has its own thread at eGullet, Gary Regan wrote about it in the San Francisco Chronicle, Robert Hess mixed one on video, and that paper of record, the New York Times, ran the recipe in December (while giving credit to yours truly).

Over at the Seattle Times, however, reporter Tan Vinh started sniffing around and discovered that not only was the Last Word’s resurrection the work of Zig Zag bartender Murray Stenson, but he found people around town (namely, me and Robert) who would claim that the Last Word is currently Seattle’s most significant drink contribution to the cocktail renaissance. He then went to Zig Zag, made Murray mix up a bunch for him and his photographer while they took some still shots and video, and stuck it in today’s paper.

You can, and should, read Tan’s story here: The Last Word, a cocktail reborn in Seattle, is on everyone’s lips — but also check out the video of Murray (which I’ve helpfully pasted above) as he usurps “my” recipe and mixes up a couple of Last Words.

(And should you be thirsty for one now, here’s the recipe again so you don’t have to click all over the place:

Last Word

• 3/4 once gin
• 3/4 ounce fresh lime juice
• 3/4 ounce maraschino liqueur
• 3/4 ounce green chartreuse

Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker and fill with ice. Shake well for 10 seconds and strain into chilled cocktail glass. Ta-da!

Next: the Last Word backlash begins….

Tags: Drinks, Gin by Paul
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Where to begin?

No, really – where to begin? That’s the whole point behind this month’s Mixology Monday, hosted by Pink Lady and her bevy of shaker-wielding cohorts at LUPEC-Boston, who have chosen as the theme The First Time. OK, stop sniggering and/or blushing, and for god’s sake don’t start pounding out the damn Foreigner song — oops, too late; the focus this round is on drinks you’d introduce to a cocktail neophyte (one whom you’d like to turn into a cocktail regular).

There are a number of drinks in the playbook that I think are great introductions to the world of cocktails. Some, such as the daiquiri, have been mentioned by other bloggers already this round (thanks a hell of a lot for snagging my original plan, Stevi), whereas others have been on this blog for ages: I think the Southside is a great introduction to gin (especially if you splash a little champagne on top, a la a French 75, which is also a good choice), and I have yet to introduce anyone to an Old Cuban who hasn’t come away craving another one.

While it’s tempting to aim for something extremely basic, I think that would ultimately miss the point of this exercise: to not only introduce someone to a cocktail that is inoffensive and easy to swallow, but to introduce them to the whole concept of a well-made drink and help them understand why freaks like us spend so much time reading, writing and mixing these things (not to mention drinking them). For this, I think you need to give them a glimpse of the delicate complexity inherent in a well-made cocktail without steamrollering them under a wave of Campari, Chartreuse or rye whiskey — ingredients that are indispensable to any drink geek’s liquor cabinet, but that can take a little getting used to.

In addition to the drinks listed above, here’s another that I’ve seen turn curious drinkers into dedicated fans, and that has several major points in its favor: the Corpse Reviver #2.

I am admittedly one of the last cocktail bloggers to write about this drink (here, anyway – and yes, I’m recycling my photo), but I’ve been a fan of it ever since it first passed my lips five or so years ago. In addition to the uniformly positive reaction I’ve seen this drink get from those who’ve been served it in bars, or from those to whom I’ve introduced it, here are a few other reasons why I think the old CR#2 is a good choice for a gateway drink:

* THE NAME – sure, it’s old hat to cocktail fiends, but pretty much everyone does a double-take upon hearing the name for the first time; it sounds kinda cool, and it’s near-impossible to forget. Add to the name the interesting (yet short and approachable) backstory that manages to not only tell something about the drink but about the early days of cocktail culture, and you’ve got a nice, concise package of mixological history to send home with your cocktail novice.

* THE RECIPE – it’s equal parts of four ingredients, plus a single drop of another. In other words, it’s almost as easy to remember as the name (though Lillet may take a little explanation), which means your cocktail novice can repeat it back to other bartenders (those who haven’t already been introduced to it, that is), or can try to replicate the drink at home. Plus, in terms of construction, it’s just measure, shake & strain. Then smile.

* oh yeah, THE FLAVOR – the CR#2 is simultaneously straightforward and complex. Yes, it has gin, but as long as you don’t pummel your initiate with an aggressive gin or something cheap and harsh, it’s doubtful even ginophobes will have much of a problem with it. Then, the classic interplay between fresh citrus and Cointreau, and finally the Lillet – slightly orangey, mildly sweet (and yes, without the bitter bite of the original Kina Lillet or of preferred but totally unavailable alternatives, but you might want to hold off until a future cocktail session before totally geeking out on the poor newbie). Finally, the absinthe — granted, this is the ingredient that’s most likely to cause your novice to rebel, but I like to follow Ted Haigh’s suggestion of using a single drop (okay, maybe two) — it’s enough to season the drink and give it depth and complexity, but not enough to introduce an assertive anise (or any other) characteristic to the finished cocktail. Overall it’s a good balance of sweet and sour, with enough complexity to make it interesting but not so much to overwhelm the first-timer’s palate.

After an initial torrid affair with the CR#2 a few years back, right around the time Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails first came out, I’ve moved on to other things, only coming back to this drink on occasion. That’s too bad — it really is a nice little number, worth breaking out from time to time, especially if you’ve got a cocktail-curious friend coming over and you want to give them a quick and agreeable introduction to your world. Considering that Doc’s book is being revamped and republished this summer, it’s high time to start sampling them again.

Corpse Reviver No. 2

• 1 ounce gin
• 1 ounce Lillet
• 1 ounce fresh lemon juice
• 1 ounce Cointreau
• 1-2 drops absinthe

Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker and fill with ice. Shake well for 10 seconds, strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a cherry, should the mood hit.

So there, I finally blogged about the Corpse Reviver No. 2 – about damn time. Head on over to LUPEC-Boston in the next day or two to see what others have been up to this round of Mixology Monday.

Tags: Drinks, Gin, Mixology Monday by Paul
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