I quit.

Okay, so I said it a lot nicer than that, and I gave plenty of notice so as not to burn my bridges and all that kind of thing, but while my presentation lacked the cathartic release I’d long hoped for, the fact remains: I’m leaving the safety and security of the day job to claw out a career as a full-time freelance writer. On Thursday.

Hot damn!

(Oh, shit.)

While I’m enthusiastic as all hell, I’m also slightly terrified of ruin and starvation, which means I’ve been enjoying my share of celebratory good drinks, but ones that don’t break the bank. This, of course, means rum.

I tend to go through drink-related phases, related not only to the seasons and particular moods, but also to the different projects I happen to be working on at the time. Last fall, I had a thing for sherry and, as we edged toward winter, absinthe. More recently, while working on a rum story, I’ve been all about premium rum, and rare has been the cocktail hour in the past few months that hasn’t seen me reaching for some fruit of the cane.

You’d think it’d be a lot easier, though. With rum cocktails, it readily becomes apparent that there are very few that really let the spirit shake it all in front of you. Not that I’m complaining — I have a biding love for tiki and exotics, and daiquiris and El Presidentes will always be on my list of favorites. But when you consider the other spirits, there’s always at least a few drinks that basically serve up the best the spirit has to offer, with just a few touches of other ingredients that serve more as garland than as modifier. Sure, you can substitute rum for gin or whiskey in a variation on Martinis and Manhattans, and if you use something decent, you’ll have a nice drink, but it’s not quite the same — that’s rum in a walk-on role; for really nice rums, they need the opportunity to shine.

And that’s where I kept coming up short. Fortunately, I wasn’t alone, and Murray has been willing to help me through the process. First there was the unnamed drink that Keith featured not long ago, with Mount Gay Extra Old touched with Grand Marnier and Cointreau (or, if you’ve got it, Creole Shrubb does a nice two-in-one job), and a few dashes of Bittermen’s Xocolatl Mole bitters. This has morphed into other, simply prepared but absolutely wonderful drinks: the MGEO or Pampero Aniversario with a little Giffard Ginger of the Indies Liqueur and some Bitter Truth Jerry Thomas Decanter Bitters and a lime twist has been a recent favorite. And, to get a little more complex, there’s the Coin Toss, from Phil Ward at Death & Co: Scarlet Ibis (or something Venezuelan, if you haven’t got it) with Chartreuse and Benedictine, with a good dose of Carpano Antica and some Peychaud’s to hold the center.

Ah, but I’m rambling, and drooling as I do so. I’ve freely stolen from all of these ideas, and compounded something of my own: the Short Timer.

Short Timer

• 2 ounces Barbancourt 8-year-old rum
• 3/4 ounce Carpano Antica Formula vermouth
• 1/4 ounce Giffard Ginger of the Indies (substitute Domaine de Canton)
  
• 1/4 ounce Rhum Clement Creole Shrubb
• 2 good dashes Bitter Truth Jerry Thomas Decanter Bitters

Stir well with ice and strain into chilled cocktail glass.

I initially made this without the vermouth, and considered sinking the drink; then, remembering the Coin Toss, I added the vermouth in 1/4 oz increments, enjoying the weird alchemy it sometimes plays with other ingredients. The finished result is mildly sweet, with an almost cola-like aspect to it from the interplay. I used the Barbancourt, thinking that its dry, floral aspect would be good here, but the next time I take a crack at this, I may use something richer, like the Pampero Aniversario. If I had more than about a 1/4 ounce of Scarlet Ibis in the house, I’d trot that out, but whaddaya gonna do.

(And super-premium thanks to my Savoy-stompin’ friend Erik for sending the bitters my way.)

Anyway, the Short Timer works — which is something you won’t be able to say about me for much longer.

This Mixology Monday is hosted by Blair over at Trader Tiki; head on over and look for his roundup.

Tags: Drinks, Mixology Monday, Rum by Paul
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Embarking on a tiki quest can be one long series of disappointments. You come across a recipe in Grog Log or Sippin’ Safari, it sounds fantastic, you set out to make it and — dammit! you have no guava nectar. No problem — there’s this recipe a few pages further, it sounded good last time you looked at it, but — hold on, you needed to start working on the syrup for this three days ago. So you flip around in the book some more, find something else that seems like a drink you absolutely must make right this very minute, but — Jesus! who ate the goddamn grapefruit!

I first read this recipe around nine months ago, when I was working on an article about the Bum for last May’s issue of Imbibe, and I managed to wheedle a few Sippin’ Safari drink recipes out of him in advance so I could break out the booze and start working on a few of Donn’s rum rhapsodies without having to wait for the book to hit the shelves. I even ran this recipe in the story, but the thing is — I never made the drink. Not because the list of ingredients calls for anything that distinctive, but rather, it was the drink’s finishing touch that kept me away.

I regret to say I’ve been mixing out of Jeff’s books for about two years now, but I haven’t tried my hand at an ice cone until tonight (or, last night really — since it’s another of the damn things you have to start planning for in advance). But, I finally broke down and bought an ice shaver — perfect timing, what with summer crapping out on us early up here in the Pacific Northwest — so between me and Mr. Snowman, we’re ready to take a crack at the Luau Grog.

Luau Grog (from Beachbum Berry’s Sippin’ Safari)

• 3/4 ounce fresh lime juice
• 3/4 ounce grapefruit juice
• 3/4 ounce soda water
• 1 ounce honey mix*
• 1 ounce gold Puerto Rican rum
• 1 ounce dark Jamaican rum
• 1 ounce Demerara rum
• dash Angostura bitters
• 2 ounces crushed ice

Put everything in a blender (ice last); blend at high for no more than 5 seconds, and pour into a double old-fashioned glass. Serve with ice cone**.

* honey mix - equal parts honey and hot water, stirred until honey is dissolved, and allowed to cool to room temperature.

** ice cone — shave a heap of ice, and pack it into a pilsner glass. Run a chopstick down the middle to make a hole for your straw, and freeze overnight.

Very, very similar to the Navy Grog, the Luau Grog has a lovely balance among the rums, with the honey and the grapefruit pulling in different but complementary directions. And while it’s mainly for appearance, the ice cone really is a nice touch — it gives one last little burst of chill to each sip of the drink, and it’s a refreshing step away from the mundane of the everyday. Which, when you come right down to it, is kinda what tiki is all about.

Tags: Drinks, Rum, Tiki by Paul
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It’s Mixology Monday again, and this round is hosted by Gwen at Intoxicated Zodiac; working with the concept “Leo,” Gwen has chosen Orange as the theme for tonight’s event. Being absolutely certain that no matter what orange juice / orange liqueur / orange bitters containing drink I chose from the classic cocktail repertoire, I’d find another person blogging about it the same evening, I instead decided to strike out on my own and use a relatively new drink that has greatly evolved over the past six or so months, and the final incarnation of which is only known to one other person: the Swordfighter Swizzle.

Last summer, one of my favorite drinks on a hot evening was the Prince Parker Swizzle, a tall, frosty mix of rums, lime juice and demerara syrup, flavored with fresh mint and perfumed with bitters. A variation on the Queen’s Park Swizzle, the Prince Parker appeared on eGullet sometime previously, and during the heat of late June, I mixed one and fell in love.

Fast forward to this past winter, when swizzles would ordinarily be the very last thing on my mind, but then Darcy and I were tasked with putting together a cocktail menu for a Tales of the Cocktail dinner at the Delachaise, prepared by chef Chris DeBarr. Sponsoring the event was Absolut, parent company of Cruzan, and I knew right away that one thing that would be perfect on a steamy July night in New Orleans is a cold, soothing swizzle.

But to suit our needs, the PPS needed a little adjustment. For one thing, Chris had chosen as our dinner theme the life of Lafcadio Hearn, so we were trying to think of ingredients and flavor themes that would somehow mesh with the writer’s biography. Furthermore, since we needed to use the sponsor’s rum for the event, that meant making the drink with Cruzan — now, I think Cruzan’s rums are wonderful, and I keep many of them on hand, but the darker rums lack the kind of delicate, brooding depth I was looking for in this particular drink; some sort of tinkering had to be done.

So, we did a couple of things: first, I tapered down the demerara syrup in the PPS, and introduced another ingredient: Rhum Clement Creole Shrubb. Considering that Hearn had lived in New Orleans for ten years, then moved to Martinique, it made sense to me to use this remarkable orange liqueur (that’s where the MxMo theme comes in) as a flavoring agent in the drink. Flavored with bitter orange peels and Caribbean spices, the Shrubb is similar to an orange curacao, except as its base spirit, it uses Martinique rum, which gives the liqueur this peppery, serrated aspect that really brings it to life.

For the depth, I recalled something Jeff Berry had once said about how Donn Beach added complexity to his original faux-tropical drinks by using a dash of Herbsaint paired with Angostura bitters. If it was good enough for Donn, it’s good enough for me, so into the drink it went.

…And then I went through about a dozen different versions before settling on the recipe for the meal. We dubbed it the “Pepe Llulla Swizzle,” named for the subject of a lengthy Hearn essay entitled “The Last of the New Orleans Fencing Masters,” about a Spanish inhabitant of the city who was the most renowned swordsman and all-around duellist of his day. We used the swizzle as our dessert cocktail for our Spirited Dinner, and Neal and the bar staff at the Delachaise did an incredible job with the recipe, as much a pain in the ass as it was to prepare.

The recipe that follows is not for this drink.

Here’s why: after returning home, in an e-mail exchange with the Bum, I sent him the recipe. With all sponsor constraints behind us, the recipe could be altered into a final state, which would be the defining recipe for this drink. Jeff went Rainman with the drink, effortlessly dissecting its flavor and recommending useful tweakages. This is the resulting drink; with the changes made in the past month, and with the difficulty of getting anyone to remember a name as clunky as Pepe Llulla Swizzle, I felt it necessary to change the name as well, while keeping the spirit of Hearn’s subject.

Swordfighter Swizzle

In a tall, 10-ounce glass, lightly muddle 6-8 fresh mint leaves, swabbing the sides of the glass with the oil.

Add:

• 1 ounce Cruzan Light rum
• 1 ounce Demerara rum
• 1 ounce fresh lime juice
• 1/4 ounce rich demerara syrup (2 parts demerara sugar dissolved in 1 part water)
• 1/2 ounce Rhum Clement Creole Shrubb
• 1/4 teaspoon Herbsaint

Fill glass with crushed ice; swizzle with bar spoon until sides of glass are coated in frost. Pack glass with more crushed ice. Bathe the top of the ice with:

• 2-3 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
• 1-2 dashes Angostura bitters

Smack a mint sprig to release the fragrance, and sink it into the ice, along with a slice of fresh peach skewered on a cocktail sword. Insert a short straw, and go to town.

Humorous conclusion: While sipping this drink and finishing this post, I started wondering if I’d made a bad move — the drink didn’t taste quite the way it did when I last tried it several days ago. Then, when placing the above image, I noticed the little red triangle on the Lemon Hart label — somehow I’d accidentally picked up the Lemon Hart 151-proof rum instead of the standard 80 proof, and didn’t clue into it until I saw the photo, even though the freakin’ bottle is sitting about six inches from my elbow. Note: don’t try making this with the 151-proof. I’m not quite halfway through the drink and it’s still kicking my ass.

Tags: Drinks, Mixology Monday, Rum by Paul
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In the mood to try something new tonight, I reached for Ted Saucier’s Bottoms Up and flipped around until something presented itself. Here’s one I settled on: it’s almost identical to the Blue Moon #1, substituting rum for gin.

Ruban Bleu
Courtesy, Le Ruban Bleu, New York City

• 1 jigger Carioca rum [Cruzan light]
  
• 2 dashes creme Yvette [Hermes Violet]
  
• juice 1/2 lemon [3/4 ounce]
  

Shake well with ice and strain into chilled cocktail glass

A quick Google revealed that Carioca rum had been made at the Cruzan distillery in St. Croix; based on the flavor characteristics of the drink, I went with the light rum.

I don’t know if it’s different enough from the Blue Moon to warrant a return invitation, but it’s not bad at all … the rum gives a little more flesh, if a little less complexity, to the drink, but the lemon / violet interplay is still engaging. Using a gold rum might give the drink a little more body, but could also overshadow the delicate violet notes. If anybody gives it a spin, please let me know how it turns out.

Not a bad way to start off a Friday evening.

Tags: Drinks, Rum by Paul
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This one made me sweat. Over the past four years or so, I’ve gone pretty much full-tilt on learning everything I can about spirits and cocktails, but when tackling such a big field, there are inevitably some holes that will need to be filled at a later time. For me, tequila is a big one of those holes.

Part of the reason for this is the price — a decent 100 percent agave tequila costs roughly twice what a bourbon, rye or rum of comparable quality does — but versatility also plays a factor. Open any typical cocktail guide, and you’ll find acres of coverage for gin, rum and whiskey, but just a smattering of recipes for tequila. If you prefer more vintage books like I do, feel lucky if you turn up a tequila cocktail at all. And when you do, it’s mostly margaritas and tequila sunrises, with the occasional Freddie Fudpucker thrown in for comic effect.

But thanks to Matt over at My Bar, Your Bar, our gracious host for this round of Mixology Monday, I’ve been forced to start exploring the world of tequila, with mostly positive results. I’ll skip over my experiments with sangrita recipes — Jimmy nailed a good one a couple of rounds back — and the lovely Prado — which Anita already mixed up for this round — and cut right to two newish tequila cocktails that seemed promising: the Sangre de Agave and the Rosebud.

The Sangre de Agave comes from David Wondrich’s Killer Cocktails, and takes the classic marriage between tequila, lime juice and creme de cassis, and knocks it silly with a firm slap of dark, heavy rum.

Sangre de Agave

• 1 1/2 ounce reposado Tequila [Don Julio]
• 1/2 ounce dark, heavy rum [Pusser’s]
• 3/4 ounce lime juice
• 1/2 ounce creme de cassis
• 1/2 teaspoon rich simple syrup

Shake with ice and strain into chilled cocktail glass

I’m reserving judgement on this one — while mixing the drink I realized two things: my limes were lousy and my cassis was kaput. Taking this into account, the drink was still pretty intriguing, with the peppery funk of the tequila coming on right away, but with that smooth, round bass note of rum giving the concoction some welcome gravitas. My crappy cassis didn’t supply the full fruity richness I was looking for, but that’s easily remedied, as is the coarse bitterness that I’m blaming on the fine-looking but nasty-tasting limes I got at Trader Joe’s. A drink to come back to with more efficient ingredients.

But I didn’t want to leave Mixology Monday on a down note — I’ve already done that — so this evening I started going through the books, looking for a lime- and cassis-free tequila cocktail that showed promise. Wisely, I started my search with The Art of the Bar: Cocktails Inspired by the Classics, a really beautiful and spectacular book by Jeff Hollinger and Rob Schwartz from Absinthe in San Francisco. I’ve had this book on the shelf for months, and I keep meaning to dig into it for a post, so what better time. Plus, I’ve got a soft spot in my jaded heart for the pitch-black musings of Citizen Kane, and the touch of bitterness in this cocktail seemed entirely appropriate.

Rosebud

• Dash of rosewater
• 1 1/2 ounces silver tequila
• 1/2 ounce Carpano Antica sweet vermouth
• Dash of Campari
• 1 piece orange zest, about 1 1/2 inches long and 1/2 inch wide

Rinse a chilled cocktail glass with the dash of rosewater, discarding the excess. Stir the tequila and vermouth with ice and strain into the glass. Flame the orange zest over the drink (light a match and hold it above and just slightly to the side of the drink, point the zest at the flame and spray the oil through the fire onto the drink surface). Add a few drops of Campari to the surface.

Wowser. The rosewater rinse and the burnt orange oil make this a very fragrant drink, but the taste is crisp and smooth, like a martini with its collar button undone. It’s kind of deceptive — the aroma is very flowery and perfumey, with no trace of tequila’s telltale whiff of pepper, so you’re expecting the taste of a flower bomb, like a cocktail supercharged with an aromatic gin like Hendrick’s or Aviation and matched with chartreuse. Thing is, the flavor is nothing like that — the florals take a backseat to the gentle bitterness of the Antica slightly prodded by the Campari, and that bitterness meshes very well with the vegetal funk of the tequila. Nicely done — if you’re looking for a delicate tequila cocktail, this is a good candidate.

That’s my little tour of tequila for this round of Mixology Monday. Head on over to Matt’s place to see what everybody else is doing with tequila.

Tags: Drinks, Mixology Monday, Rum, Tequila, Vermouth by Paul
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