MxMo: Ginger – Barometer’s falling, wind out of the east
No, it’s not the Dark & Stormy.
Though you could be forgiven for thinking that, based on the headline and on that notation on the calendar that today is Mixology Monday, which happens to be hosted this month by RumDood, who has chosen Ginger for this month’s theme. So, ginger plus rum (minus the dood), plus some boilerplate meteorological bally-hoo in the introduction? Surely I’m leading up to Gosling’s & Barritt’s, right? The classic Dark & Stormy? Or some close approximation, correct?
Eh….maybe. I came across this drink a little over a year ago, while working on the cover feature for the July/August 2008 issue of Imbibe, about liqueurs. One of the products I was covering was the relatively new (or newly reformulated, depending on how you look at it) Domain de Canton ginger liqueur. Desperate for a new and, above all, tasty use of the liqueur, I sent a feeler e-mail out to my good friend Jim Meehan at PDT in New York. Jim pointed me to a colleague of his, Tona Palomino, who was managing the bar at WD-50, and Tona unleashed this drink on me.
Noting that the Stormy Weather is a spin-off of the classic Dark & Stormy, Palomino told me how he swapped Domain de Canton for the ginger beer in that drink, matching it against a good, rich, vanilla-heavy rum like Angostura 1919. For complexity and a peculiar alchemical property, he added a hearty dose of Carpano Antica vermouth, which contributes a firm foundation of flavor but also interacts with the ginger notes in the liqueur. With a touch of effervescence from a splash of soda water, the Stormy Weather is somewhat like a mature version of the Dark & Stormy, though as I’ve continued to enjoy these over the past year I’ve come to view the Stormy Weather as something like a worldly Cuba Libre, due to that interaction of ingredients that produces a flavor I can only describe as cola-like.
Here’s Palomino’s recipe, which I included in my Imbibe piece last summer. One note: as listed, this makes a fairly large drink. You can easily scale it back by nudging the rum back to 1 1/2 ounces and the vermouth and liqueur to 3/4 ounce; scale back the bubble water accordingly, but don’t skip the lime twist — those bitter oils provide another layer of complexity to an already blammo drink.
Stormy Weather
- 2 ounces amber rum (Palomino recommends Angostura 1919; I typically use Bacardi 8 to good effect)
- 1 ounce Carpano Antica vermouth
- 1 ounce Domain de Canton ginger liqueur
- 1/2 ounce soda water
Combine first three ingredients in a mixing glass and stir well with ice. Strain into a double old-fashioned glass filled with fresh ice. Cut a thin piece of lime peel and twist over the drink; discard. Add club soda and lightly stir.
I keep coming back to this one, especially during the warm months. To see what other kinds of ginger goodness folks are mixing up this Mixology Monday, head over to RumDood‘s place for his roundup post.
, the Stifferino was allegedly created by “Man-About-Town” W.C. Weaver, who dedicated it to “Doc Voronoff” — a name you usually come across in relation to the Monkey Gland (another drink that I realize I’ve never covered on this blog, and may get to as part of the 30/30, even though the recipe’s been thoroughly blogged before, including by myself over at 
Fernet Branca so thoroughly takes over most cocktails that I was attracted to its use as the foundation for this drink — especially seeing how it was paired with equal parts of dry and sweet vermouth, and 
, now poised to retake the bibulous world in an expanded edition — the corpse reviver category has (sorry) returned from the dead. Somewhat, that is.
But, a year or so back, I was served a variation on this drink by Jamie Boudreau. Jamie freshened up the CR1 by using pommeau de normandie in place of the apple brandy; this reduced the alcohol level of the cocktail, making it a bit more managable, while also bumping up the fruitiness factor without adding extra sweetness. Rounded off with peach bitters and Angostura, and the Corpse Reviver #1 had a — sorry again — new lease on life. Here’s Jamie’s version, the Naramata:
I tried a few versions of this drink; while the impulse is always there to reach for a premium vermouth like Carpano Antica, it most assuredly does not work in this cocktail. The Antica has such a strong flavor that it overwhelms the pommeau; instead I used Martini & Rossi as it’s my workhorse sweet vermouth, and it seemed to work well in this drink. Also, I eschewed the cognac recommendation and instead went with Armagnac, reasoning that the more rugged, earthy flavor could lend an interesting angle to the drink. I doubt I could tell a Naramata made with cognac from one made with armagnac in a blind tasting, but the Armagnac did its job well and I have no complaints.
They don’t make tastebuds like they used to.
To my taste, some of the best uses of these ingredients are when they appear together — though such combinations raised warnings early on. In 1886, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle noted, “Vermouth and absinthe are becoming more popular daily, but are dangerous drinks. Many use vermouth with a few drops of absinthe as a nervine, but the treatment, if persisted in, can only result in one way — loss of mental power and extreme nervousness.”
Essentially a typical absinthe frappe with sweet vermouth added, this is absolutely lovely — really, this tastes like the 19th century: deeply elegant, floral and (I’ll say it again) baroque, with the crisp edge of anise brushed into a rich lushness from the vermouth. I used Kubler, because it’s not bad and I had plenty of it on hand; for this, as with any classic drink that calls for absinthe, you’ll need a classic anise-forward spirit; other absinthe-type spirits that don’t have that anise character just aren’t suitable in any cocktail that predates the Internet. As with many other drinks that prominently feature vermouth, I used Carpano Antica Formula, because it just kicks ass. Vya may work as well, and even Cinzano, Noilly Prat sweet or Martini & Rossi would be suitable, but they don’t quite have the gumption of the Carpano or the Vya. Word is that Dolin should start appearing soon; I’ll reserve judgement on that until I’ve had a chance to try it.
I took my first sip of this while still in the kitchen, next to the sink — to be perfectly honest, I expected to hate this. Fernet Branca, while a lovely thing on its own, is a surly prick in the mixing glass. It’s usually dispensed in small amounts as with many other bitter ingredients, but in this role it just works. With a base of sweet vermouth, it’s as though the Fernet doesn’t feel the need to compete: it can spread out in all its eucalyptus-tinged glory, without bumping into another alpha-dog ingredient. The absinthe is in no way prominent — I mean, with an ounce of Fernet Branca in there, how could it be? — but it lends that indecipherable seasoning quality, making the drink much richer and fuller than it would be without it. If you’ve got a bottle of Fernet kicking around and you’re trying to figure out what to do with it, here’s a good choice.
). As I worked through the recipes, I noticed a pattern: many of the drinks followed a similar structure, pairing absinthe with “vino vermouth,” or Italian vermouth in assorted proportions, then completing the recipe with Ingredient X (with the occasional modifier of sugar or bitters added). This ingredient could be just about anything: Calisaya bitters, Fernet Branca, Old Tom gin, creme de roses, green Chartreuse, kummel — you name it, pretty much. Some versions, such as the kummel-laden 
