In my quest for more Kummel drinks I came across this one. I picked it out because the recipe looked interesting and unpredictable. What was a caraway, vermouth, whiskey and bitters flavored sour going to taste like?

1 oz Italian vermouth (Martini)

½ - ¾ oz Irish whiskey (Jamesons)

½ oz lemon juice

¼ oz Kummel (Wolfschmit)

1 dash Angostura bitters

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

Regarding the quantity of whiskey, the Savoy suggests ½ oz while Ted Haigh’s CocktailDB suggests ¾ oz. I went with Ted Haigh’s suggestion. You can never have too much whiskey and Ted Haigh probably suggested making it that way for a reason.

This is a very odd drink. It smells mostly of vermouth. When you taste it you get an interesting mix of caraway and vermouth. There is something worthwhile happening in the sweet vermouth and caraway combination. The whiskey is a little lost but I guess it helps give the drink backbone. The lemon juice is the part that doesn’t quite work for me. Maybe this drink would be better if it wasn’t a sour? Personally I find the sour aftertaste too much of a contrast to the herbal-caraway flavor. It’s an interesting drink. Based on its weirdness it might work well for a small minority of people. I am probably not one of them despite usually enjoying herbal tastes. However, if you want a caraway and herb flavored sour this is just the thing.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 1:11 am and is filed under Irish, Recipes, aromatic bitters, cocktail bitters, kummel, lemon, sweet (Italian), vermouth, whiskey/whisky. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.