I had high hopes for this one and was not disappointed. I like drinks with lots of herbal flavors and this one obviously fits the bill.

1 oz brandy (Prince Arignac Armagnac V.S.)

1 oz kummel (Wolfschmidt)

½ oz Fernet Branca

5 dashes Angostura Bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

This would make a nice alternative to a liqueur after a meal. Or you could drink it any time you want a complex, contemplative, and rather medicinal drink. The Fernet Branca comes over heaviest, but the kummel makes its presence felt and the brandy provides the perfect mild but rich base for it all, with the bitters giving some extra complexity. Kummel mixes interestingly with strong herbal flavors, and it is a nice match for brandy too. Drinking this is like tasting a new herbal liqueur with a caraway base. I’d definitely drink this again – mind you I tend to like this sort of thing.

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?

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I decided to whip up a quick something using blackberry brandy and settled on the Allegheny. It was the first recipe to come up on CocktailDB when I searched for blackberry brandy and lemon juice. Bourbon and dry vermouth looked like they would do nicely to fill out the drink, and a dash of bitters promised to spice things up a little.

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So the theme for this Mixology Monday, hosted at Jimmy’s Cocktail Hour is ‘variations’. For once I haven’t had to think about what to throw together. This month’s theme perfectly fits something I’ve been meaning to write about for a while now, namely a very straightforward and versatile variation of a Gin and Tonic. (more…)

I did a search on CocktailDB for pisco cocktails. Besides the well known pisco drinks, namely the pisco sour and the pisco punch, CocktailDB had just three other drinks to offer. CocktailDB is normally a good way to find a list of drinks using obscure ingredients, but when it comes to pisco it does not have much to offer.

The peculiar thing was that all three of these pisco drinks from CocktailDB also included Galliano. Very strange indeed. I am guessing that these three drinks all come from the same source, maybe a promotional cocktail booklet published for some South American market by Galliano, or perhaps they were winning entries in some competition or other. (more…)

The theme for this month’s Mixology Monday is Repeal Day, and Pre-prohibition drinks are thus in order. Pisco is flavor of the month at my place since I managed to pick up three different brands of the stuff. That makes the Pisco Punch the obvious choice for this month’s drink.

I mentioned Pisco Punch the last time I wrote here. The problem with Pisco Punch, and it is quite a problem, is that the original recipe seems to have been lost. Certain things about the drink are known with certainty though. (more…)

Well this week’s Mixology Monday topic is gin.

I should have lots of ideas for this one since gin has become a favorite spirit of mine. I’ve had dreadful arguments about the whole vodka versus gin thing with friends who believe the former is the most versatile cocktail ingredient. I think gin deserves that honor. Sitting here writing this though, I can’t say that I have any particular drink in mind for this Mixology Monday. However, there is one thing that I believe does need to be said.

Gin occupies a unique space in the world of mixed drinks. (more…)

The theme for this month’s Mixology Monday (hosted at Cocktail Nerd) is Fizz. A few obvious things came to mind (Tom Collins, G&T, French 75, etc.), but I thought I’d try and do something nobody else was likely to come up with. Given how well a heavy dose of bitters worked in the Calvados Cocktail I made last month, I thought that this month I’d once again go for something bitters heavy. This time though I decided to use Angostura. (more…)

I saw some kummel the other week. I had only drunk kummel once before (in the since disappeared Berlin restaurant on Mt Eden Rd. in Auckland) but its herbal caraway taste left a strong impression. Since getting into aquavit, also traditionally flavored with caraway, over Christmas I had been wanting to give kummel another try. So I bought a bottle with vague plans of finding an aquavit and kummel drink to use it in. (more…)

The Blackthorn cocktail is one of my favorites, a gin base with a generous splash of both Dubonnet and kirsch. Dubonnet and gin appear together in all sorts of early 20^th Century drinks. In the Blackthorn the Kirsch adds an extra dimension to a well worn combination. The drink is intensely fruity, but the use of eau de vie rather than a liqueur keeps things at the dry and bracing end of the spectrum.

I am surprised this drink is not better known. Part of the reason may be confusion about recipes. (more…)