The theme for this Mixology Monday (hosted at Save the Drinkers) is Local Flavor.  The idea is to make a drink featuring local ingredients.  I will treat New Zealand as my locality.  During my temporary sojourn in the Dominican Republic I have no bar besides a couple of bottles of rum.  I think I should blog on a drink I invented a few years ago and had the foresight to photograph.

Sensitive readers should be aware that this drink contains vodka.

Those open-minded and inquisitive readers that are still with me will be wondering the circumstances that led me to invent a vodka drink.  You can blame the arrival in China of 42 Below vodka.  An Australian friend of mine with a bar in Shanghai was impressed with 42 Below.  I think he was impressed with the marketing more than the product, and you have to admit that some of it is hilarious.  Anyway, my friend asked me to invent some house cocktails, featuring New Zealand’s very own 42 Below. My reward was free alcohol and the chance to strike at the French via creative cocktail nomenclature.

Even the cocktail inventing was not entirely joyless.  Vodka may be the most boring spirit in the world, but occasionally you find a flavored vodka that offers you a taste you would otherwise have trouble getting in a drink.  Poland’s Zubrovka (flavored with bison grass) is one example.  New Zealand’s 42 Below Feijoa is another.

The kiwifruit flavor may not have been such a good idea.  In New Zealand we seem to suffer a compulsion to produce kiwifruit everything (candy, liqueurs, soap, juices, facial scrubs, and much more), then plead with tourists to take the crap off our hands.

Feijoa is a different story.  While the fruit is native to Brazil, it is oddly popular in New Zealand.  While efforts have been made to cultivate it in quite a few countries, I do not know of anywhere else it is taken on in quite the same way.  Visitors to New Zealand are often unfamiliar with it so I am guessing not many places grow it on any scale.  Even in New Zealand it only began to be sold in supermarkets fairly recently.  It was popular long before the supermarkets took it up, but was the type of fruit people either had in their gardens, acquired from neighbors, or bought at the side of the road.  Feijoa is an under-appreciated fruit with an interesting flavor (something like a weird twist on a guava), and seeing it show up as a vodka flavor was good.  Finally, an interesting flavored vodka, and with a local flavor to boot!

You could do all kinds of things with this stuff.  It should be great in Tiki drinks.  However, I went for a simple riff on a classic French high-ball, a cognac and tonic.  Then, in recognition of my debt to the French, I named the drink in a manner calculated to cause them embarrassment and offense.  Really though, what kind of nation sends their special forces to blow up a Greenpeace protest vessel?  What kind of secret agents get caught because of a neighborhood watch group?  The French are truly special.

The Rainbow Warrior

1 oz Cognac (or other decent Armagnac or brandy – since it gets cut with vodka a robust Armagnac is not a bad choice)

1 oz 42 Below Feijoa

1 lime wedge (lemon will do in a pinch)

Tonic water

Build over ice in a collins glass, squeezing the lime wedge to extract the juice.  Serve with a straw.  Show your angry side by garnishing with a burning French flag, or be humorous and use a mechanical bath toy in the shape of a frog or a scuba diver.  It all depends how you are feeling about the French that day.

The above makes for a pleasant, fruity, and slightly exotic twist on a cognac and tonic.  Recommended if you have 42 Below Feijoa lying around.

Needless to say the Chinese barmen soon began ‘improving’ the recipe.  The drink morphed into vodka, peach schnapps, and soda, and subsequently died a deserved death.  Here you have the drink in its original version.

This month’s Mixology Monday sees me without ready access to a bar to mix a drink.  On well, I’m going to go ahead and post something anyway.  The theme this month is New Orleans cocktails, so I thought I could post a couple of tips related to making drinks containing egg white, with particular reference to that venerable old New Orleans drink – the Ramos Gin Fizz.

I had made it something of a mission to get a decent Ramos Gin Fizz while in New Orleans for Tales of the Cocktail.  What I really wanted was a Ramos Gin Fizz made by Chris McMillan (check out a video of him mixing one here).  Before leaving for New Orleans I rang the bar he now works at (in the Renaissance Pere Marquette Hotel) and was told by that the great man would be behind the bar on the Friday and Saturday during Tales of the Cocktail from 4pm onwards.  I dropped past the hotel late on Friday afternoon.  The bar was deserted.  There was no queue out onto the street for Ramos Gin Fizzes.  The lobby was not filled with a couple of dozen drinks bloggers, passing a shaker or two around as they shook a couple of fizzes up.  I had lucked out!  Then I got a little closer and realized Chris McMillan was nowhere to be seen.  On asking if he was around I found he was not going to be back at work until the 25th.  Alas it was not to be.

Although the Chris McMillan Ramos Gin Fizz never happened, after the session on New Orleans Drinks I got the chance to ask Chris where I would get a Ramos Gin Fizz in New Orleans given that he wasn’t working his own bar that week.  He told me not to even try at his own bar unless he was there – which made me feel better about slinking out on the poor young guy tending bar there.  Chris suggested The Swizzle Stick Bar at Cafe Adelaide.  I graciously thanked Mr. McMillan before thrusting him out of my way and rushing to Cafe Adelaide.

Once again, it was not to be.  On a better day Chris McMillan’s suggestion may have been a good one.  I should have done well given that I believe my drink was mixed up by Lu Brow – the ‘bar chef’ at Cafe Adelaide.  Unfortunately I have little  good to say about the Ramos Gin Fizz I drank at Cafe Adelaide.  OK, I guess the ingredients and proportions were about right.  Unfortunately the execution was abysmal.  I shake a Daiquiri longer than Lu Brow shook this Ramos Gin Fizz.  I wasn’t expecting the bar to lower its shutters for quarter of an hour while everybody in the room took turns shaking my drink.  Indeed I was half expecting to be tossed out into the street for daring to ask for a Ramos Gin Fizz.  However, given that the place was as near empty as I saw it during Tales of the Cocktail, a shake lasting longer than 15 seconds would have been nice.  The drink tasted OK, but it was rather diluted (the crushed ice they seem to favor for all drinks in The Swizzle Stick Bar is not always the way to go), and texturally it was way off.  That said, at least I was able to go into a bar and order a Ramos Gin Fizz without throwing the barstaff into a fit of confusion.  You couldn’t do that in most places.

The Swizzle Stick Bar Ramos Gin Fizz was a sorry contrast to the exceptionally frothy Pisco Sour I enjoyed in The Alembic in San Francisco.  The Alembic pisco sour was probably the stand out drink from my U.S. trip.  The difference between the two drinks was the level of care taken with the execution.

So where am I going with all this?

I thought for this Mixology Monday I would throw a couple of Ramos Gin Fizz making tips out there.  I have not tried the third of these myself, since it is something I learned from a bartender/blogger while attending Tales.  I’ve now forgotten who told me this, so give a shout if you happen to be reading.  I haven’t tried the fourth either, but professional bartenders seem to like it.

Tip number 1 – Dry shake the mixture before adding any ice.  This shouldn’t need to be said, but many people skip this essential step.

Tip number 2 -Add the coil from your Hawthorne Strainer to the shaker while dry shaking (removing it when you add the ice).  The coil will act like a whisk and aerate the egg faster than if you shook without the coil in there.  So far as I know this technique is not traditional.  I have never seen it in a recipe.  However, my experiments have found it to work well.  The pisco sour at The Alembic was made this way.  The Alembic was the first bar where I have seen a dry shake done this way.  Congratulations to the Alembic for taking that extra little bit of trouble.

Tip number 3 – Add the sugar after your dry shake.  The theory behind this is that sugar acts as a stabilizer for existing foam, but actually inhibits foam formation.  I have not experimented with this yet.  However, I was surprised a few weeks back when a batch of pisco sours I made up turned out to have an exceptionally good foam.  Being a batch drink I got a little confused with the proportions and undersweetened to begin with, adjusting the sweetness later.  Perhaps the batch of drinks turned out well because I added about half of the sugar at the end.  While a Ramos Gin Fizz is not a Pisco Sour, I think you want both drinks to be as foamy as possible.  Therefore I suggest trying this technique.

Tip number 4 – You could always cheat and use one of those little battery operated blending sticks, which are small enough to fit into a cocktail shaker.  These seem popular in bars.  The Barsol Pisco brand rep thought they did a good job, as did numerous other people I spoke with.  I don’t have one but will pick one up at some stage.

The Ramos Gin Fizz recipe I use these days is below.  Some recipes leave out the lime, but I think the mix of lemon and lime is essential to the flavor.  I also like the vanilla essence, even if it may not be traditional.

2 oz gin

1/2 oz of lime juice

1/2 oz of lemon juice

1 egg white

2 oz cream

several drops of orange flower water (more if using the weak tasting middle eastern stuff)

a drop or two of vanilla essence

1 tsp sugar (add this after the dry shake)

A spash of soda water

Dry shake everything except the sugar and soda for at least a minute.  Add the sugar and give it another long shake over ice to chill and dilute a little. Strain into a fizz glass (or an undersized Collins glass) and top with soda, stirring as you do so to build a frothy head that rises above the glass and begins to run down the sides.  Watch the video above to see what I mean.  In fact why am I even bothering with a recipe here?  Just watch the video.

I did not attend the session on eggs in drinks at Tales of the Cocktail.  Does anyone who attended have more tips on getting better results out of drinks containing egg white?

There is surely no other writer with the same number of drinks associated with them. From absinthe to vodka, if it contained alcohol Hemingway drank it, and chances were he wrote about it too. Of all the drinks Hemingway enjoyed, the Daiquiri is probably the one in which his spirit endures most strongly. I wrote a post on the Daiquiri and Hemingway here. The post includes some cool photos so check it out if you haven’t already. Of course there were many cocktails Hemingway enjoyed besides the Daiquiri. Martinis featured prominently. He was also partial to absinthe topped with champagne, a mixture he dubbed Death in the Afternoon.

Recently I obtained a copy of Charles H. Baker’s Jigger, Beaker and Glass: Drinking around the World. Flipping the pages I was surprised to find a drink called Ernest Hemingway’s Reviver, or Death in the Gulf Stream. Interestingly, Baker and Hemingway appear to have been friends. Baker introduces the recipe as follows:

“One January 2 years back we took MARMION in a howling northeaster along with the, then, 4 year bride, a companion, and an insane steward, and pointed her down to Key West to get some receipts from Hemingway for the cookery book. We fished the Gulf Stream by day, and ate and drank and talked half the night. Even by the second day we were withering slightly on vine, and along with raw conch salad, or ‘souse’ listed in Volume I, we got Hemingway’s other picker-upper, and liked it.”

Both men spent time living in Florida so I guess it makes sense that they should have known one another. No doubt their mutual interest in drinking helped.

Baker mentions that before trying this drink he had an aversion to Genever, which he considered to taste like “fermented radishes mixed with spirits of turpentine”. As someone who traveled the world to gather cocktail recipes, Baker was obviously no slouch when it came to drinking. His feeling the worse for wear and needing a “picker-upper” after an evening with Hemingway therefore speaks volumes. Meanwhile, the fact that Hemingway’s “picker-upper” converted Baker on the matter of Genever confirms that Hemingway was more than your average boozer. Papa’s drinks were generally pretty damn good.

Death in the Gulf Stream

Recipe follows:

“Take a tall thin water tumbler and fill it with finely cracked ice. Lace this broken debris with 4 good purple dashes of Angostura, add the juice and crushed peel of 1 green lime, and fill glass almost full with Holland gin. . . . No sugar, no fancying. It’s strong, it’s bitter – but so is English ale strong and bitter, in many cases. We don’t add sugar to ale, and we don’t need sugar in a Death in the Gulf Stream - or at least not more than 1 tsp. It’s tartness and its bitterness are its chief charm. It is reviving and refreshing; cools the blood and inspires renewed interest in food, companions and life.“

Given my recent experiments with Genever I was pleased to come across this recipe. I made the drink up and found it to resemble a citrusy and summery pink gin. The drink is refreshing, aromatic, and a little bitter, with the Genever providing malty body and a slight funk. This is a good drink for appreciating the character of Genever. London Dry will make an serviceable drink, but will lack the essence of the original. Use an Oude Style Genever if at all possible.

To build the drink to best effect I suggest proceeding as follows: fill the glass nearly full of crushed ice; add two or three dashes of Angostura; quarter the lime, squeeze the juice from the wedges directly into the glass and drop each spent wedge into the glass; add a dash of simple syrup (if desired); top off with Genever and stir everything up; finish with a little more ice and a final dash or two of Angostura. Made this way the final addition of bitters will create a lacework effect in the ice on the top of the finished drink. To me this seems a nice touch.

Mixology Monday (hosted at Scofflaw’s Den) has suddenly sprung on me, bringing the theme of bourbon. I feel a bit inadequate about my effort this time round. Recently I have hardly been drinking bourbon. Mostly it has all been gin, with occasional detours to explore French aperitifs. This state of affairs is a bit odd now I come to think about it. When I first got into cocktails I drank plenty of bourbon drinks (mostly Manhattans and Old Fashioneds), with rum thrown in for variety. Things seem to have changed, and consequently I am low on creative ideas for bourbon. Mind you, when it comes to bourbon I sometimes wonder how creative you need to be. Isn’t an Old Fashioned about as good as it gets? Posting about the Old Fashioned seems redundant though, so I am going to throw together a new (to me) bourbon cocktail from Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails.

My original plan had been to do something out of Charles H. Baker’s “Jigger, Beaker and Glass: Drinking Around the World”. Amazon delivered a copy a couple of days ago and I had thought I would take a leisurely flick through and select whatever unusual and tasty bourbon concoction happened to catch my eye. Alas my plan was torpedoed by the near absence of bourbon drinks from Baker’s wonderful book. Why couldn’t the theme this month have been rum or gin? Or maybe even kummel? Baker seems to be heavily in to that sort of thing. Oh well, never mind.

So off to pick up Ted Haigh’s book it is. I have had this book for about a year but for some reason I have never got around to making the Derby. On paper it looks a perfectly fine drink. Somehow though it has never excited me enough to get shaking. I blame the absence of exotic ingredients.

The Derby

1 oz bourbon (Bulleit)

1/2 oz sweet vermouth (Martini & Rossi)

1/2 oz orange curacao (Marie Brizard)

3/4 oz lime juice

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a mint leaf.

A tasty concoction, even if it does not quite blow me away. Being a cross between a Manhattan and a whiskey sour, the vermouth provides the interest. I think I remember complaining that vermouth does not always mix well with sour things. It works fine here.

Using a more robust or higher proof bourbon might help the bourbon assert itself a little more. The other solution could be to increase the quantity a notch. That said, it is pretty tasty as is.

I won’t be rushing to make this one again. But if anyone was offering I wouldn’t say no.

To assist my anticipatory salivation ahead of Anistatia Miller and Jared Brown’s Tales of the Cocktail presentation on “The Cafes of Paris”, I have been taking a look at a few lesser known French aperitifs. Several weeks ago I took a look at Pineau des Charentes. Today I focus on a pair of fruit quinquinas.

Quinquina is vermouth’s neglected cousin. Vermouth is well recognized, if widely feared and misunderstood. Martini drinkers fall into two camps: those who really want vermouth in their drink, and those who merely wish to ritualistically conjure up its spirit. However, while vermouth provokes fierce debate and elaborate juju, the mention of quinquina elicits little more than a blank stare. This is a shame because quinquina is an interesting category. To fix those blank stares, perhaps a little explanation is in order.

Both quinquina and vermouth are aromatized wines (i.e. wines flavored with herbs and spices). Quinquinas distinguish themselves from vermouths in using quinine as a key flavoring. As in tonic water, the quinine originally served a medicinal purpose – warding off malaria and all that. Vermouth and quinquina are not mutually exclusive categories. Some vermouth producers sell ‘quinquina’ versions alongside their regular vermouths: for example Martini & Rossi release their sweet vermouth in both ‘quinquina’ and standard versions. However, despite some overlap there are marked differences, with quinquinas tending to emphasize spice while vermouths are more herbal.

Similar to vermouths, which can be broadly classified into sweet and dry styles, quinquinas largely fall into rouge and blanc styles. The rouge style is rich, spicy and based on red wine – Dubonnet Rouge is the classic example. The blanc style is light, citrus accented, and based on white wine – Lillet Blanc is the iconic product.

For some reason neither of these mainstream styles of quinquina ever challenged vermouth to become a ubiquitous cocktail ingredient. Cocktail recipes never casually call for a generic rouge or blanc quinquina. Quinquina is called for only occasionally, and always by brand. Even luminaries like Charles H. Baker considered Dubonnet to be “only needed in the more elaborate establishments”, and I do not recall him mentioning Lillet at all. Considering that Baker saw orgeat, kummel and six types of bitters as more or less essential bar supplies, this adds up to a bit of a slap in the face for the quinquina category.

If mainstream quinquinas like Dubonnet and Lillet are fairly obscure, fruit flavored quinquina are even more so. These fruity quinquina do not fall within either the rouge or blanc styles, with heavy fruit macerations completely masking the base wine. They deserve a look from cocktailians though, offering a great source of fruit flavors and complexity, yet one with minimal sweetness. Two products are introduced below: RinQuinQuin and Orange Colombo.

RinQuinQuin (15% alcohol by volume) is a peach flavored quinquina. It is produced in Provence by the same firm that makes Henri Bardouin pastis. The name means something like an invigorating drink or a pick-me-up in French. The production process involves maceration, distillation, blending and several months of aging. Both distilled alcohol and wine are infused with quinine, other herbs and spices, and peaches. The peaches are what distinguish the product, and are added not as fruit, but rather as leaves, skins and kernels. This makes for a very complex flavor. The product is lightly sweetened. The result is a fruity but refreshingly dry aperitif wine with a distinctly bitter edge.

Orange Colombo (15% alcohol by volume) is an orange flavored quinquina along the same lines as RinQuinQuin. Based on its complex taste I am guessing it is flavored with more than just orange skins. As in RinQuinQuin, leaves, blossoms or other material may also be used.

These fruit quinquina are traditionally consumed either chilled or over ice, perhaps garnished with a twist of lemon. However, there is no reason they cannot be used in cocktails. Bear in mind that their mild fruitiness makes them poor vermouth substitutes, while their lack of sugar and their herbal complexity prevent them from standing in for fruit liqueurs. A bit of a fresh approach is in order.

Here are a few ideas. . .

Peach Martinez

1 oz Genever (Bols Oude)

1 oz Italian vermouth (Martini Rossi)

1 oz RinQuinQuin

2 dashes Fees Whiskey Barrel Aged Bitters

1 tsp maraschino

Stir over ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

A nice take on the Martinez. Cutting the vermouth with RinQuinQuin makes for a lighter and more interesting drink. The Genever provides a mellow but solid base, neither fading into obscurity nor dominating. The complex peach notes mingle nicely with the cherry. Increase the Genever a little if you find it lacks kick.

When playing around with RinQuinQuin to create variations on existing recipes you will probably find that cutting vermouth half-and-half with RinQuinQuin works better than a straight substitution. RinQuinQuin is more of a one note product than vermouth, albeit a complex note.

RinQuinQuin Vesper

3 oz gin (Tanqueray)

1 oz vodka (Stolichnaya)

¼ oz Lillet Blanc

¼ oz RinQuinQuin

Shake over ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and garnish with a large lemon twist.

This is just brilliant. By upping the bitterness the RinQuinQuin addresses the problem of Lillet having been reformulated and lightened since the Vesper was originally invented. The RinQuinQuin also adds a peach layer to the citrus in the Lillet.

Orange Colombo can be used to create another nice Vesper variation. Both products can also be used in regular Martinis, where they work especially well with delicate gins like Tanqueray 10 that stand up poorly to vermouth. I would be inclined to split the quinquina 50/50 with vermouth.

Orange Colombo Pisco Sour

2 oz pisco

½ oz Orange Columbo (or cut back to 1/4 oz)

¾ oz lime juice

1/3 oz simple syrup

1 egg white (half an egg white per drink is sufficient if making multiple drinks)

Dash or two of Fees Whiskey Barrel Aged Bitters

Put everything except the bitters in a mixing glass. Shake long and hard over ice until the drink becomes foamy. Double strain into a sour glass. Finish the drink by garnishing the foam with a few drops of bitters – you can use a toothpick to draw a pattern on the foam. A sour glass, champagne flute or wine glass is preferable for this drink. The garnish of bitters on egg-white foam is intended to provide aroma. A sour glass concentrates the aromas, while the smaller surface area means that the foam, and the aromas, last longer.

The Orange Columbo adds both a subtle orange note and a light bite, making a pleasant variation that jazzes up the original. Perhaps I am not using the right pisco, but I find pisco sours tend to be a little too plain and smooth. Orange Columbo livens things up without creating an unseemly ruckus. You can also try a splash of Orange Colombo in a Margarita – obviously you will still need the orange liqueur, but possibly it could be scaled back a notch.

There is tons of potential for using these obscure fruit quinquina in cocktails. If you see a bottle you should grab it and have a play around. Currently these products are underutilized, leaving the field wide open to experimentation.

The Rough Riders take a break on top of San Juan Hill

Mixology Monday has rolled around and get and brought with it the theme of rum. The host of Mixology Monday XXVII is Trader Tiki. To be honest, this was never intended to be a Mixology Monday post. However, since the drink includes rum I guess I get a handy Mixology Monday entry for minimal effort.

I was rearranging my booze cupboard when I remembered I had a bottle of Kola Tonic that had never been used other than to make the Filmograph – from Ted Haigh’s Vintage Cocktails and Forgotten Spirits.

A few posts ago, while talking about the Early Fogcutter, I mentioned how small quantities of gin can do great things to rum cocktails. I mentioned the splash of gin found in early versions of the Cuba Libre. I repeated the story of how Teddy Roseveldt’s Rough Riders supposedly invented the Cuba Libre, noting that they could not have done so since Coca Cola was not sold in Cuba until some years after their departure. My eye fell upon the bottle of Kola Tonic and I wondered whether the Rough Riders might not have taken some type of Cola concentrate to Cuba with them.

This novel hypothesis offers a neat solution to the debate about the Rough Riders and the invention of the Cuba Libre. If they mixed the drink using a concentrate bought from the U.S. there would have been no need for coke to be available in Cuba at the time -simply mix the concentrate with soda water and voila! The locals were probably so impressed they decided to import Coca Cola themselves. Naturally, being Caribbean types who lacked the drive provided by a sense of Manifest Destiny, the Cubans let several years elapse before placing their order with the Coca Cola Corporation.

It makes perfect sense for the Rough Riders to have carried cola as a concentrate. They were on a military campaign, not a Caribbean holiday. Naturally they had to pack lightly – rifles, ammunition, rum, gin, bitters, Kola Tonic, silver cobbler shaker (no Boston shakers since glass was fragile and could become a hazard in the field). They would probably have been trained to live off the land for their lime supply.

So here is the concentrated version of the Cuba Libre, suitable for military campaigns, camping trips, and other occasions where circumstances demand you pack light. Note that this is indisputably the original version of the drink, as enjoyed by the Rough Riders themselves. You could equally well build this on ice and top with soda, but I think I like it served up. You can’t be fussing around with soda siphons as you prepare to assault San Juan Hill.

Rough Rider

1 ½ oz Cuban rum (Havana Club Blanco)

½ oz gin (Tanqueray)

½ oz lime juice

1 oz Kola Tonic (Roses)

1 dash Angostura Bitters

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Charge up nearest hill.

Kola Tonic is more or less a concentrated Coca Cola taste, but seems less sweet and more bitter. This product was once widespread, but today only remains a staple in South Africa. Fortunately Auckland has a large South African community so it is easy to find here.

Passion Fruit Rhum

1 ½ oz rhum blanc

pulp of 1 passion fruit (about 1 oz)

juice of ½ a lime

1 ½ tsp golden syrup (substituting for cane syrup)

Put the passion fruit pulp in a highball glass and give a quick muddle to help break down the seeds. Add ½ a lime cut into wedges and muddle some more. Add syrup and stir. Add rhum, then finish with crushed ice.

This is great. The aromatic rhum agricole is an amazing match for the passion fruit. A simple and excellent drink. You have to try one of these. It does no harm to also try this with an aged rhum.

I just dumped the passion fruit pulp into the glass because I was too lazy to wait for the juice to drip through a sieve, and anyway I thought the pulp would look nice.  If you do not like my method you can use the following Caribbean trick.  Place the pulp in a sieve over your glass, press with a spoon to extract as much of the juice as you can, then pour your rum through the remaining pulp.  This way you will really get the last of the juice out.  Of course now some of your rum is sitting in the spent pulp.  Life is all about trade offs.

Given the aromatic nature of passion fruit and rhum agricole, I couldn’t help wondering how they would fare when paired with maraschino, an aromatic liqueur.

Passion Fruit, Rhum and Maraschino Daiquiri

2 oz St. James White

¾ oz passion fruit pulp

½ oz lime juice

½ oz maraschino

Shake hard over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

This was on the thin and sour side, without the passion fruit leaping out to assert itself, but oddly moreish. Again it needs some work, probably including some more sugar, and was not what I expected. However, the whole maraschino, passion fruit, and rhum agricole thing is worth exploring further. These are three highly aromatic and funky ingredients, and their combination makes a very interesting sour. I may come back to this some time.

Passion Fruit Nacional Daiquiri

2 oz Cuban Rum (I used Havana Club Blanco)

1 oz passion fruit juice

½ oz lime juice

1 tsp dry apricot brandy (i.e. eau de vie)

2 tsp gomme syrup (or substitute simple syrup)

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

I used a generous dose of gomme syrup to add body. Passion fruit can have a thin and grainy mouth feel that is best counteracted.

This is very quaffable but not a stand out. I was hoping for the passion fruit and dry apricot brandy to work a little magic as they had in the Fitzcarraldo, my recent pisco experiment. They partner up nicely, but something seems to be lacking. The drink is still kind of sour and thin. One idea could be to make a 50/50 split between passion fruit and pineapple – pineapple would add more body. Another idea could be to change the rum. There are two possible directions, using the 3 year old Havana Club to give a little more body and sweetness, or using a rhum agricole to increase the dry aromatic element (and simultaneously perhaps up the sugar).

Passion Fruit Pisco Sour

2 oz pisco

¾ oz passion fruit pulp (I used a whole passion fruit, which yielded roughly ¾ oz of pulp – not juice!)

½ oz lime juice

¼ oz simple syrup

1 egg white

Shake long and hard over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

I deliberately didn’t double stain, hoping the passion fruit seeds would end up as an attractive garnish on the bottom of the glass. This didn’t happen. About three seeds made it to where they were supposed to go. This was not quite the effect I was after. Maybe double strain and forget about trying to achieve this effect, or simply garnish with a teaspoon of passion fruit pulp in the bottom of the glass?

It seems best to leave out the Angostura garnish on the foam. I experimented with a drop of Angostura on one corner of the drink, but it seemed to distract too much from the delicate passion fruit aroma. Of course some may like it.

This drink made a beautiful pisco sour variation. The passion fruit and pisco make nice partners, and there is no doubting the passion fruit adds some extra complexity.

Since passion fruit comes from the Amazon, and since Pisco also comes from South America I am labeling my further experiments (involving pisco and agricole rum) ‘Amazonian cocktails’.

Amazonian Cocktail #1

2 oz pisco

¾-1 oz passion fruit pulp (my passion fruit was especially big so it gave me practically an ounce of pulp)

½ oz lime juice

¾ oz St. Germain

1 egg white

Shake hard over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

I had envisaged a drink that improved on the above by adding some subtle complexity in the form of St. Germain. I think the St. Germain ended up distracting too much from the passion fruit though. Maybe ½ oz of St. Germain would be better? This is a pleasant drink, but the passion fruit doesn’t jump out like I want it to. Perhaps it just needs tweaking?

Maybe my best drink came last. . .

Amazonian Cocktail #2 (or The Fitzcarraldo)

1 ½ oz pisco

¾ oz passion fruit pulp

¾ oz dry apricot brandy (i.e. a eau de vie, not a liqueur)

2 tsp Grand Marnier

1 tsp Grenadine

This is just a reworking of the Dulchin, substituting passion fruit for the lime juice. Though I say it myself, this is pretty damn good. The passion fruit makes a much softer and more approachable drink than the Dulchin, yet one that is no less interesting. The combination of pisco, passion fruit and apricot eau de vie provides tons of aromatic complexity. The pisco is easy to pick, but the apricot and passion fruit mesh into a single exotic flavor. While sweeter made with passion fruit than the original Dulchin, it is not too sweet. It could certainly be reworked (playing around with the Grand Marnier and Grenadine?), but this is close to being a pretty good drink. The color is beautiful too.

So why did I call this the Fitzcarraldo? I have always been fascinated by the city of Manaus, the remote Brazilian Amazon town that was the site of a big rubber boom in the late 19^th and early 20^th century. One of the famous stories of the Manaus boom years concerns the grand opera house that was built there. Legend has it that Enrico Caruso himself was scheduled to perform there but for various reasons never made it. No sooner was the opera house completed than the rubber economy collapsed, and Manaus reverted to a remote jungle backwater marking the furthest boundaries of civilization. Werner Herzog directed a movie, Fitzcarraldo (1982), about the dreamer behind the construction of the Manaus opera house. This last drink seems as good a drink as any to christen the Fitzcarraldo. The drink combines Brazilian passion fruit with Peruvian pisco (this makes sense because Manaus is closer to Peru than to most places in Brazil). Meanwhile, European apricot brandy and Grand Marnier bring some Old World refinement to the remote frontier.

Having made some quality grenadine, the next step is to find some drinks to try it in. Three drinks immediately come to mind, the Clover Club, the Pink Lady, and the El Presidente. The Clover Club and Pink Lady are simply grenadine sweetened and flavored gin sours, while the El Presidente is a complex rum, orange Curacao and vermouth affair that gets a gentle lift from a teaspoon of grenadine.

Recipes follow:

Clover Club

1 ½ – 2 oz gin

½ oz lemon or lime juice (juice of about half a lemon)

1 tsp – ½ oz grenadine (some recipes call for up to an ounce!)

1 egg white

Give a long shake over ice and double strain into a cocktail glass.

This one takes its name from a 19^th Century club of which it was the house cocktail. Made with good grenadine it is a simple but very respectable affair. The grenadine should add some pleasant fruit flavors as well as balancing the lemon. The egg white is essential. Be generous with the grenadine in this one since that is what gives the drink its character. The egg white also means you can add a reasonable amount without making things too cloying. Between the grenadine and the egg, the gin will slide down very easily indeed.

Pink Lady

1 ½ oz gin

½ oz calvados (or applejack)

½ oz lemon juice

1 tsp grenadine

1 egg white

Give a long shake over ice and double strain into a cocktail glass.

This drink adds uses apple brandy to lure the conservative Clover Club on a bit of an adventure. Nobody ends up getting hurt, and in fact the new combination works beautifully. The apple brandy now takes the lead, but good quality grenadine still helps add an additional layer of flavor.

El Presidente

1 ½ oz Cuban Rum (Havana Club 3 Anos works well, as does the Anejo Blanco)

¾ oz orange Curacao

¾ oz dry vermouth

1/2 – 1 tsp grenadine

Stir over ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

This is a great Cuban drink dating from the early 20th Century. There seem to be a few variations floating around. Some use triple sec. Some use sweet vermouth. I think the above version is the original. Whatever variation you use, a good quality grenadine should come into its own here. The drink is already fairly sweet and does not particularly need an extra dose of sugar. What the grenadine does is add a little fruitiness to lift the drink (not unlike the lemon twist garnish), and improve the mouth feel.

It is certainly relatively common in Barbados, being drunk in classic local drink the Corn’n'Oil (rum, falernum, Angostura Bitters, and a squeeze of lime). The Corn’n'Oil shows how versatile and easy to use Falernum is. You can simply splash it into rum to enhance the rum, or it can be used to create a more elaborate concoction like the Don the Beachcomber Mai Tai. It is sort of like a mildly alcoholic tropical version of sweet-and-sour mix.

So far I have relied on making falernum myself. Although I have tasted the Fees Brothers product, I do not rate it highly. The formula seems far too close to standard sweet-and-sour mix to be interesting.

I have tried two different falernum recipes. As with Pimento Dram, I found different recipes yielded very different results. Happily, my second attempt once again proved better than my first.

My first attempt was made as follows:

In 1/2 cup of white rum (Bacardi) soak the following for 48 hours: 6 cloves, 3 cm vanilla bean, zest of 2 limes, and 3 thin slices fresh ginger, and 2 drops almond extract (I was using a highly concentrated almond extract, possibly of dubious quality, hence the very small quantity).

Create a simple syrup from 2 cups white sugar and 2 cups water. Strain the rum mixture and add to syrup. Bottle and use.

This recipe made a tasty lightly spiced syrup. The flavor was not particularly concentrated so there was a temptation to use a lot and thus end up with a very sweet drink. Stored at room temperature the flavor of the syrup began to deteriorate quite rapidly. The low concentration of sugar in the 1:1 simple syrup would not have helped the shelf life of this falernum.

My second attempt used a different recipe, as follows:

Take 4 oz overproof white rum (Sangster’s Conquering Lion, 64%) and infuse it for three days with the following: 20 cloves, 2 tablespoons chopped almonds (approx 25 gms) lightly toasted in a frying pan. Add the zest of 4-5 limes (depending on size) and ¾ oz fresh ginger and infuse for a further day. Adding the limes and ginger only on the last day of the infusion stops the mixture from turning slimy and avoids over-extraction of these flavors.

Strain the above mixture through a moistened cheesecloth, extracting all liquid. Mix the rum infusion with 7 oz simple syrup (2:1 sugar to water ratio), 2 ¼ oz fresh lime juice (strained), 1/8 tsp high quality almond extract, 1/8 tsp high quality vanilla extract. Bottle and use.

This version turns out beautifully. The lime juice gives it an amazing freshness, and also eliminates the need for a squeeze of lime when making a Corn’n'Oil. Of course the lime juice also means you will need to store this syrup in the fridge or freezer. However, since the juice free recipe did not last well at room temperature, refrigerated storage is probably a good idea anyway. This version is like an all purpose rum enhancer, with sourness, sugar, and spices all rolled into one.

If I was to criticize I would say that the almond could be toned down a little. I may try it without one of either the toasted almonds or the almond extract in future. Be very careful not to over-toast the almonds given that they are an assertive taste.

A key point that emerges from comparing the two recipes is probably the importance of overproof spirits when doing infusions. The higher alcohol content extracts flavors better, so make an effort to find and use overproof spirits for infusions, particularly when the infusion is itself to be used to make a liqueur or syrup (dilution of the infusion makes it even more important that it is as intensely flavored as possible to start with). Another point is that when making falernum it makes sense to go heavy on the spices. The first recipe, with only 6 cloves to 500 mls of syrup (infused in standard proof rum), did not really cut it. The second recipe, with 20 cloves to approximately 250 mls of syrup+juice (infused in overpoof rum), was a big improvement flavor-wise. If your falernum somehow ends up too spicy you can always cut it with simple syrup, but if it lacks flavor there is not much you can do besides using huge quantities and producing overly sweetened drinks. Therefore you may as well be generous with the spices.