Incognito

6 parts Lillet

3 parts Cognac

1 part apricot brandy

1 dash Peychauld’s Bitters

Stir over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

This is excellent! It is a nice smooth drink that should show off a good apricot brandy very well. It is also a nice drink for showing off Lillet. As a fruity and summery aperitif wine Lillet makes a great partner to a flavor like apricot. Lillet being slightly bitter means you have to pick the apricot flavor out in this drink, but not every apricot brandy drink should taste assertively of apricots. The Cognac adds some backbone and richness, and the Peychaud’s Bitters give complexity without the heavy spicy notes of something like Angostura. Not being an especially strong drink it is also suitable for the oversized cocktail glasses that are favored these days. My only reservation is that since the formula of Lillet changed in the 1980s to become less bitter, this drink must taste a little different to how it was intended.

Culross Cocktail

1 ½ oz gold rum (I used Cruzan Estate)

½ oz Lillet

¼ oz lime juice

¼ oz apricot brandy

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

This drink has tons of potential. It was a tad light bodied and watery, but I colder ice and a different rum might improve that. Maybe the proportions should also be reworked a little. There are several versions of this drink. This drink deserves to be looked at further.

Peck

1 ½ oz gin

½ oz dry vermouth

½ oz apricot brandy

Stir over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

This is a simple but very tasty drink. There is a similar drink that uses Crème de Cassis in place of the apricot brandy. I think it is called a Parisien or something similar. Anyway, this one uses the same principle but with a different liqueur.

Maidens Prayer Variation

¾ oz gin

¾ oz Lillet

½ oz calvados

½ oz apricot brandy

Stir over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

The addition of calvados makes this one very interesting. However, as it stands I think it comes across as a little confused. Some tweaking around with the proportions might really improve it. It could deserve a second look some time.

Mayfair Cocktail

1 1/2 oz gin

1/2 oz orange juice

1/2 oz apricot brandy

1 dash of pimento dram

optional pinch of cloves (I didn’t bother – but in retrospect I should probably have added a dash of Angostura Bitters since that has a clove taste)

Shake with ice and strain into a glass.

I was excited about this one. It isn’t often I get a chance to break out my homemade pimento dram. Sadly it didn’t do much for me. The apricot brandy and orange juice combination is just not exciting. This might work better with a tarter citrus juice.

Charlie Lindbergh

1 ¼ oz gin

1 oz Lillet

¼ oz apricot brandy

1 dash orange bitters

Stir over ice and strain into a glass.

Tasty but average.

Prohibition

1 oz gin

1 oz Lillet

¼ oz orange juice

¼ oz apricot brandy

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

Given the excellent name and the list of ingredients I had been expecting to enjoy this one. Unfortunately it was a bit of a let down. It looks good on paper but somehow the orange juice-apricot-Lillet combination does not work very well. Orange juice with Lillet tastes slightly insipid.

Barbara East Cocktail

1 oz bourbon

¾ oz grapefruit juice

½ oz apricot brandy

¼ tsp sugar (I left this out)

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

This was pleasant enough but not especially exciting.

Shrapnel

1 ¼ oz bourbon

½ oz sweet vermouth

½ oz dry vermouth

¼ oz apricot brandy

Stir over ice, strain into a cocktail glass, and garnish with an orange slice.

This is really just an apricot accented Manhattan. Neither unpleasant nor very exciting.

The one bar where I have drunk a Charlie Chaplin was a little Japanese place in Shanghai. This time the bar in question was not Constellation, but rather the little bar inside the Garcon Chinois restaurant on Hengshan Rd. That bar is much smaller than Constellation, and does not have nearly the same range of spirits, but the cocktails used to be very carefully and expertly made by a Japanese woman who knew exactly what she was doing.

She looked nothing like a bartender. In my experience bartenders are almost never Japanese women with greying hair and the homely dress sense of a church goer. Walking into her bar was like visiting a Japanese aunt you had only recently discovered you had. Things would begin with a friendly but slightly distanced greeting – understandable given that the pair of you had only just found out about each other. Then she would get busy behind the tiny bar. Were it not for the bottles piling up around her hands you would assume her meticulous and busily leisured movements were eventually going to produce a small batch of dumplings, or perhaps a plate of cold tofu sprinkled with chives and sesame oil. Instead, after the type of interval that builds anticipation without seeing it collapse into distraction, you would be presented with an excellent and carefully measured cocktail. It was slightly incongruous, but the results were very competent. Unfortunately I heard she has since left.

When I asked for a Charlie Chaplin she warned me that they didn’t have Gordons sloe gin (for which they relied on customers carrying bottles from Japan). She offered to substitute Bols while complaining about its bad quality and saying the taste would be too artificial. Warming to her theme she was soon lamenting that even single malts were often artificially flavored these days. I am not so sure if that is true. Regardless of that though, it is not often a bar cares enough about getting their drinks perfect that they will warn their customers before using what they feel are inferior ingredients. I had the Charlie Chaplin anyway and even with the Bols it tasted OK.

I made my own Charlie Chaplin as follows:

2 oz apricot brandy (I used Marie Brizard)

1 oz sloe gin (I used Gordons)

1 oz lime juice

Shake over ice and strain into a highball glass. The drink isn’t going to fill the glass without something extra, so consider pouring onto a couple of large rocks.

You would think that a drink comprising three parts liqueur and one part citrus juice would be extremely sweet. It is sweet, but less than expected. The slight sourness in the sloe gin boosts the lime, pushing the drink more towards fruity acidity than complete sugar bomb territory. Something about the lime and sloe gin helps the apricot brandy come across more as a fresh apricot flavor than a cloying liqueur. There is an interesting hint of almond flavor in the background as well, almost like an amaretto sour. This may not be the most exciting drink in history but it makes a nice showcase for apricot brandy, and is refreshing and neither too strong not too sweet. This is a drink that deserves to be made a little more often. The sweet and sour flavor profile also fits well with modern tastes, while the sloe gin and apricot brandy introduce a couple of ingredients not often called for in modern bars. Obviously apricot brandy is going to dominate the taste so try to use the best you can find.

Looking at the recipe I couldn’t help wondering whether it dry apricot brandy hadn’t been intended. My natural inclination to use eau de vie at every opportunity was probably at work here – I just love the stuff. So I made up another drink with an apricot eau de vie. Coincidentally I was watching a Buster Keaton movie at the time, so naturally I dubbed the new drink (if indeed it is a new drink) the Buster Keaton.

Buster Keaton

2 oz apricot eau de vie (Barrak Palinka)

1 oz sloe gin (Gordons)

1 oz lime juice

Hmm. . . This really wasn’t particularly good. In fact it seems a shame to attach the venerable name Buster Keaton to such a bad drink. I find relatively few experiences involving alcohol to actually be unpleasant, but this one ventures into dubious territory. The dry apricot brandy and lime are amicable enough companions. The sloe gin is very out of place though, and there isn’t much sugar around to smooth the rough edges. The drink is thin bodied, sour, and arguably more alcoholic than necessary – not unlike myself. You can certainly gag it down but is unlikely to be an experience you’d want to repeat. Sorry Mr. Keaton.

Well that wasn’t very pleasant but at least I think I have learned something. The Charlie Chaplin is definitely supposed to be made with a sweet apricot brandy, so get the best one you can and give it a try.

This is my first time participating in Raiders of the Lost Cocktail, hosted this month at Cocktail Chronicles. Resurrecting undeservedly forgotten things appeals to me, so Raiders of the Lost Cocktail seems like a great idea. Unfortunately I do not have much of a library of old cocktail books to scour for recipes. My only older book would be the Savoy Cocktail Book. Does Ted Haigh’s Cocktail Database website count as a source for the purposes of this event?

Anyway, the theme for this month’s Raiders of the Lost Cocktail is apricot Brandy. I have taken my research extremely seriously and my bottle of Marie Brizzard Apry has the scars to prove it. It feels like I must have tried a dozen or so apricot brandy cocktails, mostly from www.cocktaildb.com. In the end the drink I settled on for my entry turned out to also be in the Savoy.

The theme for this month really interested me since apricot brandy is so common in older cocktail recipes. I remember being very excited the first time I got hold of some decent apricot brandy because I figured I’d be able to make all these amazing old recipes. Looking back though, none of the drinks I made with that bottle of apricot brandy were especially memorable. In fact, off the top of my head I can hardly think of a single apricot brandy drink other than the Charlie Chaplin (for more on the Charlie Chaplin, and it’s dubious cousin the Buster Keaton, see here). This situation seems odd. Apricot brandy is great stuff and used to be widespread in cocktails, but it doesn’t seem to have many really popular drinks associated with it. Of course perhaps I am just ignorant on this one.

To narrow the field down a little I decided to look for a drink that combined apricot brandy and Lillet. Just before Christmas I got hold of a bottle of Lillet for the first time and I figured the two would be a good match. I was also sure I would find plenty of older recipes using the combination, since both used to be popular cocktail ingredients. I was sure at least one of these older recipes would be worth resurrecting.

Many drinks later, and after a detour away from Lillet, I finally settled on the Self Starter, an excellent drink that is perhaps just a little like the Corpse Reviver. Recipe below.

Self Starter

1 ½ oz gin (I used Plymouth)

¾ oz Lillet Blanc

¼ oz Apricot Brandy (I used Marie Brizard Apry)

2 dashes pastis (I used about ¼ teaspoon of Henri Bardoin but some people might prefer less)

Stir over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

This is an excellent summery drink. First you get a whiff of apricots and aniseed, then the dry citrus and aromatic flavors from the gin and Lillet, and finally some apricot sweetness to round things off. The apricot brandy and Lillet almost mesh together into a single fruity taste. As always the pastis adds a touch of complexity, complementing the apricot particularly nicely. Overall the drink does a nice balancing act between dry complexity and more luscious summer flavors.

This one is something I found while looking for something else. It is called a ‘Pisco Bell-Ringer’ and comes from David Wondrich at Esquire.

2 oz pisco (I used Bauza)

2 dashes orange bitters (I used Regans)

2 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters

1 ½ tsp lemon juice

½ tsp simple syrup

Rinse the inside a chilled cocktail glass with apricot brandy and tip out the excess. You want a sweet apricot liqueur here. I used Marie Brizard Apry. Shake above ingredients over ice and strain into the glass.

This is a tasty drink where the pisco really shines. You want to use a nice flavorsome pisco in this one, so get the best you can. Bauza probably wasn’t the greatest choice.

The foundation of this drink is austere – pure spirit with a dash of sourness from the lemon, and an even lighter dash of syrup to balance the thing. But then you have the two types of bitters bringing their own aromatics to the mix and adding plenty of extra interest, with the Pecyhaud’s also giving the drink an attractive hint of pink. The rinsing of the glass with apricot brandy is a nice touch and gives a whisper of apricot as you sip the thing. Make sure the liqueur reaches right up to near the inside rim of the glass though or it may not work too well. While drinking it you probably also want to make sure you keep sipping from different parts of glass to keep getting the apricot (something like you might with a margarita).

I do wonder if this drink wouldn’t be equally good if the syrup in the shaker was simply substituted with a splash of apricot brandy and the whole rinsing the glass thing was dispensed with. That approach may be worth a try, but perhaps it’s less interesting. Apparently this whole concept of a Bell-Ringer (which refers to the rising of a cocktail glass with apricot brandy) was thought up by a 19^th Century Chicago bartender named James Maloney who gave the apricot rinse treatment to all kinds of drinks.  He must have really liked apricot brandy.

Anyway, however you make it this is a good drink for appreciating the flavor of pisco. It it also the type of recipe you could play around with to suit your own tastes and the brand of pisco you are using – e.g. by varying the types of bitters, level of sweetness, etc.

I happened to be drinking this concoction when I received an e-mail from a good friend telling me he was now a father. I had done a search on cocktailDB for a drink containing apricot brandy, cognac and gin, and found the Une Idee Cocktail (3/4 oz cognac, 3/4 oz gin, 3/4 oz Italian vermouth, 1/4 oz apricot brandy). Since I wanted a drink that would really let me taste the Marie Brizard Apry I decided to up the apricot brandy to a 1/2 oz. Technically then the drink I had made was different to the recipe.

On opening my e-mail box I read my friend’s happy news and it seemed only appropriate to christen the drink after his newborn son given that it was, sort of, a new recipe, so the Ariel it was.

The Ariel Cocktail

3/4 oz cognac (Martell)

3/4 oz gin (Bombay Sapphire)

3/4 oz Italian vermouth (Martini)

1/2 oz apricot brandy (Marie Brizard)

This drink is smooth and rich. The cognac and apricot hold the foreground, while the gin and vermouth throwing in plenty of botanicals that make it a little bracing rather than too sweet. A refined drink. I suppose I should try it with the originally suggested 1/4 oz of apricot brandy to see how that compares. Another possibility might be using a dry apricot brandy.