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?

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 ‘quniquina’ 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.

Pineau Experiment No. 6 was perhaps the best of the bunch. . .

The next step was to try mixing some drinks of my own using Pineau des Charentes.

Pineau turned out to slightly awkward stuff to mix with, probably on account of it having such a mild taste. My natural inclination was try substituting pineau in recipes that traditionally call for other aperitif wines (i.e. following well worn patterns like Manhattans and Martinis). This approach did not work well.

While I did not come up with anything truly exceptional, several experiments yielded one or two promising results.

Not following any particular plan, I tried the following.

Experiment #1

2 oz bourbon (Bulleit)

1 oz pineau

½ oz suze

1 tsp lemon added afterwards.

This was not a success. First, there was way too much bourbon. Second, I do not think bourbon and pineau are a good match. A spicier bourbon might be an improvement, but rye would be better still, and definitely in a smaller quantity. Calvados might also be interesting. Again a teaspoon of lemon juice proved an easy way of brightening it up a little. The Suze added a little interest but also did not really fit.

Experiment #2

1 ½ oz pineau

1 ½ oz pisco

½ oz lemon juice

¼ oz Cynar

I figured I would try something using pisco, loosely based on the rhum agricole Pompadour, with the addition of ¼ oz of Cynar to give a bitter and complex finish. While I enjoyed this it did not compare with the Pompadour. The Cynar could be toned down and still do its thing. A teaspoon may be adequate.

Experiment #3

2 oz Pineau des Charentes

1 oz pisco (or calvados)

1 oz fresh pineapple juice

2 dashes peach bitters

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

On first taste this seemed almost too smooth and refreshing – like one of those vodka cocktails. I was not sure it worked. Despite an interesting list of ingredients it tasted boring. I made it again using Calvados instead of pisco, hoping for a better result. The Calvados version did not really work either.

Experiment #4

1 oz pineau

1 oz Cruzan Estate Light Rum

1 drop (not dash) Angostura

½ tsp Kummel

This was good, making a very smooth rum drink that reminded me a little of the El Presidente on account of its soft profile fringed with herbal flavors. It needs to be reworked, but is a decent start. This one deserves repeating.

Experiment #5

1 oz pineau

1 oz rye (Pikesville)

1 drop angostura

2 drops peychauds

This drink pretty much built on my experiences from Experiment #1. It is tasty enough but perhaps a bit mild and uninteresting. A bigger, spicier rye might have helped it.

Experiment #6

2 oz pineau

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

½ oz lemon juice

1 tsp crème de framboise

Tasty. . . The honey taste in the pineau plays nicely with the apricots. The lemon juice and eau de vie keep things dry. The crème de framboise adds some sugar to round things out, plus an extra layer of fruit flavor that contributes to an overall impression of fruity complexity.

Experiment #7

2 oz pisco

1 oz Pineau des Charentes

Dash of Orange Bitters

This was pleasant but unexciting.

I was probably expecting better results from messing around with Pineau. The first drink I tried with the stuff, the Pompadour, set the bar quite high. None of my own efforts came close.

Still, I think experiments 4 and 6 have potential. Experiment #6 was quite good, and Experiment #4 hints at a whole world of possibilities using pineau with rum and small doses of liqueurs or bitters. In general, Pineau seems to work well in drinks that are light on the spirits. Small touches of liqueurs also work nicely.

I would like to do more experimenting using Pineau and rums. There seems to be lots of potential there. It might also be interesting to mix Pineau with aromatized aperitif wines, something I did not try.

So that is it. While my experiments were not completely successful I think I showed there are promising possibilities for using Pineau in cocktails. Pineau des Charentes might not be as versatile as vermouth but it is still underrated as a cocktail ingredient. Used in the right way Pineau can make good drinks.

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.

Following up on my earlier experiment infusing Oolong tea in gin, I decided to do another Chinese tea inspired infusion. This time round I wanted to use a tea blend called Jupu (菊普), which is simply a mix of chrysanthemum flowers (菊花) and a black tea called Puer (普洱茶).

You do not buy this tea as a blend. You simply buy a pack each of Puer tea and chrysanthemum flowers and blend them yourself in the pot. The ratio is up to you, but the usual thing is to use enough puer to make a decent brew and then add a teaspoon or so of chrysanthemum. This tea is very popular among Cantonese as an accompaniment to dimsum.

Puer is an interesting tea from Yunnan province in southwest China. Puer is a black tea, meaning it is fully fermented. After fermentation and roasting the tea is pressed into bricks and aged. This aging makes Puer tea unique. The finished tea has an earthy and almost fungal flavor. The top of the range stuff can be decades old and sells for huge sums.

You can buy Puer tea in various forms from any Chinese grocery or tea shop. Traditionally it is sold in bricks of varying sizes, ranging from enough for a single pot up to huge things that could keep a person supplied with tea for years. You simply unwrap the brick and remove what you need using your fingers or a knife. Breaking off exactly what you need is tricky, and things can become messy if the brick crumbles all over the place. These days loose leaf Puer is popular. Although not traditional, loose leaf Puer is easier to deal with and tastes good enough for everyday use.

Chrysanthemum tea should also be available fro any Chinese grocery. It is sold in the form of dried whole flowers and is quite inexpensive.

My first experiment with this infusion involved gin. I infused the gin with the tea for two hours, and then made a gin sour sweetened with honey. I did not particularly enjoy the result. The idea behind the honey was to mimic the honey sweetened chrysanthemum tea which is a popular iced summer drink in Cantonese areas. However, I found it did not work well as a cocktail. The honey dominated too much and the gin seemed to clash with the chrysanthemum.

My second experiment used a different approach. I dispensed with the gin and turned to pisco. I thought Chilean pisco, with its ‘raisiny’ character, would make a nice base for this infusion. Pisco would contribute some similar characteristics to honey but without dominating nearly so much. Moreover, the absence of competing botanicals would leave the delicate chrysanthemum unmolested.

I made my infusion by soaking the following for two hours:

100 ml Bauza pisco

1 tsp puer tea

5 dried chrysanthemum blossoms

Then I simply used that infusion to make a pisco sour, as follows:

1 ½ oz chrysanthemum and puer tea infused pisco

¾ oz lemon juice

½ oz simple syrup (2:1 sugar to water)

1 egg white

Shake over ice and double strain into a cocktail glass. I did not bother with the Angostura Bitters garnish because I wanted to be able to enjoy the flavors without extra distraction.

This really worked. The pisco provides a nice soft background and lets you really appreciate the chrysanthemum. It makes for an interesting drink, albeit a slightly lightweight one. If I was to refine this further I would look to increase the chrysanthemum. I might also do the infusion in two steps, first briefly infusing the tea (say for 2 hours) to get flavor without too much tannin, then giving the chrysanthemum a longer infusion.

I guess vodka could also work, though right now I prefer to use the more light bodied piscos I happen to have lying around. If I were to do this with a more full on pisco, such as Machu Pisco or Demonio, I would definitely look to take the chrysanthemum up a notch. This might also work nicely if sweetened with St. Germain, though again I would look to increase the chrysanthemum if I went down that route.

I will update with a name when I think of one.

So this time round, Mixology Monday (hosted at Kaiser Penguin) is about wickedly potent drinks – i.e. drinks you cannot safely drink more than one of. I didn’t have to think too long about what drink to write about. Since picking up a copy of Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, the Early Fogcutter has been a big favorite of mine, and one too rarely enjoyed. That being the case, Mixology Monday gave me a great excuse to mix one up.

Recipe follows:

½ oz orgeat (Monin)

2 oz gold Cuban rum (Havana Club 3 anos)

1 oz pisco (Machu Pisco)

½ Plymouth Gin

1 oz orange juice

2 oz lemon juice

½ oz float of cream sherry (Canasta Cream – a blend of Oloroso and Pedro Ximenez)

Shake over ice and strain into an ice filled hurricane glass or similar.

I find the sherry float tends to sink. No big deal but if it bothers you a sweeter sherry might help matters.

This recipe strikes me as a bit of an old school drink, with its generous quantities and calls for the use of numerous old-timey and slightly oddball bottles. The recipe is far better than any subsequent Fogcutter I have come across. The Tony Ramos Fogcutter, featured on the facing page in Ted Haigh’s book, does not remotely compare.

Yep, this is yet another great pisco drink. I honestly do not work for a pisco company. I just think pisco is sorely underrated. I like eau de vie generally as a cocktail ingredient. Since pisco has a lot of eau de vie characteristics I like pisco too. The pisco does wonderful things in this drink, complementing the orgeat and the sherry float, and adding some highly spirituous fruitiness that makes the rum merely another layer rather than the whole story.

The gin is another genius addition. Gin is an urbane spirit not normally associated with tropical drinks, yet used judiciously it helps restore the exoticism of the tropics to the jaded 21^st Century palette. No really, it does.

I have read claims that gin featured in the original Cuba Libre, so put on your best lab coat and perform this experiment. Toss a ½ ounce of gin into your next Cuba Libre, not forgetting to squeeze or muddle some lime in there too. Drink the resultant concoction. Regardless of the historical pedigree of the gin-spiked Cuba Libre, after trying one you are more likely to find yourself reaching for a second than worrying about the drinking habits of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders*. A gin-spiked Cuba Libre is delicious. Small quantities of gin complement rum beautifully, adding complexity without causing the least disturbance. This early Fogcutter recipe is a great example.

Delicious! . . . as the Chinese say. Now do I dare to make a second?

* Just in case anyone does not know, the Rough Riders (a voluntary military unit sent by the United States to assist in the Cuban War of Independence) are alleged to have invented the Cuba Libre during their sojourn on Cuba. I am not convinced this story holds much weight, but there is no doubting it is often repeated. The main problem with the story is that the Rough Riders left Cuba in 1898, but Coca Cola did not become available in Cuba until 1900. Hmm. . .

I did a comparative tasting of three different piscos back in November. Given that I have since acquired a couple more piscos, it seems a good idea to do a repeat tasting. I was originally intending to write this new pisco review back in December. I delayed until now because I had been hoping to be able to include a third pisco. Sadly this was not to be.

Wade Whittle of Inca Gold Pisco has tragically, though I gather not without considerable soul searching, reneged on his November offer to send me a bottle of his product for review. It took a couple of e-mails for him to finally figure out he would not be sending the bottle he had promised to ‘set aside for me’, meaning I could stop waiting for him and write this post. He would still like to use my cocktail recipes to promote his product though. Thanks Wade!

My previous review turned into something of a battle between Chile and Peru, with the Peruvian Machu Pisco winning the day. This time we will see a similar battle as I again pit a Peruvian against a Chilean. The Peruvian product is Pisco Demonio de los Andes, while the Chilean is Bauza Reservado. Just for fun I will also review an Italian grappa from Carpene Malvoti. While grappa differs from pisco in that it is distilled from material discarded during wine making (i.e. the sludge of grape stalks, skins, and so on rather than the juice itself), it is still a type of unaged grape brandy. There should be interesting similarities and differences between the grappa and pisco.

Lets examine the Chilean offering first. I reviewed the standard Bauza last time round and found it a little astringent and flat, with an odd suggestion of sulphur. It did not grab me. In fact it was probably bordering on unpleasant. The Bauza Reservado was an improvement. The reservado had a similar raisiny flavor to the standard Bauza but was substantially richer, smoother and sweeter. Neither was especially interesting, but the reservado was more enjoyable. The reservado also differed from the standard Bauza in strength, with the standard Bauza being 35% by volume and the reservado being 40%. The Capel I previously reviewed alongside the Bauza was also 35%, so this may be the standard strength for Chilean piscos. The Bauza Reservado gets points for being smooth and easy to drink, but loses points for not having the interesting aromatic quality I like to see in pisco. It is OK but not ‘pisco-y’ enough for me.

With another average performance from Chile, Peru looked set to take the day again. The Demonio de los Andes did not disappoint. Like the Machu Pisco it was an intensely flavored clear spirit that offered aromatic grape flavors rather than raisin water. It differed from the Machu Pisco in being less sour and astringent. Instead it was fairly austere and dry. I would definitely use this pisco in drinks.

Comparing the Demonio and Machu Pisco side by side was interesting. It was difficult to say which came out better. The first time I compared I leaned towards the Machu Pisco – for its full flavor. The second time I learned towards the Demonio – for its drier character. The sourness in the Machu Pisco can be slightly unpleasant when tasting straight, but when mixed in cocktails it stops being an issue and even becomes a positive. Both had good strong flavors, with the Machu Pisco seeming a little fresher and bolder, and the Demonio seeming a little better balanced. Both seem like fine choices to me, and superior to any of the Chilean products.

The grappa was different to any of the piscos, though close enough to make an acceptable substitute. It was smooth and sweet, but also highly aromatic, making it easy to drink like the Bauza Reservado but simultaneously complex like the Demonio. The inclusion of pits, stalks, skin, and other material besides grape juice in the grappa gave it a rich depth of flavor that none of the piscos matched. However, both products shared similar basic flavors.

I have not looked at enough piscos to reach any real conclusions. However, the small sample I have reviewed suggests some differences between the Chilean and Peruvian products.

Chilean piscos appear lower in alcohol, with 35% by volume being the standard and higher alcohol versions being labeled premium. The standard for Peruvian piscos seems to be 40% by volume. Piscos from Chile and Peru also differ in color, with Chilean piscos typically having a straw color, presumably from either slight aging or artificial coloring, while Peruvian piscos are typically clear, and presumably unaged. The flavor profile also differs. The Chilean piscos I sampled all shared a sweet and gentle ‘raisin water’ type of flavor profile, while the Peruvians were more pungent, aromatic and perhaps even rough. While all tasted grapey, the Peruvian products had the most interest and complexity, with the Chilean products tending towards simple fruitiness.

Notably, the grappa resembled the Peruvian products in terms of aromatic complexity, but also had the sweet and gentle profile of the Chilean products. Overall the grappa simply had more flavor than either the Peruvian or Chilean products. This was a fairly mild grappa too. I have previously tried other grappas that were more intensely flavored than this stuff.

Obviously, one should not conclude too much based on trying a tiny handful of brands, but piscos from Peru and Chile do appear different. So far I find the Peruvian spirit more interesting than the Chilean, with a flavor more likely to carry in cocktails. Finally, while grappa is not pisco, I think it could be substituted in a pinch. When making cocktails a good grappa is probably preferable to a mediocre pisco.

The theme for this month’s Mixology Monday (hosted at Sloshed) is brandy. I’ve been taking a bit of a look at pisco recently (check posts here, here, here, here and especially here), so brace yourselves for some more pisco brandy.

Some weeks back I made a dead simple and intuitive pisco drink, a Pisco Sour sweetened with St. Germain elderflower liqueur.

1 ½ oz pisco

¾ oz lemon juice

¾ oz St. Germain

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

I am sure a lot of people must have thrown this one together before. The pisco and St. Germain work extremely nicely together. Both come through strongly but neither really dominates. Of course the more robust your pisco the stronger the pisco taste is going to be, so consider upping the St. Germain a little when using a stronger flavored pisco. Not much else to say since this one speaks for itself. If it isn’t sweet enough add a dash of simple syrup or increase the St. Germain.

For a variation you could try adding an egg-white.

Then I made it again but with an a teaspoon of Marie Brizard Tangerine. Also very nice and maybe better than the original.

Then, getting ahead of myself as usual, I started thinking about what I could call the thing. Obviously it needed a Peruvian name. If I was a better Catholic I’m sure I could have thought of some Peruvian saint, and after wittily combining that with the St. Germain it would all have been plain sailing. Unfortunately I’m not well versed in these things. Instead I thought of the Peruvian/Amazonian boa constrictor. What with cocktail glasses and the St. Germain bottle design both being somewhat Art Deco I was naturally led from there to the image of a feather boa. Suddenly it seemed obvious that the world needed a pisco cocktail, feminine yet old school, called the Feather Boa. The Feather Boa probably needed to be pink, but it certainly wasn’t going to taste pink. So the recipe got reworked again, and naturally things started getting out of hand – as they have a habit of doing as soon as a feather boa makes an entrance.

I tried

1 ½ oz pisco

¾ oz lemon juice

¾ oz St. Germain

½ tsp grenadine

1 tsp Tuaca

Why did I add Tuaca? Well I had tried a couple of Pisco cocktails from Cocktaildb.com that combined pisco with Galliano. Somebody obviously believes the pisco-vanilla combination works well. Personally I think the vanilla-heavy Galliano too easily overpowers pisco and the end result is just a bit weird. Tuaca on the other hand has a much milder vanilla flavor, and unlike Galliano it has a grape brandy base and some citrus notes. Intuitively Tuaca should be a much better match for Pisco than Galliano – which is a fine liqueur but a devil to mix with. Therefore I decided to give Tuaca a try in the Feather Boa. The idea was to introduce some vanilla to heighten the sense of sweetness without actually being cloying – the addition of vanilla makes a thing taste sweeter than it really is. Moreover, the use of Tuaca would still add a little citrus just as the Manderine had done. The result is pretty good though the citrus in the Tuaca is too faint to be detectable.

Then I made it again with 1 tsp maraschino instead of the Tuaca. Excellent! Better than the Tuaca. You get just the ghost of a taste of cherry in the mix which really improves things.

Despite having just made a really nice drink I then decided to do something completely different, and thus produced the version I finally settled on. Apologies for being long winded, but I really did go through a range of options.

Having recently done a bit of an exploration of the Daiquiri (check here), including the excellent maraschino and grapefruit version, I decided some grapefruit juice could add complexity and bitterness, and maybe even a touch of pink. I also decided that if I was playing around with introducing a ghostly little flavor in the back of the St. Germain then chocolate would probably work better than almost anything else, and would also go nicely with grapefruit. I probably also had the chocolate and vermouth spiked Floridita Daiquiri in the back of my mind. So I came up with the following, final version.

Feather Boa (another ‘final’ version below)

1 ½ oz pisco

¾ oz lemon juice (lime may be better but I had none available)

½ oz grapefruit juice

¾ oz St. Germain

½ tsp grenadine

½ tsp Tuaca

½ tsp Crème de Cacao

This is seriously nice, and just a little unusual. It probably still needs a little tweaking though. Suggestions anyone? On first taste it seemed well balanced but it seemed to get more and more sour as I went. Maybe the Tuaca could be upped to 1 tsp? I wouldn’t want to increase the Creme de Cacao because it is already quite noticeable.

I like that this drink contains a lot of different fruity flavors, is light without being sweet, and has a little bitterness to make things interesting. It’s a little like a cross between a new style and old style drink. The heavy dose of fruit juice reminds me of contemporary cocktails, while the relatively restrained sweetening reminds me more of older drinks. Anyway, while it may need a little revision I think it has potential.

No photograph of the final (pink) version of the drink. Sorry, it was so tasty it sort of evaporated. I’ll try it again tomorrow.

I did try it again the next day and did the following

Final Revision(?)

2 oz pisco

1/2 oz lime juice (lime seems nicer than lemon in this)
1/2 oz grapefruit juice

3/4 oz St. Germain

1 tsp Tuaca

1/2 tsp Creme de Cacao

1/2 tsp Grenadine

This seems a slight improvement on the above. I’ve given it to a few people and no complaints so far.

This one may be my favorite pisco cocktail. Dave Wondrich wrote it up on the Esquire website drinks data base (which seemed to disappear for a while but has now moved here). The Dulchin doesn’t have its own entry there; look for it under the Hop Toad, a lime and apricot brandy drink that is also pretty good.

The thing I really like about the Dulchin is its use of eau de vie, or dry fruit brandy. Eau de vie is fantastic stuff for mixing cocktails with. There aren’t nearly enough Eau de vie cocktails out there and the good ones deserve some attention. The Dulchin gets even better by combining eau de vie with pisco. This combination just works so well, with the pisco being a sort of a eau de vie itself – certainly more like a eau de vie than a traditional grape brandy. To top things off, the Dulchin uses a particularly hard to find and under-appreciated eau de vie, a Hungarian dry apricot brandy called Barack Palinka. It is hard not to like this drink.

Barack Palinka can be hard to find. Obviously another apricot eau de vie would make a fine substitute. If you can’t find an apricot eau de vie then consider experimenting with some other eau de vie you can find. I have found that plum makes a reasonable substitute, different from yet still similar to the original apricot. Yugoslavian plum brandy, or slivovitch, is fairly easy to find. I can imagine raspberry also being good although I never tried it. I am not so sure about cherry or pear. It couldn’t hurt to give them a whirl though. Whatever you do don’t substitute a sweet apricot brandy (i.e. the reasonably ubiquitous apricot liqueur) for dry apricot brandy (i.e. apricot eau de vie). There is nothing wrong with sweet apricot brandy, but keep it out of this drink.

The recipe:

2 oz pisco

1 oz dry apricot brandy (I used Barack Palinka)

1 oz lime juice

1 tsp grenadine

2 tsp Grand Marnier

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

Bracing, tons of complex fruity flavors, very dry, and not too sour. This drink is very different to most others so you really need to try it for yourself.

I think this drink is a good example of how pisco can do unique things. Here the pisco helps cut the intensity of the apricot to a more agreeable level, while simultaneously contributing its own fruity and aromatic qualities. The pisco forms the backbone of the drink while also providing the perfect stage for the apricot to shine on. If you substituted vodka for the pisco you would simply have diluted dry apricot brandy. If you substituted gin you might get an interesting result but the flavors would be likely to compete rather than cooperate. It might take a little more sweetness to make the drink work. If you substituted a dark spirit like brandy then you would mute the fresh flavors in the fruit brandy. Pisco doesn’t seem like an unusual choice in this drink; it seems like the ideal choice.

Oh, and this drink was apparently named after some U.S. industrialist who was allergic to other more common spirits and so had to find inventive ways to drink pisco.

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. God knows. If anyone has the answer to that one I would be curious to know.

I think Galliano is quite a hard liqueur to mix with since it has such an assertive vanilla taste. Vanilla goes with most things of course, but pisco is fairly delicate and quite easily dominated by Galliano. In any case, two of the drinks were a bit weird, but the third one was rather good and worth noting. For the sake of completeness I’ll write up all three here, saving the best till last.

First. . .

Raffaello

½ oz pisco

½ oz bianco vermouth

½ oz Galliano

¼ oz triple sec

1 dash Angostura bitters

Shake over ice then strain onto some rocks in an old fashioned glass. I was feeling lazy and just built it over ice.

This is not an uninteresting drink but I doubt I will bother to make it again. I have a hazy memory of having made this a year or two ago and reaching the same verdict. The two liqueurs plus the bianco vermouth make this very sweet, but the herbs and spices in the vermouth, bitters and Galliano help stop it being sickly sweet. You end up with a bitter-sweet and quite aromatic drink. I couldn’t taste the pisco much given all the vermouth and liqueur, but it was still there as a background presence. I can’t imagine when you would want to drink something like this. I guess it could be an aperitif for somebody with a sweet tooth.

This is also one of only a few cocktails to use bianco vermouth. Bianco vermouth has a funny flavor I can’t quite identify. It tastes almost chocolaty, but I’m guessing chocolate isn’t actually an ingredient. Anyone got any ideas on where that chocolaty taste comes from?

Second. . .

Angelino

1 oz pisco (I used Bauza)

1 oz blended scotch (I used Ballentines)

¾ oz Galliano

Shake with ice, strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with a cherry.

I found this drinkable, but sweet and unexciting – the unfortunate contribution of the Galliano. Just maybe this could be interesting if you made it with a more robust pisco and scotch. As it stands it is just a slightly interesting Galliano-promotional-booklet-style cocktail. You taste the Galliano and whiskey more than the pisco, though the pisco is still there in the background and adds a layer of flavor that wouldn’t be there if another spirit was substituted. This drink is by no means offensive, but I can’t see why anyone would drink it unless they had some kind of Galliano fetish. Just maybe there is something in the whole scotch-pisco combination, but I think the Galliano needs to be reduced significantly to make this an interesting drink. I am also thinking Tuaca might worker better here. Given that Tuaca has a gentler vanilla flavor, a little citrus, and a brandy base it should partner better with pisco.

Third. . .

New Yorker (exotic)

1 oz pisco

¾ oz Galliano

1 oz grapefruit juice

½ oz lime juice

1 tsp simple syrup

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

Finally a decent drink!

This one should be popular with modern drinkers given it is a sweet and sour type drink, with a big splash of liqueur and a couple of different fruit juices. The basic composition isn’t so different to some of the vodka-based, flavored ‘martinis’ that are all the rage these days. It isn’t a sugar bomb though, with lime for sourness and grapefruit for an interesting bitterness. I’d been finding the whole pisco and Galliano combination a little weird up until now, but it actually works nicely in this one. The grapefruit and lime keep the Galliano in check, so the vanilla taste is present without taking over. While the pisco isn’t exactly the main flavor in this (I guess the flavor profile is more citrus-vanilla-bitter), there is no doubt that it is a pisco drink. I probably can’t see myself drinking this too often, but I would make it for someone else if they wanted a pisco drink which was lower in alcohol, a little fruity, and not too sweet. If you have pisco and Galliano lying around you may as well throw one together just for the heck of it. After all, how often do you get an excuse to use Galliano?

If I was to vary this one I’d probably replace the Galliano with Tuaca, and possibly even a dash of orange curacao too since Tuaca is very restrained in the citrus department. I think going down that route might achieve a similar effect with a bit more subtlety. However, I’m not complaining about the recipe as is. It is good enough that it doesn’t need changing around.