With a name like Seamus, I felt obliged to come up with something to mark St. Patrick’s Day. Thus, in a moment of inspiration, I reached for the Crème de Menthe, Chartreuse and Midori, then got busy carving a clover out of a lime shell. The world was about to be introduced to the Leprechaun’s Abortion.

Don’t worry. . . I realize the world does not need another drink whose only distinguishing feature, besides tasting awful, is being green. Instead, I thought again along the lines of tea, specifically Twining’s Irish Breakfast Tea. Incidentally this tea comes in a green cardboard box that could be cut into fine clover leaf garnishes if required. I elected to leave this aspect of the product’s St. Patrick’s Day potential unrealized however, deciding instead to simply infuse Irish Breakfast Tea in Jameson’s Irish Whiskey. Why not?

Then I thought there was not much point infusing whiskey with tea alone, and Irish Breakfast Tea at that. Does an Irish breakfast not demand bacon? Thus into the infusion went some bacon. Wisdom intervened at this point, quietly whispering that I should leave the eggs aside until the infusion was finished. I obeyed.

So there I had my drink. It would be a whiskey sour, that quintessential morning potion of leisured Americans, made Irish for the day with hearty breakfast flavors of tea and bacon, and bolstered with a silken egg. It would be simultaneously Irish and American, a true immigrant success story. Some luck would be required to make it all work, but the Irish are rumored to be blessed in that department.

The above is not a joke. Tea infuses beautifully in gin, so why not in whiskey? Quite a few people have experimented with infusing vodka with bacon, and some have also tried Bourbon, so again why not Irish? Bacon and tea are a popular breakfast combination, and there is even such a thing as tea-smoked bacon, so why not combine them in a drink? Then consider the alternative – a mixture of crème de menthe, Midori and Chartreuse. The bacon breakfast cocktail idea is looking tempting, no? So mutter a Hail Mary and take the plunge. . .

The recipe:

1 ½ oz tea and bacon infused Jameson’s Irish whiskey*

¾ oz lemon juice

½ oz simple syrup

1 egg white

Shake long and hard over ice to froth up the egg. Strain into a cocktail glass. I like to double strain shaken egg drinks (i.e. strain through a sieve as well as with the cocktail strainer) to remove ice shards and possible strands of egg. I find ice shards do not sit well in shaken egg drinks.

The verdict? Not bad at all. The strength of the bacon taste will vary a lot depending on the bacon used, the quantity, the infusion time, etc. I found that the tea dominated, with the bacon occupying the background. The bacon was there as an aroma and some saltiness. This was more or less what I was aiming for, the sense of drinking a cup of tea at breakfast time. Irish Breakfast is quite a tannin heavy tea, being a blend with a high ratio of Assam, so this drink has a little bitterness.

I thought about using maple syrup rather than simple syrup but decided not to, at least initially, because I wanted to see how the flavors worked in isolation before complicating things further. Maple syrup would probably be a nice addition, though perhaps too dominant.

* Make the whiskey infusion as follows. The quantities are small because this was experimental. Put 1 tsp Twining’s Irish Breakfast Tea into 100 ml whiskey to infuse for two hours. After two hours, strain to remove the tea. Now place a rasher of lightly fried bacon in the tea-flavored whiskey (I used a mild and lean Danish bacon). Infuse for at least 24 hours before using. The bacon is slow to infuse compared to the tea. You could probably infuse for several days or longer. You will get some bacon fat on the top of the infusion. Since I used very lean bacon the amount of fat was minimal and I didn’t bother removing it. Small quantities should get either emulsified by the eggs or removed in the strainer. If you have large quantities of fat then simply lift them off the infusion with a spoon. Fat solidifies in the fridge so this is easily done.

1 oz Italian vermouth (Martini)

½ – ¾ oz Irish whiskey (Jamesons)

½ oz lemon juice

¼ oz Kummel (Wolfschmit)

1 dash Angostura bitters

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

Regarding the quantity of whiskey, the Savoy suggests ½ oz while Ted Haigh’s CocktailDB suggests ¾ oz. I went with the latter suggestion. You can never have too much whiskey.

This is a very odd drink. It smells mostly of vermouth. The taste is an interesting mix of caraway and vermouth. There is something worthwhile happening in that combination. The whiskey is a little lost but I guess it helps give the drink backbone. The lemon juice is the part that doesn’t quite work for me. Maybe this drink would be better if it wasn’t a sour? Personally I find the sour aftertaste too much of a contrast to the herbal-caraway flavor. It’s an interesting drink and might work for a few people. I am not one of them though, despite usually enjoying herbal tastes.

If you want a caraway and herb flavored sour this is just the thing.

My excellent friend Nathan brought be three bottles of rye whiskey from the US yesterday – Wild Turkey, Old Overholt and Rittenhouse. I haven’t had too much of a chance to play around with them yet, but the Wild Turkey is excellent stuff, and while the Old Overholt and Rittenhouse are a little lacking in aftertaste they are still nice mixers that are distinctly different to bourbon.

The Wild Turkey makes an excellent Manhattan – dry and spicy with good depth of flavor. It really does taste totally different to a Manhattan made with a quality bourbon, though I must admit a Woodford Reserve Manhattan is also very good. The Old Overholt and Rittenhouse are nice enough in a Manhattan but they don’t have the backbone of the Wild Turkey. Old Overholt and Rittenhouse don’t taste too bad in an Old Fashioned, but would probably be best in drinks with juices and other ingredients – i.e. drinks where the whiskey isn’t doing all the work. Comparing them with Blantons Bourbon, Blantons still makes a far superior Old Fashioned and I’m not a big Blanton’s fan.

Right now I’m trying the Rittenhouse in a Capetown Cocktail (1 1/2 oz rye, 1 oz Dubonnet, 2 dashes Orange Curacao, 1 dash Angostura Bitters, stirred over ice and garnished with a lemon twist). The Rittenhouse works nicely in a drink like this. It is drier than bourbon would be, just a little spicy, and the bitter and herbal flavors of the Dubonnet help make up for its lack of finish.

I need to hurry up and make some more drinks with these rye whiskeys while my bar here in Shanghai is still intact. I’m planning to leave China soon which will mean saying good bye to my bar.

One interesting thing to note though is this. . . I remember seeing a recommendation to use Jameson Irish whiskey as a substitute for rye in a Manhattan. Since tasting some real rye I can see some logic behind this suggestion. I think I’d recommend Jameson over the usual Canadian whiskey substitution. Jameson is more astringent than sweet, but it does have a little of the spiciness of a true rye. It certainly has more character than the Canadian Club that bartenders tend to use for Manhattans.

P.S. I also tried a Wright Brothers Cocktail (1 oz rye, 1 oz port, 1/2 oz lemon juice, sugar syrup to taste, an egg white – shaken over ice). The rye taste didn’t really come through but it was not a bad refreshing drink.

This month’s Mixology Monday, kindly hosted at Jimmy’s Cocktail Hour, is all about whiskey. Note, simply whiskey, not necessarily whiskey cocktails. I should have lots to say about this month’s topic but somehow I don’t.

Of course there are many things I could cover. I could choose a favorite whiskey cocktail and write about that. I could write about my family’s ritual of drinking tea with whiskey in the morning on Christmas Day. I could write about a favorite whiskey, maybe Lagavulin or Laphroaig.

Of those two I probably prefer Laphroaig – particularly the cask strength Laphroaig. The thing about Laphroaig is that while drinking it you can never quite decide what to make of it. Laphroaig lacks the easy appeal of Lagavulin. Clearly a fine whiskey, but not quite a crowd pleaser. Each taste brings something that attracts you, but in the background lurks something hard to fathom, possibly even rough and unpleasant. You quickly decide that Laphroaig is very nice but not quite perfect. Yet that imperfection is where the attraction of Laphroaig lies. Laphroaig is a little like a woman who has a beautiful face with an obvious flaw, and somehow it is the flaw that makes her looks. Without the flaw she would not be half so good looking because there would simply be nothing to wonder about and hence no interest. Laphroaig challenges you to think. It has personality and is endlessly interesting. Its a whiskey you could happily grow old with.

Of course given that most people reading this are cocktail bloggers they have probably tried Laphroaig and Lagavullin already, and for people who haven’t tried them a verbal description is hardly sufficient. Maybe I should write something about a whiskey not popular in the west, maybe the Suntory Yamazaki 12 Year Old Single Malt from Japan.

It was drinking the Suntory Yamazaki in Constellation, a little Japanese bar in Shanghai, that got me seriously interested in cocktails. The barman, Mr. Jin, suggested I try a Suntory Yamazaki with water and ice. This way of drinking whiskey is known as ‘mizuwari’ in Japan. I was brought up to think that good whiskey was best unpolluted by anything. I was not keen on Mr. Jin’s proposal. He was persistent though, and further proposed making two glasses using identical ingredients. One would be mixed to taste good, and the other would be mixed to taste average. He would let me taste both, then give me the good one and drink the average one himself. Intrigued, I let him do his thing.

He filled both glasses with freshly chipped ice. In traditional Japanese bars the barman works with an ice pick to produce individualized ice for each drink. They will carefully carve a single snowball sized rock for a scotch on the rocks, chip off a flurry of small shards for highball type drinks, and so on. All this is done with ice so cold it is dry to the touch. It is a world away from the soggy machine ice you find in most bars. When I take people to Constellation they are amazed at how long the ice cubes take to melt. After filling the glasses with ice Mr. Jin began stirring one glass with spoon, thoroughly chilling the glass. He poured the melt out of that glass and added more ice before adding whiskey to both glasses, thoroughly stirring the first glass and giving the second a perfunctory stir, adding a little more ice to both glasses and finally topping them up with water.

The taste difference between the two drinks was enormous, and the thoroughly chilled one was very good. That drink totally changed my ideas about Japanese whiskey, and about drinking whiskey with water. These days I think that whiskey needs a few drops of water to bring out the full flavor. The Japanese whiskeys that are designed to be drunk mizuwari style taste good cold and with an even bigger dose of water.

Hmm. . . having written a couple of paragraphs I am still not convinced there is anything I can say that a glass of whiskey couldn’t say much better. But continuing with the Japanese theme, the novelist Haruki Murakami wrote an interesting little travel book about a trip around the distilleries of Islay and Ireland. The book is called “If Our Language was Whiskey”. At least I assume that’s what it’s called. The name in Chinese is “如果我们的语言是威士忌” .

If our language was whiskey. . . What a amazing world that would be. Imagine smiling people inhabiting a bottle green landscape. Some are gathered in fields where they appreciatively pass glasses back and forth. Others sit alone beside crystal springs and quietly savor. Proposing marriage is as simple as selecting just the right single malt and passing it across to the object of your affections. Everyone is content.

I suppose that just for Mixology Monday our language really is whiskey, so I will finish up with an appropriately named whiskey cocktail. Oddly enough for a whiskey cocktail this one was inspired by a potable bitters from Poland I picked up the other day. The brand is Balsam and the label says it is flavored with wolfberries, honey, and other unspecified herbs. This is a sweet bitters, something like Jagermeister but milder. Perhaps it most closely resembles Averna from Italy.

Balsam makes a nice sour but I thought I would try and make a whiskey drink from it. I did an experiment with some scotch but it didn’t work very well. The honey notes meant the drink ended up tasting like a Rusty Nail but without the easy mixability and balance provided by Drambuie. I decided to try adding some vermouth and mixing it with Jameson Irish whiskey. I figured the Jameson would mix better with the Balsam than scotch and produce something less sweet than if using bourbon.

If Our Language Was Whiskey

1 oz Jameson

1 oz French vermouth

1 oz Balsam (substitute Averna, or maybe a reduced quantity of Jagermeister)

1 dash Angostura bitters

1/2-1 tsp Benedictine

Stir over ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Squeeze the oils from a lemon twist onto the drink and rub the twist around the rim of the glass.

The mildly astringent Jameson balances out the Balsam. Plenty of herbal flavors. I added a little Benedictine as an afterthought. It complements the herbals in the Balsam but also adds complexity and helps everything mesh together.

I may play around with the recipe some more in future. Right now I am wondering whether an idea as weird as using Laphroaig as a modifier could work. Maybe I will remove the Benedictine and add a splash of Laphroaig, or mix the drink with Laphroaig instead of Jamesons. Mixing Laphroaig with Jamesons would be cool if it worked since Haruki Murakami visited both Islay and Ireland on his trip.

Update: I tried making the drink as above but with two teaspoons of Laphroaig. It was pretty good, probably more interesting than the original version. You notice the Laphroaig more on the initial taste than on the after taste. This could be worth continuing to play around with. Perhaps it could use a different bitters though, or the Balsam could be reduced. The Balsam isn’t bad, but there is something almost too smooth and mundane about it.