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.

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

Before finding my aquavit and kummel drink though I happened upon a copy of Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails. It’s a great book and I was pleased to see it contains a couple of drinks that I had found in Ted Haigh’s online cocktail database and enjoyed but never seen written up (e.g. the Blackthorn and the Park Avenue). I will try out some more of the other recipes later, but decided to start with this kummel drink.

The Vowel Cocktail

1 oz scotch

1 oz sweet vermouth

½ oz orange juice

1 ½ oz kummel

1-2 dashes Angostura Bitters

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

This is an excellent drink with just the kind of taste I was imagining in a kummel cocktail. Unusually for a drink with an ounce each of scotch and vermouth, neither of these powerful tastes comes through particularly strong. Instead the kummel dominates with its heavy caraway scent. I wouldn’t call it one dimensional though. There is still a good balance, with the caraway doing interesting things as it mixes with the smoky scotch and herbal vermouth. It is slightly on the sweet side, but the strong flavors make this not too much of a problem.

Tasting this makes me think kummel would mix interestingly with Genever (though perhaps in smaller quantities). Genever-based Old Fashioneds or Manhattans could be an interesting model for experimentation, perhaps using the anise flavors of Peychaud’s bitters.

It was the craze of the day.

The Bunny Hug (click to listen) was a ragtime dance. It was one of a family of ‘lewd’ animal dances that were originally danced in bars and bordellos and spread from there to the dance halls frequented by the more polite portion of American society. Other such dances included the Grizzly Bear, the Camel Hop and the Turkey Trot. In its day the Bunny Hug was the cutting edge, the latest fad. It was loved and loathed, and swept across America and around the world even as cities passed ordinances banning it. On March 27, 1913, dance hall manager Ed Spence of Grants Pass, Oregon was reported to be “in serious condition from 11 knife wounds as a result of trying to enforce his taboo of the ‘Bunny Hug’, the ‘Turkey Trot’ and like terpsichorean confections.” Forgotten today, the Bunny Hug stirred passions in its time.

The Bunny Hug was part of the transition from the old to the modern. Like ragtime itself, the Bunny Hug filled an awkward gap between two different ages. Traditionalists abhorred it. Its fashion conscious champions quickly discarded it The craze of the day changed. Ignominiously, people hearing the words ‘bunny hug’ are now more likely think of a brand of diapers than anything else.

Fittingly enough, as the craze of the day the Bunny Hug had its name attached to a cocktail. You can resurrect the Bunny Hug by mixing equal parts whiskey, gin, and pastis, stirring over ice (or shaking) and straining into a cocktail glass. Any type of whiskey is OK, but given the strong flavors at work a blended Scotch probably brings a little more to the drink than a Bourbon does. To be authentic substitute absinthe for the pastis.

This mixture of whiskey, gin and aniseed probably divides drinkers as much as the dance it was named after divided society. Liking pastis is obviously a prerequisite for trying this drink. Even then the drink is raw, unconventional, and not for the faint hearted. Give it a chance though and you will find some interesting layers of taste to reflect upon. While this looks to be a drink thought up by someone in a hurry to get drunk and not much caring how they went about it, perhaps this lush has a sense of style? Certainly this is a drink you don’t easily get bored with. The pastis grabs the foreground, while the gin and whiskey fight a never quite resolved struggle for second place. The mixture is jarring in the extreme, yet somehow hangs together. Another nice thing about this drink is that virtually any bar can throw it together, and the concoction is robust enough that the only way to destroy it would be to light the thing on fire. It makes a handy drink to fall back on when in doubt but feeling brave.

In terms of cocktails, the Bunny Hug evokes another age, an age that predates almost everything drinkers now associate with the cocktail. The Bunny Hug predates vermouth atomizers, umbrella garnishes, Oreo cookie rimmed glassware, and snickered requests for Sex on the Beach. It caters to those expecting to be served straight liquor and not much else. Challenging and roughly stylish, combining the fire of whiskey, the abandonment of gin and the divisive funkiness of pastis, the Bunny Hug cocktail may really evoke the spirit of the dance it was named after.

The same cocktail is now probably better known, in so far as it is known at all, as the Earthquake. Perhaps some bartender recognized the mental barrier to walking into a bar and asking for an extra large Bunny Hug? The name Earthquake is less evocative though. Where the Earthquake suggests a potent concoction to be downed with nihilistic bravado, the Bunny Hug suggests a drink you might actually savor, if perhaps only during a quick break from the dance floor.

This site is dedicated to the spirit of the Bunny Hug. However dubious the Bunny Hug may have been, it never deserved to be quite so completely forgotten.