I got hold of some Lillet the other day. I really like Dubonnet so had been looking forward to trying Lillet. Dubonnet and Lillet both belong to the ‘quinqina’ category of flavored wines, namely quinine flavored wine-based aperitifs. Dubonnet is red while Lillet is white, though Dubonnet also produces a less well known white version and Lillet also has a red version. The situation is a little like that with vermouth, where vermouth producers typically offer both sweet and dry versions. (more…)

I did a search on CocktailDB for pisco cocktails. Besides the well known pisco drinks, namely the pisco sour and the pisco punch, CocktailDB had just three other drinks to offer. CocktailDB is normally a good way to find a list of drinks using obscure ingredients, but when it comes to pisco it does not have much to offer.

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. (more…)

I’m going to try a few different pisco cocktails over the next few entries here, just to maintain a little bit of a pisco theme. Some probably won’t be so great. However, there is one excellent one coming up shortly, and hopefully there will be a couple of other good ones besides that.

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.

(more…)

The theme for this month’s Mixology Monday is Repeal Day, and Pre-prohibition drinks are thus in order. Pisco is flavor of the month at my place since I managed to pick up three different brands of the stuff. That makes the Pisco Punch the obvious choice for this month’s drink.

I mentioned Pisco Punch the last time I wrote here. The problem with Pisco Punch, and it is quite a problem, is that the original recipe seems to have been lost. Certain things about the drink are known with certainty though. (more…)

Well this week’s Mixology Monday topic is gin.

I should have lots of ideas for this one since gin has become a favorite spirit of mine. I’ve had dreadful arguments about the whole vodka versus gin thing with friends who believe the former is the most versatile cocktail ingredient. I think gin deserves that honor. Sitting here writing this though, I can’t say that I have any particular drink in mind for this Mixology Monday. However, there is one thing that I believe does need to be said.

Gin occupies a unique space in the world of mixed drinks. (more…)

The theme for this month’s Mixology Monday (hosted at Cocktail Nerd) is Fizz. A few obvious things came to mind (Tom Collins, G&T, French 75, etc.), but I thought I’d try and do something nobody else was likely to come up with. Given how well a heavy dose of bitters worked in the Calvados Cocktail I made last month, I thought that this month I’d once again go for something bitters heavy. This time though I decided to use Angostura. (more…)

You might be wondering what calvados has to do with this Mixology Monday’s orange theme, but a closer look at this ‘calvados’ drink reveals the name to be something of a misnomer. Just a third of the drink is calvados, with the remainder comprised entirely of things orangey. (more…)

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. (more…)

I got hold of a bottle of Fernet Branca the other day. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while but it can be a little hard to track down. At Tara in Shanghai, when Marcus was still working there, I used to drink a simple Fernet Branca cocktail (gin, Fernet Branca and Italian Vermouth) pretty much every time I went in. The bitter taste of Fernet Branca is very much my kind of thing.

Besides the simple Fernet Branca cocktail Marcus also used to make something called The Pharmacy. I think this drink was made from cognac, crème de menthe and Fernet Branca, though I’m not sure about the proportions. I’ll have to ask Marcus sometime. Anyway, the drink was rich, minty and bittersweet. It was the type of drink that could make a good introduction to Fernet Branca. (more…)

The Blackthorn cocktail is one of my favorites, a gin base with a generous splash of both Dubonnet and kirsch. Dubonnet and gin appear together in all sorts of early 20^th Century drinks. In the Blackthorn the Kirsch adds an extra dimension to a well worn combination. The drink is intensely fruity, but the use of eau de vie rather than a liqueur keeps things at the dry and bracing end of the spectrum.

I am surprised this drink is not better known. Part of the reason may be confusion about recipes. (more…)