I’ve haven’t posted anything for the last couple of Mixology Mondays. My excuse in April was being on holiday and having no access to Champagne. It seems it isn’t a popular drink in the remoter parts of Western China. I didn’t have a very good excuse in May since I was already back in New Zealand by that stage. All I can say is that I still hadn’t got around to setting up a bar in my apartment and the idea of tequila drinks didn’t inspire me enough to make me rush out and go shopping.

This month my bar is more or less functional and the theme is cream, a theme which seems very doable. (more…)

Today’s Mixology Monday, hosted at Martini Lounge is all about shooters. Shooters are really not my thing. Designing a shooter seems more about finding an amusing name than about creating a tasty drink. Maybe they have a place though. The Austrian barman at a little place I sometimes visit here in Shanghai has a habit of mixing his favorite customers a quick ‘shot’ as they leave. He usually mixes up rum, lime, and something sweet, and the quantity is probably something less than a full drink. It can make a friendly and pleasant end to the evening.

Generally though I just don’t like shooters so I had trouble thinking of anything for this Mixology Monday. But perhaps Pink Gin could be considered a shooter? I was very skeptical about Pink Gin the first time I tried it so I think I either made it on a shot glass or made a very small quantity in a rocks glass. Actually it isn’t so bad. It isn’t something I ever really drink, but there is something quite nice about room temperature gin with bitters. If you really and truly enjoy gin then you should also enjoy it at room temperature, right? So why not try a shot of Pink Gin?

Simply put a couple of dashes of bitters into the glass, tilt the glass to distribute it evenly, then add the gin. If you enjoy the taste then slowly savor it rather than tossing it back. If you don’t like the taste then toss it back and go make something else.

I made this one because I wanted to try something else with Anisette. This recipe appealed because the inclusion of an egg seemed old fashioned. I also figured that an anisette drink with egg or cream might be nice, since the aniseed taste would become very mellow. The name is also kind of cool. It is hard to imagine bunch of stock brokers wandering into a bar and ordering this though. I guess brokers had different tastes a hundred years or so ago.

Recipe:

1 1/2 oz white port

1/2 oz gin

1/4 oz sweet vermouth

1/4 oz anisette

1 egg

Shake with ice and strain into a wine glass. The recipe suggests using a cocktail glass, but depending on the size of the egg this may be a little small. Since 19^th century eggs were smaller than eggs today, you could also consider using only half an egg.

This thing tastes more like a vermouthy wine flip than anything else. The anisette does not come through much at all. It is there, but very much in the background. I won’t be rushing to make this again in a hurry, but it is a good drink if you feel like something unusual. I think I might prefer it with a little less vermouth and a little more anisette though.

I found this one while searching online for cocktails using agricole rum. Apparently it was created by Philip Ward of the Pegu Club in NYC. The drink stood out to me because of the use of Chartreuse. Agicole rum has a soft, grassy flavor, not unlike the sugar cane juice it is distilled from. Chartreuse is a strong herbal liqueur but could also be described as grassy. Combining agricole rum and Chartreuse made sense to me on paper, and it works in the glass too. The use of dry vermouth introduces yet another layer of grassy, herbal flavors, and also helps cut the alcohol back a little.

The recipe:

2 parts white agricole rum (I used St. James)

1 part Green Chartreuse

1 part French Vermouth (I used Martini Rossi)

Stir over ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a sprig of mint if you happen to have one handy. Introducing a little mint scent via a garnish, and perhaps by rubbing the rim of the glass with a mint leaf or two, could improve the taste a notch. However, the drink tastes pretty good without it.

This drink good should go down well with people who like Chartreuse. It is also a good one if you are looking for a complex tasting rum drink that does not require fruit juices. The aroma is mild, like sugar cane. However, on tasting the drink the herbals in the liqueur and vermouth provide lots of complexity. The sugar cane character of the rum, plus the large dose of sugar in the Chartreuse, help tame the strong herbal flavors and make the drink almost gentle.

I have no idea why it is called the Affinity Cocktail #2. The original Affinity Cocktail was a mixture of equal parts scotch, French vermouth, and Italian vermouth, with a touch of orange bitters, and so far as I know is not very widely known. There is no obvious connection between the two that I can see. Maybe Philip just thought the name was good enough to deserve recycling.

A few weeks back I found a shop here in Shanghai selling Marie Brizard liqueurs. There seems to be a company importing them from Hong Kong into Shantou. Unfortunately the Shanghai store has decided to stop stocking them in favor of Bols. It is hard to understand why they would do this given that Bols is generally crappy and Marie Brizard is generally good, but there you go.

Anyway, having realized Marie Brizard was quality stuff after trying their Apry while in Cambodia I grabbed a few more flavors as soon as I saw it. I picked up crème de cacao, orange curacao and anisette. I also grabbed a bottle of Get 31 peppermint liqueur. I was especially pleased with the anisette because I hadn’t seen this before in Shanghai.

All of the flavors were pretty good when I compared them to Bols. The only slightly strange one was the crème de cacao, which seems to have an odd herbal taste in addition to the chocolate. The Get 31 tasted OK but had a strange sediment in the bottle. I took it back a few days later and exchanged it. Exchanging it was a little funny. I was standing in the front of the shop showing the assistant that my bottle had a sediment while the other bottles did not. There were three of us standing in a line behind the display holding bottles of crème de menthe up to the light and peering into them. A dozen or so pedestrians on Huaihai Rd. stopped to watch the foreigner checking the crème de menthe bottles. I guess they thought they were seeing a crème de menthe inspector from France doing a random crème de menthe inspection.

Later that night I happened to take out the Anisette bottle to show a friend while we were having a drink in Le Garcon Chinois. The Japanese woman behind the bar seemed to have some kind of a sixth sense for anisette. As soon as the bottle came out of its bag she abandoned the drinks she was making at the other end of the bar to ask where I had found anisette in Shanghai. She said she needed it to make a drink called Shanghai. I’d never heard of this drink before, but after she mentioned it to me I did notice that the odd bar in Shanghai has it on their menu, always made with Pernod since anisette is hard to find. Anyway, I eventually got around to making a Shanghai myself.

Shanghai

1 1/2 oz Jamacian rum

1/2 oz lemon juice

1/4 oz anisette

1/4 oz grenadine

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

There seems something old fashioned about sweetish but extremely rummy drinks like this one. The anisette adds interest to what is really just a very simple rum punch, and takes it away from being just a sweet and sour type of drink. It is good if you want a very mild aniseed drink.

I had the remains of a pineapple in the fridge that needed to be put to use. I didn’t feel like drinking a Singapore Sling or a Park Avenue, the two drinks I normally associate with pineapple juice, so I decided to search online for something with pineapple juice and Cuban rum. The Mary Pickford (and the almost identical Cuban Cocktail Variation) stood out because of their use of maraschino in addition to the juice and rum. Maraschino tends to make drinks taste interesting and I already knew it went well with Cuban rum in the Hemmingway Daiquiri.

The drink tasted pretty good. The main taste is rum, but the pineapple juice makes it slide down smoothly while the maraschino adds enough interest that it tastes like something other than a simple rum and juice mix. The grenadine lends the drink an attractive pink hue.

The recipe:

1 1/2 oz Cuban rum (I used Havana Club 3 Anos)

1 oz pineapple juice

1/8 oz maraschino

1/8 oz grenadine

Stir over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

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 was looking for 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 a little 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 make it slightly 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.

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.

There is a club in Phnom Penh called the Heart of Darkness where I spent a couple of memorable evenings back in August. I drank Guinness and Tequila Slammers. The environment was a confused medley of Cambodian elites and their gun toting body guards (the doormen were very selective when searching customer for weapons), local foreign residents, higher class working girls (since the working girls apparently had to pay a fee to get in), and bemused looking tourists. It was lots of fun, but not really a sit-back-and-savor-your-drink type of environment. I have no idea if Heart of Darkness served Martinique rum. I discovered the dry and complex tasting Martinique rums at some other bars in Cambodia, most notably Riverside in Battambang, which gives huge pours of the excellent St. James Ambre for just US$1. (more…)

I dropped into Trader Vic’s recently opened Shanghai restaurant last night for a Shanghai Expat (www.shanghaiexpat.com) hosted cocktail party. The service at Trader Vics is five star, the Polynesian décor takes you a world away from the grime and grind of Shanghai, and the food and drinks are not half bad. However, you can’t help thinking the cocktails could be better. The drinks are by no means bad, but when patronizing the joint that invented the Mai Tai it is depressing to drink a Mai Tai that is merely a shadow of what it could be. (more…)