Antonin's Black Heart

Here's a commemorative drink, in the grand tradition of bartenders naming cocktails after memorable people. The person in question is one who I disagreed with on almost everything, but he was certainly influential and he seemed like a guy who would enjoy a stiff drink.

And I think we all need one of these now that an already insane election season just got crazier.

1 1/2 oz Laird's Straight Apple Brandy
3/4 oz Cynar
3/4 oz red vermouth
1/4 oz ruby port
1/4 Islay scotch (or similarly peaty, briny monster)
2 dashes Bitter Truth Jerry Thomas' Own Decanter bitters
2 dashes Fee Brothers Black Walnut bitters

Stir and strain into an old-fashioned glass over a single large cube. Garnish with a large coin of orange peel (I used blood orange, appropriately enough) and a few grains of sea salt.

All In

Here's a drink named after its construction. This started when I couldn't decide between a Negroni and a Boulevardier, and things escalated from there. The genever is a beautiful midpoint between gin and whiskey, and while I was at it I decided to split the modifiers as well.  The result looks overly complicated but is tasty as hell, enough to warrant its own post (which is kind of an event these days!)

2 oz Bols barrel-aged genever
1/2 oz red vermouth
1/2 oz rainwater Madiera (a medium-dry sherry might work too)
1/2 oz Cappelletti Aperitivo
1/2 oz Cynar
4 dashes orange bitters (Regan's No. 6)
1 dash maraschino liqueur (Luxardo)

Stir and strain over a large cube. A bit of lemon or orange peel would make a nice garnish here, but as you can see I skipped it (having neither readily available). A fancy glass sufficed for me.

Poison Apple

I think I'm about ready to go back to work. It's not like I have a problem with day drinking (as in, I don't completely frown on the practice) but I'm pretty sure that drinking scotch while the sun's up is some kind of warning sign.

2 oz scotch (a blended Speyside; Pig's Nose would do)
1/4 oz sweet vermouth
1/4 oz Cynar
1/4 oz pineapple syrup
2 dashes Bitter Truth Xocolatl Bitters

Stir over a large ice cube in an old-fashioned glass. If we were going all-out here, I'd say garnish with a dehydrated slice of cacao nib-crusted pineapple, but anything less would be foolish.

Don't worry about the name - I realize there's no actual apple in this. Like most of my cocktail names it's derived from a whole chain of barely-coherent puns that rattle around my skull whenever I think about such things.

Northwoods

A very incise, woodsy, herbal drink. I think I'm gonna make quite a few of these.

1 oz rye whiskey (Bulleit)
1/2 oz Loonshine
1/2 oz Cynar
1/2 oz sweet vermouth (Cocchi Torino)
15 drops Bittercube Door County Hops Bitters

Stir and strain over a large ice cube in an old-fashioned glass. Garnish with a strip of lemon peel.

Briny Deep

Okay, fine, I admit it - I wanted a Pitch Black, I was out of vermouth, and I subbed in another amaro instead.  So what?  It's tasty enough to merit its own name anyway.

1 1/4 oz Cutty Sark Prohibition Edition
1 oz Averna
1 oz Cynar
1/4 oz overproof dark rum (did you know that Gosling's makes a 151-proof version?)

Stir over a large ice cube in an old-fashioned glass; garnish with a small pinch of salt on top of the cube.

This makes for an impressively dark and sultry drink.  Worth hunting down the amaros for, if you ask me.

Cedared Martinez

It's time once again for the Weird Gin Cocktail Hour!  Seems like there's not a month where I find some new, unusual gin that just begs to be taken home.  This time, it's Vikre Distillery's Boreal Cedar Gin, which I almost feel bad for mentioning; it's brand-new, hyper-local, and near as I can tell not yet distributed outside my home state.  It's an interesting spirit, very subtly colored and flavored with cedar wood, which is probably a first. The cedar is most definitely prominent, sharing space with some classic botanicals as a somewhat piney presence before ballooning out into campfire smoke with a mild forest-berry backdrop.  It's a little bit hot at the end (campfire in more ways than one) but despite all that cedar manages to be more restrained than other evergreen-infused gins like St. George Terrior or Rogue Spruce Gin.

That unique smoky presence makes this a dead-on match for Cynar.  After some experimentation, here's a Martinez rendition designed to make use of this potent combination.

2 oz Boreal Cedar Gin
1/4 oz Licor 43
1/4 oz Cynar
1/4 oz red vermouth (plain old Martini & Rossi, this time)
1 dash Regan's No. 6 Orange Bitters

Stir and strain into a cocktail glass.  Garnish with a thin strip of orange peel, or nothing at all.

If you're adventurous, you can swap out some or all of the red vermouth for additional Cynar (in which case you might want to drop the bitters) but I like this more balanced approach.  From experience I can also tell you that Luxardo, Benedictine, and even Rothman & Winter's Apricot liqueur all make interesting substitutions for the Licor 43.

Notebook Cocktail #9

Somewhere in here I had a rather unhealthy fixation on double-base cocktails, meaning those that combine two different liquors in equal proportion.  Classic examples such as the Vieux Carre are among my favorite drinks (you may have noticed a couple variations) and I like trying to get spirits playing off one another.  It's a damned difficult trick to pull off; out of maybe a half-dozen cocktails that I vaguely recall, this was the only one enjoyable enough to deserve recording.

1 oz rye (Wild Turkey here)
1 oz Bak's Bison Grass vodka
3/4 oz Cynar
1/4 oz Licor 43
2 dashes aromatic bitters

Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass; garnish with a wide swath of orange peel.

And that, my friends, concludes the run of Notebook Cocktails (representing maybe 10% at most of my output during this latest hiatus).  I'll try to spread these out a little in future.  In the meantime, I wish all of you a very pleasant July 4th weekend (those of you reading from the U.S., anyway).

Moroccan Haze

Here's a potent and slightly foggy cocktail that was too good not to write down.

1 1/4 oz cognac (VSOP grade or better would be nice)
1/4 oz absinthe
1/4 oz Cynar (I haven't tried Cocchi Torino, Carpano Antica, or other reasonably bitter vermouths, but I have every reason to expect that any of them would work; however, the herbal notes of Cynar have an interesting synthesis with the absinthe)
1/4 oz rooibos tea syrup
2 dashes ras-el-hanout bitters (I'll get around to publishing a recipe someday, I swear)
2 dashes orange bitters

Stir and strain into a cocktail glass; garnish with a large orange coin squeezed to express the oil.

Beignroni

A french-y version of the wonderful Itatian-ish Negroni, one of my personal favorite cocktails?  Sure, and why not call it something that nobody will be able to pronounce correctly?  Say the first part like "beinget".

1 oz cognac
1 oz Cynar
1 oz sweet vermouth
1 dash orange bitters

Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Silversmith

I was absolutely delighted to receive an order of exotic spirits this week, which had been hunted down specifically because I'd never seen their ilk in any of my local liquor stores.  Among them was a bottle of Sombra mezcal, a spirit I'd been itching to experiment with.  I popped it open almost immediately.  "Whoa!" I called to my wife, "this smells like somebody chucked a pineapple into a campfire."  To which she wrinkled her nose and agreed.

Turns out, I wasn't far off.  The process of making mezcal, a cousin of tequila, consists of digging a large pit, filling it with hot rocks, then tossing in a bunch of agave piña (also the Spanish for "pineapple", which it closely resembles).  After roasting for days, these are mashed and left to ferment, finally resulting in a powerful spirit that tastes something like tequila infused with cigar smoke.  The silver Sombra mezcal that I received is particularly intense, and it took some taming.  Still, it holds its flavor very well in cocktails, and lends a resounding smoky flavor.

This particular drink was just me playing around, and is named after the place where Sombra is made: Oaxaca, Mexico.  Silver jewelry shops are a major component of the tourist trade there.

1 oz Sombra mezcal
1 oz pineapple-infused tequila (I used resposado
1/2 oz Cynar
1/2 oz kumquat syrup
1 dash lime juice

Shake with plentiful ice and pour into an old-fashioned glass; garnish with a caramelized pineapple slice if you're feeling fancy, or nothing if you're feeling lazy.

Hamlet's Cocktail (Alas, Poor Yorick)

Another unusual drink, this one somewhat simpler in construction.

1 1/2 oz aquavit (I like North Shore's very interesting, domestically made rendition)
1 1/2 oz Cherry Heering (really the only cherry liqueur that works for this, unless you make your own at home)
3/4 oz Cynar (bizarre, artichoke-y goodness)

Shake lightly and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.  Garnish with an orange wheel, brandied cherry, or old skull.  Gaze deeply and solemnly into the glass before knocking back.

It took a couple days for this one to percolate, but now the name seems perfectly obvious.  Both aquavit and Heering are traditionally Danish and fit for a prince (Heering was an official purveyor to the Royal Danish Court).  The entire thing is rather dark, somewhat bitter, lightly shaken, and highly profound--there's a lot of flavor to digest here.

I'm rather proud to call this one original, if a bit weird.  When I shared this recipe with one of my bartending mentors and friends, his immediate reaction was "Wow, that might be a bit too strange for me."  Take that as you will.  I'm not saying it's for everybody, I'm just saying it merits a try if you happen to have these ingredients on hand.

The Uppercut

I don't know why it's named this, other than the punch it packs.

1 1/2 oz aquavit (use the aged Norwegian variety; Linie is a good go-to brand)
1/2 oz maraschino liqueur (Luxardo, as always)
1/2 oz Cynar (everyone's favorite artichoke apertif! yes, really.)
1/4 oz lime juice
1 dash absinthe

Stir vigorously and strain into a chilled cocktail glass; spear a brandied cherry and stir into the drink as garnish.

This is a rather incisive drink, filled with bitter orange, cherry, dark spices, and rich herbs.  I'd also be happy to try this with brandy (something fairly young, 3 years or less) or a rye whiskey in place of the aquavit, but would bet it wouldn't be quite as interesting.