Tasting #3: Holiday Party Redux

Just about two years to the day after my first tasting menu presentation, I was invited back (in a fit of poor judgment, no doubt) to handle drinks for another holiday party!  This was a great experience for me, in that it allowed me to think back on what worked well vs. not so well at the previous event, while reworking the format for a slightly bigger crowd.

Five drinks wound up being a little impractical the last time around, so we shortened to three rounds (I cheated by doing two variations on the same formula for round 2, as you'll see below).  To start things off, we added a relatively gentle communal punch, which gave everyone a chance to settle in and grab something to eat while getting into the spirit of the event.  The other major difference this year, although it doesn't show in the menu below, is that I recruited volunteers from the crowd to help out with measuring, stirring, and shaking.  I've done this with friends at home, and it's a great way to keep everyone engaged while also demonstrating one of the points I try to get across the most fervently: that with a little instruction, anybody can put together a good drink.

(There were a lot of pictures taken as well - I'll try to hunt down some copies and post them up here.)

PRIMER: ROSY CHEEKS PUNCH
1 oz (8 oz) gin (Tanqueray)
½ oz (4 oz) overproof white rum (Wray & Nephew)
½ oz (4 oz) cinnamon syrup*
½ oz (4 oz) Campari (or similar)
½ oz (4 oz) lime juice
3 oz (1 standard 750ml bottle) sparkling wine
4 oz (1 standard 1 liter bottle) soda water
To build: Combine in a large glass, or punch bowl over a large block of ice. Garnish with cranberries, orange slices, rosemary sprigs – whatever you want! (All of the above at the event, which was maybe a bit much, but which got compliments on its appearance!)
Other notes: You can make this as an individual drink, or as a communal punch for 6-8 people (using the amounts in parenthesis).

DRINK #1: OLD-FASHIONED, RUMMY STYLE
2½ oz aged rum (Plantation 5 Year)
¼ oz cinnamon syrup*
¼ oz falernum (John D. Taylor)
3 dashes Angostura bitters
To build: Stir over ice and strain into a chilled glass, or just stir over a large ice cube; garnish with a small strip of lemon peel squeezed over the glass.
Other notes: Don’t skimp on the rum here; you want a smooth operator for this one.

DRINK #2 (A/B): SILVER & GOLD HOLIDAY FIZZES
Silver:
1½ oz gin (Tanqueray)
1 oz falernum (John D. Taylor)
1 oz lemon juice
½ egg white
Gold:
1½ oz gin (Tanqueray)
1 oz apricot liqueur (Rothman & Winter)
1 oz lemon juice
½ egg yolk
To build: Shake once without ice and once with ice, then strain into a highball glass and top with 3-4 oz of soda water to taste.
Other notes: Two different variants on the same basic formula; you can omit the egg for a plain fizz if you’re squeamish, but this way nothing goes to waste.

DRINK #3: FRANKENSTEIN’S ZOMBIE
1½ oz aged rum (Plantation 5 Year)
1 oz overproof white rum (Wray & Nephew)
½ oz apricot liqueur (Rothman & Winter)
½ oz falernum (John D. Taylor)
¼ oz cinnamon syrup*
1 oz pineapple juice
1 oz lime juice
2 dashes Angostura bitters
To build: Shake vigorously and pour unstrained into a highball glass; garnish with flaming rum in a lime shell only if it’s your first drink of the night. (I was asked why I made this point at the event, and it bears repeating: alcohol is flammable, and you don't want to set your bar/home/self on fire.)
Other notes: This is a cobbled-together version of several different Zombies that can be found in the wild; the original goes back to 1934.

*For Cinnamon Syrup: Combine 1 cup each of white sugar and water in a saucepan and add 4 whole cinnamon sticks. Heat and stir until the sugar dissolves, and let stand for at least 1 hour or overnight. Strain, bottle, and keep in an airtight refrigerated container.

I'm sure they'll never read it here, but I'd like to extend my thanks once again to our hosts, both for the aforementioned hosting duties and for inviting me back.  Events like this are always a blast, and it was fun to get participants a little more hands-on this time around!

Pink Ribbon Punch

Barbecues are among my favorite events to throw. This is thanks primarily to two easy, delicious things: grilled meat, and punch. I like to think that our summer gatherings are becoming known for both.

This particular version was inspired directly by cheap, tasty-looking watermelon, so I garnished it with some frozen into large ice blocks, with watermelon frozen in the middle, you guys! This is something I've always wanted to try but never had the foresight to manage; my wife, however, dubbed it "very Martha Stewart," which I'm pretty sure was derogatory. Whatever! It looked nice.

The following makes about half of the gargantuan amount seen to the left, which still didn't quite make it to the end of the party. I admit that I may have dumped a bit of it on the table trying to pour the dregs out of the punch bowl.

1 L watermelon juice (well-strained)
750 mL prosecco (something cheap and dry)
500 mL white rum (Bacardi)
500 mL soda water
4 oz lime juice
4 oz lime-coriander cordial
4 oz cranberry grenadine
4 oz Cocchi Americano

Combine in a punch bowl and float some large ice cubes to keep things cool (it helps if everything's well-chilled beforehand).

That's a pretty damn weird mix of metric and imperial units, I know, but it's how I measured, and it turned out really nicely, so I'm recording it verbatim.

Valentine's Cocktail

I'm really not a big fan of Valentine's Day, it being, in my opinion, a manufactured holiday created mostly to sell sappy pablum in a ridiculous attempt to relieve post-holiday winter doldrums. (Wow, that got bleak quickly.) But, setting expectations low in the first place provides me with the ability to pleasantly surprise my wife by applying even a modest amount of effort.

On Friday, I took a much-needed day off from the day job, which pretty much committed me to making some kind of romantic gesture. So: flowers. And, playing more to my skill set, a drink utilizing both sparkling wine (the beverage of romance!) and blood orange, one of her favorite fruits.

Hence, this very pretty concoction! (Served in equally-pretty, recently acquired coupes!)

1 1/2 oz rose petal-infused gin*
1/2 oz spiced cranberry syrup
1/2 oz blood orange juice
1/2 oz lemon juice

Shake and strain into a coupe glass, then top with 1-2 oz sparkling wine to taste. Garnish with a large coin of peel from the expended blood orange. (I was going to trim the peel into a heart shape, but figured that would be a bit too much.)

*A relatively simple one: take 1 tablespoon of dried rose petals per 4 ounces of gin, combine in a glass vessel, and infuse for about 24 hours. Strain through a coffee filter, pressing gently to extract all the gin, and for every 4 ounces of gin add a drop (yes, a single drop) of rose water and three drops of Fee Brothers Rhubarb Bitters (easily omitted, but I like the bit of freshness they add).

So far as a name for this one, I'm leaving the post untitled because I can't decide between "Gun & Rose" or "Love Gun" (this being a variation of the French 75, a drink named after a cannon). The former is great as a reference, but I like the suggestiveness of the latter.

Negroni Bastardo

A nice, easy take on a Negroni Sbagliato, one of my favorite little-known low-proof wonders. A great patio drink, or a tasty way to avoid getting too drunk - your choice.

3/4 oz sweet vermouth
3/4 oz Casoni 1814 (or comparable; Aperol would actually be best)
3/4 oz reposado tequila (Espolon)
3 oz sparkling wine (a lovely gifted blanc de blanc this time; normally I'd be using cava)
3 dashes Bitter Truth Xocolatl Bitters

Build over copious ice in a tall-ish glass; doesn't really matter what kind as long as it will hold your beverage. Garnish with a grapefruit peel (that's lemon in the picture, because I didn't have any grapefruit around, but I'm expressing a preference for once).

I'm making this as a pitcher-sized cocktail for the first warm day when we have people over - just you watch. Nice easy proportions make this easy to scale up or down.

Death in the Alps

On my recent amaro adventure, I also grabbed a bottle of Genepy des Alpes liqueur, thinking it belonged in the category.  In my defense, I'd never tried it before, but it most certainly is not.  I believe I was thinking of Aveze, which I've tried only on one drunken evening at the lovely Pouring Ribbons and can't find locally.

It's not bad, mind you - kind of a milder cousin to my beloved Chartreuse, but its only advantage is price point.  Still, can't let it go to waste.  I thought its sweetness would align nicely with bubbly, and the use of wormwood reminds me of absinthe, so I plugged it into a Death in the Afternoon, a drink which I shudder to recall.  Let's just admit already that Hemingway was an excellent writer and superb drunkard, but a middling mixologist at best.

1 1/2 oz Dolin Genepy des Alpes
3 dashes Bitter Truth Celery Bitters
5 oz sparkling wine (Cava for me, which I always choose for mixing over champagne)

Pour the liqueur and bitters into a champagne flute and top with the bubbly.  Per the original directions: "drink three to five of these slowly".  Wake up the next morning with regrets.

Red Gatling

Another easy riff on the French 75, so I had to name it after another piece of old-school field weaponry.

1 1/2 oz dry gin (Boodles is always nice)

1 1/2 oz cranberry sauce syrup*

1/4 oz lemon juice

Shake and strain (over ice only when there's none outside) then top with 2-3 oz rose champagne or cava.

In the interests of proper logging, I should note that I initially made this with pisco, which was nice, but didn't have quite the snap I was looking for.  Something about that gin-champagne cocktail is just so delightfully speakeasy.

*This was essentially leftover homemade cranberry sauce (made with real cranberries!) that I pureed until smooth, stretched out until pourable again, then ran through a fine strainer.  You may wish to sweeten or tweak this further to your liking.  Mine was still fairly tart, courtesy of fresh cranberries, hence the hefty amount.  You may also wish to double-strain any cocktails you make with the stuff depending on its final texture.

Notebook Cocktail #7

Basically a French 75 variant using some of the ingredients on hand.  We tried a couple different versions with one citrus or another before splitting the difference.

2 oz London Dry gin (really any gin would do fine here; cheap gin would be suitably authentic)
3/4 oz rhubarb syrup (the same lightly-spiced version from N.C. #6)
3/4 oz lime juice
3/4 oz grapefruit juice (I used a nice sweet Ruby Red variety)

Shake and strain over fresh ice, then top with about 2 oz rose cava or champagne (I think we actually used a Baron de Seillac Brut Rose, which is from Provence and therefore technically neither, but that's irrelevant; anything pink and bubbly and dry will do fine).

Prince of Saud Cocktail

This is a modified version of a classic cocktail that I found in Imbibe! and promptly fell in love with, the Prince of Wales Cocktail.  In terms of construction, it's similar to one of our current best-selling cocktails (though stripped-down for speed) and thus fills the bubbly cocktail slot on our menu nicely.

3/4 oz rye whiskey
1/2 oz pineapple juice
4-5 dashes ras-el-hanout bitters
4 oz brut cava

Drop a sugar cube into a champagne flute and soak with the bitters; add a little ice, top up with whiskey, and then cava.

I don't think this really needs any more explanation - it's a remarkably simple drink which successfully marries the luxurious flavor of the Prince of Wales with the crispness of a champagne cocktail.

The Pirate

Like the Cougar Bite, this is an older drink of mine, one that found its way onto the list of the restaurant where I sporadically tend bar.  Unlike the Cougar Bite, though, it never did sell particularly well and fell victim to the seasonality of its main sweetening agent.  I honestly don't give a damn, though - this is still one of my absolute favorite cocktails.

I think of this as very much a bartender's drink rather than a mixologist's.  For one, it was conceived as a way to use up some extra bottles of E&J brandy that had been accidentally ordered by our manager.  For two, it's a relatively simple drink, and quick to turn out.  For three, it's very amenable to substitution and adjustment, making it really more a class of drinks (like the Collins) than a single recipe.

Here's the original form, the so-called Colonial Pirate:

1 1/2 oz brandy (E&J, as noted above, but any will do, though VSOP-grade or better is preferable)
3/4 oz rich pineapple syrup*
1 large dash Fee's Aztec Chocolate bitters
1 large dash Fee's Aromatic bitters**

Shake the above lightly, strain into a cocktail glass, and top off with about 1oz of dry sparkling wine to taste (Champagne, Cava, California bubbly, whatever you've got).

*This one actually is easy, unlike that damned squash syrup.  Bring a syrup of two cups turbinado or other natural sugar and one cup water to a simmer, then pour over a peeled and cored pineapple sliced into 1/2 inch cubes.  Let stand for 24 hours and pour through a fine strainer, making sure to reserve the pineapple cubes, as they make a very nice garnish if rolled in additional fine sugar and dried on a cooling rack.

**We used to use a ras el hanout bitters in the restaurant, but this makes a reasonable substitute.

Again, this is a drink with endless potential for variation.  Ran out of brandy and need to use rum?  No problem - you'll have a Caribbean Pirate (I sometimes name them specifically after the island from whence the rum hails, resulting in the "Barbados Pirate", "Cuban Pirate", etc.)  The Dutch Pirate is made with genever in place of the brandy; the Scandinavian Pirate uses aquavit, which results in perhaps my favorite variation.  And so on.  Vary the fruit, if you like - just stick with a medium-dark natural sugar.  Mango makes an excellent alternative, though you should add a dash of lime juice to compensate for the missing tartness.  For any of these, vary the amount of bubbly to taste; add slowly, stir and taste frequently.  You want to add crispness without overwhelming the drink's spicy, rich texture.  I'm gonna go make another one.