The Peach Tease

This cocktail doesn’t even need a name. It has its own playlist:

Prince. The Eels. The Presidents of the United States of America.

Peaches for you. Peaches for me.

And until now it’s only been available in my brain and at my kitchen table, but I’m nothing if not generous — so here’s the recipe.

The Peach Tease

As mentioned previously, Bag and String Wine Merchants gifted me a bottle of their new exclusive barrel release from Tommyrotter Distillery in Buffalo.

This is my first go at making a fun cocktail with it.

About This Drink

A perfect late summer sipper, as fresh peaches are still readily available and the depth and spice of the barrel aged gin hint at the approaching change of seasons.

It’s The Peach Tease (or Teasy P. if you’re hip and into the whole brevity thing).

Ingredients

• 1.5 oz B&S Tommyrotter Barrel-Aged
• .75 oz Peach Tea Simple Syrup
• .75 oz Contratto Apertif orange liqueur
• Peach garnish

Preparation

• Add all the ingredients except the garnish into a mixing glass and stir until well chilled and diluted (as the gin is 122 proof). Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a fresh slice of peach.

Satan’s Whiskers

Following up on yesterday’s Grand Marnier post, I figured I’d share these photos of the Satan’s Whiskers cocktail I made:

  

A recipe for the Satan’s Whiskers cocktail taken from Imbibe Magazine:

•1/2 oz. gin
•1/2 oz. Grand Marnier
•1/2 oz. sweet vermouth
•1/2 oz. dry vermouth
•1/2 oz. orange juice
•Dash orange bitters

Shake all ingredients over ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

 

The cocktail first appeared in Harry Craddock’s Savoy Cocktail Book in 1930, and there were actually two versions, “Satan’s Whiskers (straight)” and “Satan’s Whiskers (curled)” — with curacao in place of Grand Marnier in the latter.

Thirsty For More?
— This post on Cold Glass has a thorough assessment of the drink.

July 4th, 2015 — Recap

Having the Fourth of July on a Saturday this year felt pretty great (as Saturdays are like Fridays for some of us in the service industry).

All-in-all, it was a great few days.

I drank beer.

I drank wine.

And I camped out:

  

In terms of liquor, I drank something pretty basic on Saturday that I’ve never had before— gin and ginger ale.

Sure, it’s summer and blah blah blah gin and tonic. But I surveyed what we had on hand and the gin and ginger ale is what I ended up with. I almost went with whiskey & ginger ale (and there was actually a lot on hand to choose from), but I really wanted gin for some reason — which is a spirit I like, sure. but never really reach for. And I think this summer is going to be a turningpoint for me in that regards.

After the basic gin and ginger ale, I cracked open a bottle of Sipp Ginger Blossom and made two cocktails — one with gin for me, and one with Captain Morgan for my mother-in-law:

  
This flavor of Sipp had the bite of ginger beer, but also had vanilla and lime notes which softened and sweetened the drink. I’m sure it would make a great Dark ‘n’ Stormy. And I was afraid that mixing it with Captain Morgan would be overkill on the vanilla, but I didn’t hear any complaints.

And, finally, I love this photo I took Sunday night:
  

I was drinking a Great Lakes Burning River and tried to get a group shot without getting out of my chair. What ended up happening was a photo burst of several pics that created a weird vortex around my father-in-law. I didn’t digitally enhance it to look that way or blur it on purpose at all. 

Happy Birthday, Jack Dempsey!

It’s Jack Dempsey’s birthday today, which had me flipping through my copy of Mr. Boston for the recipe for the Dempsey Cocktail:

  
That pic above comes from the 1953 edition of the Old Mr. Boston De Luxe Official Bartender’s Guide.

I know Mr. Boston’s not the oldest cocktail book nor the most cited, but it’s the only one I have on hand that mentions the Dempsey Cocktail.

Jack Dempsey

Who was Jack Dempsey? I didn’t know much about the man until I cribbed the following from Wikipedia:

William Harrison “Jack” Dempsey was born June 24, 1895 and dies May 31, 1983. He was also known as “Kid Blackie” and “The Manassa Mauler.”

He was an American professional boxer, who became a cultural icon of the 1920s.

Dempsey held the World Heavyweight Championship from 1919 to 1926, and his aggressive style and exceptional punching power made him one of the most popular boxers in history.

From Mr. Boston:

Ingredients:

•1 oz dry gin
•1 oz apple brandy
•1/2 teaspoon absinthe substitute
•1/2 teaspoon grenadine

Preparation:

Shake well with cracked ice and strain into a 3 oz cocktail glass.

Other Recipes:

—Difford’s Guide uses rum in its “Jack Dempsey” cocktail.

Negroni Week Kick-Off

Negroni Week has arrived!

Here’s the first portion of our chalkboard at Forte the Restaurant: 

And the 2015 coaster: 

And my 2015 t-shirt:  

Mary Astor’s Painless Anesthetic

Actress Mary Astor was born on this day in 1906.

She starred in silent movies as well as “talkies,” and is perhaps best-known for having played the role of Brigid O’Shaugnessy in the movie The Maltese Falcon. She also played the role of Mrs. Anna Smith in the movie Meet Me In St. Louis.

In searching the Internet for a Mary Astor cocktail, I came across two recipes that piqued my interest. The first was a drink I found on the site of a liqueur brand called Chareau, which is a booze company based in California — and the liqueur they make is aloe flavored.

Check out the site’s “about” section by clicking here. The liqueur sounds mind-boggling. I don’t know that I ever would’ve thought of aloe as a primary ingredient for a liqueur. Of course, I’m also not a California farmer.

Other ingredients in the liqueur include: Cucumber, eau de vie, lemon peel, muskmelon, spearmint, sugar and water.

Online at the Chareu site, the company lists this as their Mary Astor cocktail:
 

Photo from chareau.us

 

INGREDIENTS

• 2 oz Gin
• 3/4 oz Chareau 
• 1/2 oz Lillet Blanc 

PREPARATION

Stir ingredients over ice and strain into a coupe. Garnish with edible flowers. Cocktail by Pablo Moix.

Crazy interesting, right!? I have got to know what that tastes like.

ASTOR’S PAINLESS ANESTHETIC

So, while still interesting, Chareau’s Mary Astor cocktail is a brand specific modern cocktail. 

There isn’t any official “Mary Astor” cocktail that I’ve found, but there is the thing called “Astor’s Painless Anesthetic!”

What is an Astor’s Painless Anesthetic? Well, according to Lesley M. M. Blume’s book “Let’s Bring Back: The Cocktail Edition,” the drink was created for Mary Astor by the Stork Club.

The full title of Blume’s book is: Let’s Bring Back: The Cocktail Edition: A Compendium of Impish, Romantic, Amusing, and Occasionally Appalling Potations from Bygone Eras.

Google made research into the matter even more helpful by having a copy of The Stork Club Bar Book available to search online:

INGREDIENTS

• 3 oz gin
• 1 oz French vermouth
• 1 oz Italian vermouth
• 1 oz cognac
• Orange bitters

PREPARATION

“Shake well with ice cubes and dash of orange bitters, twist of lemon peel and just a touch of sugar.”

THE STORK CLUB

The Stork Club was a nightclub in Manhattan, which was open from 1929 to 1965 and was regarded as one of the most prestigious clubs in the world. 

The club was a symbol of café society, where the wealthy elite, including movie stars, celebrities, showgirls and aristocrats all mixed in the VIP Cub Room of the club.

Reading over the Stork Club’s Wikipedia page I found out that Walter Winchell actually coined the name of the Stork Club’s “Cub Room,” — a fact which has me now wanting to rewatch that HBO biopic starring Stanley Tucci.

Hard Cider Cocktails

Last night I made two cocktails with DeMunck’s Hard Cider.

The first was a recipe I found online here through Liquor.com’s DrinkWire.

The article was a list of cider cocktails to make this fall, curated by Chilled Magazine. This first drink is their recipe and also their picture:

Orchard Flowers
Ingredients:
•1/2 oz. Dry Gin (I used Boodles)
•1/2 oz. Elderflower Liqueur
•Splash Lime Juice
•3 oz. Dry Cider (I used DeMunck’s)

Preparation
Shake gin, elderflower liqueur and lime juice over ice and strain into a chilled martini glass. Top with cider. Garnish with a lime wedge.

The drink was good. Sort of like a French 75 in a way, swapping lemon for lime and using hard cider in place of champagne (plus the addition of elderflower liqueur). With that drink in mind, I came up with this next drink using whiskey, dark rum, bitters and ginger liqueur:

Haunted Hayride
Ingredients:
•3/4 oz whiskey
•3/4 oz dark rum
•1/2 oz ginger liqueur
• Dash Angostura Bitters
•Splash lime juice
•3 oz. Dry Hard Cider (I used DeMunck’s)

Preparation
Shake whiskey (I used Knob Creek bourbon), dark rum (I used Meyers), ginger liqueur (Domaine de Canton) and lime juice over ice and strain into a chilled martini glass. Top with cider and add a dash of Angostura bitters. Garnish with a lime wedge.

Amelia Earhart Cocktail

Today is Amelia Earhart’s birthday.

A quick search of the Internet turned up a cocktail result. A website called A History Of Drinking wrote the following about her:

Today we’re marking the birthday of legendary aviatrix and “Queen of the Air,” Amelia Mary Earhart, born this day back in 1897 in Atchison Kansas.

Among her many accomplishments were: first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, and the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California.

Earhart disappeared in 1937 while en route to Howland Island during an attempt to fly around the world.

The drink itself was created by a user named StriperGuy on a ChowHound message board back on June 28, 2009. Here’s the text of his post:

Came up with another winner. Because it is basically an adapted Aviation I will call it an Amelia Earhart (the strawberries are a bit girly):

Amelia Earhart Cocktail
2 oz fresh local strawberry puree (I blended some with the gin)
•2 oz gin
•2 Tsp marascino liquer
•1 Tsp creme de violette
•2 Tsp simple syrup
•Juice and zest of 1/2 meyer lemon

Shake and serve on the rocks, or straight, or whatever

For my money, that recipe’d make for a heck of a pretty cocktail served up in a martini glass or champagne glass.

The Man Behind The “Monkey Gland”

Today is the birthday of Serge Voronoff.

Voronoff has very little to do with cocktails. He was a doctor, a French surgeon of Russian extraction.

He is best known (and really only remembered today) for one thing — a surgery he performed which now has a cocktail named after it.

Voronoff pioneered “the technique of grafting monkey testicle tissue onto the testicles of men for purportedly therapeutic purposes while working in France in the 1920s and 1930s.”

“As his work fell out of favor, he went from being highly respected to a subject of ridicule. Other doctors, and the public at large, quickly distanced themselves from Voronoff, pretending they had never had any interest in the grafting techniques.”

You can read more about him here.

It is from his life’s work that today we have a cocktail named the “Monkey Gland” — a gin and absinthe delight with orange and grenadine flavors.

Monkey Gland:
The Monkey Gland was created in the 1920s by Harry MacElhone, owner of Harry’s New York Bar in Paris, France.

Here we have Imbibe Magazine‘s recipe:
•1 1/2 oz. gin
•1 1/2 oz. fresh orange juice
•1 tsp. grenadine
•1 tsp. simple syrup
•1 tsp. absinthe

Shake all ingredients over ice and strain into a chilled glass.

[Adapted from Barflies and Cocktails by Harry MacElhone (1927)]

I’ve also read that the Monkey Gland was created in April 1923 by Frank Meier, at the Ritz Hotel, Paris.

More About The Monkey Gland:
•About.com Cocktails
•Voronoff.Wordpress.Com
•Art Of Drink