What I’m Drinking: Summer’s Lease

Summer proper (first day of summer and all that) is still over a month away, but I can feel it creeping up with every sunny day, temperature rising, refreshing fruity drinks bubbling, flowers blooming, gardens growing, sweat sweating, outdoor meals aromatizing evenings, and did I mention the drinks? We had a precursor summer day recently, one of those days that provides a preview of all that sun and such just described, and I just had to make up a new drink to accompany said day, and had to name it after summer, and had to transport my mind into a summer mindset, and between us, I (humbly), think I did a fairly decent job, and that Theros would approve. Oh, what’s in the drink? I started with rum (a summer favorite), white rum, that is, and then upped the rummy-ness with a little Stiggins’ Fancy rum, which is a referred to as “pineapple rum,” but for summer’s sakes don’t take that to mean chemically-induced or saccharin-y or against nature, as (if you haven’t had it), Stiggins’ is none of those, instead, wafting a perfectly roasted pineapple aroma over a dark flavorful rum. If you haven’t had it, try it now. Then, to round out those rummy siblings and to underline with citrus, herbs, caramel, sweetness, and lushness, I added some Montenegro amaro – one might not think of amari as summer standbys, but one also might be foolish, as these flavor-packed pals can bring just the right layers to hot weather treats, when mixed with the right partners. Like rums! And, like pineapple juice, our next ingredient. And, like Scrappy’s Lime bitters, which delights with lime and lighter herbal notes (remember kids: bitters makes it better). Finally, ice, club soda, mint, and here we are, summer, a month or so early. Enjoy it now, and then.

Summer’s Lease

Ice cubes

1 ounce white rum

3/4 ounce Stiggins’ Fancy Pineapple rum

1/2 ounce Montenegro amaro

1-1/2 ounce pineapple juice

1 dash Scrappy’s Lime bitters

4 ounces chilled club soda

Fresh mint sprig, for garnish

1. Fill a cocktail shaker or mixing glass halfway full with ice cubes. Add the rums, amaro, juice, and bitters. Shake well.

2. Fill a highball or comparable glass with ice cubes. Strain the mix from step 1 into the glass. Top with club soda. Stir, carefully (no need to spill). Garnish with the mint.

A Note: You could serve this over cracked ice, even crushed ice. But I wasn’t so prepared or industrious as you might be. Next time, I might be!

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What I’m Drinking: Coronado Heights Flip

Coronado Heights is a castle. Jeremy Sidener, the gentleman bartender who created this drink, is a king of shakers and stirrers. That almost seems enough said right there! But to delve more deeply, he’s also the owner of the venerable and deservedly venerated Eighth Street Taproom in Lawrence, KS, (a must-visit bar by the way) and has been making and serving delicious drinks to all and sundry for many years, bringing the cocktail awesomeness to another level, the tops in KS and really all the Midwest. A champ. The castle that gives name to this flip (creamy, egg-lovely, sherry-tastic) might not be a champ in all the castles in the world, but it does sit on a hill outside of Lindsborg, Kansas, where I grew up, so I am inordinately fond of it in some ways (though it’s only from 1932, and more of a family picnic spot when such things are allowed, due to the views around it, then a historic monument of deep note). But not as fond of it as I am of drinks made by Mr. Sidener! I have my priorities straight, as should you.

Coronado Heights Flip

Ice cubes

2 ounces Harveys Bristol Cream sherry

1 ounce Kahlúa

2 heaping tablespoons freshly whipped cream

1 egg

1 teaspoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon grated Mexican chocolate for garnish

Thin orange twist for garnish

1. Fill a cocktail shaker halfway full with ice cubes. Add the sherry, Kahlúa, cream, egg, and sugar. Shake extra well.

2. Strain, slowly, into a Champagne flute. Garnish with a sprinkling of the chocolate and the orange twist

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What I’m Drinking: The Tennessee Colonel with Bib & Tucker Bourbon

Not too long ago in the scheme of things (depending on your scheme!), I was lucky enough to receive a bottle of Bib & Tucker bourbon (along with some swell glasses and such – it was a very lucky day!). Coming in one of the more memorable bottles I’ve seen in some time – lovely glass shape and glass lettering and overall aesthetic set up – Bib & Tucker isn’t just a pretty package. Made in Tennessee in a hearkening to the 1880s as they say, the time of “boldness and refinement,” it’s a bourbon aged 6 years in low char white oak barrels (there are some older siblings, too, on the years-aged front) and has won a fair amount of awards. Deservedly so, me thinks, as it’s very smooth, very drinkable. Starting with a nose of vanilla, caramel, and spices of the pastry variety, it flows into a vanilla, cinnamon, spice flavor, with a hint of nuttiness, pecan style, and then finishes with a little oaky caramel spice-ness. Made from 70% corn, 26% rye, and 4% malted barley, it’s a swell number to sip solo, with or without a cube of ice.

However (as you might have guessed!), it’s also a really fine base for cocktails in my humble opinion, as the people say. If going the mixing route, I’d suggest a recipe that lets the bourbon shine, with only one or two other liquid pals along for the ride. Which is what we’re doing here, in the way of the classic Kentucky Colonel cocktail, which I was reminded of when browsing the old The Art of Mixing Drinks, 1961 edition (not to be confused with the also venerable and perhaps more well-known The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. The lack of “Fine” volume I have comes in a little box, with plastic cover and ring binding, and is fun if you can find it). We’re altering the title a bit here, cause our Bib & Tucker is from TN not KY, but keeping the basic combo of bourbon and monastic herbal liqueur Bénédictine. You see this cocktail with various ratios of our two players, and with the addition of bitters (a good plan, though not used here as this book’s recipe didn’t have it and I wanted to pay homage properly), served up instead of with a big cube (but the big cube felt ideal) and with different twists – I’ll admit, at first the lemon felt off, but its bright citrus notes worked a treat above the bourbon and liqueur intertwining flavors. Delicious.

The Tennessee Colonel

Cracked ice

2-1/2 ounces Bib & Tucker 6-year old bourbon

1 ounce Bénédictine

Ice cube/s

Lemon twist, for garnish

1. Fill a mixing glass or cocktail shaker halfway full with cracked ice. Add our two darkly-spirited pals. Stir well.

2. Add a large ice cube or a few smaller ones to an Old Fashioned or comparable glass. Strain the mix in. Garnish with the lemon twist.

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What I’m Drinking: Blushing Bride

You know (well, if you don’t, I’m about to tell you, and in some ways this is a rhetorical question just to set up the drink we’re going to have as this week’s Friday Night Cocktail) that some drinks get sadly relegated to only being had on very specific occasions – paired in a type of liquid wedlock, if you will – and not enjoyed year round. Take this drink, the Blushing Bride, whose name has led me to only suggesting it be had at weddings and wedding-related events. Which is sad, cause this delicious, multi-base-spirit drink is a treat (and a rarity, in a way, with brandy or Cognac and vodka together), with enough heft to get you through a chillier day (or a long relationship!), but enough fruitiness to make a summer day dawdle by in the best possible way, and then a cuddle of sweet that matches, well, springtime, as it is right now. So, take my advice, and have drinks you like any day of the 365, no matter if they carry a particular daily connection.

The Blushing Bride, from Dark Spirits

6 fresh raspberries

3 lime wedges

Ice cubes

2 ounces Cognac

1 ounce vodka

1/2 ounce Simple Syrup

1. Put the raspberries and 2 of the lime wedges into a cocktail shaker. Using a muddler or wooden spoon, muddle well.

2. Fill the cocktail shaker halfway full with ice cubes. Add the Cognac, vodka, and simple syrup. Shake very well.

3. Strain the mix into a cocktail glass through a fine strainer. Garnish with the remaining lime wedge.

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What I’m Drinking: Work By Lamplight

I must admit (or partially at least), I stole this title from Ed (the best poet in the world) Skoog. Or think I did, as I had his latest book Travelers Leaving for the City next to me when I was trying to come up with a title for a new drink I’d made, and so I picked up his book and randomly opened it up, and picked the first phrase I saw, but then my mind wandered, as it does, for a moment, and “Work By Lamplight” was what I remembered when fingers finally met keyboard.

And, you know what, it works well, as, though this tipple could be tipped earlier in the day, I feel it’s best later in the hours, after dinner. It can serve, in a way, as your after-dinner coffee and a dessert all in one glass. How, you ask? It starts with Tia Maria, a newly-designed bottle of which showed up neatly packaged on the porch recently (I know, I’m lucky!), and which reminded me of how it’s made with 100% Arabica coffee beans and Madagascar vanilla on a base of Jamaican rum, and in the popular cold brew method. That’s good, yes? Yes! It’s a touch sweet (but so am I), but the coffee-ness comes through smoothly and it melts on the tongue in a swell way. And coffee goes with more other bottled beauties than people give it credit for. Tequila, for example, which is the base for this cocktail, goes deliciously with coffee. In some ways, those two together in the right ratios might be okay all by their paired-ness, but we want better than okay, right? Right! So, in come two delights near-and-dear to all good drinker’s hearts. First up, Pierre Ferrand’s orange curaçao, which bring what you think of curaçao to another level in the same way this drink brings what you think of coffee cocktails to another level (if I may be so bold). And then, Scrappy’s Chocolate bitters, which utilizes organic toasted cacao nibs to add chocolate and herbal notes, without which the drink would feel ridiculously underdressed. And then, a mandarin orange twist, whose citrus oils cut the sweetness charmingly. Altogether, a layered number you’ll want to sip slowly as the evening turns. If you want to read poems while drinking, all the better.

Work By Lamplight

Cracked ice

2 ounces silver tequila

3/4 ounces Tia Maria

1/2 ounce Pierre Ferrand orange curaçao

Dash Scrappy’s Chocolate bitters

Mandarin orange twist

1. Fill a mixing glass or cocktail shaker halfway full of cracked ice. Add all but the twist. Stir well, but be mellow about it, cause it’s the evening.

2. Strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with the mandarin twist (if you only have a non-mandarin orange, that’s dandy, too).

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What I’m Drinking: The Earth’s Attraction

It’s a familiar and beloved story with an alluring gravity: you are walking by your liquor shelves (or cabinet, or bottle stash, or near-toppling table, or bar cart, or horse’s buggy, or pie safe, or wherever you choose to keep your booze) and you catch, from the corner of your eye, a little wink from a gin bottle. Wink-wink, you think you saw, and knowing how flirty gin is, you stop, and peer at the bottles (in this scenario you have more than one type of gin, which I’m sure you do), and try to decide which gin is calling you over, wink imagined or not, because by now all this gin-ing has made you thirsty for a gin drink.

Well, I am here to help, with The Earth’s Attraction, a drink I made with Bluewater’s Halcyon gin, made up this way in Everett, WA, and “distilled by open flame” as they say. It brings a layered London-style, with reliable juniper backed by citrus and spice (a little angelica, orris root, and cinnamon). Yums. It provides the gravitas and base here, with our secondary players being dry vermouth (for the botanical and lighter herbal accents), Giffard’s Crème de Pêche de Vigne (for the vineyard peachy-ness we all desire, a wee bit of sweet, and nuttiness, too), and Scrappy’s Orange bitters (because bitters makes it better – plus orange layers and deep herb and spice notes). Oh! And a twist of lemon, whose heavenly citrus oils bring it all together, like Saturn’s rings. Celestial enough? I think so!

The Earth’s Attraction

Cracked ice

2 ounces Bluewater Halcyon gin

1/2 ounce dry vermouth

3/4 ounce Giffard’s Crème de Pêche de Vigne

Dash Scrappy’s Orange bitters

Lemon twist, for garnish

1. Fill a mixing glass or cocktail shaker halfway full with cracked ice. Add all but the twist. Stir well.

2. Strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with the twisty twist.

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What I’m Drinking: The Stinger

You ever wake up and think to yourself as the mists of Morpheus (hahaha, that’s deep yo) roll away from your ever-loving brain, “what I really want to do today is have a Stinger?” I’m sure you, as most, do. Because, though this might be too, oh, lace-doily-y for many at first glance (crème de menthe not having that renaissance that many liquids have been having oh these last 20 odd years), when that “many,” or most of many at least, realize the hefty shot of brandy this is based on, one hopes they take a second look, realize not every drink needs like 6 or 10 obscurities to be tasty, then follows that up with a realization that maybe some of those lace-doily lovers had a good idea of a good drink, and then these smart people make one of these, love it, and at a future date go through the morning ritual described above. At that point, the only question is: at what point in the day should you have said Stinger? And the answer is: right now, friend, right now.

The Stinger (using the recipe from Dark Spirits)

Ice cubes or cracked ice (depending on if you’re stirring or shaking, see Step 1 below)

2-1/2 ounces brandy (or Cognac, if the bottle and desire and daring is nearby)

1/2 ounce white crème de menthe

1. Fill a cocktail shaker halfway full with ice cubes. Add the brandy and crème de menthe. Stir well, or shake. Honestly, I like to stir here, in traditionally manner. But, I also think this is one drink that needs to be well-chilled. So, do what’s best.

2. Strain the mix into a cocktail glass. Bee-lieve it!

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What I’m Drinking: The Manhattan, with Early Times Bottled in Bond Bourbon

There are days when you want to unbury a drink from an old book or pamphlet, a drink that hasn’t been sipped for many years, and other days when you want to make up a whole new drink, one that you’ve created for your very self for the very first time, and then other days when you want to try and recreate a drink you had out (or as take-out, in currant circumstances) at a local watering hole, made by a talented drink-slinger, and then other days when you just want to have a classic Manhattan, one made with Early Times Bottled in Bond bourbon. Today is that day! For me, at least, as I recently received a bottle of said Early Times bourbon – lucky me! – making it all possible. Early Times Bottled in Bond bourbon has a long and interesting history, including being lost to all from I believe the 1980s until a slow re-release that started in 2017. Aged 4 years, and at 100 proof, this tipple treads an approachable path, with some umph beneath, swirling a sweetness on the nose that lingers through a citrus, caramel, vanilla flavor with spice hints popping up, and then popping up more and more through the finishing moments. Overall, just a delicious, friendly bourbon that everyone I know enjoys sipping slow as the sun goes down. But that approachability also means it’s a dandy cocktail base, too, and the Manhattan is a swell cocktail to base on it. As it has that little sweetness, I went with Punt e’ Mes as the vermouth, because it’s a little drier with beauteous bittery herbal notes – a good choice, I have to admit! And for the bitters themselves, I picked Scrappy’s Aromatic bitters, which is an ideally-balanced spice and herb bitters in a classic style, superb here.

The Manhattan

Cracked ice

2-1/2 ounces Early Times Bottled in Bond bourbon

1/2 ounce Punt e’ Mes sweet vermouth

1 dash Scrappy’s Aromatic bitters

Cherry (I used a Rainer cherry I’d had mulling with mates in some bourbon, but a good Maraschino would work a treat, too)

1. Fill a cocktail shaker or mixing glass halfway full with cracked ice. Add the bourbon, vermouth, and bitters. Stir well.

2. Add a cherry (or two!) to a cocktail glass. Strain the mix from Step 1 into said glass. Enjoy.

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