The name of this long-a-Spiked-Punch-favorite drink means, or so I was told, I think of you always. Which is about the sweetest sentiment one could echo, making this a drink ideal for both romance, but also when thinking about and toasting departed loved ones, and also for having when you’re petting a beloved dog. Considering the sweetness of said sentiment, the drink itself can be a tad sweet – if your love is worried about a cavity, then you could omit the simple syrup in the below, or drop it to 1/4 ounce. Actually, I’d try that first, cause I do think the smooth simple helps to make the brandy and world-renowned-now beauty Aperol cuddly together nicely. Add an orange slice and boom, deliciousness. Drink it up, and I’ll be thinking of you.
Ti Penso Sempre
Ice cubes
1-1/2 ounces brandy
1 ounce Aperol
1/2 ounce simple syrup
Orange slices, for garnish
1. Fill a cocktail shaker halfway full with ice cubes. Add the brandy, Aperol, and simple syrup. Shake well.
2. Strain the mix into a cocktail glass, garnish with orange, and think lovely thoughts.
Sometimes, you need a quick bracer in the morning of a particularly stressful day, one you know might test your, let’s say, patience a bit (side note: do people still say “bracer” when referring to drinks? If not, why not, cause it’s an amazing word. If you start doing it now, bringing it back, so to speak, I’m sure it’ll catch back on, cause you’re cool, right? Right!). For me, today I think is that day, and so I’m starting with one of my favorite bracers, the one named after the fair city of Baltimore. It’s got the nice smooth kick from brandy, a swell helping of anisette (which goes well with brandy historically) that adds loads of flavor and tones down that brandy umph a bit, and then an egg white, which not only makes it frothy smooth but brings us back to this being an egg-cellent (hehe) morning drink, one that’ll brace you up for whatever the day holds. Unless the day holds driving large equipment or flying a plane or doing surgery. Then maybe stick to coffee.
Baltimore Bracer
Cracked ice
1-1/2 ounces brandy
1-1/2 ounces anisette
1 egg white, preferably organic
1. Fill a cocktail shaker halfway full with cracked ice. Add the brandy, anisette, and egg white. Shake well.
Whether its Mother’s Day, or graduation, or Memorial Day, or just a darn good day for a party, many occasions for serving a group of people drinks are coming up. Make it easy for yourself and pick up a punch bowl and punch it up. That is, if you don’t have a punch bowl already, but maybe you do? I was on the radio (you kids might not remember such) once, on a call in show, talking about having two punch bowls, one fancy, one not, and a caller called in to say they had eleven punch bowls! Eleven! Now, that person knows how to party. Not saying you need eleven, but one or two, yes. And then, you can make this punch in one of them. It sounds like a Shakespeare character, and admittedly hearkens back in a way back-a-ways, with a hearty red wine base (like a Cabernet or other robust red wine) mingling with some juice (grape, here), and sweetened with some simple syrup. But then! We are also adding mysterious French herbal liqueur Bénédictine, and a heaping helping of brandy, plus club soda (which helps lighten it up, and make it okay for brunching as well as later affairs). The first item in that list really gives this punch an intriguing personality, and one that is sure to make your late April, May, and June events memorable (as well as events in the other nine months, to be clear). Punch it!
1. Add the block of ice to a large punch bowl, or fill the bowl halfway full with ice cubes. Add the brandy, grape juice, Benedictine, and simple syrup. Stir well.
2. Add the red wine to the cast, and stir again.
3. Smoothly add the club soda, and stir a final time (or maybe a few final times—you want to get it good and combined). And a handful or two fresh red seedless grapes, if you want. Sometimes I feel the grapes, sometimes I don’t. I’m weird. Serve in punch glasses. Or with straws.
As mentioned in a Cocktail Talk just a few weeks ago, I was recently in the UK (which is always jolly) and while there of course I had to try out a few local gins, it being the country I associate perhaps most strongly with gin (though I love my local gins, tons and always, but historically, you know). And I had some good ones, indeed, with one fav being Whitstable Harbour gin (which features Sea Buckthorn and Samphire, and which has a sibling featuring Kentish Cherries and Hibiscus – that one I liked so much I brought a bottle home). I had enough gin, that I was reminded of the below quote from Raymond Carver, who liked gin enough to have his detective swimming in it, so to speak.
I smelled of gin. Not just casually, as if I had taken four or five drinks of a winter morning to get out of bed on, but as if the Pacific Ocean was pure gin and I had nose-dived off the boat deck. The gin was in my hair and eyebrows, on my chin and under my chin. It was on my shirt.
It’s April, you old so-and-so! That means summer (or Mr. Sunny Suntimes, as it’s called by some) isn’t too far around the corner, what with its rum drinks and poolside parties and pirates. With that, I suggest you start practicing your summer drinks now, so you can be known as Drinkmaster HW (for hot weather) when it gets here. And here’s one to start practicing with, not a known drink worldwide yet (though known enough to carrying its own second moniker, “rum-daddy”), but a darn good one, featuring a hearty base (or spirit-kick, as they say) of Flor de Caña rum shimmying close with Brovo’s delightful Lucky (it already has a nickname in its name!) Falernum, Pierre Ferrand’s now classic orange curaçao, Scrappy’s dancing on the tongue Orleans bitters (did you know Scrappy was a nickname of a real person? It is!), and a touch of lemon and simple. The very latter I like, as it seemed to smooth the edges (or tan lines, if you will), but if it’s too sweet for your taste, drop it like a name you’re not fond of.
Well, we’ve had a fair amount of Cocktail Talks from Dickens’ classic Barnaby Rudge on the ol’ Spiked Punch and that’s a fact. But I was recently visiting the lovely countryside of England, stopping in at any number of cozy, friendly, tasty, thirst-quenching, delightful country (and city!) pubs. And when doing so, while always recognizing them for their own varied and multitudinous joys, also always was driven to think a moment about the Maypole, the bar some of the book’s action and non-action circles around. Is it the book-bar (meaning, fictional bar from a book) I’d most like to visit? Hmm, perhaps! In honor of it, and in honor of all the dandy actual pubs recently visited, I decided I had to re-post the below quote. It’s such a lovely one (oh, for more on the actual book and more quotes, see all Barnaby Rudge Cocktail Talks, and for that matter, why not view all Dickens Cocktail Talks).
Old John would have it that they must sit in the bar, and nobody objecting, into the bar they went. All bars are snug places, but the Maypole’s was the very snuggest, cosiest, and completest bar, that ever the wit of man devised. Such amazing bottles in old oaken pigeon-holes; such gleaming tankards dangling from pegs at about the same inclination as thirsty men would hold them to their lips; such sturdy little Dutch kegs ranged in rows on shelves; so many lemons hanging in separate nets, and forming the fragrant grove already mentioned in this chronicle, suggestive, with goodly loaves of snowy sugar stowed away hard by, of punch, idealised beyond all mortal knowledge; such closets, such presses, such drawers full of pipes, such places for putting things away in hollow window-seats, all crammed to the throat with eatables, drinkables, or savoury condiments; lastly, and to crown all, as typical of the immense resources of the establishment, and its defiances to all visitors to cut and come again, such a stupendous cheese!
Though we’re well past Valentine’s Day, really, if you’re a perfect paramour or partner, you should be showing the love every day, right? Right! And what’s the best way to show the love? Making that favorite person of yours a dandy cocktail, perhaps one a bit sweet to show you think they’re the sweetest? Too much? Well, it makes for an interesting intro idea to this cocktail, which isn’t overly sweet, mind-you, thanks to the bountiful base of brandy (the most under-utilized base spirit). One top of which are two other dancing partners that might be a stitch sweet, but also deliver lovely (!!) flavors: Navan vanilla liqueur and the Italian charmer Dumante Verdenoce pistachio liqueur. Those three alone play together quite cozily, but adding an egg white, as we do here, gives a wonderful silky mouthfeel (as they say), one that’ll have you and yours canoodling happily any day of the year as you sip it.
Was thinking about how it’s mid-March and still quite chilly in this PWN part of the country, the kind of weather which leads me to a nice whisky or whiskey punch, hot, full of swellness, warming on multiple levels (temperature and whisky-a-ture). And then also thinking about yesterday being Saint Patrick’s Day, which then led me to thinking about the Anthony Trollope book called Castle Richmond, an early book for Spiked Punch pal Mr. Trollope, one that takes place in the beginning days of the Irish famine, and which, like many of his works, has dollops of humor in the midst of some non-humorous situations, and then all of it sprinkled with little everyday details, relationships, Cocktail Talks, life, love, and everything else (if that’s not getting too deep). Which then led me to wanting to post the below quote here, from said novel, a quote full of whisky punch. Oh, be sure to read all the Trollope Cocktail Talks for more from the book, and from many of his other works, too.
But the parlour was warm enough; warm and cosy, though perhaps at times a little close; and of evenings there would pervade it a smell of whisky punch, not altogether acceptable to unaccustomed nostrils. Not that the rector of Drumbarrow was by any means an intemperate man. His single tumbler of whisky toddy, repeated only on Sundays and some other rare occasions, would by no means equal, in point of drinking, the ordinary port of an ordinary English clergyman. But whisky punch does leave behind a savour of its intrinsic virtues, delightful no doubt to those who have imbibed its grosser elements, but not equally acceptable to others who may have been less fortunate.
