Hey, it’s the day after Thanksgiving! Hope that you had a filling day (those reading who celebrate, that is), and have found some things to be thankful for (this sentiment goes to all, celebrating or not). As for me, I’m thankful that I have some leftover homemade cranberry sauce, so that I can whip up a few Gizmos, the world’s finest day-after-Thanksgiving drink. It’s mingling of delicious gin – I go London style – with leftover cranberry sauce, and a smidge of simple syrup (which, if your cranberry sauce is sweetish already, you can skip. Mine’s fairly tangy as a rule, so I sometimes like that extra sweetness here). Thanks to you for having one, and double thanks to anyone making me one of these holiday delights.
The Gizmo
Ice cubes
2-1/2 ounces gin
1 ounce homemade cranberry sauce
1/2 ounce simple syrup (optional)
1. Fill a cocktail shaker halfway full with ice cubes. Add the gin and cranberry sauce, and syrup if using. Shake exceptionally well.
2. Strain into a cocktail glass. Drink, thankfully as you can.
Here’s a swell quote from a swell old pocket book called Suddenly A Corpse, by the legal thriller/crime/pulp master Harold Q. Masur, or Hal Masur, or just old HQM, as his pals used to call him (I hope). It stars his regular, lawyer Scott Jordan, and is well worth tracking down. I could tell you more, but I’m not gonna. Cause I want to get to the quote, which I find is ideal for this time of year, the Thanksgiving time, the time when all of those who don’t have some sort of insane ability to skip seconds, end up being overfull. Or, because their stomachs, as below, were installed by . . . well, just go on reading.
She had another pull of rye that would have knocked me kicking. She might have been drinking water for all the effect it had. Her stomach, I thought, must have been installed by the Bethlehem Steel Company.
For a moment there I was busier than a drunk on a tightrope.
When I first posted this drink, many many moons ago, I talked about how it was a favorite of legendary legend Pliny the Elder (who wrote the Naturalis Historia and more). Well, maybe it wasn’t his favorite per se, but the name is inspired by him, and beyond any of my silliness, this is a lovely drink to have this time of year, whether you’re reading very very very old authors or not, due to its warming peppermint tea base, which is just the ticket for a chilly November morning. Or afternoon. Or evening! Especially when combined with Planteray’s Original Dark rum, which delivers notes of smoke, citrus, banana, and spice that play quite nicely with the tea, and with Averna amaro, whose herbally goodness also plays quite nicely. Pliny himself would be happy to sip it, and you will be, too.
Every year out this-a-way, the wonderful Woodinville Whiskey Company has a one-time only harvest release, with a big release event (I wrote about one Woodinville Harvest Release for Seattle Magazine) packed with fun, fans, and of course whiskey. This year it happened on October 19th, with the Harvest Release being their bourbon, but a batch finished in freshly-emptied Sauternes casks. The bourbon’s already won Double Platinum in the 2024 ASCOT competition and is delicious. It’s based on traditionally grown corn, rye, and malted barley, grown like all the grains they used on the Omlin farm in Quincey, WA. Once mashed and distilled and such, it’s barreled and aged in their barrel houses in Central WA, a perfect spot. And it’s quite a perfect release, scrumptiousness in a bottle. It has a nice fruit nose (plummy, somewhat, adding to the bourbon’s oak, corn, and caramelness), and then a singular flavor, which has a vanilla and pear essence over more oak and then some faint echoes of tropical fruit (kiwi, maybe mango, maybe beaches) that really make this stand out. The finish is smooth, toffee-y, lingering. I loved it, and you will too (oh, try it straight solo first, naturally, but I enjoyed a splash of water in it as well). I look forward to lingering over it even longer throughout this year, and, if I don’t finish it first, next year, too.
It’s nearly the 31st of October, or Warlockoween, the day (or/and the weekend before depending on what day of the week the 31st falls on) when everyone follows along with the below video, drinking their Warlock (the mystical mix of brandy, Strega, limoncello, orange juice, and Peychaud’s bitters that has been favored by magicians, sorcerers, conjurors, witches, and the like for thousands of years) and then turning into zombie spell-casters. Fun! Watch and learn and fall under its spell. A spell also good on something called Halloween, which hasn’t taken off yet like Warlockoween, but hey, it could.
Here’s a swell fall number (weirdly, no-one thinks, or rarely thinks, about fall flings, or winter, perhaps, but fall gets especially short shrift on the romance side). It also is good in winter! And spring, honestly. And even summer, if not too hot, or when you’re feeling daffy (as flings can make one feel). It’s also a near relation to a few better-known drinks that share not only qualities but ingredients, specifically the rocking Rob Roy (which has Angostura bitters instead of orange bitters, and a slightly different vermouth to Scotch ratio), and then pushing it out somewhat, the beautiful Bobby Burns. The Highland Fling is slightly sweeter and with a different bitter-y hint, not better than its cousins, but wonderful none-the-less. Oh, I found it in a sweet bound book called A Guide to Pink Elephants, Volume II (Richards Rosen Associates, 1957), sized to fit in a decently-large pocket.
The Highland Fling
2 ounces Scotch (I’d suggest a nice blended number, but you be you)
1 ounces sweet vermouth
2 dashes orange bitters
1. Fill a cocktail shaker halfway full with cracked ice. Add the Scotch, sweet vermouth, and bitters. Stir well.
Okay, I couldn’t let another reading of the Dickens novel Our Mutual Friend (I think this is reading number four, or perhaps number five), without one more Cocktail Talk, this one featuring one of my favorite characters (well, there are many!), the Inspector, who isn’t a main character by any means. But is a good one! And likes his flip, which I’m fond of too (I’m also fond of people who go and read all the Our Mutual Friend Cocktail Talk Posts, like you).
Mr Inspector immediately slipped into the bar, and sat down at the side of the half-door, with his back towards the passage, and directly facing the two guests. ‘I don’t take my supper till later in the night,’ said he, ‘and therefore I won’t disturb the compactness of the table. But I’ll take a glass of flip, if that’s flip in the jug in the fender.’
‘That’s flip,’ replied Miss Abbey, ‘and it’s my making, and if even you can find out better, I shall be glad to know where.’ Filling him, with hospitable hands, a steaming tumbler, Miss Abbey replaced the jug by the fire; the company not having yet arrived at the flip-stage of their supper, but being as yet skirmishing with strong ale.
‘Ah–h!’ cried Mr Inspector. ‘That’s the smack! There’s not a Detective in the Force, Miss Abbey, that could find out better stuff than that.’
‘Glad to hear you say so,’ rejoined Miss Abbey. ‘You ought to know, if anybody does.’
Well, they said (whomever they are) that it couldn’t be done, but I did it! I just re-read the Dickens classic (one may not even need to use the word “classic” here, as all his books are probably considered such by someone) Our Mutual Friend. And realized there were even more Cocktail Talks in it then I’ve had on here already – be sure to read all the Our Mutual Friend Cocktail Talks to learn more about the book (the last complete novel our pal Charlie ever wrote), to read more quotes, and get more background. I’m gonna skip all that here, and just dive into the burning of sherry below. I’m not going to give you the full two pages it’s in, but the two parts in those pages I like best.
The two lime merchants, with their escort, entered the dominions of Miss Abbey Potterson, to whom their escort (presenting them and their pretended business over the half-door of the bar, in a confidential way) preferred his figurative request that ‘a mouthful of fire’ might be lighted in Cosy. Always well disposed to assist the constituted authorities, Miss Abbey bade Bob Gliddery attend the gentlemen to that retreat, and promptly enliven it with fire and gaslight. Of this commission the bare-armed Bob, leading the way with a flaming wisp of paper, so speedily acquitted himself, that Cosy seemed to leap out of a dark sleep and embrace them warmly, the moment they passed the lintels of its hospitable door.
‘They burn sherry very well here,’ said Mr Inspector, as a piece of local intelligence. ‘Perhaps you gentlemen might like a bottle?’
….
Bob’s reappearance with a steaming jug broke off the conversation. But although the jug steamed forth a delicious perfume, its contents had not received that last happy touch which the surpassing finish of the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters imparted on such momentous occasions. Bob carried in his left hand one of those iron models of sugar-loaf hats, before mentioned, into which he emptied the jug, and the pointed end of which he thrust deep down into the fire, so leaving it for a few moments while he disappeared and reappeared with three bright drinking-glasses. Placing these on the table and bending over the fire, meritoriously sensible of the trying nature of his duty, he watched the wreaths of steam, until at the special instant of projection he caught up the iron vessel and gave it one delicate twirl, causing it to send forth one gentle hiss. Then he restored the contents to the jug; held over the steam of the jug, each of the three bright glasses in succession; finally filled them all, and with a clear conscience awaited the applause of his fellow-creatures.
It was bestowed (Mr Inspector having proposed as an appropriate sentiment ‘The lime trade!’) and Bob withdrew to report the commendations of the guests to Miss Abbey in the bar. It may be here in confidence admitted that, the room being close shut in his absence, there had not appeared to be the slightest reason for the elaborate maintenance of this same lime fiction. Only it had been regarded by Mr Inspector as so uncommonly satisfactory, and so fraught with mysterious virtues, that neither of his clients had presumed to question it.
