As we’re leaving winter in the rear view mirror, it’s become less painful to think about – and easier to consume the brandy-y sipper that’s called the Snow Ball. What’s funny about it, really, is that this drink is a very refreshing bubbly bit of beauty, suited for the springtime (and summer, too, but that’s still a few months away) like flowers, romance, and crackerjacks. Because it has an egg in it, you can also feel good serving this up for breakfast, as long as you use this recipe from Dark Spirits.
Snow Ball
Ice cubes
2 ounces brandy
1 ounce Simple Syrup
1 egg
Chilled ginger ale
1. Fill a cocktail shaker halfway full with ice cubes. Add the brandy, simple syrup, and egg. Shake very well.
2. Fill a Collins glass three-quarters full with ice cubes. Strain the well-shaken mix over the ice.
3. Top the glass off with ginger ale. Stir, but calmly.
Yeah, that’s right, we’re going back-to-back with the first two episodes of the new season of the Cocktail to Cocktail Hour (which is good, in a way, cause who really knows when the next one will be?). Partially we’re doing this because I love you so, so very much. And partially because Episode 2 is a very special holiday cocktail, and, well, the holidays are certainly in full swing. The bubbly combo in question is the Tip Top, a sparkling wine-brandy-Benedictine affair from Dark Spirits that’ll make any winter holiday you care to celebrate better than you could ever imagine (especially New Year’s Eve naturally). So get with the holiday spirit why dontcha?
Oh golly, I love this drink. My love reaches such a magnitude that I made a Baltimore Bracer cocktail video already, but I still wanted to post the drink again. It’s just the ideal combination of tough name, sweet-in-a-good-way-meaning-with-a-kick taste, and amazing mouthfeel thanks to the egg white. I’m not even saying any more (except that the recipe’s from Ginger Bliss and the Violet Fizz). Just have the drink already. Or you’ll be sorry.*
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.
2. Strain into a cocktail glass.
*Not sorry cause I’m going to get all Bruce Campbell on you or anything. I’m not really that tough. Just sorry cause you’ll be missing a dandy drink.
My last post of a book from George Harmon Coxe was in 2008. Jaysus. I wonder how many drinks you’ve had since then? Who do you think’s had more, you, me, or Barack Obama? I only ask cause when that last post went up, it was August 26th, 2008, the same day he was nominated for Pres. Anyway, I digress. Much like that that last Cocktail Talk post way back when, this GHC (that’s what he wanted to be called after two rye shots) quote is from a book featuring mystery-solving photographer Kent Murdock. That sounds like a career path every kid should aspire to. This pocket-book is called Eye Witness, and in it Kent roughs up and gets roughed up, uncovers the clues, charms the ladies, and has a fair number of drinks. In the below quotes, it’s actually both the charms and the drinks:
She laughed aloud. The third sidecar had begun its work, and the reserve, the slight touch of haughtiness that had once marker her speech and manner, slide away. The flush that brushed her cheeks was becoming and her voice was more throaty and somewhat less cultivated.
Murdock asked Leone if she would have a brandy. She thought a B&B would be fine so he had the brandy. Only then, when the waiter took the other things away, was Murdock able to sit back and give his attention completely to his companion. ‘That was all right,’ he said. ‘Marvelous.’ She was watching him now, the faint flush in her cheeks giving her a new radiance that was attractive and promising. The cocktails had apparently done their work well for she seemed relaxed and at ease, content; it seemed to leave the next move up to him.
Hey ho daddy-o, you won’t believe it but we’ve made the mighty and masterful Cocktail to Cocktail Hour Season Two even more magnificent and helpful for the masses. How, you say, is this impossibility possible? By adding a new segment in the show called “Everyday Drinking,” a segment designed to help solve the problems of everyday drinkers, drinkers that are just like you and me (except without my awesome suit and trophy wife). Learn more in the most recent episode of the roaring Cocktail to Cocktail Hour.
As I mentioned once in a Cocktail Talk post over two years ago (amazing that I’ve been writing this blog for so long, now that I mention it), I’m not a huge Perry Mason book fan, meaning those (and there were tons) written by Erle Stanley Gardner. I am a gigantic Perry Mason television show fan, however. Which points I suppose to how wacky I am, or some such. But the books just seem a tad too smart about themselves, while the show seems just the right pitch of genius and atmosphere. However, I do still pick up the occasional Perry Mason book, mostly because many of the original pocket book covers are joys to behold. Take the one pictured here–lovely lady, in negligee, with smoking pistol, on a boat. Gawd, that’s wonderful. And this book I liked more than others, too, as it seemed a little less in hand at times to me, and had the full contingent of Perry Mason favorites: dashing detective Paul Drake, saucy and swell secretary Della Street, and cuddly losers (at least when facing Perry) Lieutenant Tragg and DA Hamilton Burger. And, the following little gem of an exchange:
Drake said, “Here’s a car with three of my operatives now. What do we do first?”
“Put them out the way I said, so they can watch the apartment, the garage, and the windows.”
“Okay, then what?”
“Then,” Della Street interposed with firm determination,“we get a cup of hot coffee and it there’s any brandy in the car, we spike it with brandy. My chattering teeth are chipping off.”
“That,” Mason agreed, “is an idea.”
It’s been over two years since I had a quote up here from Harold Q. Masur (though, between us, I’m guessing he hasn’t noticed), who I like cause books I have by him fit into my pockets, and because his characters don’t shy away from the sauce, and cause in the below quote he mentions three delicious boozes, and because he isn’t pulp enough to be distracting, and isn’t so light as to float away into a land of cotton candy and unicorns. Though, honestly, that doesn’t sound bad, either. Anyway, this is from a book called Bury Me Deep, and it involves a lawyerly type chasing around a drunken literary type and a girl. Which, honestly, doesn’t sound much different than some afternoons I had way back when (except the lawyerly type part).
A marble-eyed waiter with a pushed-in face and a malevolent twist to his mouth came over, snapped a napkin, nodded. I ordered bourbon for myself, Dubonnet for Dulcy, and Bob ordered a bottle of Napoleon for himself.
The ol’ Seattle weather recently hasn’t been what you’d (you or anyone, really, unless that other person is someone who revels in dreary wetness) call awesome lately (and by lately, I mean, to all reports, since last August). You might think this rain-cloud-rain pattern would drive me to drink only straight shots of rot-gut (or at least straight shots of almost-rot-gut). But no, fair friend, no. When the weather trots out its worst repeatedly during a time when the very month name should signal clear skies and sunshine (like May, for instance) I go for summertime mixes. A: I’m not going to let that weather tell me who the boss is. I know who the boss is (Tony Danza. And then me). B: I figure if I drink like there’s sun in the sky then maybe, just maybe, I’ll influence said weather to follow my lead. Here’s hoping, at least. Which is why I’m sipping the summertime queen of the jungle, the Ognam (which is straight of out Dark Spirits, don’t you know. Wait, you don’t? Well go buy the book and find out). It was created by wife Nat and has a tropical refreshing vibe (sure, I said vibe, what of it?), and can, if anything can, change the weather:
Ice cubes
1 1/2 ounces brandy
2 1/2 ounces mango juice
1/2 ounce Aperol
Chilled club soda
Lemon slice for garnish
1. Fill a highball or comparable glass with ice cubes. Add the brandy, mango juice, and Aperol. Stir well.
2. Fill the glass almost to the tippy top (Ognam insists on words like tippy top. Don’t infuriate Ognam.) with club soda. Stir again, well. Squeeze the lemon slice over the glass and drop it in.
Snow Ball
