Classic Cocktails: Last Call

(This post is part of a series that I’m using to help write my next book, the new edition of 100 Classic Cocktails, and provide inspiration for home bartenders in these times of social distancing. Some of the recipes are ones I’m trying to workshop, and I’m asking my readers to test the recipes at home if able and send me their thoughts on the questions I have. Others are ones I think I’ve nailed that can be easily made with common household ingredients, and I’m sharing them to help my readers keep their spirits up while spending a lot more time at home than usual. I’ll always specify which is which. For more background on all of this, including the book, you can check out the first post in the series here. All posts will be tagged “(100) Classic Cocktails”.)

My manuscript deadline is looming, so this post will be the last opportunity to influence the contents of Classic Cocktails before it comes out! To that end, I’m skipping the history and the theory and just listing the cocktails I have lingering questions about. If you have feedback on any of these, give me a shout at info@herzogcocktailschool.com as soon as you can!

Don’t worry, I’ll still keep this blog series going after the manuscript is done. There’s a lot that I’ve learned that I’d like to share, and plenty more of these recipes are easy to make at home in a socially distant world. (Plus I now have an interesting story about the Lemon Drop, which is a sufficiently unexpected outcome of all this that I think I have to share it.)

In the mean time, however, if you’d like to help me out and/or see your name in print in the book’s acknowledgements, mix up one of these and tell me what you think:

Diamondback

(Lower-Octane, Original Version)
1½ oz. ~80-proof Rye
¾ oz. ~80-proof Apple Brandy
½ oz. OR ¾ oz. Yellow Chartreuse

Stir with ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with maraschino or brandied cherries.

(Higher-Octane, Contemporary Version)
1½ oz. ~100-proof Rye
¾ oz. ~100-proof Apple Brandy
½ oz. OR ¾ oz. Green Chartreuse

Stir with ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with maraschino or brandied cherries.

Question(s): Did you try the lower- or higher-octane version? Within that version did you try it with ½ oz. or ¾ oz. of the Chartreuse variety specified? Did you find it well-balanced, too spirit-forward, too sweet, not spiritous enough, or not sweet enough?

(Inconveniently, this is both alphabetically first and the one on the list that has the most permutations to inquire about. Your feedback on any one of them will be helpful data in working out an overall consensus; the rest of these are much more straightforward.)

Gin Rickey
1½ oz. Old Tom Gin or London Dry Gin
Juice of ½ Lime
3 oz. Club Soda

Juice half a lime into a highball glass. Add ice, gin, and club soda, and stir. Garnish with the spent lime shell.

Question(s): Is this palatable or too sour? Does it need more soda, more gin, or both?

Jasmine
1½ oz. Gin
¾ oz. Lemon Juice
½ oz. Campari
½ oz. Curaçao or Triple Sec

Shake. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

OR

1½ oz. Gin
¾ oz. Lemon Juice
¼ oz. Campari
¼ oz. Curaçao or Triple Sec

Shake. Serve without ice.

Question: Is this better with the extra ¼ oz. each of Campari and curaçao, as in the top recipe; or without, as in the lower?

Margarita
2 oz. Blanco Tequila OR 1½ oz. Blanco Tequila
½ oz. Triple Sec
½ oz. Lime Juice
1 tsp. Simple Syrup (or agave syrup, or another sweetener)

Shake with ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail grass with a salted rim. Garnish with a lime wheel.

Question(s): Is this better with the additional ½ oz. of tequila, or without? Additionally, what sort of sweetener did you use, and did you find it improved the drink, compromised it, or had no discernible effect?

Pegu Club
1½ oz. Gin
¾ oz. Triple Sec or Curaçao
¾ oz. Lime Juice
2 dashes Angostura Bitters OR 1 dash Angostura Bitters and 1 dash Orange Bitters

Shake with ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Question: Is this better with both Angostura and orange, or with just Angostura?

Seelbach
1 oz. Bourbon (~50% ABV preferred)
½ oz. Triple Sec
7 dashes Angostura Bitters
7 dashes Peychaud's Bitters
3-4 oz. Sparkling Wine

Stir all but the wine with ice. Strain into a chilled flute and fill with sparkling wine. Garnish with an orange twist.

OR

Chill all ingredients. Combine bourbon, triple sec, and bitters in a flute and stir, then fill with sparkling wine. Garnish with an orange twist.

Question(s): Which way did you prepare it, and did you enjoy it? What was the proof of the bourbon you used, and did the whiskey flavor come through enough (or too much) for your tastes?

Vodka Espresso
2 oz. Vodka
1 oz. Fresh Espresso
½ oz. Coffee Liqueur
½ oz. Simple Syrup

Shake until foamy. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with three coffee beans, if available.

OR

1½ oz. Vodka
1 oz. Fresh Espresso
¾ oz. Coffee Liqueur

Shake until foamy. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with three coffee beans, if available.

Question(s): Which variation did you use? Did you find it overly sweet or not sweet enough? Too spirit-forward or not spiritous enough?

Vodka Sour
1½ oz. Vodka OR 2 oz. Vodka
1 oz. Simple Syrup
¾ oz. Lemon Juice

Shake. Serve up.

Question(s): Is this better with the additional ½ oz. of vodka, or without? And is the below version perhaps even better?

‘Lemon Drop’
1½ oz. Vodka
½ oz. Simple Syrup
½ oz. Triple Sec or Curaçao
½ oz. Lemon Juice

Shake. Serve up.

Whiskey Sour
2 oz. Bourbon
¾ oz. OR 1 oz. Simple Syrup
¾ oz. Lemon Juice

Shake. Serve down.

Question: Is this better with ¾ or 1 oz. of simple syrup?

The Collins, the Fizz, the Rickey, and the Highball

(This post is part of a series that I’m using to help write my next book, the new edition of 100 Classic Cocktails, and provide inspiration for home bartenders in these times of social distancing. Some of the recipes are ones I’m trying to workshop, and I’m asking my readers to test the recipes at home if able and send me their thoughts on the questions I have. Others are ones I think I’ve nailed that can be easily made with common household ingredients, and I’m sharing them to help my readers keep their spirits up while spending a lot more time at home than usual. I’ll always specify which is which. For more background on all of this, including the book, you can check out the first post in the series here. All posts will be tagged “(100) Classic Cocktails”.)

Or, “Long Drinks Part Two: Carbonated Boogaloo.” (It’s been a long lockdown, OK?)

It’s time for another post with a whole bunch of recipes, in the same spirit as our earlier discussion of juice-forward drinks but this time focusing on recipes lengthened with sodas. They fall into three broad categories.

“Highball” is a blanket term for simple two-ingredient combination of a distilled spirit and a carbonated mixer over ice, occasionally with a citrus wedge or other garnish. The mixer is usually flavored but plain club soda is sometimes used.

Strictly speaking, the Gin and Tonic and any other drink along those lines belongs to the highball category, but if someone orders a ‘highball’ without specifying further, they’re generally expecting a glass of whiskey with ginger ale or club soda rather than, say, a Rum and Coke. Highballs are straightforward, and I find a 1:2 ratio of spirit to mixer is a pretty solid baseline. Particular recipes follow at the end of this post.

But first, let’s talk about their historically more interesting cousins: the Collins and the Fizz. Why more interesting? First, because they require a bit more technique than highballs do. And second, because they’re very tricky to tell apart. A Collins is made with a spirit base, usually gin, and lemon juice, sugar, ice and seltzer. A fizz is made with a spirit base, also usually gin, and also with lemon juice, sugar, ice, and seltzer.

They may seem like they’re the same damn thing, except that fizzes occasionally have egg whites or yolks added to them (more on this later), and people sometimes say the fizz should be smaller or that it should be served without ice for some reason. That’s pretty thin, and for this reason I was prepared to scratch the whole fizz operation out of Classic Cocktails as redundant, until I read Dave Wondrich’s notes on the traditional distinction between them in his excellent book Imbibe! Here’s how I would summarize his findings:

• The Collins is a built drink, prepared in the glass it’s going to be served in. It uses a ton of seltzer - 6 ounces, in Wondrich’s recipe - and is served in a tall glass to accommodate all that liquid. Because the preparation process doesn’t chill the drink in any way, it is served with ice. It is expected that the ice will melt, and that it will chill and dilute the drink over time, because it is expected that a drink this large will take a while to consume.

• The fizz is a shaken drink. All the chilling and dilution it needs comes from the ice in the shaker; it is then strained into a glass and topped with seltzer. It is served without ice, because it’s already cold and no further dilution is desired - but because there is nothing keeping it cold, it is meant to be drunk quickly, before it warms up. Consequently, the amount of seltzer is lower, more like 3-4 ounces against the Collins’s 6, and it is served in a correspondingly smaller glass.

Put another way, the Collins is oriented around being a slow sipper, while the fizz is meant to be drunk more like a shorter cocktail. Everything else about each flows from this: preparation, service on or off the rocks, glass size, even the presence or absence of egg. You can easily dress up a fizz by adding egg whites to the shaker, but you emphatically do not want to try that with a Collins, where you’ll have drippy unintegrated egg swirling around in the glass for the good long while it’ll take you to finish the drink. This is why the fizz can be doctored into other things and the Collins basically can’t. It’s also why certain cocktails come in ‘fizz’ versions, not Collins versions - most notably the Southside, a shaken combination of gin, lemon, sugar, mint, and sometimes orange bitters, which is sometimes topped with seltzer and rechristened the Southside Fizz. The lack of ice also lets the fizz’s effervescence play a starring role (and even an acrobatic one) in the drink’s presentation, as it most notably does in the Ramos Gin Fizz.

And then there is the Rickey, a sort of half-sibling to both the Collins and the fizz. It is fizz-sized, but it is built in the glass and served with ice like a Collins. Its main distinguishing feature is a lack of sugar, followed by its preference for lime rather than lemon juice. It is necessarily the sourest-tasting of the bunch, and it assumes a certain amount of lingering ice-melt to offset its limeyness. The original Rickey was made with whiskey, according to the tastes of its creator and namesake Col. Joe Rickey; but the Gin Rickey has been the more popular sibling for most of their history, heightening the apparent similarity with the Collins and the fizz.

Got all that? OK, let’s do some recipes. These are all super easy quarantine cocktails, but I have the same mild Question for My Tasters about each of them: are you happy with these proportions? As always, drink as many or as few as you like, just let me know which drinks you tried and which spirit(s) you used when providing your feedback!

Tom Collins (pictured)
2 oz. Old Tom Gin (traditionally) or London Dry Gin
1 tsp. Sugar
Juice of 1/2 a Lemon (~3/4 oz. Lemon Juice)
6 oz. Seltzer

Combine gin, sugar, and lemon juice in a Collin glass or other tall glass (if you have a 12- to 16-oz. beer glass lying around, that’ll do nicely) and stir until sugar is dissolved. Add seltzer and plenty of ice, and stir to mix. Enjoy slowly over the course of an afternoon.

For a John Collins, substitute whiskey for the gin; for a Ron Collins, substitute rum.

Gin Fizz
2 oz. Old Tom Gin (traditionally) or London Dry Gin
1/4 oz. Sugar
Juice of 1/2 a Lemon (~3/4 oz. Lemon Juice)

Shake with ice. Strain into an 8ish-oz. highball or juice glass without ice and fill with 3-4 oz. of seltzer. Drink quickly, while it’s still laughing at you. Rum, whiskey, or brandy may be substituted for the gin if preferred.

For a Silver Fizz, add an egg white to the shaker and shake once without ice to unfold the egg proteins before shaking with ice. For a Golden Fizz, add an egg yolk instead.

Southside (pictured)
2 oz. London Dry Gin
3/4 oz. Lemon Juice
3/4 oz. Simple Syrup
~8 Mint Leaves
1 dash Orange Bitters

Shake all but the bitters. Strain into a chilled rocks glass and dash bitters on top. Garnish with a smacked sprig of mint.

For the Southside Fizz, strain instead into a 6- to 8-oz. highball or juice glass and dash bitters on top. Then fill with 3-4 oz. of seltzer and garnish with a smacked sprig of mint.

Gin Rickey
1 1/2 oz. Old Tom Gin (traditionally) or London Dry Gin
Juice of 1/2 a Lime (~1/2 oz. Lime Juice)
3 oz. Seltzer

Juice half a lime into a 6- to 8-oz. highball or juice glass. Add ice, gin, and club soda, and stir. Garnish with the spent lime shell. For a traditional Rickey, substitute whiskey for the gin.

Bourbon Highball
2 oz. Bourbon
4 oz. Ginger Ale or Club Soda

Combine in an 8ish-oz. highball or juice glass with ice and stir.

Gin and Tonic
2 oz. Gin
4 oz. Tonic Water

Combine in an 8ish-oz. highball or juice glass with ice and stir. Optionally, garnish with a wedge of lime.

Cuba Libre
2 oz. Aged Rum
4 oz. Coca-Cola (or similar)

Combine in an 8ish-oz. highball or juice glass with ice and stir. Garnish with a wedge of lime (essential here - both for flavor and because without it, this is simply a Rum and Coke).

Pappy Van Winkle

Image courtesy of the Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery, which I was surprised to discover has a website.

Back in January, I got a glimpse of the whiskey aficionado's Valhalla, with a taste of Pappy Van Winkle's 23-year.

If you don't recognize the name, you're in good company. Pappy Van Winkle is extremely hard to find, and almost inconceivably expensive for a bourbon. It's also very, very good.

The Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery, which produces it, has a pedigree stretching back to the actual Van Winkle family in the nineteenth century. The Van Winkles took over an existing Kentucky whiskey operation in 1872, which they operated as the Stitzel-Weller Distillery for a hundred years. After the company was sold under stockholder pressure in 1972, Julian Van Winkle, III, a strong contender for best name in the whiskey world, decided to start from scratch with an old family recipe.

I really can't make this stuff up. You could write a book about these guys. 

The more familiar Rebel Yell was one of the Stitzel-Weller brands, introduced in 1949 to commemorate the founding of the original distillery. Rebel Yell and Pappy Van Winkle also have something else in common: wheat.

Bourbons are required by law to be at least 51% corn-derived (for the most fascinating taxonomy of spirits you've ever read, check out the US Code), while the rest of the mash can be any sort of grain. Generally, this is a mixture of rye and barley, along with more corn. Rye, like its namesake whiskey, tends to be rougher and spicier than other cereals. Wheat is way on the other end of the spectrum, with a grassy note that takes you right back 7,000 years.

Pappy's mash is corn, wheat, and barley. This is a big deal to them, and, well, I trust it. They certainly know more about aging whiskey for two decades than I do. But it does make instinctive sense - if you're going to keep flavors pent up together for that long, you want them to play nice with each other.

Because it's so rare, and so expensive (our shared glass worked out to about four dollars a sip), Pappy Van Winkle is a cult obsession among whiskey drinkers. My liquor store gets three bottles of it a year, and about thirty calls a week looking for it. A bottle of the 20-year famously sold for $1,190 at auction a few years ago, and there's a bottle of the 23 on the auction block for thirteen hundred euros as we speak. Almost three weeks to go - God only knows how much it'll sell for.

A lot of this is driven by hype, yes, and the desire to show off how much money one has. Some is the product of a deliberately-limited supply, about seven thousand bottles per year. At the same time, the whiskey's been aged almost a quarter of a century. When these grains were planted, there was still a Soviet Union. It's impossible for producers to predict demand that far in advance, and impossible for us consumers to know how much a thing like that should cost.

People can spend years without getting their hands on it. The fact that I lucked into it when I did, barely initiated into the Ways of Pappy, is definitely not fair to them. Hell, I didn't even know it was a bourbon going in; I thought it was a rye. That's obviously foolish in retrospect, because twenty-three years ago, there was pretty much one rye left in America. But at the same time, it was completely instinctive - surely this whiskey, about which I knew nothing except that it was The Whiskey, precious and finely-made since time immemorial, must be some sort of 51% rye grain coelacanth, a survivor of the Volstead Act and the two great wars and American whiskey's forty years wandering in the desert?

Nope. Wheated bourbon.

I give you all of that backstory so that when I present my observations as I wrote them down that very day, my evident assumptions about what I was getting into can be appropriately accounted for:

"First of all, I'm assuming it was cask strength. No hint of water. Aging that long weakens it enough anyhow. Despite that, and the fact that it was rye, it is the smoothest thing on earth. Taking a swallow is like a meditative exercise. No jolt, no burn. Just warmth. It's very woody on the nose. Almost sweet, like they did eighteen years in oak and five in cherry. The sip is wood and grain. The swallow isn't vegetal but vegetabley, like a peppery salad green - not arugula, but in its family. Grassy. Stalk-y. Something very green. And all warm and oaked and slightly, *slightly* caramelled. Spectacular."

Obviously the sweetness, smoothness, and gentility that surprised me so much in a "rye" make perfect sense in a wheated bourbon. The noticeable plantiness should have tipped me off to the presence of wheat, but I was too focused on on the flavors of the spirit to give my analytical brain the time of day.

If you'd like to repeat my experience for yourself, a glass of 20- or 23-year Pappy can be yours at Mistral.

Day 2: Russell House Tavern

I confess: I've been to Russell House before. Many times. Yes, we're two days into Negroni Week, and I've already broken my own rule.

Believe it or not, I planned for this. Russell House was my dedicated fallback bar (distinct from a fall backbar, where I assume one can get a pumpkin milk punch). If one thing led to another and I needed someplace convenient, of guaranteed quality, I had every intention of ending up at Russell House Tavern.

They're still billing themselves as a "New American Tavern" on their website, but the tavern is a fixture in Harvard Square. It was full but not packed when I was there last night, and last night was a Tuesday.

Mention Negroni Week at Russell House, and you'll get a Negroni Week Passport, with spaces to stamp for ten participating bars in each of ten cities. Suddenly, my own seven-bar project seems far less ambitious.

It was at this establishment that I first fell in love with the Jungle Bird, so I tend to trust Campari experiments conducted here. They're serving both classic Negronis and a special variant called the Palazzo this week. I opted to try the latter.

The Palazzo starts out with gin and Campari, like you'd expect. The Russell House twist is to finish it with a 50/50 mixture of Booker's bourbon and St. George raspberry liqueur, with the goal of hitting sweet vermouth's flavor notes without actually including any. It's garnished with a slice of orange peel, as usual, and served neat.

It's a pleasant drink, but it strikes me as quite different from a standard Negroni. Most of the sip is the bourbon-raspberry combination, until the Campari hits on the aftertaste. The result is that it's less complex than its parent cocktail, while at the same time being more subtle than you expect it to be. Probably not one for the Negroni purists, but I liked it well enough.

Sales of both the Palazzo and the classic Negroni benefit the Leary Firefighters' Foundation, founded in 2000 by actor and local son Denis Leary. In those fourteen years, the foundation has given out millions of dollars to fire departments around the country for equipment, training, and facilities - a good chunk of that in Boston and Worcester.

Two days down, five to go. And remember - tonight, we drink for AccesSportAmerica!