This Is A Very Good Cocktail

The Duboudreau Cocktail (PDT, page 110), created by Jim Meehan based on some other mixologist’s recipe, is eight parts rye, three parts Dubonnet Rouge, one part Fernet-Branca and one part Elderflower liqueur. We don’t have Fernet-Branca, because whenever I think about buying it it seems kind of expensive. Jen suggested substituting Cynar for it, which I did. This is a very good cocktail.

Shake ‘N Bake Cocktails

The thing I learned, belatedly, after buying a fucking thing of it, is that the only thing Drambuie is good for is a Rusty Nail, which I still haven’t bothered making not least of which because Drambuie, as a scotch-based herbal whatever the fuck ever, is mixed with straight scotch. Basically, what the fuck? Scotch mixed with scotch? You’re kidding, right? So I never use it.

I suppose I should try a Rusty Nail. Maybe not now but some other time. Maybe tomorrow, just to get it out of the way. But I can’t believe it’s awesome. It’s just two ingredients, right?

All of which is to say, this colored my idea about a Dubonnet Cocktail, which at two ingredients (gin and Dubonnet Rouge), equally measured, seems too simple to be good. That’s a bad assumption. It’s a good cocktail. It feels like making a pork chop with Shake ‘n Bake, but it’s good. It has orange bitters, too. But still.

When Cocktails Are Like Sex With Bad Pizza

The great thing about the Mr. Boston book is that there are loads of cocktail recipes that are included and it’s not completely clear whether they’re there because they exist or if there is some kind of endorsement. I assumed it was the former, that the book was intended to be a dictionary of stuff. At the same time, the nod toward curation in the accompanying text makes you wonder if they’re serious about some of these drinks. And what I like about it is that there are no “bylines,” unlike a lot of books, so it’s never really clear what’s new and what’s old.

At any rate, I would like to say that the Guadalajara (page 137) seems like a flabby, uninspired cocktail. It’s got tequila (four parts), dry vermouth (two parts) and Bénédictine (one part) and yet nothing really comes forward from that. I didn’t use a lemon twist as was called for, and maybe that would make a difference, and it’s silly for me not to have done that because there are a bunch of lemons in the fridge, but at the same time, I have such an aversion to dismembering fruit that it’s hard for me to think to go over and do such a thing.

This Is Just To Say

This is just to say . . . we had a leftover bottle of a Tuscan wine made from 55% Sangiovese, 25% Syrah and 20% Merlot (a 2011 Ruffino Il Ducale, which I’m pretty sure was brought over here by someone) that tasted great — great! — with our bastardized Zuni-style roasted chicken. I wouldn’t have expected it to work because, you know, it’s red and it’s chicken and it’s leftover and we — or at least one of us — doesn’t know shit about wine (really), but this was awesome. When you tasted it with high-heat chicken fatty roasted chicken, the wine’s flavors jumped out and sharpened into something beyond what what there. One of those revelatory pairings. It turns out that “Il Ducale Toscana is the perfect accompaniment to herb-roasted chicken . . .” And, indeed, if you Google something long enough, you’ll find some evidence to support that: “Pair Sangioveses with rare steaks, roasted game birds (or wild boar), rich chicken or mushroom dishes or anything with tomato sauce” — “rich chicken”; I’ll take it.

Ginning Up A Post

So the thing about gin is — and this is probably just me, and I’m sure it’s just me — that it’s kind of a weirdly uninspiring spirit. OK, I said it. I invite the one-and-a-half people who read this to challenge me, tell me what I’m missing or what I’m doing incorrectly. But the more I drink cocktails — and the more I notice what I’m drinking — the more I realize that I avoid gin.

Gin is OK, don’t get me wrong. I like a gin martini before dinner — but only one! — but it seems like something that gets covered up more than it gets highlighted. I do have some gin drinks I like: the mastic liqueur one and a Negroni both come to mind. But I don’t sit there and sip gin — I’m guessing no one does. [Googling: OK, some do, but I’m unconvinced; I also see that it’s classified as a neutral spirit, so OK, I can kind of trust my intuition sometimes.]

The first gin drink comes from Robert Hess’ The Essential Bartender’s Guide: How to Create Truly Great Cocktails. It’s the Caprice (page 137): an appropriate balance (3:1:1) of gin, dry vermouth and Bénédictine with a dash of orange bitters. It was OK.

The second gin drink comes from Mr. Boston was the Leapyear: basically the same proportions as above (4:1:1) but with more gin, then sweet vermouth, Grand Marnier (we substituted that Domanier Cognac A l’Orange for that) with a dash of orange bitters. The Leapyear was OK, too. I was sitting there thinking something along the lines of, “This would be good for people who really like gin because it lets that floral shizz through but adds a little flavor.” But then you’re like, “Who the fuck really wants to taste gin?”

And don’t even get me started on vodka cocktails; as far as I’m concerned they don’t really exist. Which probably means we should try making more of them.