Madeira

Had a thing of Madeira left over and it doesn’t last forever so we found this recipe for a drink called “Yankee Notions”, which we riffed on, substituting a squirt of agave syrup for the 1/2 ounce of “chamomile cordial”: 2 1/4 ounces bourbon, 1 1/4 ounce Madeira and three dashes Angostura bitters.

Cassis

This recipe for a modified whiskey sour is good, and put to use the new bottle of cassis I got at the store. Costco agave syrup substitute for simple syrup.

Aquavit

The Scandinavian liquor Aquavit or Akvavit is the type of hooch that shouldn’t be too cheap. If done right it’s quite good, however, and is tasty with pickled fish, which may be a little bit of an esoteric selling point I suppose.

This Norwegian Wood cocktail is worth returning to again and again, until you realize that good Aquavit may be kind of a pain in the ass to get a hold of: four parts aquavit, four parts Laird’s Applejack (we used Calvados), three parts sweet vermouth, one part Yellow Chartreuse (we used Strega) and one dash Angostura bitters.

Blended Scotch For More Than Scotch & Soda

Looking up stuff in the PDT book, I found a cocktail called the “Professor” using rum, port and sweet vermouth. I noticed in the note that it was a variation on the Chancellor cocktail, so I looked up that (I have a thing about rum, which is my own problem) and found this: four parts blended scotch, two parts port, one part white vermouth and two dashes orange bitters. As the link notes, scotch is an odd cocktail ingredient, but this was good . . .

Journal: Hibiscus

For maybe more than a year there’s a tab open on my phone — the first in a long cascading tile of tabs — with this cocktail using hibiscus called The Southern Tart. I think I left it there because I intended to make a note about it because I made some sort of cocktail with hibiscus-something-or-other — probably dried flowers steeped and cooled but I definitely don’t remember how or what now. I thought I might remember but I definitely for sure don’t. When hibiscus comes back into our lives again, maybe this link will help.

Now I can close the tab on the phone, freeing up top honors to “DIY All-Purpose Cleaning Solution” and eventually “Basic Ukulele Chords For Beginning Players.”