That’s Amaro

I’d been seeing recipes for cocktails using Amaro CioCiaro and finally got a bottle. The first recipe I rooted around and found was this Triborough cocktail in the PDT book.

For some reason there are all these borough-based cocktails. Manhattan — obviously. But there’s these Brooklyn and Bronx cocktails, too. In the David A. Embury book he quips that “Every borough of Greater New York has to have its special cocktail. . . .” That line is preceded by something called a “Westchester Special.” Maybe at one point people tasted the treacly Sweet Tart taste of maraschino and automatically thought “Brooklyn,” but it’s hard to discern what that might be. Whatever. And I actually like maraschino.

So anyway, the Triborough (not “Triboro”) is a recent creation from the PDT people*: Rye, kirschwasser, Punt e Mes**, Amaro CioChiara and Angostura bitters. Four parts, then one part for everything else: 3.5 ounces. Plus one dash. And . . . it’s good!

This, by the way, seems like a nice primer on the matter of Italian bitters.

*It’s Nate Dumas, who now is part of New York Distilling Company, an all-star dream spirits team who, as far as I know, have been doggedly trying to open the first distillery in the New York area for like a gazillion years.

**And, we don’t have Punt e Mes, but apparently you can recreate this by combining two parts sweet vermouth with one pat Campari).

A Root Cocktail

These people in Philadelphia make liquors from early American recipes. We have a bottle of their Root, which they say is basically the proto Root Beer, before it was denuded of its alcohol.

I was looking for cocktails made from Root, which wasn’t easy. I don’t know if it’s the SEO of “root” or what. Maybe I didn’t spend enough time looking. The ones on their website weren’t interesting but this guy created one that kind of worked: rye, dry vermouth, Root, a little simple syrup (Demerara syrup), bitters (we used Angostura instead) and a lemon twist (which we didn’t use mostly because I’m lazy).

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.