Not Quite Mortal But Pretty Good, Nonetheless . . .

Here’s a cocktail that tastes like a lot of things, but which is solid (and I don’t care if it’s too clever by half): the Venial Sin (Mr. Boston, page 145) is six parts blanco tequila, two parts yellow Chartreuse (substituted Strega), one part Elderflower liqueur, one part maraschino and two parts mezcal.

Good Like, Weird Good

The Keegan (Mr. Boston, page 185) is four parts bourbon, three parts Aperol, two parts yellow chartreuse and three parts lime juice. I have two almost-empty bottles of lime juice in the fridge, so this was appealing, as was the chartreuse, though I have green and not yellow. So, you know, there’s that.

Normally I don’t like this kind of low-alcohol drink; I like stuff boozy. This was good, though. Strange good. Weird good.

The Age Of Vermouth

There’s a drink in the 1927 book Barflies and Cocktails called “Warday’s Cocktail” (page 75), which is 1 teaspoon of yellow Chartreuse (I used green because I only have green), “1/3 Italian Vermouth” — i.e., one ounce sweet vermouth, 1/3 gin (read: one ounce gin) and 1/3 calvados or Apple Jack (we used one ounce of Apple Jack).

I was intrigued by it because a gin/Apple Jack-based drink sounds really weird. That, and the chartreuse has been burning a hole in my pocket (perhaps it literally could . . .). It’s a pretty OK cocktail — sort of like the Ur or Platonic cocktail in that it just tastes like generalized “cocktail.”

(Barflies and Cocktails is really weird, by the way; very “23 Skiddoo” or whatnot. Lots of mixers and vermouthiness.)

On Yellow-Red Color Blindness

I was going to say, this drink was X, Y & Z and then I go back to the recipe and realize that it was very fucked up. On page 159 there’s a drink called the La Louche which is six parts gin, four parts Lillet rouge, two parts lime juice, one part yellow Chartreuse and one part simple syrup.

I knew I had green Chartreuse and not the yellow variety and thought “Oh well.” But it wasn’t until going back just now that I realized I missed the “rouge” part of “Lillet rouge.”

Anyway, this drink — with green Chartreuse and the non-rouge Lillet was kind of one note (as determined by the executive committee, not me), like a fancified gimlet. Maybe I’ll try it the normal way at some point.