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.

Two Versions Of The Same, Neither Of Them Done Exactly Right

The Deshler (PDT, page 105) is a drink that I’ve had twice tonight, neither time made how it’s apparently intended. It calls for [conjuring ye olde tymey time form of transmitting proportions in cocktail recipes] six parts rye, four parts Dubonnet (which I bought a bottle of today) and one part Cointreau, with two dashes of Peychaud’s.

I don’t have Cointreau. But Goober googled it and ran upstairs and got some triple sec, which Cointreau is?. So we used that the first time. Lo, this is one nice tasting cocktail! Without looking at the ingredients (or without looking at them too closely), Goober correctly guessed that it was a variation on a Manhattan, which the note says it is. To me, this tasted more complete and cocktail-y than a Manhattan; as strange as that sounds, my impression of Manhattans is that they’re rye with an added subtle flavor of some sort. Which, don’t get me wrong, I really, really like, but is usually just kind of boozy tasting.

After Jen got home late from work we made another cocktail, and it wasn’t until I poured a couple of ingredients that I realized that Goober’s triple sec was locked away upstairs. We figured our bottle of Domanier Cognac A l’Orange would be, uh, orange tasting. It’s a Grand Marnier knockoff, I think. We did that. Not the same but still decently cocktail-like.

Can Sherry Regrow Your Hair?

The Dewey D. from the PDT book (page 105) is constructed from rye, Lustau East India Sherry, Aperol and Angostura bitters. We had cream sherry, which is sort of, kind of close to the Lustau thing. Also, I picked up the wrong bottle of bitters and dumped two big dashes of orange Angostura bitters in there (it’s not even the same color). All the same, this was good.

The Fine Art Of Screwing With Recipes

So clearly this Bénédictine we got is burning a hole in my pocket — or whatever; it sounds scary and dangerous to think about alcohol burning parts of one’s clothing — because I went to that well again. When I was flipping through The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks I noticed a lot of recipes that used it. Tonight I found one called a Monte Carlo (page 260).

The thing people seem to talk about with Embury’s book is the “opinionated” nature of his writing. You see that in this recipe. It calls for one part Bénédictine, two parts rye and one or two dashes of Angostura bitters. And immediately he’s like, “This drink is a bit on the sweet side. It can be improved by adding 2 parts lemon juice and increasing the rye from 2 parts to about 4 or 5.” I don’t know what his deal is with refusing to write out numbers under 11, but whatever. In essence, it’s a much different drink. I like the freedom of being able to not give a fuck about recipes.

So to that end, I ran out of rye so I used bourbon instead. I followed his advice, however, and upped the whiskey-everything else proportion and added the lemon juice. I think there’s a lot of lemon — maybe half that much lemon would work. Also, I get the concept of rye — that particular rye flavor would probably stand out better. But it was still OK — I’d try it again, with some tweaks.

If By “If Necessary It Can Be Stored, Corked And Refrigerated, For Up To One Week After Opening” You Mean Forget About It In The Lower Door Shelf Of The Refrigerator For More Than A Year, Then I’m Right There With You

There was a little bit of manzanilla sherry in the refrigerator from “a while ago” so I Googled a cocktail around it and found this slideshow idea, which doesn’t actually use manzanilla sherry but rather amontillado but which I thought that, in the spectrum of sherry, was close enough. In effect, it’s a cutting-corners recipe.

OK, so we didn’t use the basil leaves the recipe called for, nor did we use the amontillado sherry. And we substituted an off-brand Grand Marnier for Cointreau. And of course we omitted the orange twist, but that’s like every night, because who really keeps citrus fruit around just to construct twists? If you’re doing that you clearly don’t really drink.

So given all that: Dry sherry, Rye whiskey, Grand Marnier (or some such), lemon juice and orange bitters. It was tart and, as Jen mentioned, you kind of wanted more of that nutty sherry flavor. I was intrigued by the way the rye disappeared; not sure how that happened except that everything else piled on could easily blot it out. This is when I think there should be a Likert Scale of relative cocktailia happiness but of course there isn’t.