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 . . .

Good, Better, Best; Or Whatever

The Easter Elchies cocktail (Mr. Boston, page 179), named for some fucking house on the Macallan estate, calls for eight parts single malt scotch, one part Cherry Heering and one part Punt y Mes plus on dash of orange bitters.

Of course we didn’t use single malt scotch because WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD USE SINGLE MALT SCOTCH IN A COCKTAIL? I actually have a bottle of single malt here, maybe two, and honestly, I never know when to drink it. Most nights seem not to rise to the level of single malt. The bottle(s) just sit there. Weird because they’re not that much more expensive, or at least the single malt I get. Which is to say, if they cost twice as much, you’d think they only get tasted every two or three times you drink booze. Instead, it never gets drunk. I probably should just change that. It would be a more “mature” move.

So anyway, cheap blended scotch with that weird Polish cherry stuff I got and mostly Punt y Mes but also a little bit of sweet vermouth because we ran out of Punt y Mes. And . . . it was good! Uncle Goober noted the Rob Roy-plus thing going on. Oh, yeah, right — I always forget about that; variations on this-or-that. Would it have been more good with single malt scotch? Is that ever even a possibility?

Silent Third

Now here’s an under the radar drink that I only alighted on because it had triple sec in it and I was wanting to use triple sec. Until relatively recently I assumed triple sec was some crap that you put in margaritas, and I don’t make margaritas, so whatever. Then I had a Deshler and then I actually looked up what this “crap” was. So I didn’t buy Cointreau but rather the random DeK***** stuff that is at the store and which probably is really OK or whatever.

The Silent Third is a drink that’s like a scotch sour in a way — 2 parts scotch, 1 part triple sec and 1 part lemon juice. Jen liked it, for what it’s worth.