Build in a rocks glass with one big cube.
New Spins on Gin from America’s Best Bars
I enjoyed reading an advance copy of Michael Turback’s All The Gin Joints: New Spins on Gin from America’s Best Bars (ISBN 978-1466282988), a book celebrating gin with “101 artisanal cocktails.” Mr. Turback writes in a light, engaging style, weaving quotes from Casablanca through the prologue and the brief history of gin that front the cocktail recipes. A small fairly complete section covers proper bartending tools, material which should be familiar to people who love cocktails.
The cocktails themselves range from the staggeringly simple “Wolf’s Bite”, (3 parts gin, 2 parts grapefruit juice, and 1 part Green Chartreuse) to the almost comically complex “Daikon Dream”, which has intrepid home mixologists stirring up dongchimi broth, taking two full days to ferment at room temperature.
That’s not to say that there aren’t some intriguing drinks in this book. I am honored to know all of the Texas bartenders in the book, and Bobby Heugel’s “Smitten” is not only delicious, but within the abilities of the home cocktail-maker. Likewise, Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s “East of Eden” takes an gin sour with equal parts citrus and syrup, but enhances the white flower aromatics of St. Germain with a floral-lychee scented Gewurztraminer reduction. There are some cocktails in “All The Gin Joints” that combine deliciousness and ease of construction into a pleasant whole.
Yeah my friend got the recipe for this in the 00s directly from Tommy and there was no simple, it's definitely .5 maraschino.
Exactly. I was expecting spirit forward dry drink. Actually quite sweet, but not in a cloying way.
Curated to correct gin, a note added about Beefeater 24 error, and a link added to reference an article published yesterday (which I didn't see until today, eerie coincidence) about the history of this cocktail.
It is a lovely drink. I particularly enjoyed a slight variation published by Adam Elmegirab which uses 3 dashes of his Spanish Bitters in place of the two dashes of orange bitters. The Spanish bitters are a more floral/fruity, semi-orange bitters which fit seamlessly into this recipe.
From what I can tell, the original recipe called for Beefeater in 2002, but not Beefeater 24 (which has teas as part of its profile) since the latter was not released until October 2008. [There is a typo in one article that says something about it being in 45 markets in 2004, but it doesn't match the rest of the article and was likely meant to be 2014 based on the article's 2015 date.] Dr. Adam Elmegirab's Book of Bitters lists the venue as Mad Fox in Amsterdam. Difford's says 2002 at Milk & Honey, London. I am wondering if the competition it was created for was in Amsterdam, since all appearances are that Chris Jepson was working in London at the time. At any rate, its long time inclusion on Milk & Honey's menu is what drove its popularity.
Tasty drink. The chartreuse really is front and center in the taste profile, but the other elements play nicely in the background supporting the chartreuse. I made it using Appleton Signature and OFTD.