The great Stephen Colbert had the good taste to invite author, cocktail historian and all-around good guy Dave Wondrich onto his program last night, where Dave made him some tough-times cocktails and invented a new one … The Colbert Bump!

Hmm, we’ll have to see about that new drink. Colbert Bumps for cocktail hour tonight!

THE COLBERT BUMP
(by Dave Wondrich, created for Stephen Colbert)

1-1/2 ounces gin.
1 ounce Cherry Heering.
1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice.
Soda water.

In a Collins glass, build over ice: gin, Heering, lemon juice, then top with soda and stir.

Contrary to stated instructions, feel free to use Democratic gin.

Last night I finally participated in TDN, Thursday Drink Night. Sheesh, it’s about time.

TDN is a weekly gathering at The Mixoloseum Bar, a chat room where cocktail webbloggers, readers, enthusiasts, authors and even spirits industry folk gather on Thursday nights from 4pm-midnight Pacific time to make original cocktails, talk about them, make fun of each other and stay up too late. There’s a theme each week, whether it’s a specific product or a general base spirit or something like last night’s theme, “Equal Proportions.”

Can you make a good drink using equal proportions of the ingredients? Well sure, it’s been done all the time in cocktail history. My favorite example of this is the Negroni, equal parts of gin, Campari and sweet vermouth. The Sidecar began as an equally proportioned cocktail, of brandy, lemon juice and Cointreau. Thing is … that particular Sidecar doesn’t really taste balanced to me. I prefer it as 3:2:1, others at 2:1:1 (and some like the wacky Embury proportion of 8:2:1). Cocktails are all about balance, and when you’re constrained by a rule like this it can get tough to make a cocktail that’s properly balanced, and therein lay the challenge. The rules were to make an original cocktail using only equal proportions of your ingredients, with the exception being dashes of bitters or an egg white.

I was pretty happy with my entry, I must say. I started thinking about it on the way home, wanting to do something tequila-based and remembering something Misty Kalkofen of the bar Drink in Boston said recently, about how grapefruit bitters work well with yellow Chartreuse. DING! This one sprang fully-formed from my head, not unlike Athena. While I reserve the right to tweak the proportions later (e.g., the soda element won’t be constrained to the 3/4 ounce anymore, although I measured that amount in the original drink), I think it was pretty darn good as it was.

The grapefruit soda should be a high-quality one with a signifacant juice content. I thought that Ting, the Orangina-like grapefruit soda from Jamaica, would be ideal, but it’s not always easy to find. I couldn’t get to Galco’s before closing (and I knew they had some), so I ended up using IZZE Sparkling Grapefruit, which is 70% juices (grapefruit, apple, orange and white grape) with no added sugar. It had a terrific, fresh flavor and I think I’ll stick with this one, although I do want to try it with Ting. I wouldn’t use Fresca, but some of my bartender friends speak highly of Squirt, which I must confess I’ve never tried.

The name came from a rather infamous trip I took to Mexico back in college with some close friends. There were many adventures and inside jokes that survive until this day, and when I was trying to think of a name for a new tequila-based drink this one popped right out.

THE ANIMALITO

3/4 ounce añejo tequila (I used Partida).
3/4 ounce Laird’s bonded apple brandy.
3/4 ounce yellow Chartreuse.
3/4 ounce fresh lime juice.
2 dashes Bittermens Grapefruit Bitters (substitute Fee’s).
2 dashes Angostura Orange Bitters (substitute any other orange bitters).
IZZE Sparkling Grapefruit or Ting Grapefruit soda.
Grapefruit peel.

Combine the firsts four ingredients with the bitters in an Old Fashioned glass. Add ice and stir for 15 seconds or so. Top with grapefruit soda and stir briefly. Garnish with grapefruit peel.

Tart and refreshing, with a nice little bitter edge! I liked this very much, and so did the folks in the Mixo Bar (thanks, y’all!). I may try making it shaken and up with half the bitters and no soda, just for kicks.

This drink is dedicated to Mr. John Norbutas. (“I want those goddamned Animalitos.” Long story.)

Here’s one of many fantastic drinks I had during my first evening at Cure back home in New Orleans, finally getting there about four months after they opened.

This is a drink from the book by Cure bartenders Kirk Estopinal and Maks Pazuniak [currently out of print but soon-to-be-reissued] which was created by Kyle Davidson from The Violet Hour in Chicago. It appears on Cure’s side menu, not the main one, and is a must-get. Again based on half-spirit, half-amaro, all the ingredients play off one another so well. It’s absolutely out of this world. It’s another one of those drinks that let the bitterness of the amaro be more assertive but still keep it in check (Cynar is relentlessly bitter, and one of the only amaros I don’t drink by itself). The description from the book tells you exactly what to expect:

Picture yourself in the limestone-walled courtyard of an Italian villa off the coast of the Riviera. You are surrounded by fragrant herbs and flowers, and the sea air is blowing gently. The sun is bright, but it’s not hot, and you have nothing to do all day but relax and savor the sensations all around you. Drinking this cocktail is kind of like that if somebody suddenly punched you in the stomach just as you were begining to doze off in the sun. In a good way.

Um … yeah you right.

THE ART OF CHOKE
(by Kyle Davidson, The Violet Hour, Chicago)

1 ounce white rum.
1 ounce Cynar.
1/8 ounce fresh lime juice.
1/8 ounce rich Demerara sugar syrup (2:1).
1/4 ounce green Chartreuse.
Sprig of mint.

Bruise the mint sprig with the other ingredients in a mixing glass. Stir with ice for half a minute, then strain over fresh ice into an Old Fashioned glass. Garnish with another mint sprig.

Here’s one of many fantastic drinks I had during my first evening at Cure back home in New Orleans, finally getting there about four months after they opened.

We started off the evening with the wonderful Angostura Sour, which taught us that aromatic cocktail bitters could actually be the base spirit for a cocktail. Now, thinking that it is indeed possible to make a drink in which the only base spirit is a high-alcohol, supposedly non-potable aromatic bitters, how would they give it a local twist? Well, Peychaud’s bitters, of course, and giving it “the Pimm’s Cup treatment.” May I present their creation (to our mutual amazement)?

THE GUNSHOP FIZZ
(by Kirk Estopinal and Maksym Pazuniak, Cure, New Orleans)

2 ounces Peychaud’s bitters.
1 ounce lemon juice.
1 ounce simple syrup.
2 strawberries.
3 cucumber slices.
3 swaths of orange peel.
3 swaths of grapefruit peel.
Sanbittèr.

Add all ingredients but the Sanbittèr to a mixing tin. Muddle thoroughly and let stand for 2 minutes for the flavors to blend. Shake hard with ice, and double strain over fresh ice in a Collins glass. Top with Sanbittèr and garnish with a cucumber slice.

Wow.

This drink is incredibly light and refreshing, with a bitter edge that kicks in a while after the initial finish, and slaps your palate in the best possible way. The cherry, anise and spice flavors of the Peychaud’s harmonize beautifully with everything else, and one extra little edge of bitterness from the Sanbittèr on top. (In case you’re not familiar with it, it’s a San Pellegrino product, a bright red soda sold in 50ml bottles that’s like a non-alcoholic Campari and soda.) And look at that color! It’s a bit labor-intensive (try to avoid ordering six of these on a night when they’re three-deep at the bar), but very much worth the effort. Bravo, y’all.

And the name? Antoine Amadie Peychaud’s pharmacy where he made his family bitters recipe was at 437 Royal Street in the French Quarter, which is currently occupied by James M. Cohen’s antique gun and sword shop.

If you’re going to drink a tall, bright red drink in New Orleans, this is the serious one.

Cure itself is in a reclaimed firehouse, elegantly designed, a nice long bar plus tables and a few booths, and one bit of intensely New Orleanian décor that I’m not sure too many other food-and-drink establishments have had the stones to hang in the bar.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it’s the national bird of New Orleans, Periplaneta americana, the American cockroach. I don’t know about y’all’s, but the ones in New Orleans fly. They tend to like to aim for your face. Guaranteed to make a grown man scream like a girl.  Or at least this one.  (*shudder*)

Okay, back to the drinks …

I think I’ll now have a new routine every time I go back to New Orleans. That routine will be to head to the corner of Upperline and Freret every Sunday evening I’m in town, arriving a bit after 5pm, and spend the next several hours at Cure, which recently became one of my favorite bars in the city (and anywhere, for that matter). New Orleans has needed a place like this for a long, long time.

If you’ve been following along here you’ve seen a couple of posts about Cure, opened by Neal Bodenheimer (formerly of The Delachaise and Bar Tonique, its “ancestors,” if you will) earlier this year. As I didn’t go home for Jazzfest I didn’t get to make it to Cure until Tales. I’m torn between saying it was worth the wait (it was) and goddammit why couldn’t I get there sooner.

I had met Maksym Pazuniak, one of their bartenders, via my friend Mary when she was dining at Rambla last Christmas. That was Maks’ gig at the time, and she figured we might want to get to know each other. She was right, and two gigs later I finally got to sit at the bar again while Maks was behind the stick.

I should pause here to mention that Maks and another Cure bartender, Kirk Estopinal (a NOLA native but who had worked in NYC and at The Violet Hour in Chicago) have recently self-published a book called Rogue Cocktails, featuring a 40 mostly-original “outside the box” cocktail recipes and a few classics worth revisiting. [UPDATE: Unfortunately they had to pull their book after a cease-and-desist from the folks at Rogue Ale. Look for an expanded and renamed edition in the summer of 2010. Check their blog beta cocktails for further updates.]

In addition to a provocative manifesto for bartending, Kirk and Maks wanted to come up with a book that didn’t have the same recipes over and over again or one that required exotic produce and specially-made syrups and tinctures. They wanted a book for a bartender who works at a well-stocked bar that challenges them to think about some of their ingredients differently. The book got some nice coverage in da local papuh, and you can order the book via their Rogue Cocktails website.

Their outside-the-box thinking is typified by their version of a drink found in Charles Baker’s Gentlemen’s Companion from the 1930s, a fizz in which the only base spirit is 90-proof Angostura bitters. Um … but we add bitters to cocktails by the dash. Aren’t they supposed to be “non-potable” by government definition? Supposedly, yes … but it seems they’re quite potable if you know how to handle them.

Here’s Kirk’s adaptation of that fizz, turned into a sour. It’s become very popular among our more daring bartenders, who seem to have had great success serving it to our more daring imbibers. Do give this a try — considering, as Kirk and Maks say in the book, that “it’s the cocktail equivalent of eating a tablespoon of salt,” I think you’ll find it much more pleasant than that, surprisingly so.

ANGOSTURA SOUR

1-1/2 ounces Angostura bitters.
1 ounce simple syrup.
3/4 ounce fresh lime juice.
1 egg white.

Dry shake the egg white with the lime juice for half a minute. Add the bitters and syrup plus ice and shake hard. Strain into a cocktail coupe.

We served this to our friend Devin when he was visiting. He loved it, and couldn’t wait to go back home and try it out on our friend Chris, with whom he imbibes on many occasions. “Taste this!” he said, after making one for Chris and exhorting him to guess what was in it. “I incorrectly guessed Fernet Branca and nutmeg and then Gammel Dansk and saffron. It was really interesting.” It’s really good. Try one.

And just you wait. It gets better …