This is the first time I’ve managed to get my lazy, absentminded, procrastinatory ass in gear and participate in what is now the third installment of Raiders of the Lost Cocktail, run by the folks over at The Spirit World. (NOTE: Site now defunct.) The general idea behind it is this: “While we are certain there are great new cocktails yet to be discovered, we are equally certain there are great old cocktails that have been lost to the vagaries of time and chance. Some have been recovered by the new masters, but many have not. They are out there, in books and magazines, but they are at risk…”

I started digging through my old books (almost at the last minute of course, I being me) and started by escewing ones that lots of people probably already have, such as the Savoy Cocktail book. Given that I’d pulled out Charles Baker earlier this week he was still fresh in my mind, but lots of people already have his Gentleman’s Companion, but I’ll bet not quite as many people have his subsequent tomes, The South American Gentleman’s Companion, Being an Exotic Drinking Book Or, Up & Down the Andes with Jigger, Beaker & Flask.

Our usual standard for apricot brandy (that is, sweet apricot liqueur with a brandy base, not a clear eau-de-vie or distillate of apricots, such as Hungarian barackpalinka or the outstanding Blume Marillen) is Marie Brizard’s most excellent Apry, but lately we’ve been enjoying the relatively new product by Rothman & Winter from Austria (and imported by our pal Eric Seed of Haus Alpenz), called Orchard Apricot. It’s slightly lower in alcohol than Apry (24% as opposed to 30%) and slightly less sweet (I forget the brix, and don’t have my refractometer handy … actually, come to think of it, I don’t have a refractometer), so you might have to adjust the balance in your cocktails to your own preferences when using it. While it doesn’t have quite as much alcohol or sugar, what it does have is a deep, rich, wonderful flavor of apricots!

In the book I found three contenders, and last night Wes and I had a tasting of two. We passed the glasses back and forth, tasted, swished them around, wrinkled and furrowed our brows, and declared that we had two good cocktails but only one clear winner. Here’s the one that came out on top, plus the runner-up and a special bonus cocktail (one you’ve perhaps seen before but richly deserves another view), all featuring lovely lovely apricot brandy.

The PISCO-APRICOT TROPICÁLS, an Exotic Pair of Cocktails which May be Served Frozen, or Shaken as a Standard Cocktail, from Lima Country Club, Lima Peru.

If you have been able to rat-out a crock of this charming and fragrant Peruvian Grape Brandy, see Shopping Index, try these 2 to vary the Pisco Sour listed on Page 143.

2 oz Pisco Brandy
1/4 to 1/2 pony Garnier’s Apricot liqueur.
Juice 1/2 small lime.
Small dash Angostura.

Eitiher put in pre-chilled electric mixer with fine ice and serve in big champagne cocktail glass in frozen form, or shake with big ice and strain into chilled stemmed cocktail glass.

Or use same ingredients and routine, only adding 1 pony of ripe pineapple juice to the mix — whether frozen or shaken and strained. GArnish this last with thin stick of ripe pineapple.

These also may be further varied by using some other cordial than Apricot liqueur, such as: White Curaçao, Cointreau, Maraschino, peach liqueur or either type of Chartreuse. Miguel was the head bar-boy’s name. These were 2 of his specialties. Hope he’s still there if you should stay, as we did, at this lovely Club.

Well, chances are that by now Miguel is mixing at that Great Bar in the Sky, where all the liquor is premium, there’s cold running fresh fruit juices on tap and no such thing as sour mix or Pucker schnapps. Here’s how we did Miguel’s first concoction, and it’s my official entry in Raiders of the Lost Cocktail:

Pisco-Apricot Tropicál

2 ounces pisco.
1/2 ounce apricot brandy.
1/2 ounce fresh lime juice.
1 dash Angostura bitters.

Combine in a shaker with ice and shake for 10-12 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and garnish with a lime wheel.

The runner-up was still a fine drink, though, again in Charles’ words:

HERE’S another Brandy Business from the AMERICAN CLUB Bar in Buenos Aires, & Called a BRANDY MIST.

We lunched here 1 spring day with a group of expatriated men from the States, and upon hearing our mild wail upon the lack of mixed drinks of Latin creation to be found along the Rive Plate, this was suggested — was tested-out upon the spot. And accepted.

Pack an Old Fashioned Cocktail glass — with lip already rubbed with a sprig of crushed mint — with fine ice; hit it with 1 dash of Angostura and/or orange bitters. Now add 2 oz. really good Cognac brandy, not just any cheap California brand, 1/2 pony of veritable P. Garnier imported Peach Liqueur. Stir gently until chilled and garnish with 1 nice sprig of green mint which has been dipped into powdered sugar to give it a sparkling pleasantly frosted look. Garnier’s Apricotine will also work, our donor advised us — Apricotine, of course, being a superfine apricot-flavored liqueur distilled and made in Enghien-les-Bains, France.

Or, if you’re too lazy to read the Bard’s prose:

Brandy Mist

2 ounces Cognac.
1/2 ounce apricot brandy.
1 dash Angostura bitters.
1 dash orange bitters.
2 mint sprigs.
Superfine sugar.

Rub the lip of an Old Fashioned glass with a sprig of crushed mint, then fill with crushed ice. Add the Cognac, apricot brandy and bitters, and stir for 20-30 seconds. Take the second mint sprig, moisten it and dip in the superfine sugar, and garnish with the frosted mint sprig.

While we did like this drink, the apricot didn’t shine quite as much, and Wes felt that the mint might have been a bit of a problem; although we like mint, it seemed as if it was fighting with the apricot a bit. I might actually increase the apricot to 3/4 ounce next time I make this, especially if using the lower-alcohol and -sugar R&W brand, and see how it goes. Mint-fighting or not, I think this one does deserve more tries.

“Hey, do we have any cherry brandy?”

Thus came the request from Wes as he was digging for last night’s libation, and the answer was indeed yes, we’re usually never without the Cherry Heering (or kirsch, if that’s what he mean, which it wasn’t). We still haven’t replaced our most recently drained 1.75l bottle of Maker’s Mark, so our new bottle of Bulleit Bourbon stepped in. Properly equipped, then he was off.

This one came out of Gary Regan’s The Joy of Mixology, and is an adaptation of one that initially came from the Bard of Cocktails, the great Charles H. Baker Jr. and his classic The Gentleman’s Companion, or Around the World with Jigger, Beaker and Flask. Both Wes and I are trying to recall whether Gary specified Bourbon or listed it as “Bourbon or rye” (will double-check later), but we think it’s the former. Having looked up Baker’s original rendernig of the recipe we see he specifies it as a rye cocktail and are eager to try that version. That said, when Gary makes adaptive changes it’s usually for a very good reason — balance and flavor being two big ones. Wes thinks that Bourbon might actually be his preference here, but we’ll see.

I like everything about this drink but its name, which refers to the “Gulf of Tonkin incident” of the Spanish-American War in 1898, in which our country capitalized on an explosion of unknown origin aboard the USS Maine and blamed it on Spain as a pretext for starting a war. (All this shit sounds sadly familiar, doesn’t it? Sigh.)

A little Googling revealed that the drink is also called “McKinley’s Delight,” which I prefer actually, and we speculated that it might have become a Bourbon drink when rye fell out of favor during Prohibition. Take two coming soon, but in the meantime here’s the version we thoroughly enjoyed last night.

McKinley’s Delight
(a.k.a. “Remember the Maine”)

2 ounces Bourbon.
3/4 ounce sweet vermouth.
1/4 ounce cherry brandy (like Cherry Heering).
2 dashes absinthe or pastis (or slightly less, to taste).
1 dash Angostura bitters.

Combine with ice in a mixing glass and stir for no less than 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. No garnish is specified in the recipe, but given the flavor profile of this drink a Luxardo cherry or brandied cherry would not be inappropriate.

Here’s Charles Baker’s version, from The Gentleman’s Companion:

REMEMBER the MAINE, a Hazy Memory of a Night in Havana during the Unpleasantnesses of 1933, when Each Swallow Was Punctuated witih Bombs Going Off on the Prado, or the Sound of 3″ Shells Being Fired at the Hotel NACIONAL, then Haven for Certain Anti-Revolutionary Officers.

Treat this one with the respect it deserves, gentlemen. Take a tall bar glass and toss in 3 lumps of ice. Onto this foundation donate the following in order given: 1 jigger good rye whiskey, 1/2 jigger Italian vermouth, 1 to 2 tsp of cherry brandy, 1/2 tsp absinthe or Pernod Veritas. Stir briskly in clock-wise fashion — this makes it sea-going, presumably! — turn into a big chilled saucer champagne glass, twisting a curl of green lime or lemon peel over the top.

Mighty, mighty good.

Thing about this drink is that it’s really starting to catch on, and nobody calls it McKinley’s Delight. So I guess Remember the Maine it is.

And even better is this version! This is the one we’ve settled on — it’s closer to Baker’s version, and make it this way at home all the time.

Remember the Maine

2 ounces Rittenhouse 100 proof bonded rye whiskey.
3/4 ounce Carpano Antica sweet vermouth.
2 teaspoons Cherry Heering.
1/2 teaspoon absinthe.

Stir with ice for 30 seconds and strain. Garnish with a Luxardo cherry.

Bourbon shmourbon. This one needs the rye, most definitely. Rittenhouse, preferably.

This one came from about fifty clicks of the “Random Recipe” button on CocktailDB, which is what it took to finally find something that made me go “Hmmm!”

We’ve been on a bit of a brandy cocktail kick this week, and this one fit right in. It’s also a Chartreuse cocktail, and the world needs more Chartreuse cocktails (in this case the yellow variety). The original recipe called for an ounce of brandy, but that left the drink a bit sweet for my taste; I rebalanced it by adding another half-ounce of brandy, and that worked much better for me. Your mileage may vary.

This is a bit of a nostalgic cocktail for me, because my dad often referred to me by the name of this drink.

The Smart Alec Cocktail

1-1/2 ounces Cognac.
3/4 ounce yellow Chartreuse.
3/4 ounce Cointreau.
1 dash orange bitters.

Combine with ice in a mixing glass and stir for at least 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. No garnish specified.

I’m sure you could tweak the ingredients or add a bit more to come up with a Why You Little Smart Ass Bastard I Oughta… Cocktail, but I haven’t given that any thought as yet.

Doing a bit of catch-up … we’ve been having lots of traditional “comfort cocktails” recently, especially Manhattans, especially when Wes makes them, as his Manhattan-making skills are vast and sublime. We’ve still been trying “new” ones (even though they may be decades or even a century old) though, and here’s one that came to us from Dave Wondrich’s stupendous book Imbibe!.

I’d seen this one around before, but the version he includes is the best I’ve ever seen, and the one that inspired me to try it, and fall in love with it. The original proportion on the brandy and vermouth was equal parts, but I prefer Paul E. Lowe’s “fine suggestion” of changing it to 2 parts brandy to 1 part vermouth, as specified in his 1904 tome Drinks as They Are Mixed.

Metropole Cocktail

1-1/2 ounces Cognac.
3/4 ounce dry vermouth.
1/2 teaspoon gum syrup or simple syrup.
2 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters.
1 dash orange bitters (I used Regans’.)

Combine with cracked ice in a cocktail shaker, stir for at least 30 seconds, then strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a cherry — a good brandied one, or Luxardo cherry in syrup, not those neon red abominations from the supermarket, please.

This was the house cocktail at the Metropole Hotel, opened in New York a couple of years before the turn of the 19th Century to the 20th. The owners had previously owned another hotel called the Metropolitan, which had its own cocktail as well (for that one, “replace both bitters with 3 dashes of Angostura, cut the Cognac in half and add a barspoon of gum”). The Metropole Cocktail is to the Metropolitan, according to Dave, “as the one hotel was to the other: more or less the same ingredients, but stronger, spicier and definitely flashier, yet not without style.”

This one goes in the regular rotation. I’ve really been enjoying brandy-based cocktails this week, and I’ll feature another one tomorrow.

This is absolutely one of my favorite cocktails ever. I, and we all, have Seattle bartender Murray Stenson to thank for this.

About five years ago back Murray was flipping through a 1951 cocktail book by Ted Saucier called Bottoms Up! and came across the recipe for this drink, which was created at the Detroit Athletic Club around the time of Prohibition, and put it on the menu at Zig Zag. Once resurrected it became an immediate hit (in fact, has become the de facto signature cocktail of Seattle), spread beyond Seattle to Portland and beyond, and took the cocktailian world by storm.

Unsurprising too, as it’s a spectacular drink. Complex, herbal, tart, a bit sweet and yet very easy to drink, The Last Word can take you to another world in a glass. Seriously, if you’ve never tasted this drink you owe it to yourself to try it.

The most distinct flavor component is the French herbal liqueur Chartreuse (of the green variety), still made by Carthusian monks with a secret recipe that to this day no one person knows (three monks are responsible for the recipe, each only knowing 1/3 of it). Powerful stuff at 110 proof and comprised of 130 herbs, it’s a bit of an onslaught the first time you try it, but it’ll quickly take you under its spell. Balanced by the fruitiness and nuttiness of the maraschino, the tartness and freshness of the lime and the strength and botanicals of the gin, this is cocktail alchemy at its zenith. It shouldn’t work as well as it does. Equal proportions? That much maraschino? Yep.

When making this drink at home make sure you use a robust gin, as a softer gin will get completely lost in this drink. We’re talking Beefeater or Tanqueray here.

The Last Word

3/4 ounce gin.
3/4 ounce green Chartreuse.
3/4 ounce maraschino liqueur.
3/4 ounce fresh lime juice.

Combine with ice in a cocktail shaker and shake for 10-12 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. No garnish.

I’m a big fan of this drink, as are many others, but some feel there’s room for improvement. Bobby Heugel at Anvil in Houston wants more gin in his (“Hell, I want more gin in my cereal”), and feels the drink works a lot better with lemons than with limes. In fact, he says he’s stopped using limes entirely, and offers this variation as better suiting his taste:

Refined Speech

1-1/2 ounces Junipero Gin.
3/4 ounce Green Chartreuse.
3/4 ounce Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur.
1/2 ounce Lemon Juice.

Shake and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

“Now, clearly we have a very different drink than the original Last Word, but I think that changing ratios of this classic and switching citrus is well worth the experimenting. I rarely follow a recipe from a book. Sure, I start there, but ultimately the unique characteristics of the world’s spirits require adjustments in all cocktails. A good cocktail is the product of someone’s understanding of all the spirits and how they work together.”

Which one do you prefer?