I stumbled across a few recipes on the Chowhound site for a specialty cocktail created by the guys at Employees Only in New York, one of the top cocktail spots in the city. The recipes centered around a cocktail consisting of gin, dry vermouth and Cointreau — sounds simple, and very similar to a couple dozen cocktails in the database, but the similarity ends there when the gin is infused with lavender and the vermouth with herbes de Provence.

Provençale
(Employees Only, NYC)

2-1/2 ounces lavender-infused Plymouth gin.
2-1/2 ounces Vermouth de Provence.
1 ounce Cointreau.

Combine with ice in a mixing glass and stir for 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with an orange twist.

YIELD: 2 drinks.

To make lavender-infused gin, add 1-1/2 teaspoons dried lavender to one 750ml bottle of Plymouth Gin. Infuse for 24 hours, then strain and rebottle.

To make Vermouth de Provence, start with 2-1/4 teaspoons of herbes de Provence and one 750ml bottle of Noilly Prat Original Dry vermouth. Add the herbs to 3/4 cup of the vermouth and bring to a simmer (not a boil!) over low-medium heat. Simmer for 5 minutes, remove from heat, allow to cool for 15 minutes, then strain. Pour the infusion back into the bottle with the rest of the vermouth.

Sure, make two. Who wants to drink alone?

These guys play with infusions a lot and savory flavors in cocktails. It fascinates me, and I’ll definitely be visiting when I finally get my butt to New York.

Wes dug this one up last night, browsing through Robert’s cocktail list. By The Professor’s reckoning you might be able to call this an “Improved” Martini, although … really, there’s no improving on a Martini. This is a damned tasty drink, though.

The Caprice Coctkail

1-1/2 ounces gin.
1/2 ounce dry vermouth.
1/2 ounce Bénédictine.
1 dash orange bitters.

Combine with cracked ice and stir for 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Straw colored, smooth and with a touch of spice. Mmmmmmm.

I suspect that many of the upcoming Cocktail of the Day posts will come from Dave Wondrich’s new book Imbibe! — it’s so inspirational, getting back to our roots, and besides, they look delicious.

This is a nice, refreshing drink great for hot days and tropical climes, although it’s a bit removed from the original version as it was invented in 1915 at the Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore by a bartender named Ngiam Tong Boon.

Here’s the current, most popular version of the drink. While it may not be the original version, as Chris McMillian quotes Dale DeGroff, “When a drink tastes this good, who cares if it’s the original one or not?”

The Singapore Sling
(Contemporary version)

1-1/2 ounces gin.
1/2 ounce Cherry Heering.
1/2 ounce Bénédictine.
1/4 ounce Cointreau.
1/2 ounce fresh lime juice.
2 ounces pineapple juice.
1 dash Angostura bitters.
2 dashes grenadine.
Club soda.

Combine with ice and shake well. Strain into a tall wine glass or Collins glass over ice, and top with club soda. Garnish with an orange-cherry flag.

Research by Dr. Cocktail, among others, suggests that the original version of the drink was much drier, made with a dry cherry brandy like kirschwasser rather than the sweet Cherry Heering. This alleged original is good too, and very much worth a try. Doc has renamed it the “Straits” Sling.

Straits Sling

2 dashes of Orange Bitters.
2 dashes of Angostura Bitters.
The juice of half a lemon.
1/8 gill (1/2 ounce) of Bénédictine.
1/8 gill (1/2 ounce) of Dry Cherry Brandy.
1/2 gill (2 ounces) of Gin.

Shake with ice, pour into a tumbler and fill up with cold soda water.

I know the weather’s turning cold, but if you happen to have an unseasonably balmy day (we’ve had plenty up until just this week), sling away.

Here’s New Orleans master bartender Chris McMillian making one for us:

One of the things Dave Wondrich continued to emphasize in Imbibe! is that the gin you read about in all of Jerry Thomas’ classic recipes is not the gin you’re thinking of. At all.

Today, when you say “gin,” people automatically assume you mean London dry gin, which is by far the most prevalent. Beefeater, Tanqueray, that sort of gin, and the similar Plymouth gin, and all its contemporary variations (from Hendricks to No. 209 to Aviation), despite their different flavor profiles, are all far more similar to each other than to the gin described in the Professor’s (and Dave’s) book. The gin they’re talking about in many of these old recipes is Dutch gin (to use a mildly inaccurate term), the precursor to London dry gin, which in Dutch is galled genever or jenever, and in the Professor’s day was called “Hollands gin.”

It’s very different stuff, and I had very little experience with it until fairly recently. Genever comes in two main varieties: jonge and oude, literally translated as “young” and “old,” but unlike most other similar appellations this doesn’t refer to the age of the spirit, it’s more the style. Oude is the one you want, distilled from malted barley (moutwijn, or “malt wine”), with some rye and corn; it’s “thick, malty and divine,” as Dave describes it. It actually has more in common with whiskey than with London dry gin, and Dave even recommends an emergency substitute for oude genever if you need some but can’t find any, a mixture of Irish whiskey, Plymouth gin and a little simple syrup (“not particularly adequate … [t]his works tolerably well in Punches and the like, but less so in Cocktails.”) Oude genever, in the old days, was considered a bit less than palatable on its own, and because of this herbs were added, including juniper berries (for which the Dutch term is jeneverbes, hence jenever or genever and then “gin”). Jonge is a clear spirit, dating from the World War I era, with a much more neutral flavor and very little maltiness; while it’s good too, I prefer the oude myself.

You may have a bit of a hard time finding it, but the first brand I managed to find fairly easily was Boomsma, which was available at all my local liquor haunts, as well as nationwide at BevMo. It’s cheap too — around $15 a bottle, and really tasty stuff. Unfortunately, the stuff from the Netherlands I really want isn’t available here at all — it’s called korenwijn, meaning “corn wine,” and it’s even older than genever. It’s a distilled malt spirit, and a precursor to the oude type of genever, but has a great character all its own. Philip Duff, who’s with Bols in the Netherlands, gave me a swig of korenwijn at Tales of the Cocktail, and my immediate reaction was “I want!”

Nowadays the premier genever readily available to us in the U.S. is Bols Genever, which is a really wonderful product. It’s clear but has a wonderfully robust malty flavor, and is Lucas Bols’ 1820 recipe. The stuff the Professor served probably tasted a lot like this.

So, what shall we do with our genever?! There was one cocktail in the book I zeroed in on and wanted to try right away. As we know, the original definition of the Cocktail (“more vulgarly called a Bittered Sling”) was a mixture of spirits, sugar, water (those two often in the form of gum syrup or simple syrup) and bitters (a “sling,” in its original definition, having been merely spirits, sugar and water). Around the mid-1860s to early 1870s we began to see “fancy” cocktails, which might add a dash or two of Curaçao, and an “improved” cocktail, which might add a bit of absinthe, a teaspoonful of maraschino or some other liqueur. This is the one I wanted to try, and lo and behold … it was a fantastic drink.

The Improved Hollands Gin Cocktail
(adapted from Imbibe!, by David Wondrich)

2 ounces Bols genever.
1/2 teaspoon maraschino liqueur.
1 teaspoon rich simple syrup (I made mine with Demerara sugar).
2 dashes Angostura bitters.
1 dash absinthe.
Lemon peel, twisted to express the oil.

Combine with cracked ice in a mixing glass, shake well, then strain into a fancy cocktail glass. The flavor is improved by moistening the edge of the cocktail glass with a piece of lemon.

Even though the Professor called for this drink to be shaken, I’m a stirrer when it comes to drinks composed of all spirits, wines and/or liqueurs; you can’t beat that silky smooth texture you get. As Dave says, “If you’d rather be right and stir, be right and stir. Then smile.”

We smiled a lot while drinking this cocktail. I could hop in the Wayback Machine, quaff these at The Professor’s bar and be very, very happy indeed.

Here’s another drink from the brandy seminar I attended in 2007, presented by Chad Solomon and Christy Pope and sponsored by Hennessy Cognac. This one wasn’t part of the seminar, but one I came up with afterward.

After Chad and Christy’s presentation, the bartenders present were invited to go behind the fairly well-stocked bar and play; i.e., create! Marcos and Patrick and Damian and a bunch of other guys got back there and made some very tasty stuff, none of which I remember because I didn’t write any of it down. (D’oh.)

There was one guy who was into the whole “flair” thing, juggling bottles and glasses and shakers over his head and behind his back and, in the process, dribbling spirit and mixer all over the floor. I am really not into that kind of thing; some people find it entertaining to watch but it adds nothing to the flavor of the drink and arguably takes away from it because he is not using jiggers to measure his ingredients. I’m also opposed to freepouring in general, as in many recipes a difference of even 1/4 ounce being out of proportion can completely kill a drink. (It takes almost no time to use a jigger to measure, folks … use ’em!) If my bartender is a talented juggler, fine — I’d rather see him juggle rubber balls or flaming bowling pins in between drinks than juggle my liquor. Also, a few of us noted that if we were his bar manager we’d be displeased with his cost control — he got just as much product onto the floor as he did into the mixing glass.

I got behind the bar after a while and knocked something off which wasn’t bad. I had never mixed brandy with St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur before, and there was a nice big pretty bottle of it (so hush). I gave it a semi-classic proportion, upped the level of the St. Germain due to its being less sweet than most liqueurs, and tossed in a couple of dashes of fruit bitters to make it a bit more complex and interesting. Several people tasted it and thought it pretty good; my favorite reaction was from one of the bartenders I’d been talking to, who had recently switched careers and had only been bartending for three months. He took one sip and made a big puckery Mr. Yuck face. I cracked up. “Wow, that good, huh?!” He, as it turns out, prefers sweeter drinks (which I do not), and this was was to his palate a bit tart. (I was a little boggled that anyone could find a drink with only a half ounce of lime juice in it to be “too tart,” but to each his own, I guess.) I gave him a minute to recover and prepare, and had him taste it again. Still not to his own taste, but he did appreciate the flavors and balance.

I thought about naming it after Wesly, since he wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t make it to the event, but I don’t think either of us are egomaniacal enough to name drinks after ourselves or each other. I thought of something somewhat close, though, and named it after one of my favorite character actresses whose name at least contains his in its first syllable. The tartness and pleasantly bitter edge of the cocktail suited her most famous character too, I think. (“Oh, do be quiet, Durwood.“)

The Moorehead Cocktail

2 ounces Hennessy VS Cognac.
3/4 ounce St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur.
1/2 ounce fresh lime juice.
1 dash peach bitters.
1 dash orange bitters.

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

[UPDATE: I haven’t revisited this one since the night after I first made it. Now that over two years have passed, I think it’s time to try it again to see if it passes the test of time.]