Danger, Will Robinson! It’s an obscure ingredient!

Actually, it’s not that obscure. You can get the currently available brand at Beverage Warehouse if you’re in the L.A. area, or anywhere you’ve got a nicely-stocked spirits store, I’d imagine.

I found mine in a rather unlikely place …

Kümmel is a spirit from Germany that’s complex and herbal, with its primary flavoring agent being caraway. Nowadays the brand you’ll tend to find is Gilka, from Berlin, but that stuff’s $28 a bottle and it was a little low on my liquor-purchasing list.

Then I spotted an ancient-looking bottle just like this in the liquor cabinet at our friends’ Gregg and Mike’s house, as we were invited to just dig in and mix.

“Where’d you get this?!” I asked.

“At the little liquor store up on Colorado, across the street from Fatty’s, believe it or not.” Right in our neighborhood. “There was another bottle left, too!”

I sped to the little liquor store the next day, and there it was, very bottom shelf behind the counter, marked $9.99. The ladies behind the counter seemed befuddled that I wanted it, and even more so because that bottle had probably been sitting on their bottom shelf since long before they bought that store. They argued briefly as to whether or not to give me some kind of discount — “Who would want that?” I heard the younger one say. However, Big Mama won out, and said to charge me as it was marked. I didn’t care … if I was going to experiment with a new liqueur (and caraway is one of those tastes I’ve always disliked but have barely begun to acquire), $10 was better than $28. And a vintage bottle, no less! I was feeling very Dr. Cocktail, realizing, of course, that an old bottle of Hiram Walker anything is pretty much worthless.

The contents were far better than worthless, though. I still haven’t tasted the good stuff from Gilka, but this stuff wasn’t bad at all — the caraway predominated, but it was pretty complex, and wasn’t all that sweet (which, for me, is good).

This led us to finally be able to try one of the cocktails in Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails that we hadn’t gotten to yet — The Vowel Cocktail.

The Vowel Cocktail

1 ounce blended Scotch.
1 ounce sweet vermouth.
1/2 ounce kümmel.
1/2 ounce orange juice.
2 dashes Angostura Bitters.

Shake and strain. No garnish.

It looks a little brown and murky, but the flavor of this drink is like nothing you’ve tasted before.

Wes and I took a sip and our eyebrows shot up. It was very caraway-y, and I probably shouldn’t have liked it. But there was a lot going in in there … My first impression was to say, “This is weird,” as in, “This is really different, which it was.

Second sip. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s really good.”

“I think it’s really good, me too!”

Lots and lots going on in this drink, from rye bread to a hint of smoke to spice and a little citrusy tang. We immediately wanted pastrami sandwiches after this drink but alas, had to wait until the next day for that.

There was just one thing … Apparently the recipe for the Vowel Cocktail is the ONE publisher’s misprint in [the first edition of] Doc’s book! The text reads as 1-1/2 ounces kümmel, which seemed strange to me but I went ahead and made it anyway, and ended up liking the result. When we tried it again with the proper amount of 1/2 ounce kümmel, there was much less assertiveness and more subtlety from the kümmel, which was a good thing. The basic flavor combinations still worked really well.

The good news is that this is another step towards my acquisition of the flavor of caraway, which I had never liked in the past. Next stop, aquavit!

The Jack Rose is one of the perennial classics, very popular in pre- and just post-Prohibition times. A simple combination of applejack, lemon (or lime) juice and grenadine, it’s one that I keep returning to.

Many of the classic recipes seem quite sweet to me, though. The Savoy Cocktail Book recipe simply calls for 3/4 applejack and 1/4 grenadine, no citrus. Not enough balance for me. Speaking of the citrus, the classic recipe calls for lemon juice, but I love the way that lime plays with apples.

Others have called for as much as 1/2 ounce of grenadine — also too sweet. I’m fond of more tart drinks, and I’m also fond of bitters. Here’s the way I like to make it at home, with a little New Orleans touch. (For a standard Jack Rose, just omit the bitters.)

I don’t really care for Laird’s Applejack product — it’s now 65% grain neutral spirits, and only 35% actual apple brandy. (Sad.) However, Laird’s bonded Straight Apple Brandy, at 100 proof, is a phenomenal product and mixes beautifully, with a pronounced apple flavor. I love it.

The Jacques Rose Cocktail

2 ounces Laird’s Straight Apple Brandy.
3/4 ounce fresh lime juice.
2 barspoons grenadine.
1 healthy dash Peychaud’s bitters.

Combine with ice, shake for 10-12 seconds, strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lime wedge.

Now, speaking of variations …

I had a day off yesterday. What did I do? Liquor shopping! (Idle hands, etc.)

I did some surveying of wine and spirits establishments in my area that I hadn’t frequented or even visited before, just to check out their selection and prices. The true revelation, which made me smack my head for spending the last six years passing it by and thinking it was a garden-variety corner package liquor store, is Mission Liquors, on the corner of Washington and Allen in Pasadena. Their selection is jaw-dropping for such a small place, including things I’d never seen before (brand after brand of Lebanese arak, Armenian and Georgian brandies and eaux-de-vie), and pretty decent prices on most items I’d be getting.

From there I finally got a chance to pick up something I’d first tried last month chez Dr. Cocktail, who had been sent a free bottle by the liquor company (Heaven Hill, I believe). It’s a brand-new product called Pama, and it’s the first true pomegranate liqueur. It’s gorgeous too; ruby-colored, and in a gorgeous bottle that they seem to have pinched from my favorite gorgeous-bottle people, Modern Spirits Vodka in Monrovia (whose products are extraordinary, but we’ll talk more about them tomorrow).

Doc first described Pama to us, and later on in a Martini Republic article, as being made, according to the liquor company, with “pomegranate juice blended with imported Tequila and super-premium vodka.”

“I immediately wanted to triangulate my way to any handy vomit bags,” said Doc. I don’t blame him.

Then we tasted the stuff. Dang. It’s good. Mo’ better than it has any right to be, given that description. Tart and well-balanced in its flavor, and Doc started to thinking … why not use this stuff in classic cocktails that call for grenadine? He served us an experimental version of a classic, the Jack Rose, made with apple brandy, lime juice and grenadine, substituting Pama for the grenadine.

It was good.

Here’s our once-again Creolized version, with the lovely Pama substituted for the grenadine. Given that it’s a liqueur and not a syrup, we bumped up the amount a bit — make yours to taste.

The Jacques Rose Cocktail No. 2

2 ounces applejack or apple brandy.
1/2 ounce freshly squeezed lime juice.
1/2 ounce Pama pomegranate liqueur.
1 dash Peychaud’s Bitters.

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.
Garnish with a lime wedge.

The good thing about today is that it’s the federal holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a great American who, among many other profound things, said:

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

— Dr. Martin Luther King, 1967

I’d say that’s particularly true of wars that were started based on misdirection and lies.

The bad thing about today is that … well, not everybody gets the day off (Wes has to work today, pfeh), but I was thinking more along the lines of this: it’s the 86th anniversary of the day that Prohibition began in the United States, January 16, 1920. The “noble experiment” was, fortunately, a disastrous failure, and we can celebrate that at least, both today and on December 5, which was the Day of Repeal. In the meantime, here’s a celebratory cocktail that might be worth trying:

The Prohibition Cocktail

1-1/2 ounces Plymouth gin.
1-1/2 ounces Lillet blanc.
2 dashes Apry (or other apricot liqueur).
1 teaspoon orange juice.
1 dash Regans’ Orange Bitters No. 6 (optional).

Shake with ice for 10-12 seconds, and strain into a cocktail glass.
Squeeze a lemon twist over the drink, and garnish with the twist.

The bitters were not part of the original recipe, but it seemed to me to cry out for a dash.

Wes always does a great job of picking the evening’s cocktail when it’s his turn, and last night was no exception. This one was in Food and Wine’s Cocktails 2005, first came to my attention via Robert Hess, seems to have originally appeared in Gary Regan’s Bartender’s Bible, and is served among other places at the Zig Zag Café in Seattle.

La Rosita

1-1/2 ounces reposado tequila.
1/2 ounce sweet vermouth.
1/2 ounce dry vermouth.
1/2 ounce Campari.
1 dash Angostura bitters.

Combine ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker or mixing glass. Stir for no less than 30 seconds. Strain into a cocktail glass; no garnish.

The flavor of the agave along with the bite of the Campari make for a delightful drink and an inspired combination of flavors. Definitely give this one a try. The world needs more Campari cocktails! And more tequila cocktails too, for that matter.

If you’re going to throw a party, make punch.

[UPDATE: Those of you seeking great historical punch recipes (as well as the amazing history of punch) should check out David Wondrich’s indispensible Punch: The Delights (and Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl, published in 2010. The recipe has been revised slightly to include the technique of making “oleo-saccharum” as learned in this book.]

It’s easy, tasty (if you pick the right one), and you don’t have to spend all night mixing drinks for people. The key is finding the right punch. As our friend Dr. Cocktail points out in his excellent recent post on punches, simply go to CocktailDB, enter the word “punch” in the search box and you come up with 98 of them. I found even more looking through some of my old cocktail recipe books. Still, as interesting as many of them looked, I wasn’t exactly lighting up with excitement.

We had some folks over for a holiday party last night, and the punch was the talk of the living room. This is yet another of the pleasures of life for which we must thank Dr. Cocktail, who provided the recipe for the best punch I’ve ever had. Said punch recipe dates back to the early 19th Century and in 1893 was named “Columbian Punch” at the first world’s fair, the 1893 Columbian World Exposition in Chicago, which celebrated the near-quadricentennial (so they were a year late, big deal) of Columbus’ “discovery” of America (Natives: “Um, you can’t discover us, we already live here!” Columbus: “Do you have a flag?” Thank you, Eddie Izzard.).

I’ll research and attempt a few other punch recipes that looked interesting, but out of at least two dozen recipes I studied this week, none was as interesting as this. It’s fantastic. To this day it still rules as my favorite punch.

COLUMBIAN PUNCH

1 quart Jamaican rum.
1 pint brandy.
4 ounces Green Chartreuse.
1 pint freshly brewed oolong tea.
The juice of 2 lemons.
The juice of 2 oranges.
1 cup superfine sugar.
750ml Champagne.

The day before making the punch, fill a metal bowl or large tupperware container (that fits into your punch bowl) with water and freeze to make a large block of ice. (Or, if you’re forgetful like me, you can always just buy block ice and break it down to fit your punch bowl.) Chill the boozy ingredients and tea; keep the fruit at room temperature.

Carefully peel the lemons and oranges, getting as little of the white pith as you can. Muddle the peels with the sugar until you’ve extracted as much citrus oil as you can from them, and allow to sit for at least an hour, preferably three hours. Juice the fruit and strain the juice.

Combine the boozes, juices and tea with the muddled peels and sugar in a large punch bowl and stir until dissolved. Remove the peels. Add the Champagne and stir, then add a large block of ice to keep chilled. Ladle into small punch glasses and allow your guests to serve themselves until it’s gone (and I guarantee you’ll have none left).

(Recipe originally published in Beverages and Sandwiches for Your Husband’s Friends, authorship credited only to “One Who Knows”, 1893.)

This is unbelievably good, and not for the faint-hearted either (i.e., it’s mostly booze). Rather than shriek, “J’accuse! You stole me idea, you young cur!”, Doc was, of course, gentleman that he is, flattered that I had made the punch; to the best of his knowledge no one other than himself had made this stuff in the last hundred years or so.

For the rum I used a fifth of Appleton Estate, topped off with some Myers’ Dark to make a quart. For the brandy I used Courvoisier VS, which was on sale for $19.99 for a 750ml, in a lovely gift box with two narrow brandy-and-soda glasses (such a deal).

You, of course, have a bottle of green Chartreuse in your bar (along with a bottle of the yello variety) because, although pricey, they last a long time and are indispensible for any number of truly extraordinary cocktails. Green Chartreuse makes an excellent post-prandial digestivo as well.