I was perusing my old cocktail index on The Gumbo Pages’ beverage page and realized that in the Great Cocktail Article Migration of 2009 I missed a few, including this one. Eek! What was I thinking?! Rectification of oversight commences!

This one may be familiar to many of you, but if you’re scratching your head thinking, “Nope, never seen this one before, and grapefruit juice? Ew!” it’s another “forgotten” cocktail that comes to us courtesy of Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh, who first served it to us years ago. The Blinker is the creation of a bartender whose name has escaped into the mists of history, but it was first mentioned in print in 1934 by bartender Patrick Gavin Duffy. (There’s a bit more about it in Doc’s most excellent book, Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails.)

Doc tinkered with the recipe; originally the drink was made with grenadine (and a horrifying amount of it, equal to the grapefruit juice). Raspberry syrup gives it a lovely complexity, especially when considering most commercially-made grenadines. I think it’s a terrific variation.

The thing that made the drink Doc made for us so much better than the first one we made at home was his use of Smucker’s brand raspberry syrup, right from the grocery store, instead of the Torani raspberry syrup we used. Nowadays for prepared syrups I’d generally go with Monin, which would also be good. But man … that Smucker’s stuff had an fabulously fruity, aromatic and intensely jammy quality (unsurprisingly) that really put this drink over the top. Even better was a raspberry syrup from Harry and David, the Fruit of the Month Club folks, which was hands-down the best raspberry syrup I’d ever tasted (and didn’t have the tendency to sink to the bottom of the drink that Smucker’s has). Sadly, the product’s been discontinued.

If you have a really good, homemade pomegranate grenadine or an excellent commercial product like Trader Tiki’s Hibiscus Grenadine, by all means use that if you like. Otherwise, try the Smucker’s, or better still, a homemade raspberry syrup from fresh (or even frozen) raspberries.

Of course, it goes without saying that you should not use bottled grapefruit juice. Freshly-squeezed white grapefruit juice, please. It takes half a minute to cut and squeeze a grapefruit, and it’s eleventy million times better. Also, if you’re one of those folks that doesn’t like grapefruit juice, this may be your conversion moment; you’ll like it here, even if you only ever have it in this cocktail (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Enjoy the Blinker — it’s a simple yet really lovely drink, and don’t worry about the silly name (drives Doc crazy).

Oh, the image below is temporary, shamelessly purloined briefly borrowed from the fine folks at Modern Drunkard magazine, who in turn lifted it from Ted’s book (naturally, since the article was an interview with Ted about his book). I’ll have one of my own up by the weekend, especially since I haven’t had a Blinker in a while, and I want one.

The Blinker Cocktail

2 ounces rye whiskey.
1 ounce fresh grapefruit juice.
1 teaspoon raspberry syrup.

Combine with cracked ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake vigorously for no less than 10 seconds, until very cold; strain into a cocktail glass.

Doc didn’t garnish this, and I don’t know if the original recipe called for a garnish, but we like a pretty grapefruit peel curl cut with a channel knife (Doc opts for lemon). Don’t squeeze any grapefruit oil over the drink, though; we don’t want this one to be too bitter.

To quote Wes, “What the world needs is more rye cocktails.” Amen.

This delicious cocktail, dating from 1893, was contributed to a recent Liquor.com article by David Wondrich.

This drink demonstrates how one small, simple addition can completely transform a cocktail. Remove the teaspoon of crème de cacao and it’s an old-school 2:1 Martini (which I frequently enjoy with orange bitters, as was the old method). Put it back in, though, and hat hint of sweetness, that subtle whisper of chocolate — an amount so small that it might take you a moment to realize what you’re tasting — and the perfect flavor combination of chocolate and orange … yum!

Use this old idea to fuel your own experimentation. What can you do to your favorite classic cocktails by the addition of just a barspoon of a liqueur or amaro? For instance, a Daiquiri made with Scarlet Ibis rum and with the addition of one barspoon of Averna is now one of my favorite cocktails, thanks to my friend John Coltharp, currently bartending at Copa d’Oro and The Tasting Kitchen. I have no idea what he calls it (I’ll have to ask him), but I’ve been calling it the Sicilian Daiquiri.

Now … it’s love-love, and it’s your serve.

THE RACQUET COCKTAIL

2 ounces Plymouth Gin
1 ounce Noilly Prat Dry Vermouth
1 teaspoon white crème de cacao (Marie Brizard, preferably)
2 dashes orange bitters

Stir with cracked ice for at least half a minute, then strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a thin slice of lemon peel, twisted over the top and dropped into the drink.

The Racquet Cocktail is a cousin of both the Martini and the Twentieth Century Cocktail (swap the vermouth for Lillet, add lemon juice and up the cacao a bit, roughly). If you haven’t tried the latter, please do so.

Speaking of Wondrich, he will soon regale us with another magnificent tome called Punch: The Delights (and Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl. (Pre-order at this link or, preferably, pick it up on its publication date of November 2 at your nearest independent bookseller.) You can now also harass follow him on Twitter and that monstrously big social network that’s having the movie made about it this year, not to mention his own shiny new website, The North Gowanus Institute for Cranial Distempers.

We had the most luscious honey the other day.

One of our favorite breakfast and lunch spots, the Village Bakery and Café in Atwater Village, is carrying local honey made by Feral Honey (aka “our friends Amy and Russell,” said owner Barbara). The beekeeping is hands-off for the most part, all natural and organic (no pesticides or hormones) and the honey is made by wild bees in the Silver Lake area. All the nectar they gather is from within a 3-mile radius in the neighborhood, and it tastes like what’s growing in the area, and what’s in people’s backyards.

The current batch tastes of lavender with a touch of minty eucalyptus (although not medicinal-tasting), rich and complex and absolutely wonderful. It’s not cheap, but you get a lot of honey-bang for your buck.

Besides just eating it out of the jar with a spoon (which we found to be dangerously enticing, ’cause we just might finish the whole thing if we’re not careful), the first thing we thought to do with it was try it in one of the great classic cocktails that I think needs a lot more attention.

The Bee’s Knees cocktail popped up sometime during Prohibition (although we don’t know its exact origin) as one of many ways to disguise the taste of, shall we say, disreputable gin. It’s a very simple gin sour, but the twist here is that the sweetener, as you may have gleaned, is honey rather than sugar. You have a lot of room for variation and creativity with the myriad flavors of honey that are available, and we thought this marvelously floral honey would be a perfect match with the new Beefeater Summer Edition gin.

Beefeater Master Distiller Desmond Payne, looking for a followup to the very successful Beefeater 24, sought to come up with a gin that’s a bit lighter and more suitable for warm weather and summery drinks. The limited edition Summer gin is lighter in proof, 80 as opposed to 94, a slightly lighter juniper profile and the addition of black currant, elderflower and hibiscus flower to the range of botanicals. In tasting the gin neat you can’t really pick these individual flavors out, but the combination plus the lighter profile makes it very refreshing. It’s floral without being flowery, and the combination of flavors in the gin seems to make it want to leap into the arms of other ingredients. (Wes has been playing with this a fair bit, and once we get back from Seattle I’ll post a couple of his recent concoctions.)

Grab Beefeater Summer Edition while you can, because it won’t be around for all that much longer (and I certainly hope it shall return next year).

Now, for that cocktail …

To make honey syrup, combine equal parts of honey and extremely hot water and stir until the honey is dissolved. For rich honey syrup, use 2 parts of honey to 1 part hot water. It’ll keep in the fridge for a few weeks, and longer if you add a splash of vodka as a preservative. It’s so easy to make on the fly, though, that I’ll usually just prep enough for the batch of cocktails I’m about to make.

You can serve this drink strained and up with a lemon twist garnish, or on the rocks with a lemon wedge. Try more robust gins, or try swapping out the gin for rum or tequila. If you’ve never had this one, you’re going to fall in love with it. Why, it’s so good it’s the … (you know).

BEE’S KNEES

2 ounces gin (substitute rum or tequila)
1 ounce honey syrup
1 ounce fresh lemon juice

Combine in a shaker with ice and shake for 10-12 seconds. Strain into chilled cocktail glass and garnish with lemon twist, or over ice in an Old Fashioned glass with a lemon wedge garnish.

You may recall that last month I wrote about an ongoing cocktail competition at Drago Centro restaurant in downtown L.A., The People’s Cocktail Contest. It went on for four weeks — each week a theme ingredient was announced, recipes were submitted through the week, and during the weekend one recipe was selected by Michael Shearin, their sommelier/beverage director and Jaymee Mandeville, their head bartender, to continue through the finals. The winning cocktail gets added to the restaurant’s cocktail menu. The preliminaries are now closed, the four final cocktails have been selected, and it’s time for the face-off!

The finals for the People’s Cocktail Contest will be held at Drago Centro, 525 S. Flower St. this Wednesday the 30th starting sometime after 6pm. I don’t have a hard start time, but that’s when they asked me to arrive. [UPDATE: Judging begins at 7pm!] I suspect there’ll be a certain amount of cat-herding involved to get everyone there, set up and ready to roll. They’ll also be unveiling their new summer cocktail menu at the event, so there’ll be plenty of good stuff to try.

This is going to be such a blast, especially because two of the other three finalists are friends of mine. I’m looking forward to meeting Jeni, week four’s finalist, too; her blog is full of gorgeous food photos.

If you can’t attend the final face-off you can still play along at home; make the cocktails and see which one’s your favorite. I posted the recipe for my cocktail entry in Week 1: Blueberry, the Bell’aspetto, last month. Here are the other three finalists’ cocktail recipes, pulled from Drago Centro’s Twitter feed (no pictures of the drinks, alas; I was too lazy):

Week 2: Fernet Branca
Finalist: Ron Dollete, lushangeles.com

TRAMONTANA

1 oz Fernet Branca
1 oz Krogstad Aquavit
1 oz Cointreau
2 dashes Angostura Bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

 

Week 3: Gin (or genever)
Finalist: Matt Robold, rumdood.com

DUTCH ELM DISEASE

2 oz Bols Genever
1/2 oz Scotch
1/4 oz Simple Syrup
2 dashes Angostura Bitters.

Stir with ice for 30 seconds. Strain into a rocks glass over ice. Garnish with a lemon twist.

 

Week 4: Lemon
Finalist: Jeni Afuso, Oishii Eats

MOMO RYE FIZZ

1/2 fresh peach
1 oz simple syrup
2 oz Rittenhouse 100 rye whiskey
1 oz lemon juice
Club soda

Muddle peach with simple syrup. Add rye and lemon juice. Shake with ice, strain into tall glass over ice, top with club soda.

Wish us luck! No matter who wins, it’s going to be a lot of fun. Join us if you can.

The CSOWG‘s Thursday Drink Night (hosted in that wretched hive of scum and villainy delightful online chat room called The Mixoloseum Bar) on May 27, 2010 featured a sponsored product that may have escaped your attention — Mandarine Napoléon.

According to its producers, this French liqueur was originally created by Antoine-François de Fourcroy (1755-1809), Napoléon Bonaparte’s personal physician. Mandarines grew well on the isle of Corsica, the Emperor’s birthplace, and supposedly it was de Fourcroy who first macerated mandarine peels in strong alcohol, distilled the maceration and blended it with aged Cognac. The Emperor was so taken with the product that he often invited his physician to share a glass with him. Mandarine Napoléon was first bottled in 1892, and until very recently was still owned by the de Fourcroy family. De Kuyper, the Dutch producer of liqueurs and genevers, bought the product from the de Fourcroys about 9 months ago. However, according to a recent article in CLASS magazine, the Belgian distillery that’s produced the spirit base for the product since 1998 continues to do so, distilling the mandarine peels and botanicals, all of which is “sent to De Kuyper’s production facility for blending and bottling.”

The process is more or less the same as it’s always been– maceration of mandarine peels from Sicily and Spain in grain alcohol, distillation of the result, resting in vats for two years, sweetening and blending with various Cognacs with at least 6 years of age. The result is a deep, delicious liqueur at 77 proof, sweet but not cloying, and a strong mandarine flavor. It’s one of the best citrus liqueurs out there, and deserves some of the attention given to Grand Marnier and Cointreau.

Mandarine Napoléon’s public relations folks kindly sponsored a TDN and encouraged us to experiment, resulting in a number of really tasty cocktails. I, of course, lazy bastard that I am, decided to fall back on an existing cocktail of mine, because it so happened that I had already created a cocktail containing this liqueur. I had to stick with it, because it’s probably the best cocktail name I’ve ever come up with. (C’mon, a pun that doesn’t make you groan? That actually makes you laugh! Such a rarity!)

I hadn’t had one in a while, though I remember it being well-received by folks I had made it for at the time. Perhaps the most memorable fan is a friend of mine who might not be who you’d typically picture when you think of someone quaffing a cocktail made of Belgian liqueur and French apéritif wine — a country & Western bandleader, songwriter and guitar player (and a damned good one too). He came over with some friends one night, fell in love with this drink and quaffed them all evening long. Still, I thought it needed another look, just in case; I whipped one up to revisit and evaluate before submission.

Hmm.

Sure, still tasty. But it was sweet. Definitely sweeter than is our taste in cocktails these days (although perhaps not so much 10 years ago, when I came up with it.) Not quite balanced. Needed a little rejiggering.

Here’s the old post I wrote way back in September of 2000, talking about how I came up with the drink (and, as I recall, it’s the first cocktail I came up with on my own, albeit one that sprang from another):

Consider the Lillets…

 

(Stop groaning. It’s only going to get worse from here.)

Wes and I were browsing yesterday at a nifty antique shop and, naturally, stopped to peruse the barware section. They had a book on vintage barware, and in it was a recipe for a cocktail that sounded fascinating, and not only because I loved the name — the Tiger Lillet.

Lillet Blanc is, of course, the French aperitif white wine with hints of citrus and spice, and I’m quite fond of it. The recipe they printed didn’t quite add up, though — it called for 1/3 Lillet, 1/3 Van der Hum (a South African tangerine liqueur based on brandy) and 1/6 “Maraschino syrup”. Hmm. That’s only 5/6 of a drink. And what do they mean by Maraschino syrup? Do they mean Maraschino liqueur, or the thin sweet “juice” that the maraschino cherries come in? Was there a cocktail flavoring product back then that was a low- or no-alcohol cherry syrup? Despite this hole in the recipe, I thought the drink sounded very promising.

The web to the rescue! I found a site that had a more complete recipe which stated, as did the book, that the drink was the winner of the World Cocktail Championship in London in 1952, and was created by a barman named Mr. J. Jones (now that’s an unusual name). Here’s the actual recipe:

Tiger Lillet

1/3 Lillet.
1/3 Van der Hum.
1/6 Dry Vermouth.
1/6 Maraschino.

Shake and Strain. Serve with small piece of Orange Peel.

BZZZZZT! The dry vermouth just killed it for me. I do not like vermouth of any kind. I do not like it in a bar, I do not like it in a car. I do not like it in my drink; tastes quite nasty, that I think.

(Good gods … can you believe I actually said that. I used to hate vermouth. Well, in 2000 I was a toddler as far as fine and historic cocktails were concerned, and I think that at the time I was suffering from the same thing most people who think they hate vermouth suffer from — they’re drinking vermouth that has gotten old and gone bad. Ah, the things that change in ten years … in fact, fortunately for me, only a couple of years later I was quaffing vermouth-bearing cocktails with glee.) Now, back to the past:

So … how to go about changing this drink to suit my taste? Well, for starters, in all my digging through the two finest wine and spirits shops in Los Angeles, I’d never once seen Van der Hum liqueur. Fortunately, right there in my bar cabinet is a bottle of Mandarine Napoléon, another tangerine liqueur that’s based on brandy, which I thought would make an excellent substitute.

Another aside — it turned out that there is a “Maraschino syrup” product out there, the most widely-available of which is made by the Reese company, who’ve made some of the viler jarred products I’ve been unfortunately enough to buy in the supermarket. It’s artificially colored bright red, presumably a thicker version of the syrup in the horried neon red “maraschino” supermarket cherries — the use of which we’ve eschewed for years — and therefore vile. It’s pretty obvious that Mr. Jones used maraschino liqueur and not a syrup. Continuing with the old post:

We’re also fine for the maraschino — I love Liquore de Maraschino, and I have a bottle of Luxardo’s fine product right there in my bar.

Now, to replace the vermouth. For a 3-ounce drink, I’m really only substituting one tablespoon’s worth of liquor. I think the 1/3 Lillet content takes care of the aperitif wine flavor without adding more from vermouth, so I thought a bit about what might complement the flavor of both the Lillet and the Mandarine Napoléon. Cointreau and Grand Marnier were out, because I thought we had the citrus flavor covered. How ’bout … Cognac? Hmmmmm. Complimentary flavor, keeps it all French (“IT IS BELGIAN!” shrieks Poirot predictably, while sipping a cordial glass of Mandarine Napoléon) and gives it a slight extra kick. I like it. I liked it even better when I mixed one up and drank it last night.

Now, to name the drink. I can’t call it a Tiger Lillet anymore, since one ingredient has changed. That’s one of the cardinal laws of cooking — if you steal a recipe, you can get away with it by changing an ingredient or two, and then changing the name of the dish.

What’s Up, Tiger Lillet? I like Woody Allen, but that’s too close to the original. Calla Lillet? Kate Hepburn might like it, but I dunno… Gilded Lillet? Hrmm. Lillet Munster? Too silly! Lillet of the Valley? Lillet of the Field? Bleuchh. I really didn’t consider Consider The Lillet, either.

Finally, it struck me. I named the drink for someone I’ve really liked for a very long time and whose work has given me a great deal of enjoyment over the years. And that’s the truthhhhhh.

That old recipe called for an ounce each of Lillet and Mandarine Napoléon, and half-ounce each of Cognac and maraschino.

Okay. On the right track. But tooooo sweet.

A little thought, a little rebalancing. We still want to keep the Lillet as a base, but we want to up the Cognac to give it more backbone. Mandarine Napoléon is good, but a whole ounce of it was too much and lets a candylike sweetness creep forward. Back that off by a half an ounce, and back off the maraschino too. That should be there to help the fruit and Cognac flavors blend and round out, not to add any more sweetness. I decided to switch to the drier Croatian Maraska brand rather than the more powerful (and sweeter) Italian brand Luxardo. Finally, a dash of bitters for spice, edge and brightness.

Y’know, the flavor profile is pretty much the same, but this is a far superior drink, in my overly cocky– er, humble opinion. Consider the Lillet … reformulated.

LILLET TOMLIN

1-1/2 ounces Cognac.
1 ounce Lillet.
1/2 ounce Mandarine Napoléon.
1/4 ounce Maraska maraschino liqueur.
1-2 dash(es) Regans’ Orange Bitters No. 6.

Shake with cracked ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Garnish with a strip of orange peel, expressed over the glass and rubbed upon the rim. Garnish additionally with two ringy-dingys and serve to the party to whom you are speaking.