Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona Duit! (Happy St. Patrick’s Day, and all that.) Ná cuir ceist orm … níl a fhois agam! (I do know, actually; I just like saying that.) Oh, and NO feckin’ green beer today, please. Black.

Okay, so it’s St. Patrick’s Day … there may be drinking involved. (No! I don’t believe it!)

If I were to offer a Cocktail of the Day today, it might be simply this:

Guinness Draught

One pint Guinness, poured properly. Sip through the head. Savor. Enjoy. Repeat.

There’s a caveat, though — make sure that the places you order Guinness from the tap actually do it well. A couple of weeks ago we went with some friends to The Knitting Factory in Hollywood to see The Sacred Cowboys, a country/Southern rock band whose lead singer is W. Earl Brown, whom you may know better as Dan Dority, Al Swearingen’s evil henchman on “Deadwood”. They were great, but I swear … the Guinness I was served there was without a doubt the most god-awful pint it has ever been my displeasure to have pass my lips. It tasted old, stale, heavily metallic and … well, Jaysis knows what other shite was in that line. It may have been the single most disagreeable pint of Guinness served to anyone since Arthur Guinness started his brewery in Dublin in 1759. Needless to say, do not ever order a Guinness at The Knitting Factory. (Andy said even the whiskey tasted “off”, so you’re probably better off with bottled beer.)

If there isn’t a decent pub in your neighborhood, apparently you can just order a pre-built pub and they’ll deliver it to you (which I find fascinating and bizarre).

Speaking of whiskey … it should be Irish this weekend, of course. We have a pretty decent collection at home, consisting of, if I recall correctly: John Powers Gold Label, John Powers 12 Year Old, Jameson, Jameson 12 Year Old, Tullamore Dew, Kilbeggan, Locke’s 8 Year Old Single Malt, Redbreast 12 Year Old, Paddy, Bushmills, Bushmills 10 Year Old Single Malt, Bushmills 21 Year Old, Midleton Very Rare 2003.

There will be sipping.

Then there’s the cocktail question. Well, sad to say, Ireland isn’t much of a cocktail-drinking country. I love the pints and the pure drop, but when were were last there I did miss the ould cocktail. (The Octagon Bar at the Clarence in Dublin filled the bill, although at an eye-popping €15.50 per drink for starters.)

There isn’t really a “typically Irish” cocktail, although you’ll see lots of things with Irish names, many green for the sake of being green, and that greenness coming from awful doses of green crème de menthe. (“What about Irish Coffee?” you ask. Follow the link for a bit on that.)

There’s one cocktail I’m quite fond of that’s becoming associated with this day, although I doubt that a single person in Ireland will drink one today (as opposed to the 150 pints of Guinness that are being pulled per second for each of the 24 hours of St. Paddy’s Day). It’s Irish whiskey-based and quite lovely, but calls for a bit of a tolerance for the intensely herbal liqueur Chartreuse (a tolerance very much worth acquiring). I believe the original recipe came from Hugo Ensslin in 1919, but this is the version appearing in the Savoy Cocktail Book:

The Tipperary Cocktail
(original version)

3/4 ounce Irish whiskey.
3/4 ounce green Chartreuse.
3/4 ounce sweet vermouth.

Stir with ice for no less than 30 seconds and strain into a cocktail glass.

In yesterday’s edition of The Cocktailian, Gary Regan’s fortnightly column in the San Francisco Chronicle, The Professor, our cocktailian bartender, offers a different version; same ingredients, different proportions — “More whiskey, less vermouth, less Chartreuse.” This is the way to go for me.

The Tipperary Cocktail
(The Professor’s modern variation)

2 ounces Irish whiskey.
1 ounce sweet vermouth.
1/4 ounce green Chartreuse.

Pour the Chartreuse into a chilled cocktail glass, and by tilting the glass and rotating it at the same time, coat the entire interior of the glass. Discard the excess Chartreuse. Fill a mixing glass two-thirds full of ice and add the whiskey and the vermouth. Stir for approximately 30 seconds and strain into the prepared cocktail glass.

Plus there’s the Dubliner, and its sibling, my own St. Dominic’s Preview. I think you’ll have plenty to drink to celebrate the day. If you do follow all of the above suggestions … well, try to space them out a bit.

P.S. — Here’s a version of the Tipperary from Larousse des Cocktails by Fernando Castellon in which he uses rye instead of Irish. It’s a good variation, but you’re not allowed to make it on St. Patrick’s Day. Use a nice, big, spicy rye and the best sweet vermouth you’ve got (Carpano Punt E Mes or Antica Formula).

Tipperary Cocktail No. 2

2 ounces rye whiskey.
1 ounce sweet vermouth.
1/2 ounce green Chartreuse.

Stir with ice; strain into a cocktail glass.

 

Version française, Larousse des Cocktails

4 cl de rye whiskey
2 cl de vermouth rosso
1 cl de liqueur Chartreuse verte
5 ou 6 glaçons

Mettez les glaçons et les ingrédients dans le verre à mélange.
Remuez à l’aide d’une cuillère à mélange pendant 8 à 10 secondes.
Filtrez au-dessus du verre martini à l’aide d’une passoire à glaçons.
Servez aussitôt.

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.

Yes, it’s what I do, but it’s not what I’m talking about at the moment.

This is an original creation of my friend, the cocktailan and writer Paul Clarke, who was responding to a challenge on the eGullet Fine Spirits & Cocktails Forum to come up with a good drink containing limoncello. While it’s a fine digestivo by itself, it seems to have been neglected as a potential ingredient in classic cocktails. Paul came up with this one, named because it took him so long to post his drink at the forum (yeesh, sounds like me, and given my own propensities could easily have been named for me).

It’s mighty tasty, and is now the second cocktail in my repertoire to contain limoncello after Dr. Cocktail’s creation, the Lemony Snicket. It kicked our butts, too. “Jeez, hang onto the handrail going down the stairs!”.

The Procrastination Cocktail

2 ounces Bombay gin (regular, not Sapphire).
3/4 ounce Noilly Prat dry vermouth.
3/4 ounce limoncello.
Dash of green Chartreuse.

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

If you really want this to kick your butt, and if you have some, dash in the 142 proof Élixir Vegetal de la Grande Chartreuse.

This was contributed by cocktailian bartender extraordinaire Murray Stenson, of the Zig Zag Café in Seattle. Murray said, “Monday you mentioned Chartreuse, Tuesday you mentioned rye … why not try this one? It has become popular at the Zig Zag.” We did. Wow!

The Diamondback Cocktail
(from Bottoms Up, by Ted Saucier)

1-1/2 ounces rye whiskey.
3/4 ounce green Chartreuse.
3/4 ounce applejack (we used Laird’s 100 proof apple brandy).

Shake with cracked ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
No garnish.

This was really, really good; complex, sublime, beautifully balanced. Wes said that he found it a very summery cocktail, much to his surprise, given the ingredients. I loved it, and was immediately curious to try it again with yellow Chartreuse. Murray said in other topic’s comments section that they’ve tried a Green Diamondback, Yellow Diamondback and even a green/yellow combination with success. “‘Sublime’ is a perfect description,” he said. Why thank you; ’twas the first word that popped into my head. And thanks for sending the recipe, too!

Somebody wrote me recently asking about cocktails containing Chartreuse. It’s a powerful concoction, intensely herbal and 110 proof strong, not for everyone. I’ve been developing quite a taste for it, though, and I’m working up the courage to try the Tailspin, a current DrinkBoy favorite.

Tailspin

3/4 ounce gin.
3/4 ounce sweet vermouth.
3/4 ounce green Chartreuse.
1 dash Campari.

Shake with cracked ice. Strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with lemon twist and cherry.