“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 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:

Well, it only took them eight feckin’ months, but my insurance company finally approved payment for my sleep apnea device (the Modified UCLA Herbst Mandibular Advancement Device, or MUCLAH-MAD, as we say in the the biz (actually, we don’t say that at all)). There’s a grand I now don’t have to cough up to an increasingly annoyed doctor’s billing company, which is a great relief.

Wes cheered, and suggested we celebrate with a cocktail (as distinct from all those other evenings when we simply have a cocktail with no celebration involved). He wondered if there was a Procrastinator Cocktail, a Slowpoke Cocktail, a Cheapskate Cocktail or a Forgetful Cocktail. (Do you think he was trying to tell me something?) Alas, none existed in CocktailDB, and none of the three in-progress originals we’re working on seemed to fit those names. Via CocktailDB, his is the closest he came up with.

Elephants Sometimes Forget

1 ounce gin.
3/4 ounce Cherry Heering.
3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice.
1/4 ounce dry vermouth.
1 dash orange bitters.

Shake and strain; no garnish specified.

This was really good, with a perfect balance between sweet and tart. Unfortunately there was no attribution for its origin or its silly name.

Okay, so the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster might have been a bit impractical. (We didn’t quite have all of the ingredients.) Once again, it’s CocktailDB to the rescue. Apparently Wes was impressed enough with my results from it last night that he consulted our cocktail oracle again tonight, this time looking for interesting-looking cocktails with one particular ingredient in mind. He chose this one, which fooled me almost entirely. I guessed wrong as to the base spirit, although I guessed the modifiers correctly. It’s another one of those cases of cocktail alchemy where the whole is completely different from the sum of its parts.

Move Over Cocktail

1-1/2 ounces gin.
1/2 ounce dry vermouth.
1/4 ounce sweet vermouth.
1/4 ounce Cherry Heering.
1 dash aromatic bitters.

Stir with ice in a mixing glass and strain;
garnish with twisted lemon peel.

For the aromatic bitters we used Angostura; try Fee’s, Bitter Truth, Peychaud’s or whatever you have on hand. I expect each one will produce a drink of an entirely different character.

This one came to my attention in one of Gary Regan’s columns, where the Professor and Doc sample a 1930 classic. It was named after a 1920s Rudolph Valentino movie, based on a novel of the same title by Vincente Blasco Ibáñez. It has since become one of my favorite Scotch-based cocktails (and that’s not all …).

Blood and Sand

3/4 ounce blended Scotch.
3/4 ounce sweet vermouth.
3/4 ounce Cherry Heering.
3/4 ounce fresh orange juice.

Shake with cracked ice and strain into chilled cocktail glass.

The smokiness of the Scotch works well in harmony with the other ingredients here, as unlikely as that may sound. If you want to take it to another level, swap out the Scotch for a good smoky mezcal, such as one of the Del Maguey offerings, or perhaps Sombra if you want to crank the smoke level up even more. With this substitution, though, you should call it an Arena y Sangre.

[UPDATE] The above photo was taken at the 2007 Spirited Dinner at Commander’s Palace at Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans, in which Chef Tory McPhail’s dishes were paired with cocktails by Audrey Saunders and Dale DeGroff. The Blood and Sand is a classic cocktail, and the only straight-ahead classic that was served at the meal. Usually it calls for a blended Scotch, and though I’m not sure what Scotch they used in this one, it did have a bit of smoke it it, which made it so perfect to go along with what was to come. Let’s talk cocktail pairings with food … here’s the dish that this drink accompanied.

Our entrée was Sugarcane and Bourbon Smoked Duck, smoked over smoldering whiskey barrels with local figs, a sweet potato pone, BBQ’ed onions, vanilla bourbon syrup and foie gras ganache.

Jesus Gawd.

Let’s just go through this again, shall we? Duck with Bourbon and sugarcane rub, smoked over smoldering wood from whiskey barrels. This is one reason why Tory McPhail is one of my favorite people on the planet. This dish was just fantastic; I think Wes and I had our eyes rolled up in our heads more than once while eating this dish. And the really fascinating thing is that the booze in the dish wasn’t paired with the booze in the drink this time … the smoke in the booze in the drink was paired with the smoke in the duck in the dish.

THAT, my friends, is how you pair a cocktail with a dish.

I wanted thirds and fourths of this, and I’m going to cry next time I go to Commander’s because this dish won’t be on the menu. Maybe I’ll luck out and it will, though. Fingers crossed.