I’ve been on a bit of a Strega kick lately, finally having added a bottle to my bar. Michael’s on a Strega kick too, and sent along this recipe from CocktailDB that we really enjoyed last night.

Alberti’s Night

1-3/4 ounces rye whiskey (Bourbon is okay too).
3/4 ounce Strega.
1 dash orange bitters.

Combine in mixing glass with ice. Stir for 30 seconds and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. No garnish.

This one’s pretty powerful, as Strega, although a liqueur, is 80 proof. All the drink’s sweetness comes from this, but it’s not all that sweet. You do get plenty of alcohol, so keep that in mind — it packs a punch, albeit a lovely, spicy one. We like Rittenhouse bonded in this one, but you can use a lesser proof rye for nice results too, if you don’t want your ass kicked by a 100 proof base spirit.

As Eric Felten writes in the WSJ, small amounts of Fernet Branca in cocktails are the way to go for a lot of folks, substituting it for aromatic bitters like Angostura.

He writes of the Fanciulli Cocktail, basically a 2:1 Bourbon Manhattan swapping 1/4 ounce Fernet Branca for the 2 dashes of bitters, up or on the rocks. (I’d garnish that sucker with a big oily twist of orange, me.)

If you need it spelled out:

Fanciulli Cocktail

2 ounces Bourbon.
1 ounce sweet vermouth.
1/4 ounce Fernet Branca.

Stir and strain, up or on the rocks.

We’ve done this with rye, but didn’t know the Bourbon version had a name. I’ll give it a shot this way, but I’ve become an insane amaro lover. We drink Fernet on its own (and as the base spirit in Old Fashioneds), which apparently impresses Felten: “Though some of the herbs, roots and barks that go into it are common enough in bitter drafts — cinchona, orris, gentian — the flavors are so powerfully concentrated that the stuff is almost impossible to choke down straight, which is why it has been used as a morning-after shock to the system.”

Sheesh, I’ve never had any in the morning. I’m more of a Brandy Milk Punch kinda guy in the morning.

UPDATE, 7:34pm: Wes made Fanciulli Cocktails tonight using George T. Stagg Bourbon (at 144.8 proof, woof!), Punt E Mes and, of course, Fernet. It’s a hell of a thing.

This is my entry for the Downtown Los Angeles Sub-District Cocktail Competition. (Wow, that’s a mouthful.) Cocktail competitions are fun — sometimes they’re only ways for the spirits company sponsoring them to get their brand out there, but a lot of the time it’s a great way for a bartender to get a little recognition and maybe even win a prize. Marcos Tello of The Edison is organizing a new one not for a spirits company, but for our own fair city. What we hope to get out of it in a month’s time is seventeen new signature drinks for Los Angeles. Let’s have him tell y’all about it:

New York has for some time had The Manhattan, The Brooklyn, and The Bronx — benchmark cocktails named after their native regions. A short while back a couple of bartenders from New York got together and decided to finish naming cocktails after their beloved neighborhoods. Cocktails such as The Bensonhurst, Greenpoint, and Little Italy. Beautifully stirred cocktails using a spirit base and vermouths, liqueurs, amaros, bitters, etc. Being a native Angeleno, I have always wanted a set of cocktails named after my own city or its neighborhoods.

Recently I bellied up to the bar at Seven Grand in downtown Los Angeles. (As you may or may not know, downtown is trying desperately to become a “full-fledged” city.) My buddy Leo Rivas served me a delicious concoction, stirred, and served up. And I thought to myself, as he was still searching for a name, why don’t we name it after a one of the sub-districts in downtown? And then I thought, why doesn’t L.A. have its own set of sub-district cocktails? This first one we decided to name it the Arts District Cocktail.

The point of all this is that we should have our own set of cocktails named after the city that needs our help in developing a true cocktail culture, in order for it to truly be called a “city”! So in February will have a cocktail competition in which name cocktails after the 17 Sub-districts in Downtown Los Angeles.

I know this is kind of closing the barn door after the bandersnatch has run away, but the deadline for entries was yesterday. (Glerp. Sorry.) Eligibility is bartenders who reside in the Los Angeles area, or who are L.A. natives but now tend bar elsewhere, and also serious non-professional enthsiasts and cocktail nerds. We might have picked up three or two more of yas from the readership here, but oh well.

The Rules: A stirred cocktail using a base spirit, modifying vermouth, liqueur (i.e. Bénédictine, Curaçao, etc.) or sweetening agent, and some type of bitter. No citrus. (Citrus is plentiful in L.A. and it’s too easy; we don’t want a whole bunch of sours either.) Also, ingredients have to be readily available, meaning no homemade ingredients or extremely, obscure hard to find ingredients. We want to be able to make these on a regular basis and promote making them around the city, so they should be somewhat approachable. Entrants are encouraged to do some research on the history of the district they’re aiming for, to help the drink reflect both the past and present in that district.

The competition will be on the first Sunday of February. If we can coax him into town for the weekend from his until-April out-of-town gig, we hope Dr. Cocktail himself will be judging. (I’m sure Marcos has a Plan B just in case.)

I decided to go for the Toy District, bordered by 3rd Street on the north and 5th Street on the south, Los Angeles Street on the west and San Pedro Street on the east. It’s filled with myriad shops for inexpensive toys, trinkets, and you-name-it. It’s also pretty bustling, at least during the day. For years one of my best friends lived in a loft in the Toy District, and there we did lots of eating, drinking and carrying on. (Good, good times.) Besides the personal inspiration, I did a bit of digging and found out some interesting things about the neighborhood.

Before the wave of immigrants from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and elsewhere in Asia arrived to make the Toy District into what we know it to be today, the neighborhood was “filled with the colorful sights and fragrant smells of old Greece”, according to the Los Angeles Times, and was known as Greek Town. The city’s first Greek restaurant was on 4th Street, with Kalamata olive oil importers a few doors down. There were 65 Greek businesses clustered in the area, although few remain today and all but two of the original buildings have been razed.

I chose one of my base spirits, Metaxa, to reflect the flavors of the community in old Greek Town, augmenting it with rye whiskey to give it balance, a sturdier backbone and to reflect my love of the downtown drinking scene (I like to drink whiskey in downtown bars). The bitter component is Amaro Ramazzotti, complementing the floral notes of the Metaxa with bitter orange and fragrant spice (plus, the Romans had pretty much all the same gods as the Greeks). Lillet is there to help bring the flavors together, and to reflect the presence of fabulous French dip sandwiches a few blocks away. A muddled slice of ginger, as well as the ginger garnish, reflects the current Asian population of the Toy District and gives the drink a bit of brightness and zing.

Okay, I’m being silly with some of the symbolism there, but I wanted a Greek spirit and thought it’d taste good with the Italian amaro (wonderful stuff, which I want to use more often), and the other ingredients were chosen solely for taste and balance. I worked on this for about three days, and Wes and I drank most of the not-quites. (Hence, we were fairly shitfaced on Friday and Saturday and stayed home.) I’m pretty happy with the result. If you’ve a mind to, give it a shot and tell me what you think.

THE TOY DISTRICT COCKTAIL

1 ounce Metaxa 7 Star.
1 ounce rye whiskey.
3/4 ounce Amaro Ramazzotti.
1/2 ounce Lillet blanc.
2 slices of fresh ginger.
1 orange peel

Combine liquors and 1 slice of ginger in a mixing glass. Muddle the ginger slice to extract flavor. Add ice and stir for 30 seconds. Double-strain into a rocks glass over ice. Garnish with additional ginger slice and orange peel.

Here’s hoping I win my district! [UPDATE: I did. Yay! Although I think I had one, maybe two competitors for this district, and good luck ordering this anywhere.]

I’m back in L.A. now, having made the year’s final visit to Seven Grand for yet more cocktail cheer, where Dave took mighty good care of us. I managed to pick up a dose of sniffles and coughing while I was back home, so Dr. Dave first served up something that cures what ails ya:

Hotty Toddy

2 ounces Cognac.
3/4 ounce honey syrup (combine honey and hot water 1:1 to make).
Hot water.
Nutmeg and star anise.

Grate a bit of nutmeg and star anise into a small stemmed glass (an Irish coffee glass would work well). Add the Cognac, honey syrup and hot water and stir to combine. Garnish with a nice oily lemon peel.

Next up was a tall drink Dave whipped up, also medicinal, with fresh grated ginger and rye. He asked me which rye I wanted and I wanted one with a punch (well, it’s medicinal after all), so we went with the new release of Thomas H. Handy Sazerac Rye, which I love. It’s powerful, coming in at 127.5 proof, and it screams “RYE!” at you, big and spicy and fruity. I felt it could stand up to all the other ingredients and still be assertive, and that it was. (Given the way I’m still coughing as I write this, I should go upstairs and make another one right now.)

(Yeah, crappy iPhone pic, but what're ya gonna do?)

Rye Brouhaha

2 ounces rye whiskey.
1/2 ounce fresh lime juice.
1/2 ounce simple syrup.
1/2 ounce pineapple juice.
1-2 teaspoons fresh grated ginger, to taste.
1 egg white.
Seltzer.

Grate some fresh ginger into a shaker and add the whiskey, juices, syrup and egg white. Shake like mad until cold and frothy. Strain into a tall glass with ice, then top off with a bit of seltzer. Garnish with a slice of fresh ginger.

Next I wanted an Old Fashioned but with a whiskey I had never had before. Dave immediately recommended the 2008 release of William Larue Weller Bourbon, the fifth member of the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection which had somehow eluded me all this time. It’s undoubtedly my obsession with the Sazerac 18 year rye and the Handy Rye, plus the “haz-mat” George T. Stagg and the lovely Eagle Rare 17 that had kept me distracted. I’m sorry I waited, although I had read later that previous years’ releases of WLW were somewhat weak. Not this one.

This is a gorgeous whiskey, not as punchy as a rye (it’s wheated, as I recall) but it gets a lot from the wood — vanilla, caramel and holiday spices like cinnamon. It’s also beautifully smooth, with no alcohol burn despite its high proof (125.3). I’m gonna have to dig some of this up if I can (limited availability and all), as if I haven’t already spent a fortune on whiskey the last couple of weeks …

(Another crappy iPhone pic)

Then home and off to bed. We’ve got smothered cabbage and black-eyed peas to make tomorrow.

Recapping my ’08 trip home to New Orleans for Christmas …

Next up was a lovely Old Fashioned variation of Chris’ that he’s currently calling “New Orleans is Drowning,” adding that “I gotta come up with a better name for this.” The bitters represent our Caribbean heritage, the Cognac is for the French, the rye for the Americans and the Campari rinse is for the Italians. (The Spanish, Africans, Irish and Germans get left out in this drink, but frankly adding three more ingredients would tend to get things a little crowded. Maybe we can come up with a No. 2 version to honor those other parts of New Orleans’ mix.)

In the meantime …

“New Orleans is Drowning”
(Adapted from a perhaps soon-to-be-renamed Old Fashioned variation by Chris McMillian)

1 ounce Cognac.
1 ounce rye whiskey.
1 teaspoon rich simple syrup.
3-4 dashes Angostura bitters.
Campari.

Add the simple syrup, bitters, Cognac and rye to a mixing glass filled with ice and stir with ice until well chilled. Rinse an Old Fashioned glass with Campari, then strain the Cognac-rye mixture into it and garnish with an orange peel.

Chris’ preferred method is to use a sugar cube and splash of water rather than simple syrup. For that method add the sugar and bitters to the mixing glass, then the water. Crush the sugar cube with a muddler and muddle until the sugar is completely dissolved. Then proceed with the rest of the ingredients.

I’m hoping I remembered the details correctly on this one. I was getting a little fuzzy in the memory department by this point.