Base spirit, sweet vermouth and bitters. It’s a classic combo, which gave us the Martinez and the Manhattan to name but two (not to mention myriad Manhattan variations).

The Scotch whisky version of this combination has long deserved its own name (don’t call it a Scotch Manhattan!). Here’s the basic recipe.

Rob Roy

2 ounces blended Scotch whisky.
1 ounce sweet vermouth.
2 dashes Angostura bitters.

Stir with ice for 30 seconds and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a cherry.

A Rob Roy lends itself very well to being made as a Perfect Rob Roy (1/2 ounce each of sweet and dry vermouth) or a Dry Rob Roy (1 ounce dry vermouth). If you make it dry garnish with a lemon peel; if perfect you may use either lemon peel or cherry.

Gary Regan is a proponent of Peychaud’s Bitters in a Rob Roy, and I’m very much with him on this. The cherry and anise flavors of Peychaud’s marry well with the peat and smoke of Scotch, and I’ve been making mine with Peychaud’s ever since I first read his suggestion. Like this — here’s what we’d probably hand you if you came over and asked for a Rob Roy:

Rob Roy
(Chuck & Wes’ typical version)

2 ounces Famous Grouse 12-year-old blended Scotch whisky.
1 ounce Cinzano sweet vermouth.
2 dashes Peychaud’s bitters.
Lemon twist.

Stir and strain, chilled cocktail glass, express oil from twist and garnish.

Gary goes further, though. He’s a major espouser of the “garbage-in-garbage-out” theory, and is even bold enough to advocate the use of powerfully flavored single malt Scotch whiskies in cocktails (something which causes a few Scotch-drinking acquaintances of mine to recoil in horror). I’m with Gary on this one, but it requires careful consideration of flavor and balance.

Brief digression: We’ve been watching a series on the Fine Living Network called “Great Cocktails.” When we heard about it we were intrigued but skeptical; I’ve seen plenty of bad TV about cocktails, and I was hoping this one would raise the bar. For the most part, it does. While we do disagree with some of the things espoused by the host (please don’t encourage home cocktail mixers to freepour — use a jigger!), generally the approach is very good, and they’re talking to all the right people, including Duggan McDonnell, Audrey Saunders and Gary.

On the last edition of “Great Cocktails” that we watched, Gary made a Rob Roy — a classic cocktail — yet remade it entirely by using one of the most powerful Scotch whiskies in existence. When using so powerful an ingredent, you need to adjust the balance of your drink so that the Scotch doesn’t completely overwhelm everything else. In this case the standard 2:1 (or occasional 3:1) ratio gets bumped up to equal proportions, with more bitters then you’d normally use.

It sounds mad, but trust me — it works. I made these the other night when Wes wasn’t feeling well. It wasn’t strictly medicinal, although it did have that effect. It was, in addition, a ballsy and stupendous drink.

The Laphroaig Rob Roy
(from the delightfully mad Gary Regan)

1-1/2 ounces Laphroaig 10 Year Old Scotch Whisky.
1-1/2 ounces Cinzano Rosso vermouth.
4 healthy dashes Peychaud’s Bitters.

Combine with ice in a mixing glass and stir for no less than 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled Champagne flute. I’d omit the garnish, unless 1) you’re really crazy, and 2) you had one of my friend Barry’s smoked cherries (he threw a pan of them into the smoker when we was smoking a hunk of meat; technique described here).

It cured him for a day, but then he got sick again yesterday. I should have made two.

[UPDATE: Not only is the Roy Roy a great cocktail, it's also one of my very favorite bars anywhere. When in Seattle visit Rob Roy, have some of their great cocktails, and tell Zane and Anu that Chuck and Wes said hi!]

Charles Edward Stuart, also known as “Bonnie Prince Charlie,” died 219 years ago today. He was an exiled claimant to the thrones of Scotland and England, whom the Jacobite movement tried (and failed) to restore to the throne. My own particular interest in Charlie is that he supposedly created the liqueur consisting of Scots whisky, honey and herbs that we now know as Drambuie, from the Scots Gaelic am dram buidheach, meaning “the drink that satisfies.”

That it does, it’s mighty good stuff. Although I love the flavor I tend to find straight liqueurs to be far too sweet for my taste, and what better to cut the sweetness and retain the flavor but a drink that combines Drambuie with its base, “the devil uisce beatha, guid Scots whisky?!

This drink is often dismissed as something that’s “easy,” and while it is indeed easy to make, you’d do yourself a disservice to ignore it, especially if you make it with a good Scotch base. Lots of people seem to forget about this drink, but they shouldn’t. It’s wonderful.

Rusty Nail

2-1/4 ounces blended Scotch whisky.
3/4 ounce Drambuie.
Lemon twist.

Combine with ice in a rocks glass and stir. Twist the lemon peel over the drink and garnish with the peel.

I like this with a good blended Scotch like The Famous Grouse, but given the near-infinite variations and tastes in Scotch you will, of course, use one to suit your own taste. If you’re really wacky you might even use a smoky, peaty single malt.

Apparently today is also “National Brandy Alexander Day.” (Where do they come up with this stuff?) Unless you wish to celebrate the myriad drag queens who have adopted this as their nom-de-drag, and if you do like sweet, creamy drinks (I don’t) then you might want one of these instead. Combine a jigger of brandy with one ounce each of cream and crème de cacao, shake and strain, then grate a little nutmeg on top. Sip and be faaabulous, dahling.

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!

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.