Well, I didn’t get a chance to participate in this one. Wes and I were out of town visiting my sister and my adorable nephew Thomas and my adorable brand-new niece Molly, and I didn’t have access to my bar. I also complained about not really having any guilty pleasures, not in the way some of my fellow drinkers did. Wes and I put our heads together, and could only really come up with The Gimlet, which I don’t think anyone needs to feel guilty over (unless you make them with vodka, I guess!) and a couple of other things I didn’t feel sufficiently guilty about.

I probably would have written about a similar one as Paul did in the above link. He likes vodka Gimlets, but when I was in school my drink of choice was the Tequila Gimlet, which my good friend Matt Brown turned me on to. Same deal as with the gin or vodka versions … I usually make mine 4:1 these days, but I’ll add the 3:1 proportions too.

Tequila Gimlet

2 ounces (or 2-1/4 ounces for 3:1) good blanco tequila (I like Milagro, Herradura or Partida).
1/2 ounce (or 3/4 ounce for 3;1) Rose’s Lime Cordial.
Lime twist.

Combine with ice and stir like hell for 30 seconds. Strain into chilled cocktail glass and optionally garnish with a lime twist.

Of course, back on those less enlightened days I made my Tequila Gimlets with Cuervo Gold, something I wouldn’t use today for anything other then possibly disinfecting wounds. (Horrid, godawful mixto mierda1) Use the blancos I recommended, especially the magnificent Partida. I haven’t had one of these in ages, but I think these days I’d take a cue from Paul’s recipe above and use this variation as he did:

Tequila Gimlet
(Variation)

2 ounces Partida, Herradura or Milagro blanco tequila.
1/4 ounce fresh lime juice.
1/4 ounce Rose’s Lime Cordial.

Stir & strain, etc.

The other drink of choice back in those Olden Days (although only briefly), was the one Doug Winship wrote up in his MxMo post … the dreaded, evil Kamikaze. Now, I suppose it’s not intrinsically evil, like the black lump at the end of Time Bandits. However, if I were to see one today, I’d shriek, “Don’t touch it! It’s evil!”

It’s my own stupid fault, of course.

I don’t know how I first came across the Kamikaze, but it was certainly inoffensive — citrusy and sweet (really sweet, given that you’re getting Rose’s and undoubtedly the cheapest well triple sec). Here’s how I made it at the time:

Kamikaze
(Chuck’s 1986 version)

1-1/2 ounces vodka (cheap).
3/4 ounce triple sec (cheap).
3/4 ounce Rose’s Lime Juice (Cordial).

Shake and strain. Chilled cocktail glass? Guffaw! Any receptacle will do.

I hadn’t really given the drink’s name much thought, until one day I was with a bunch of friends at some bar, and they were taking our drink orders. When they got to me I shouted out, “Kamikaze!” resulting in a spit-take and a “WTF?!” reaction from our friend Hiroki, who was from Japan. The word had a somewhat different connotation for him. When I told him how it was made, he opined that the name sounded appropriate enough.

During that summer of 1985 I got the great idea to throw a Kamikaze Party. Two of my friends, Bob and Shawn, thought it was a great idea too, and contributed their apartment for the debacle occasion. This was a bit surprising, as we’d already had a fairly raucous gathering there the night before — more on that later. I was put in charge of the “mixology,” or what passed for it when I was 23. I procured two 2.5-gallon jugs of drinking water (the kind that look like this), cut holes in the top, dumped out the water, and batched each of them with two-and-a-half gallons of premixed Kamikaze. Not understanding proper mixological principles at the time, I didn’t take into account the fact that the shaking or stirring of a cocktail makes the final result about 20-25% water, which is absolutely necessary for flavor, texture and to take the burning edge off the alcohol. Lacking the water made the drink even stronger, of course (but strong was what it was all about in those days, wasn’t it?). Once mixed, each container went into the fridge, giving us five gallons of Kamikaze. The jugs had a spigot, and next to the fridge were piles of little 3-ounce Dixie cups. All you had to do was grab a cup, open the fridge, dispense some chilled Kamikaze from the jug, and shoot it back.

That party had almost no survivors. Also, the Kamikaze is the only cocktail that resulted in my passing out next to the toilet (with photographs, of course).

This tends to take the “pleasure” part out of the phrase “guilty pleasure.” I haven’t touched a Kamikaze in 23 years, 3 months, 26 days and approximately 13 hours.

And this was after the party of the night before. Zoinks.
 

Still exploring our new bottles of Hayman’s Old Tom Gin, and enjoying every drop. Killer Martinezes, lovely Tom Collinses, although we have yet to try it in a Ramos Fizz. (I keep forgetting to get eggs and cream at the store … next week for sure.) Tonight for inspiration I delved into CocktailDB, and came up with this one. The original recipes called for an ounce each of Old Tom and sweet vermouth, plus a half-ounce of Crème de Violette, with a dash of orange bitters. To my taste (in fact, probably to most contemporary tastes) this seems horribly sweet, but a possibly intriguing flavor combination with the right balance. I decided to increase the gin and vermouth to 1-1/2 ounces each, and reduce the violette to a teaspoon. Then I realized that this basically makes a Martinez with violette swapped out for the maraschino. That sounded interesting.

Rothman & Winter make the most readily available Crème de Violette.

The Demeanor Cocktail
(Chuck’s variation)

1-1/2 ounces Old Tom gin.
1-1/2 ounces sweet vermouth.
1 teaspoon Crème de Violette.
1 dash orange bitters.

Combine with ice and stir for 30 seconds. Garnish with a lemon twist.

It was … well, certainly interesting. Wes found it “viscous,” even though the only difference between this and the Martinezes he’s been loving recently is the 1 tsp. of violette instead of 1 tsp. of maraschino. We use Maraska maraschino most of the time, which we find to be a bit drier than the Luxardo (which is still excellent), and perhaps he was reacting just to the level of sweetness of the violette combined with the sweet vermouth and the sweetened gin. He thought it was too sweet; “I wouldn’t order it again.” I think this has promise, although I think it needs more tweaking. I’d try to get a little more vitterness going by using Punt E Mes for the vermouth, and I might even try a London dry gin too. Yay, tinkering is fun!

Have any of y’all tried this one? What do you think?

No, it’s not farming subsidies or drill-baby-drill. It’s Cocktail of the Day.

Here’s the one we had the other night, a signature drink of the island nation of Barbados, whence falernum originated. I understand that this drink was originally made with Barbados rum (which makes perfect sense), but a few years ago Murray Stenson of the Zig Zag in Seattle suggested to Paul Clarke that this drink be made with one particular type of rum, which looks like something you’d pour in your crankcase and seems as if it would pack a powerful wallop … but makes a stunningly beautiful drink.

Cruzan Black Strap Rum is made not just from regular molasses, as is most rum, but from blackstrap molasses, which comes from the third boiling of sugar syrup in the sugar making process. Oddly enough, although it has the calories of sugar it’s quite good for you, containing vitamins and minerals, including calcium, magnesium, potassium and iron. (Here’s hoping that at least a bit of that carries through to the hooch.) If you’re a lover of molasses, particularly sorghum molasses for all you Midwesterners, you’ll love this rum. Having watched Wes drizzle Kansas sorghum on his biscuits (which is a bit much even for me), I knew he’d love this stuff too.

I’ve seen a number of slight variations — amount of falernum, bitters or not, lime juice or not — but the drink does seem to gain some wonderful brighness from the addition of fresh lime, and although the bitters have a tendency to be stomped on by this rum you can add a few dashes if you like, enough for the spice to peek through the heavy molasses flavor.

If you’re using the homemade Falernum No. 10 posted earlier, a half-ounce works well. With John D. Taylor’s Velvet Falernum, the consensus seems to be to cut that back to 1/4 ounce, and I agree.

Although the drink might look as if it’s made with 10W-40, it contains neither oil nor corn.

Corn ‘n Oil

2 ounces Cruzan Black Strap Rum.
1/2 ounce Falernum No. 10.
2-3 dashes Angostura bitters (optional).
2 lime wedges, about 1/4 lime.

Build over ice in an Old Fashioned glass, and you may leave the squeezed lime wedges in the drink. Stir for at least a quarter-minute before serving.

In looking at the Cruzan Rum website, I’ve learned something new. I’ve always heard the brand pronounced like “CREW-ZAN,” equal stress on the syllables, and pronounced it that way myself. The website features an introduction by the guy who makes the stuff, and he says “CRU-zhin.” I had no idea.

We’re so looking forward to the 2008 vice presidential debate tonight. There was really only once choice.

The Alaska Cocktail

1-1/2 ounces gin.
1/2 ounce yellow Chartreuse.

Combine with ice, stir for no less than 30 seconds and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Garnish with a freshly shot and field-dressed moose.

Okay, you can leave out that garnish. I’ll … find another garnish and get back to ya!

Murray said he’d be making this one tonight:

The Snicker Cocktail

1-1/2 ounces gin.
1/2 ounce dry vermouth.
1/4 ounce maraschino liqueur.
1/2 teaspoon simple syrup.
1 dash orange bitters.
1 egg white.

Dry shake the ingredients without ice for half a minute, then add the ice and shake for 15 seconds or so. Strain into a cocktail glass.

Hey, that sounds good.

I was craving that gin punch.

At the kickoff of Plymouth Gin’s Historic Los Angeles Cocktail Tour last month (which I still haven’t written about, because I’m a lazy bastard and God Emperor of Procrastination), Dave Wondrich handed us each a flask filled with what he described simply as “gin punch.” It was great.

A couple of weekends ago Wes and I were asked if we wanted to bring cocktails to a pool party and barbecue we had been invited to. The answer to that is always “Yes!” but often we tend to feel more like enjoying the party than mixing drinks the whole time, particularly when a pool is involved. This is one of those times that calls for punch, and my mind snapped back to Dave’s gin punch and how much I enjoyed it.

I went right for my copy of his marvelous book Imbibe! (the work copy, that is; we have two copies of it — one pristine and autographed, and the other one that we’re beating the crap out of in our kitchen and bar, and which already has a cracked spine and loose pages). There on page 77 was a punch recipe that seemed awfully similar to the one we had that day, and was undoubtedly It.

Given who the sponsor was, the gin we had that day was Plymouth, although the original recipe from the early- to mid-1800s was based on “Holland gin,” or genever. If you want to be authentic, make it with an oude genever, or try Maytag’s excellent Genevieve Genever-style Gin. Dave says even a London dry will work, and that’s what we used, because we had about 2 liters of Beefeater on hand and didn’t want to use up all our Boomsma or Genevieve.

For the raspberry syrup you can use Monin or even Torani in a pinch. The best raspberry syrup we’ve ever come across is from Harry and David, those folks that sell the amazing (and amazingly expensive) flats of fruit as gifts, and lots of other expensive bottled and bagged stuff too. Their raspberry syrup is amazing, richly flavored of fresh berries, not too sweet, and stays well-blended in the drink. Problem is, I just checked their online catalog and it doesn’t seem to be listed anymore. (D’oh.) As far as I can tell the product is discontinued.

Dr. Cocktail is fond of Smucker’s Raspberry Syrup, and it’s really good too. We found that it’s heavy and has a tendency to sink to the bottom of a drink rather than stay blended. This is not necessarily a bad thing — it just means you shouldn’t dawdle over your drink!

Or hell, just make your own.

Raspberry Syrup

2 cups fresh raspberries.
1-1/2 cups sugar, plus 2 tablespoons.
2-1/2 cups water.
1/2 teaspoon fresh lemon juice.

Combine the raspberries, 2 tablespoons of sugar and 1 cup of water in a saucepan and cook gently over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the berries begin to break down and release their juices, about 5 minutes.

Add the rest of the water and the lemon juice. Bring to a boil then immediate reduce to a low simmer, skimming any foam that forms. Simmer, stirring frequently, for 15 minutes.

Pour through a strainer, and press the fruit to squeeze out all the juices. Return to the pan, add the rest of the sugar. Stir until sugar dissolves, bring to a boil again and immediately reduce heat to a low simmer; simmer for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool

Bottle and store in refrigerator for up to 4 weeks.

YIELD: About 3 cups.

We didn’t have any raspberry syrup on hand, so we ended up kicking it up a bit by substituting the venerable Chambord black raspberry liqueur (which is made with blackberries as well). I had a lot of it on hand, after judging a local Chambord-sponsored cocktail competition a couple of weeks ago (and no, I haven’t written about that yet either, sigh).

I multiplied the recipe below by twelve to serve everyone, and had enough left over for us to have a nice li’l bowl of punch in the fridge for a few days. I think I might have to keep that practice up. Anyway, here’s the version of the punch I made, in a single-serving size:

Gin Punch
(Chuck’s version, based on the 19th Century recipe in Imbibe!)

3 ounces Beefeater gin.
1-1/2 ounces water.
3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice.
1/2 ounce Chambord (or raspberry syrup).
1/2 ounce simple syrup.
1 teaspoon maraschino liqueur.

Serve over ice in tall glasses, garnished with a slice of orange and berries in season. Provide straws for sipping.

This was good. They put a lot of this stuff away at the barbecue, and were very complimentary. Don’t let its pinkness put you off, though. It’ll knock you on your keister if you’re not careful. (A couple of people at the party cut it with lemonade, about 80% punch to 20% lemonade. Try some of the fizzy French-style, which would probably be very good in this.)