New Orleans singer-songwriter Paul Sanchez wrote this opening lyric to his wonderful Christmas song, “I Got Drunk This Christmas”:

I see a stocking hanging
But I don’t know whose it is
I hope Santa’s bringing
An icy sloe gin fizz.

I’ve always loved that song, but I couldn’t quite identify with his cocktail reference … as until last night, I’d never had an icy sloe gin fizz. In fact, until last night, I’d never even tasted realsloe gin. An odd gap in my cocktailian background, true; it was never around much during my earliest drinking days, and every time I saw the stuff in the store (which was not all that often), it tended to be a bottom-shelf liqueur. One sip of that stuff was all I needed to know that what those bottom shelf bottles were passing off as “sloe gin” was not for me.

Real sloe gin is made from sloe berries, the tart blueberry-like fruit of the blackthorn plant (a member of the plum family) and grows primarily in Europe, along with sugar and real gin. It’s a homemade product throughout Britain, with people going out to pick sloes, steeping them in gin and letting them age for the rest of the year, although commercially available brands were also available for decades. The chance that most of those cheap domestic brands would contain both real gin and real sloes was slim to none.

Sloe gin started popping up more and more as an ingredient in various drinks during my later cocktail education, and I began to get curious. After I became a devotee of Plymouth Gin, I found out that Plymouth make a sloe gin as well! The bad news is that it’s not exported to the United States (bah). Well, I’d never let that stop me before. After effusively enthusiastic recommendations from Dr. Cocktail that Plymouth Sloe Gin is indeed The Best There Is (in fact, other than the homemade article, All There Is and None Else Are Worth Bothering), and then reading this taste test in the Guardian …

The best way to drink sloe gin is neat (it is not as alcoholic as ordinary gin, with an ABV of 26%), in a small glass, so that’s how we first tasted it. There were two samples. One was purply, intensely sugary and tasted confected and sickly, like a syrupy cough remedy — that was the Gordon’s. It went straight down the drain. The other had more russety tones, like clotting blood. A waft of bitter almonds and damsons (the sloe is a member of the plum family) came off the glass. Enough sugar had been added to take the edge off the rampant astringency of the fruit, but not so much as to domesticate it. It was delicious — grown-up and very addictive. This one was made by Plymouth (£9.99, from Asda and Safeway).

“Russety, like clotting blood”?! Oh my. Well, the rest of it sounded fantastic, and I knew I had to have some to add to our bar.

I really wanted to try Paul’s icy sloe gin fizz, plus there was still a cocktail in Doc’s book that I couldn’t make because I didn’t have any sloe gin and didn’t want some syrupy, sickly, artificially-flavored bottom-shelf brand. I wanted the best, and Plymouth is the best. One easy internet mail order from Royal Mile Whiskies in the U.K. and one shocking credit card charge later (it cost £1 more to ship the bottles than it cost to buy the bottles, oy), I am now the proud and happy owner of one liter of Plymouth Sloe Gin.

Beautiful tartness, not too sweet and not too powerful, only 52 proof. The waft of bitter almond definitely comes through, and what they said about it being addictive … oh my. This stuff is way too good for me to have to spend £41 for a liter of it with shipping from the U.K., especially at the rate at which we’re likely to be drinking it. Doc recommends Mohawk as an acceptable domestic version (sadly, I don’t recall noticing that brand at any of my usual hooch-buyin’ haunts); I usually only see Hiram Walker, and I’m suspicious of their quality.

The good news is that Plymouth Sloe Gin is now finally available in limited quantities in the U.S., for about $32 a bottle. Hooray!

Okay, I know that Christmas was a month ago, but look what Santa brought me …

Here’s the classic, simple recipe.

Sloe Gin Fizz
(classic)

1-1/2 ounces sloe gin.
1 ounce freshly squeezed lemon juice.
1 teaspoon simple syrup.
Soda.

Combine with ice in a cocktail shaker and shake for 8-10 seconds.
Strain into an ice-filled 5-ounce Delmonico glass, top with soda and stir.

The closest equivalent to a Delmonico glass is described by CocktailDB as a “diner or coffee shop breakfast juice glass.” For taller drinks, double the ingredients and use a Collins glass. By volume, the amount of soda in this drink should be just over 1/3 once the ice is in the glass. Don’t over-soda it!

Yes, I’m aware that in the above photo the drinks are chilled with refrigerator ice. It was all I had on hand at the time. Gimme a frakkin’ break. (This was pointed out in the comments section of the original post by someone who completely ignored the fact that those fizzes are served in vintage 1939 New York World’s Fair Delmonico glasses. Sheesh.)

Here’s the way I prefer to make it these days. I like to kick it up with a bit more gin, but you can leave that out if you like.

Sloe Gin Fizz
(modern)

1-1/2 ounces Plymouth Sloe Gin.
1 ounce Plymouth Gin (optional).
3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice.
1 barspoon (tsp) simple syrup.
1 egg white.
Soda.

Combine ingredients in a shaker WITHOUT ICE. Dry shake for at least 30 seconds, a minute if you can manage. Add ice and shake again for 20 seconds. Strain over ice into a tall Collins glass, and top with soda water.

Oh man, talk about good …

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!

The Jack Rose is one of the perennial classics, very popular in pre- and just post-Prohibition times. A simple combination of applejack, lemon (or lime) juice and grenadine, it’s one that I keep returning to.

Many of the classic recipes seem quite sweet to me, though. The Savoy Cocktail Book recipe simply calls for 3/4 applejack and 1/4 grenadine, no citrus. Not enough balance for me. Speaking of the citrus, the classic recipe calls for lemon juice, but I love the way that lime plays with apples.

Others have called for as much as 1/2 ounce of grenadine — also too sweet. I’m fond of more tart drinks, and I’m also fond of bitters. Here’s the way I like to make it at home, with a little New Orleans touch. (For a standard Jack Rose, just omit the bitters.)

I don’t really care for Laird’s Applejack product — it’s now 65% grain neutral spirits, and only 35% actual apple brandy. (Sad.) However, Laird’s bonded Straight Apple Brandy, at 100 proof, is a phenomenal product and mixes beautifully, with a pronounced apple flavor. I love it.

The Jacques Rose Cocktail

2 ounces Laird’s Straight Apple Brandy.
3/4 ounce fresh lime juice.
2 barspoons grenadine.
1 healthy dash Peychaud’s bitters.

Combine with ice, shake for 10-12 seconds, strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lime wedge.

Now, speaking of variations …

I had a day off yesterday. What did I do? Liquor shopping! (Idle hands, etc.)

I did some surveying of wine and spirits establishments in my area that I hadn’t frequented or even visited before, just to check out their selection and prices. The true revelation, which made me smack my head for spending the last six years passing it by and thinking it was a garden-variety corner package liquor store, is Mission Liquors, on the corner of Washington and Allen in Pasadena. Their selection is jaw-dropping for such a small place, including things I’d never seen before (brand after brand of Lebanese arak, Armenian and Georgian brandies and eaux-de-vie), and pretty decent prices on most items I’d be getting.

From there I finally got a chance to pick up something I’d first tried last month chez Dr. Cocktail, who had been sent a free bottle by the liquor company (Heaven Hill, I believe). It’s a brand-new product called Pama, and it’s the first true pomegranate liqueur. It’s gorgeous too; ruby-colored, and in a gorgeous bottle that they seem to have pinched from my favorite gorgeous-bottle people, Modern Spirits Vodka in Monrovia (whose products are extraordinary, but we’ll talk more about them tomorrow).

Doc first described Pama to us, and later on in a Martini Republic article, as being made, according to the liquor company, with “pomegranate juice blended with imported Tequila and super-premium vodka.”

“I immediately wanted to triangulate my way to any handy vomit bags,” said Doc. I don’t blame him.

Then we tasted the stuff. Dang. It’s good. Mo’ better than it has any right to be, given that description. Tart and well-balanced in its flavor, and Doc started to thinking … why not use this stuff in classic cocktails that call for grenadine? He served us an experimental version of a classic, the Jack Rose, made with apple brandy, lime juice and grenadine, substituting Pama for the grenadine.

It was good.

Here’s our once-again Creolized version, with the lovely Pama substituted for the grenadine. Given that it’s a liqueur and not a syrup, we bumped up the amount a bit — make yours to taste.

The Jacques Rose Cocktail No. 2

2 ounces applejack or apple brandy.
1/2 ounce freshly squeezed lime juice.
1/2 ounce Pama pomegranate liqueur.
1 dash Peychaud’s Bitters.

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.
Garnish with a lime wedge.

The good thing about today is that it’s the federal holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a great American who, among many other profound things, said:

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

— Dr. Martin Luther King, 1967

I’d say that’s particularly true of wars that were started based on misdirection and lies.

The bad thing about today is that … well, not everybody gets the day off (Wes has to work today, pfeh), but I was thinking more along the lines of this: it’s the 86th anniversary of the day that Prohibition began in the United States, January 16, 1920. The “noble experiment” was, fortunately, a disastrous failure, and we can celebrate that at least, both today and on December 5, which was the Day of Repeal. In the meantime, here’s a celebratory cocktail that might be worth trying:

The Prohibition Cocktail

1-1/2 ounces Plymouth gin.
1-1/2 ounces Lillet blanc.
2 dashes Apry (or other apricot liqueur).
1 teaspoon orange juice.
1 dash Regans’ Orange Bitters No. 6 (optional).

Shake with ice for 10-12 seconds, and strain into a cocktail glass.
Squeeze a lemon twist over the drink, and garnish with the twist.

The bitters were not part of the original recipe, but it seemed to me to cry out for a dash.

Wes always does a great job of picking the evening’s cocktail when it’s his turn, and last night was no exception. This one was in Food and Wine’s Cocktails 2005, first came to my attention via Robert Hess, seems to have originally appeared in Gary Regan’s Bartender’s Bible, and is served among other places at the Zig Zag Café in Seattle.

La Rosita

1-1/2 ounces reposado tequila.
1/2 ounce sweet vermouth.
1/2 ounce dry vermouth.
1/2 ounce Campari.
1 dash Angostura bitters.

Combine ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker or mixing glass. Stir for no less than 30 seconds. Strain into a cocktail glass; no garnish.

The flavor of the agave along with the bite of the Campari make for a delightful drink and an inspired combination of flavors. Definitely give this one a try. The world needs more Campari cocktails! And more tequila cocktails too, for that matter.