Some Words

The other day, on a whim, I picked up a bottle of Parfait Amour. It’s a purple colored orange liquor, with some floral things added. I’m really not that sure what, maybe lilac.

It tastes like candy, in a fluffy sort of way, and it looks deeply unnatural.

So far we’ve tried three things.

The Jupiter Cocktail
1 1/2 oz Gin
1/2 oz Dry Vermouth
1/4 oz Orange Juice
1/4 oz Parfait Amour

This was interesting, but not amazing. The purple color was muted and somewhat muddy looking, because if you were adding enough Parfait Amour to make it really purple, it would taste like marshmallow. Dr. Cocktail’s book has this made with Creme Yvette (lilac flavored), which I get the impression is going to be more than a little different. The orange would be more muted of course, but unless lilac is a flavor that brings a lot to the table, I don’t see it popping the drink into the regular rotation.

Trilby Variation
3/4 oz Blended Scotch
3/4 oz Sweet Vermouth
3/4 oz Parfait Amour
1/4 oz Pastis
2 dashes Orange Bitters

Ok… I only made this one because I had all the ingredients. I didn’t expect much, and I was disappointed. The best way that I could describe this is: a complex root beer barrel. Super sweet and very strange. It wasn’t something I’d like to drink again, but I also didn’t feel that I should waste the booze by sending it down the drain, like I did that one time I mixed a Godfather. I don’t know what I was thinking that time.

The last one was a variation on the Delilah cocktail. I can’t find a recipe off hand, but it’s basically gin, lemon, and curacao. Mark subbed the Parfait Amour for the curacao. Not bad, but not amazing.

The two recepies given here were from Cocktail DB.

Oh, and here’s a non Parfait Amour cocktail that’s got me thinking I should pick up a bottle of Yellow Chartreuse next: The Champs Elysées Cocktail

Ok, wow, I had no idea there were this many rye brands available.

That is all.

So, Mark gave me some Cointreau for the holidays. I picked up some citrus the other day, and went looking for something to mix. I found a little thing over at CocktailDB. It was called the Boxcar. They had a different recipe than most of the other sites, one that called for lime instead of lemon, and more of it. I hadn’t been led astray there yet. (Though I’m sure it will happen one day. Everyone has different taste blah blah…)

I mixed up their version. Sweet damn was it good. I just made a second tonight, and it seems I got the proportions just right, a little more of the bitterness came out, and it really balanced perfectly. The first try had been just a touch sweet. I probably used too much grenadine, as I don’t have a quarter measure.

Boxcar
1 1/2 oz. Gin
1 oz. Fresh Lime Juice
1/2 oz. Cointreau
1/4 oz. Grenadine
1 Egg Yoke

Bonus for Mark, it’s pink.

A while ago I read A Wild Sheep Chase by Murakami. I kept talking about it until Mark asked me to let him borrow it. He liked it too. The other day we came up with a drink we were both quite happy with, and we decided to name it A Wild Sheep Chase. While it’s served cold, I do think think it’s a nice winter drink. Here’s how we made it.

A Wild Sheep Chase
2 1/4 oz dark or medium rum
3/4 oz sweet vermouth
2 dashes lemon bitters (we had Fees)
1 dash aromatic bitters (again, Fees)

I’m thinking of making it two dashes of the aromatic, but that’s because I love aromatic bitters, and on some level I want to add them to every drink I make.

Enjoy.

A few days ago Mark and I went to Surdyks, where I picked up a bunch of different bitters. I also put together a homemade grenadine, the cold process over at Cocktail Chronicles. I wanted to find something that used both the orange bitters I had picked up, and the grenadine. I found the R.A.F. cocktail.

2 parts gin (I used Tanqueray this time)
1 part sweet vermouth
1 part dry vermouth
dash of grenadine
dash of orange bitters

It was good. I had worried that it would be too much vermouth for a single drink, as I generally don’t like much vermouth at all. I was amazed by how much it blended. The sweet vermouth peaked out a little too much at the end, but that was probably due to it being the first time I’d mixed it.

I’m starting a big writing push tonight, so there will probably be more posted, as I take breaks from the fiction from time to time. I’ve had a few things I’d been meaning to post about.

Friday was a good day for a barbecue. A few people came over and beef was cooked. While that beef was cooked beer and cocktails were had.

I had a couple of champagne cocktails that I thought were worth mentioning. The first was “Death in the Afternoon,” supposedly invented by Hemingway, and named after his book on bullfighting. It’s a great idea, but the recipe that Mark and I used was not so good. It called for absinthe and champagne in a 1:5 ratio. Lacking absinthe we went with Ricard’s. This might also have been a mistake. The Ricard’s was a little too syrupy for a 1:5 ratio. It also totally dominated the champagne. What we ended up with was some slightly toast flavored anisette that bubbled. Despite this I hold out that it could be a good drink if altered. Could Pernod be the solution? My guess is that changing it to champagne and just a heavy dash of the anisette would be in order.

The other one was I believe called a champaign flamingo.
Recipe:
3/4 oz. Campari
3/4 oz. Vodka
Top off with champagne

This one was a winner, it was dry and bitter in all the ways that make dry and bitter refreshing and amazing. It also looked pretty. I knew I was keeping Campari in the bar for some reason other than those odd moments when I wanted bitter red syrup on ice (this happens more often than you’d think). This drink is that reason.