An Old Fashioned Badger

Our man in Wisconsin (the Badger State), USA, recently alerted me to this article in the New York Times Magazine. In it the reporter talks about how this classic cocktail in made in his home state.

It seems that in Wisconsin the Old Fashioned is primarily a brandy based drink and made to a different standard to that you would find in the fine bars of New York, San Francisco and New Orleans. Like the Martini, the Old Fashioned is a very personal drink with each "connoisseur" having their own particulars. In fact the variables in an Old Fashioned are probably even greater than the mix of gin and vermouth.

So how do they make them in Wisconsin?

"Every bartender here knows the drill: a bar spoon of sugar, three dashes of Angostura bitters, a lightly muddled slice of orange, a slug of brandy, lots and lots of ice, a splash of soda and, of course, a bright red maraschino cherry, often with an extra dose of the fluorescent juice that they swim in."

Taste
This is a different kettle of fish to my usual whisky or gin old fashioned. It is sweeter, more dilute and fruitier but still quite a nice drink.

Some aficionados will squirm at the fact that I included a little zip of 7UP for some extra zing; others will hate my fruit medley of a garnish. But in true honesty I like the drink; it is more refreshing than a traditional OF and, with the extra dilution, is much lighter.

I also really like the brandy combination with gives the drink a sweet, more rounded flavour profile. Given my fondness for the Horse's Neck I wonder how it would work if I replaced the 7UP with ginger ale..?

Astringent Cocktail

Astringent Cocktail

Whilst researching Ginger Ale I stumbled across this recipe in Jack's Manual from 1910:

I used Croft Indulgence Port and Martell and some ginger water as my Jamaica ginger.

The Taste: Quite repulsive! spoils the Port, Brandy, Ginger Water and even the Angostura Bitters. Such a waste! The final tingle of ginger was the only upside.

On the other-side Mrs. Godfrey loved it's profile of warmth and thought it rather tasty and smooth. Well they do say opposites attract and this was one cocktail she was welcome to finish!

Update from the Lab #2

Update from the Lab #2 – Old Tom and Forbidden Fruit

As promised in the last lab update, I shall be looking at making Old Tom Gin. This is by no means the last word on the subject and I know my fellow drinksmiths at the Institute are keen to look at this in greater depth.

My idea stems from a conversation we had with Tony at 69 Colebrook Row who mentioned that drinks expert David Wondrich suggested creating Old Tom gin by rinsing a glass with Scotch whisky, adding gin and sugar syrup and then using that to make your drink; a cocktail within a cocktail, you might say.

I scaled this up to make half a bottle's worth; I have another experiment coming up where I will need large quantities of Old Tom so being able to produce a substitute will be useful.

I added a small amount of whisky to gin and cane sugar I then gently warmed this until the sugar had dissolved and then cooled, strained and bottled the result.

The Taste: the sugar gives the gin a silky smooth quality (as you may expect) making it much more sippable. The whisky seems to tweak the flavour a little bit and certainly colours the gin a light gold. The juniper still comes through in the middle and at the extreme finish is a flavour akin to violet. This is a sweet gin and does resemble some of the other sweetened Old Tom gins in a basic way. Another work in progress but the work will be fun.

Forbidden Fruit

Not content with telling our lab observers merely about Old Tom gin, I decided to recreate a drink known as the Forbidden Fruit which appears in Louis' mixed Drinks (1906) under "Miscellaneous Drinks" see recipe below:

My first issue was that I had misremembered that the recipe calls for a grapefruit and went out and bought a melon, still we had a nice breakfast and starter for our dinner. Having obtained the right fruit I followed the recipe.

The result was a drink with an interesting temperature range, hot at the top and warm at the bottom. Mrs. B described it as a "serious drink which was also sweet and fruity". It was surprisingly smooth and rather drinkable, even to a non-brandy drinker like Mrs B. The grapefruit oil from the skin of the fruit mixed well with the burnt sugar and brandy and reminded me of a similar effect made from flaming orange, particularly nice (I'm told) over a Negroni.

This drink does involve fire so please make sure you take full safety precautions before making this drink, I used glove and apron and as you can see did it over the sink.

On the use of Champagne in cocktails

A French '75. (The sugar cube quickly loses
its cubeness and becomes more of a heap)

I've largely given up ordering Champagne cocktails in bars, having come to the conclusion that the classic versions offered in many have far too much brandy (and often too much Angostura). I'm guessing this is because these components are a lot cheaper than the Champagne itself, though it may just be a sort of gleeful "more is more" ineptitude. (At 43 South Moulton I watched as the barman—who was full of cocky confidence in his mixological wisdom—placed a sugar cube on the bar top and literally saturated it with bitters, before slopping it into a glass which he filled a good third full with brandy.)

I feel that if you’re going to make a mixed drink with Champagne you should be able to taste that Champagne and the recipes should be subtle. For the record, I would take a sugar cube, splash three or four drops of bitters on to it then place it in a champagne flute. Over this I pour enough cognac just to cover it, then top up with Champagne. (This is based on glasses a good five inches tall.)

When I became interested in the French ’75, a mixture of champagne, gin, lemon juice and sugar, I tried applying the same principle. The drink takes its name from a French 75mm cannon from the First World War—and the naming is ascribed variously to the experience of drinking it being like the impact of a 75mm shell, or to the combination of typically British and French ingredients representing some sort of entente cordiale. Its invention is often attributed to Harry McElhone (of Harry’s American Bar in Paris), although Harry himself apparently attributed the drink to MacGarry of Buck's Club in London (home of the Buck's Fizz; it's also no accident that the barman at Woodhouse's Drones Club is also named McGarry*). Many are actually under the impression that the drink originated during Prohibition in the US (where it became popular at the Stork Club), though Simon Difford feels that it is unlikely the Americans would name a drink after a (metric unit) French WWI gun, especially given that the war would have been long over by the time Prohibition came along.**

The 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book has the ingredients as described above (apparently the first recipe to appear in print), though it's worth noting that David Embury in his classic The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks from 1948 seems to think the standard version uses cognac and that gin is a variation. More strangely, Larrousse Cocktails (UK edition 2005) by Fernando Castellon states that the original French '75 used calvados instead of the Champagne, and that it was McElhone who made the switch. I can't help thinking that if this were true it is scarcely the same drink, though if there was originally a drink called a French '75 containing gin, calvados, lemon juice and sugar, then you can't argue with that. (I must try it.) Castellon does not give his sources, however. In Robert Vermeire's Cocktails: How to Mix Them (1922, though I admit my copy is the twelfth edition) his recipe for a Champagne cocktail*** has you "squeeze the essence of two or three pieces of lemon peel into the glass" and add another piece to the drink, suggesting a pretty close relationship between the two cocktails. It's easier to see the French '75 as evolving from the Champagne cocktail than from the drink Castellon describes.

Most people seem to use 1½ or 2 measures of gin, about ½–1 measure of lemon juice and about a teaspoon of sugar syrup or fine sugar. These are stirred or shaken and added to a glass to which the Champagne is then added. Some recipes add triple sec, calvados or grenadine. Some serve the drink on the rocks and some with a maraschino cherry.

This version came as the result of my tinkering along the lines of the classic Champagne cocktail described above.

1 sugar lump
3–4 drops of orange bitters
Juice of ¼ of a lemon
About a measure of gin
Champagne

Splash the bitters on to the sugar cube and place this at the bottom of a flute. Add enough gin just to cover the cube. Add the lemon juice then top up with champagne, stirring gently if necessary, but not with the intention of dissolving the sugar cube—it should sit there at the bottom, bubbling away and gradually breaking down. Although the classic version is supposed to derive its firepower from the quantity of gin, making it this way means you can still taste the Champagne’s character as well as the gin coming through, plus hints of rind oil from the bitters, all freshened by the lemon. Of course it becomes sweeter as the sugar dissolves and as you get closer to its source at the bottom, but, hey, life is about change.

*Oddly, no one seems to agree on MacGarry's Christian name—I've heard Pat, or Malachy—or even whether it was McGarry, MacGarry or Macgarry
**Of course the basic principle of adultering Champagne was much older—the Champagne cocktail is mentioned by Jerry Thomas in 1862. The Seelbach, a combination of bourbon, triple sec, Angostura bitters and Peychaud's bitters with Champagne, was invented in 1917 at the Seelbach hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, though apparently lost until rediscovered by the hotel in 1995. I've not tried it but it sounds interesting.
***In fairness Vermeire does also have you "soak" the sugar cube in bitters, but I still think this is OTT.

Brandy and Cigars: A Match Made in Heaven?

Alexandre with the XO. He is very French

It’s the end of your fantasy evening and for what do you bellow? Brandy and cigars, of course.

Imagine how my curiosity was piqued when I was invited along to a cigar-and-brandy event last night at the Stafford Hotel in St James’s. The cigars were Cohiba Siglo VI courtesy of Hunters and Frankau and the Cognac was Remy Martin VSOP and XO. These brandy categories indicate age, but not anything terribly specific: the cognacs are blends of spirits of different ages. “VSOP” requires a minimum of four years (in practice the Rémy VSOP consists of eaux de vie aged between four and 14 years) and XO six years (though from 2016 this will rise to ten).

These acronyms actually mean nothing in French—they stand for English phrases “Very Special/Superior Old Pale” and “Extra Old”, reflecting the dominance of the English market at the time they were devised. Rémy does actually produce a VS product too, we are told by Alexandre Quintin, the Rémy ambassador (who is very French and even looks like a character from Belleville Rendezvous). It’s a grade below VSOP, but is sold only in America. Make of this what you will, but it’s interesting to note that while the US is now an important market for cognac, the demographic has shifted dramatically from affluent white drinkers to urban black consumers, who now represent 60–80 per cent of sales. In studies many purchasers have confirmed that their choice of drink is specifically an endorsement of their favourite rap artist. Do not underestimate the power of hippety-hop.

Rémy are very proud of the high proportion of grapes from Grande Champagne and Petite Champagne, the two more prestigious crus for cognac. A blend of the two, with at least 50 per cent Grande Champagne, is known as Fine Champagne and 80 per cent of all of this is made by Rémy. In fact their VSOP is 55 per cent Grande and the XO 85 per cent.

The Stafford event was originally scheduled to take place in the vaulted wine cellars, where I hung around twiddling my thumbs before discovering that it had moved to the courtyard. (I’m glad I saw the cellars, though, as they are a shrine to their WWII function as bunkers, filled not just with dusty wine bottles but old signs, helmets and other mementoes; perhaps worthy of further investigation.) Needless to say the weather whipped up and the heavens opened, leaving us huddled under canvas canopies. Hurricane conditions aren’t ideal for appreciating the subtleties of a stogie—the boxes of long cigar matches liberally scattered were of little use and I relied on the generous loan of a multi-jet turbo gas lighter (imagine lighting your smoke with a pocket-sized Death Star) from a fellow guest. Initially they plied us with Prosecco, which I thought was a surprisingly delicate flavour to risk against the leathery Old-World fumes of the cigars, but perhaps not—I was reliably informed by the Hunters and Frankau rep that certain cigars go very well with Champagne. Don’t believe me? I might arrange a Club event to investigate this assertion once and for all…

The story goes that an exceptional cigar roller, Eduardo Rivera, devised a particular long thin cigar for the private used of himself, family and friends. One of those friends was Bienvenido Perez, who happened to be Fidel Castro’s bodyguard. One day Castro was out of smokes and asked his minder to sub him. He enjoyed Rivera’s cigar so much he set the man up up with a team of five to produce them for the president’s exclusive use. (The name Cohiba came from the ancient Taino Indian word for the bunches of tobacco leaves that Columbus saw the original Cubans smoking.) Indeed it was not until 1982 that a range of Cohibas became available to the public; ten years after that the Linea 1492 range was added to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of the New World, in five gauges dubbed Siglo (“century”) I to V. The relatively fat (a 52 in cigar gauges) Siglo VI, which we were smoking, didn’t arrive until 2003. Two of the filler leaves in Cohiba cigars undergo a tertiary fermentation in cedar barrels to impart smoothness. Apparently the Cohiba flavour is most often described as “grassy”, though I’m not sure I picked up on that. 

OK, cigar aside, what was the brandy like? I  must have tasted at least the VSOP before but coming to it fresh I was hit by an unexpectedly pronounced apple note. In fact if you’d given it to me blind and asked me what it was I might even have suggested that it was Calvados (Normandy’s apple brandy). After that, as you get your snout deeper in and then sample the palate, I got broader, spicier notes, but still all very lively and pugnacious. It may be an old world drink but it was still bouncing around on its toes. (The Rémy website claims you should be getting “the impertinence of wild flowers”. Don’t you just know that’s been translated from French?)

I then switched to the XO and immediately got a softer, wider, preserved-fruit barrage. Alexandre likened the flavours to Christmas pudding—it was figs and plums, very characterful but more like subtle woody memories, in which you want to wallow nostalgically, than the darting VSOP. 

I’m no connoisseur of cigars but I have enjoyed a few and I was interested to see if it was true that they could be meaningfully partnered with drink. Just because they are commonly associated doesn’t mean it works: after all, Champagne and chocolate are often sold together, yet make a foul gustatory combination. However, it won’t surprise you to hear that Cognac and cigars to do work. Just like a food and drink combination, the flavours of each emphasise aspects of the other. The sweetness of the brandy seemed to be brought out, a sugar cane quality that perhaps filtered any bitterness in the smoke, leaving smooth, rubbery, Reisling-like, petrol notes and aromatic woody hints. The two jostled and occasionally sparked: at one point I got a burst of mixed, candied fruit peel (back to Christmas pudding again, I suppose).

Hunters organise regular events of this kind but you’ll have to keep looking at their website: they are not allowed to do mail-outs, as this constitutes advertising. Rémy meanwhile are organising a “speakeasy” themed night next week, with Champagne reception, three-course meal and lashings of Cognac and cigars (is that really what speakeasies were like? I’m thinking more bathtub gin and raucous jazz). But this will set you back £140. In fact my evening was very much one of sampling the high life—while Rémy Martin VSOP is typically around £30, the XO closer to £90. Cohiba Siglo VI are around £22–25 singly.

So what other flavour combinations are there out there we should investigate? Chablis and chewing tobacco? Champagne and chewing gum? The Institute is at your service. Mind the monkey on the way out. He was testing our homemade puffer fish bitters last night and I think he’s still sleeping it off…