A cocktail for St Patrick's Day

I produced this on Tuesday, for St Patrick’s day, obviously, and should have posted it then, but what the hell. I was reminded of the garnish effect I accidentally produced with the Maid in Jalisco cocktail a few years ago—at the time it reminded me of a four-leaf clover and I made a mental note to do something shamrocky with it for St Paddy’s Day.

I’d received a promotional email from Difford’s Guide with some Irish whiskey drinks in it, and one included cucumber, which is what reminded me. Now while cucumber is to be found in and around gin all the time these days (see my recent posts on Caspyn and Hendrick’s), cucumber and whiskey are not obvious bedfellows. This recipe is called an Irish Maid and consists of:

Irish Maid
60ml Irish whiskey
15ml elderflower liqueur (St Germain is what I used, though I imagine cordial would work too)
20ml lemon juice
10ml sugar syrup
2 slices of cucumber

Muddle the cucumber in a shaker, add the other ingredients and shake vigorously with ice. The garnish is obviously optional, but you can tell I have time on my hands now with the corona virus stalking the land. (These are Difford’s proportions; others allow slightly more sugar, though I personally think it is quite sweet enough.)

The cucumber certainly makes its presence felt. The spiky elderflower is more subtle, though it’s a flavour that seems to merge seamlessly with the cucumber, in a savoury, herbal way. The lemon and sugar are just the classic cocktail sweet ’n’ sour building block, and the whiskey rises up behind with caramel warmth. It’s unexpected but it really works, and it all to easy to drink.

The cocktail is apparently derived from the Kentucky Maid, essentially a Mint Julep with added lime juice and cucumber. Two days ago when I went to the supermarket I found the shelves mostly empty (thanks to panic buying by hoarders—really this epidemic has brought out the worst in people). In the fresh veg section the only thing left was a large quantity of cucumber, so I see the promotion of cucumber-based cocktails as Doing My Bit. (In two different shops the only fruit they had left was grapefruit, so watch this space…)

Cornish gin update 2.0

Back in Cornwall last summer I popped once again into John’s Liquor Cellar in St Ives to see if they had any new local gins in. What they suggested this time was Caspyn Midsummer Dry Gin, made by Pocketful of Stones who have a distillery just outside Penzance in Long Rock. In fact the man behind the distillery is a displaced South African, Shaun Bebington, but the lure of the coastal life he grew up with drew him from London where he’d been running a pub. The name Caspyn came from a Neolithic stone circle near the distillery: it’s actually called the Merry Maidens—apparently Bebington misread a sign that was actually an acronym: CASPN, “Cornish Ancient Sites Protection Network”, but by the time he realised his mistake the gin was named.

I was immediately taken by it: the nose is a perfumed tapestry of citrus and other fruits—blueberries, pears, melons—with cucumber and dry spice like cumin. On the tongue it is fruity and spicy, with a curious salty finish (what could be more Cornish than that?). The cucumber is not a coincidence: the very pale green colour of the gin is because fresh cucumbers are infused in it. In a Martini it intrigues with a combination of floral perfume on the nose and a relatively savoury, vegetal palate, again with that very subtle briny finish.

In fact the Midsummer gin is a relatively recent addition, a development from the original Caspyn Cornish Dry Gin (the suggestion is that the Midsummer is nothing more than the original Dry Gin with those cucumbers infused in it). This brings us back to the old question of what makes, or might make, a gin intrinsically Cornish—last time I idly suggested gorse and brine, and Caspyn does indeed have gorse in it, which they say combines with orris to give a sherbet finish. (There is no suggestion of brine, but, as I say, I do get a hint of salt on the finish.)

Mind you, the other botanicals don’t seem particularly Cornish: floral hibiscus, citrus from lemon and orange peel, lemongrass and lemon verbena, Japanese tea. And it’s lemon that really hits you on the nose when you sniff the Cornish Dry, plus something vividly herbaceous; there is also a floral note, something like berries, and an earthy echo at the end, but overall the nose is bright and zingy. By comparison the nose of the Midsummer version is mellower, slightly waxy, with a definite cucumber note but also savoury hints like agave or dill pickle.

On the palate the Cornish Dry is sharp, dominated by that lemon zestiness, with a peppery finish. They do say the aim is to make it taste like a crisp Cornish spring morning, bright but cool. Again the Midsummer version is mellower, with the citric spike softened and more of a fleshy vegetal warmth. Maintaining the climatic analogies, the distillers say that the Midsummer gin is intended to evoke a hazy summer afternoon. Both gins are absorbing, with vivid flavours that reveal themselves in layers, inviting close contemplation, but if the Midsummer really has just had cucumbers bunged into to it for a while, it’s interesting how much of an effect they have had.

Of course putting cucumber into gin is not new—Hendrick’s famously do it and so do Martin Miller’s. But Hendrick’s don’t use fresh cucumber: they use a commercial essence sourced from the Netherlands (I’ve tasted it neat, and found it rather delicious). In each case it seems well established that trying to macerate cucumber prior to redistillation, as you do with normal botanicals, doesn’t work, so it has to be added after distillation. Why do Hendrick’s use an essence rather than the real thing? I guess with their multi-shot technique (essentially producing a botanical concentrate, which is then diluted with alcohol and water to boost the volume for bottling) it is perhaps too difficult to get a strong enough flavour this way. The Caspyn Midsummer certainly achieves a distinct cucumber flavour, which balances deftly with the other flavours.

I like both these Caspyn gins. After I first tasted the Midsummer I decided I wanted to post about it but, tellingly, I got through it so quickly I had to order another bottle, along with a bottle of the original Cornish Dry for comparison. As I write this both bottles are nearly empty. This tells you all need to know. They are vivid and inviting, with a smooth spirit base that makes them all too easy to drink neat.

But of course most of us don’t drink gin neat most of the time. I was afraid that the Cornish Dry’s pronounced fresh lemon effect of the lemon peel, lemongrass and lemon verbena, when combined with the citrus thrust of most tonic waters, might be too much, but in fact it works well. What seems to come out in this combination is a midrange herbal spiciness and a gentle earthy note. The Midsummer mixes with tonic to bring out the cucumber character, mellow and relaxed, again with an earthiness. It is savoury almost to the point of being like food.

In an Aviation cocktail the Cornish Dry slots effortlessly into the drink with poise and balance, though the Midsummer is perhaps a bit too bohemian and savoury for the floral/tart structure of this cocktail. In a Negroni the Cornish Dry again shows its classic credentials and works well, but again the Midsummer is a bit odd. In a straightforward Dry Martini the Cornish Dry is crisp and sharp, with a warm and slinky midrange perfume—very inviting. By direct comparison, the Midsummer again seems strikingly savoury; it’s nice but certainly not a classic Martini. I’m beginning to think the Midsummer gin’s natural place is in a G&T, which is probably how it was intended.

The Caspyn gins come in chunky, round-shouldered bottles with wood-capped corks for a high-end feel. The labels have hand-written batch numbers. The Cornish Dry features a picture of a basking shark, rather a local emblem in Cornwall, also featuring on Tarquin’s label, though I’ve never actually managed to see one in the flesh. The Midsummer Gin, somewhat bizarrely, features a picture of a hoopoe—an odd choice for a gin that is meant to evoke an English summer. Is this a reference to Bebington’s South African roots?

“I first started thinking about using the hoopoe whilst I was is Croatia doing some juniper research and one happened to cross my path,” Shaun tells me. “The hoopoe does reside in South Africa during the Southern Hemisphere summers but flies to Europe for the Northern Hemisphere summers, mostly to the countries around the Med. Occasionally they overshoot their migration route and end up in Cornwall. I’ve yet to see one but I’ve seen photos. I liked that it was symbolic of our occasional summers here in the UK and I liked the link between South Africa and Cornwall.”

The connection between South Africa and Cornwall has just got stronger, as Shaun tells me he is now making a version of Caspyn gin at West Coast Distillers in Langebaan, South Africa. “The South African version is made with South African botanicals,” Shaun explains. “They are very similar but whereas the Cornish version has Cornish lemon verbena and bergamot (Earl Grey tea) the SA version has rooibos, honeybush and citronella pelargonium, a lemon-scented geranium.” This recipe is intended only for the South African market, though Shaun tells me that he hopes to bring the Nightshade Gin and Mutiny Bitters made at Langebaan over to the UK.

My (virtually empty) miniature of Penzance Bathtub Gin

For reasons I forget, we stepped into a deli in Penzance, and I noticed they were selling a “Penzance Bathtub Gin”. OK, I thought, I’ll bite. But for how much? Even a tiny 50ml sample bottle was £8—the equivalent of £112 for a 70cl bottle. You’ll be pleased to hear that, if you like the stuff, you can get a better deal by buying a larger bottle now from their website, though it looks as if changes have been afoot. When I got my sample last summer it was (as you can see from the photo) sold as a bathtub gin—the joke being that Penzance’s famous Art Deco lido, the Jubilee Pool, made it a town with a vast bathtub. (And since Prohibition bathtub gin dated from the same era as the Pool, all the more reason for Penzance to have its own version.) But I see that they are now selling it simply as “Penzance Gin”—the label design has the same image of the lido, but the word “bathtub” has been removed. But I will assume for now that it is made in the same way.

I wondered which distillery had made the gin, but the label simply said it had been made in association with the Cornish Hen. Which turned out to be the deli where I’d bought it. So seemingly a very local, handmade thing. The website says it was dreamed up by three friends over a few drinks at a local pub quiz.

The current label, shown on the website

As you can tell from the colour, this is an infused gin. They have clearly bought neutral grain spirit (or perhaps just vodka from the supermarket), macerated it in their own botanical blend, and sold it on. Nothing wrong with that. Would you want to pay £8 for 50ml? Well, I wouldn’t. It is very strange stuff: on the nose there is a strong orange citrus note, but combined with something wheaty that reminds me overall of orange Club biscuits from my youth. In fact the citrus is so strongly combined with notes of wheat, and even butter, that it profoundly suggests lemon drizzle cake.

The makers do not say what goes into it, other than that it features gorse. The palate seems clumsy after the Caspyn, with the same orange peel and wheat flavours in a rather thin, astringent spirit base. And, if I’m honest, I don’t feel there is much about it that reminds me of gin. But the product seems to have taken off rapidly in a way that makes it possible the current product is not quite the same as the batch I tasted.

Caspyn Cornish Dry and Caspyn Midsummer can by bought widely online for about £39. Penzance Gin can by bought from penzancegin.co.uk for £38.

Absinthe, tequila…and cucumber

The experimental Maid in Jalisco. Looking at it, I think I should come up with a cocktail for St Patrick's Day,
garnish it in the same way with thin slices of cucumber, and call it a Four-Leafed Clover…

Cucumber in booze is nothing new—both Hendrick’s and Martin Miller’s gins include cucumber among the flavourings.* But synchronicity dictated that I receive two emails today that embraced the noble plant and, since it is summer and I am in England, what could be more apt?

Emerald Street, a well-written daily offshoot from Stylist magazine, today featured a number of inspiring things you can do with your blender, including a frozen Margarita that includes puréed cucumber (two peeled ones, the juice of five or six limes, 100ml tequila and four cups of ice cubes, whizzed together, plus agave syrup to taste).**

Meanwhile, a post on the Real Absinthe Blog takes a scholarly look at Hemingway’s consumption of absinthe and concludes that, in his writing at least, he only ever drinks it in the traditional way with water, plus the Death in the Afternoon cocktail (absinthe and Champagne). Absinthe has such a powerful flavour that where it does appear in cocktails it is often present in homeopathic quantities (typically the serving glass is rinsed with absinthe that is then discarded before the cocktail is poured in). Last year Gaz Regan in his Regan Report noted the importance of absinthe as a cocktail ingredient but likewise warned against adding too much. Anyway, the post included a link to an earlier item describing the Maid in Cuba cocktail:

2 shots white rum
1 shot lime juice
½ shot sugar syrup
Small handful of mint leaves
3 slices of cucumber
Absinthe

Vigorously shake the first five ingredients with ice and strain into a glass that has been rinsed with the absinthe. It’s essentially a melding of Cuba’s two most famous cocktails, the Daiquiri and the Mojito, with added cucumber and absinthe.

Absinthe is pretty complex stuff in its own right, so you might argue that it is best drunk on its own. However, that would be a coward’s way out, so I found myself wondering what it might naturally synergise with. Gin, with its botanical arsenal, seems a likely contender, and classic absinthe cocktails like the Corpse Reviver No.2 and the Monkey Gland (gin, orange juice, absinthe and grenadine) do tend to be gin-based.*** I wouldn’t say that absinthe had a particular affinity for the white rum in the Maid in Cuba, as it is pretty much a blank canvas, but just thinking about it you can suspect that the herbaceous nature of tequila is going to marry well. And you’d be right. Just try rinsing a glass with absinthe then pouring in some tequila and you’ll see what I mean—the flavours of the two ingredients merge seamlessly.

So, by splicing Emerald Street’s cucumber Margarita with the Maid in Cuba you come up with something we might call the Maid in Jalisco:

2 shots tequila
1 shot lime juice
Agave syrup to taste (½ shot perhaps, although this was too sweet for me)
3 slices of cucumber
½ tsp absinthe

Shake with ice and strain. I started off just rinsing the serving glass with absinthe but I felt that it needed another ½ tsp at least (I was using Jade Terminus). I think the absinthe really works, though I must admit I’m less sure about the cucumber. I think that just by adding absinthe to a Margarita you have something very interesting indeed.

* Evidently cucumber doesn’t work if you infuse it with the other botanicals and distil, so it must be added post-distillation. (See my exploration of how Hendricks is made.) This means that these gins can’t call themselves “London Dry Gin” as this is an EU-defined category that does not allow any additives after distillation. Some people get quite exercised about this and query whether the definition or terminology should be changed, but I have always said that consumers almost certainly won’t consider the term “London Dry Gin” to be a stamp of quality. If anything they will probably assume that it means it was made in London, which it probably wasn’t, as the term does not encompass any geographical requirement.

** Classically the Margarita uses triple sec (such as Cointreau) but it is increasingly common to use agave syrup instead.

*** With the noble exception of the Sazerac, of course, a New Orleans classic that adds a smidgeon of absinthe to rye whisky, Cognac or a blend of the two, along with sugar and bitters.

A most unusual way to make gin

The exterior of the Horseless Carriage

The Hendrick's marketing machine is such a thing of Shock and Awe that few people (at least few in Our World) can be unaware of their calculated image of playful eccentricity and oddness. So I was almost surprised when, as part of London Cocktail Week, there was an opportunity to learn about how the actual product is made.

The Hendrick's roadshow had set up on the forecourt of a disused petrol station and there was eccentricity aplenty with a croquet lawn, threnody from a musical saw and one of the famous Hendrick's roll top baths, filled with rose petals. The actual seminar was inside the Hendrick's Horseless Carriage, what looks like a railway carriage adapted for road transport. The snug, dark wood interior is filled with bric-a-brac and strange specimens—but also, mercifully, with gin.

Brand ambassador Louis Xavier Lewis-Smith gave us a preliminary talk on the history of distilling and gin in particular, with the aid of a PowerPoint presentation which he himself had not previously seen— perhaps a test of prowess through which all ambassadors must go before they can get the really good postings. (It wouldn't surprise me to discover that Hendrick's has its own embassy in Moscow.) We were also confronted with an array of samples that turned out to be a rare opportunity to taste the liquid as it comes out of the still.

Around the bath it reads, "I can resist everything
except temptation." Wilde, I believe.

Hendrick's is made by William Grant, the whisky distillers. Their involvement with gin dates from when they bought a gin recipe and two stills at auction in 1966 from the London firm Taplow's. One was a Bennett pot still made in 1860 and the other a Carter-Head still fashioned in 1948; both have been restored and have been used since 1999 to make Hendrick's, which is itself a blend of the output from the two stills.

The Bennett still is basically a copper pot that is filled with neutral grain spirit and botanicals (Hendrick's aren't too specific about what these are—"flowers, roots, fruits and seeds" is all they will admit to, though juniper, coriander and orange and lemon peel are clearly involved), which are left to steep before the whole lot is heated and the resulting vapour condensed into a distillate that emerges at 80% ABV. One of our samples was precisely this—we were warned that we might not want to put it into our mouths undiluted, advice which we, of course, ignored.

The Bennett still has a reputation for producing a robust product and at 80% the predominant note for me was caramel or butterscotch, but when you add water to bring it down to roughly 40% there is a huge rush of citrus aromas, earthy roots, pungent, piney flavours and a hint of warm aniseed. Robust indeed. The long maceration prior to distillation has extracted profound flavours and plenty of oils from the botanicals, visible in the "legs" up the side of the glass when swirled—moreover, when you add water it "louches" like absinthe, going slightly milky. As with absinthe, this is the oils, dissolved at 80% ABV, emerging as an emulsion of fat droplets as the alcohol concentration drops.

Sitting down with Louis and an array of samples before us

The Carter-Head still, also very rare, is a more complex affair. Louis showed us a diagram which was frankly over my head, but in essence the rising vapour passes through a matrix of channels and baffles with the intention of controlling just what parts of the molecular soup are allowed through and which fall back down into the bubbling liquid. The botanicals are not steeped, in fact not even allowed into contact with the neutral spirit: they are packed into a "flavour box" through which the vapour passes on its way to be condensed back into liquid.

Our next sample was the 80% ABV distillate from the Carter-Head. It was fascinating how it clearly had the same general flavour profile as the previous one (having been made with the same botanicals)—there was citrus and earthy spices—yet its aroma was finer, lighter, more delicate and dry, and it was sweeter and peppery on the palate. There was no clouding when water was added, suggesting the heavy essential oils had been left behind.

The finished product is a blend of the two distillates. For professional reasons Louis was not able to reveal in what proportions they were mixed, though I pointed out that the high-strength sample of the blend louched almost as much as the pure Bennet sample, something Louis had not thought of before and which he admitted was a bit of a giveaway. (Not that I have enough of a science brain to know how to interpret this.)

Brand ambassador His Excellency Louis Xavier Lewis-Smith

But there is more to the Hendrick's formula than this: it famously includes rose petals and cucumber in the mix, yet these are not flavours that can be acquired by adding rose and cucumber to the botanicals, so they are added as essences to the final blend before dilution to bottling strength. Some bartenders turn their nose up at Hendrick's for this reason. (Interestingly, Martin Miller's gin also contains cucumber essence—though it's not something they dine out on as Hendrick's does. There is a rumour that someone from Miller's actually defected, taking the idea with them.) We were given samples of these essences—the rose from Bulgaria, the cucumber from the Netherlands—and again warned against tasting it, which we again ignored. The rose essence was a bit too concentrated to get the full bloom of aroma but the cucumber was rather delicious, I thought.

More forecourt shenanigans. The ornament on the bonnet of the car is,
unsurprisingly, a winged cucumber

We have talked before about how it was only 18 months ago that the EU defined gin at all. Louis mentioned with some pride that Hendrick's was, in a way, responsible for this, what with their audacity in adding flavouring essences after distillation. As such, Hendrick's cannot be classified as a London gin, but is technically a distilled gin, and Louis is happy with that. In the exploding gin market* there is clearly room for all sorts and Hendrick's extraordinary marketing efforts clearly have more effect on the typical consumer than any EU definition.

In the interests of science, Mr Bridgman-Smith did the Institute proud and attempted to create his own Hendricks by blending the two distillate samples, adding rose and cucumber essences and bringing it down to bottle strength**—though, under the imperious eye of a stuffed stoat, he admitted he had done this "without much success". Thus proving that a premium gin is not something that any old muppet can knock up with a few flavourings.***

*There may actually be a market for exploding gin which no one has tapped yet. I did come across a rum the other day that is made by a Kiwi bloke who blends various spirits then adds chilli, pipe tobacco and gunpowder. Perhaps mercifully you can't readily buy this stuff but allegedly have to barter for it with him online.
**Like many gins Hendricks is bottled at two strengths, 41.4% for the UK market and 44% for the US. This whole concept of "export strength" is something we will look into in greater depth in the future, but DBS was rather fascinated by the fact that the two Henrick's ABVs were so close, and so precise. Louis explained that at different concentrations different flavour elements manifest themselves, and rigorous experimentation had found that these two ABVs were both "sweet spots" at which the drink tasted particularly good.
***Interestingly, Sacred, an incredibly artisanal gin, is made by an ex-headhunter in the City who distils all the botanicals separately then blends them. You can even buy a kit of the separate botanical distillates, so you can create your own version.