Wild Bill Turkey

I'm hoping a non-professional can play along, (after all, the subject is newcomers) so I'll throw in a drink I started offering at my first cocktail parties. I offered a longer menu of cocktails than maybe a new bartender should attempt, but by far the most successful was the somewhat obscure Missing Link from Gary Regan's book. This drink combines two of the themes in this topic, the universality of the Margarita, and the approachability of rum as a base spirit. As crazy popular as the Margarita is, there are still quite a few people who don't like tequila, whereas I've never met anybody who wouldn't try a rum drink. The Missing Link 1 1/2 ozs dark rum (Goslings) 1 oz Cointreau 1/2 oz lemon juice To invite comparison to its more famous cousin, I strain this into a chilled Margarita glass.

For my part, I always found those cloudy swirls to be more expressive of the swirling clouds that form in the glass as the drink is louching. In the Privat-Livemont poster, there are very similar swirls happening inside the glass, suggesting that the artist thought this way as well.

If the liquor has already been heated up, why ignite it? Isn't that burning off some of the booze you wish it had more of? This is an honest question I don't know the answer to. Does the flame caramelize the sugars or change the flavor in some desirable way?

Given that there were others who deserved to share the credit with Darwin for his pioneering work on "The Origin", it seems like we should celebrate the day in drink with something with a disputed origin, like the Margarita.

From the Savoy topic

Hey John, go to the Google Homepage and click Language Tools. They give you a place to enter the URL for the page you want to translate from Japanese (or any of a long list of languages). It recreates the page but with the text in your language, and often some very entertaining mistranslations. Still, you usually understand enough to get the info you need. I just tried on your linked page and it works fine.

There's a thread like this over at the Chanticleer Society, and down at the bottom of Page 2 the suggestion was made to get the Rubbermaid 1/2 cup storage cups, which make perfect 1-cube-per-rocks-glass ice. I got some at my local Ace hardware, and sure enough, they're perfect, and the "cubes" release easily.

Sounds like a good suggestion, 31K. I'm always game to try making a drink with this Wild, how you say, Turkey?

If you had any interest, I'd post the ingredients for Trader Vic's orgeat syrup, though in addition to making the Fee's and 1883 look like organic health-food products, it might also take up an entire page of the forum in a single post... {Edited to add that, of the three, the 1883 has by far the most flavor}

My response was to your assertion that St. George's ingredients were nearer to original absinthes "like Pernod Fils" than are the Kübler or Lucid, by virtue of its use of a brandy base, despite its use of herbs not found in the Pernod Fils. The source that you cited twice in discussion of this point was the Conrad book, and so that's the one I referred to in response. This book, now 20 years old, is by no means the "standard" text on the subject of absinthe, however, and the inaccuracies I mentioned parenthetically are part of the reason why. But yes, many of the things written in this book are correct. It isn't my intention to discuss every ingredient ever listed as having been used in making absinthe. The issue at hand was Pernod Fils and its like, and the source you cited listed only the mentioned ingredients. The fact that a wide variety of herbs and even dangerous chemicals have been used over the years to make both absinthe and faux absinthe does not change the fact that, at its core, absinthe is made from the six herbs listed in the Pernod Fils recipe. Adding a lot of other herbs to it, especially those far afield of the cardinal herbs, such as stinging nettles or basil, will change the taste of the product to a point where even people who like it will note that it no longer tastes like absinthe, as is the case with FG, and a large percentage of the absinthe-drinking community. My point, that use of a brandy base does not make St. George nearer in formula to the great original absinthes than Kübler or Lucid, stands. The base spirit is only one item in a list of ingredients, and my argument is that use of traditional core herbs is more of a determinant of nearness to the original than the starting spirit used. Regarding the "wormwood" issue, by your own description this word can become confusing in the context of an absinthe discussion, where different wormwoods are involved, so it's helpful to clarify to which you are referring, which the St. George label does not. I do not require, as you would, that he use Latin names, but simply tell me whether he means Grand or Petit, as one is used for the primary distillate and one is more involved in coloring. I'm curious why you would assume I've done no reading on the subject.

Thanks for the welcome, Max, but I've been in this discussion on eG since last Sept. (you've already quoted one of my posts), and in the world of absinthe for a few years already. Barnaby Conrad's book (which is full of factual errors and is credited with having started the disproved rumor that E.A. Poe was an absinthe drinker) lists, on page 95, the six herbs in the recipe for Pernod Fils (and, it says, most other "legitimate" absinthes): Grand wormwood, green anise, (and specifically not star anise) melissa (lemon balm) and fennel in the macerate, and petite wormwood and hyssop in the coloring step. The starting spirit was an eau-de-vie distilled from grape wine. These six herbs, then, and the wine base, constitute the ingredients of most legitimate absinthes according to your source. These six herbs are the ingredients found in Lucid and Clandestine (though the latter being a blanche, does not use the coloring herbs) and most of the well-reviewed absinthes on the market. Compare this list of ingredients to the list of those found in St. George: Star anise, mint, wormwood (no specific type listed), lemon balm, hyssop, meadowsweet, basil, fennel, tarragon, and stinging nettles, with brandy as the base spirit. This dissimilarity in the herb bill is, I think, the reason why many people, including FG, who you were addressing, find the St. George to taste like another drink entirely, rather than just a slightly different-tasting absinthe.

This seems like a stretch to me. The flavor of the the starting spirit has less effect on the final taste of an absinthe than the herbs in the first maceration prior to distillation, or the flavoring herbs used in the coloring step. While Pernod Fils used a grape wine base (I'm not aware of historical distillers using brandy, but I'll stipulate that they may have ) and some of the lesser products that came along to grab market share used more "industrial" spirits as a base, this issue is not what separates the wheat from the chaff in the modern market. While in the historical market unscrupulous makers were able to get away with using downright dangerous ingredients to simulate the color and taste of absinthe, today's use of highly-refined neutral grain spirits is hardly an issue. There are some distillers using grape wine spirit in the making of modern absinthes, and one (Clandestine, a name born of a lifetime of underground distillation, prior to the recent legalization, and not so much an attempt to be mysterious) who notably offers the same recipe made in two versions, one with NGS, and one with the grape wine base. All else being equal, you can taste, or maybe feel, the difference between the two. But many of the best modern absinthes are made with NGS, and I've yet to hear anyone claim this detracted from the quality or taste. The St. George, with its stinging nettles, basil, meadowsweet, tarragon etc. is not closer in formula to the original greats like Pernod Fils by virtue of using a brandy base. Far more important to the final outcome are the herbs used in distillation and coloring .

A little poking around on the internet yielded this page ... If anybody successfully orders from that link I'd love to know if it works. ← I ordered a few of the 1883 syrups from them (the Coffee Authority) and the service and delivery were great.

And sure enough, at the very beginning a bartender smacks his head on a bottle with that "for the thousandth time" look. And not one of the three drinks he sampled could be tasted without a spoon and a straw. I think I'd want to go somewhere for a drink after that.

I'm still tinkering with my "Noël" , a cross between the Alexander and Widow's Kiss 1 1/2 ozs apple brandy 1 oz Bénédictine 1 oz cream 3 dashes Angostura bitters Shake hard, double strain, top w/ground nutmeg (this can also be made splitting the ounce of Bénédictine into 1/2oz Bénédictine, 1/2 oz St. E's Allspice Dram)

Here in SF, one of my favorite local bars, Elixir is having a theme party with a special drink that I'll have to stop by and try. Later in the evening I'll have a little low-key cocktail party of my own with a little more attention paid to absinthe and absinthe cocktails, paying tribute to the most maligned of the spirits that was shown no love on the original repeal day.

I knew it. This whole thing has been a hoax to get a few of us to stock up on Cherry Heering. I guess you'll all be collecting your enormous kickback checks and partying it up at Raffles in Singapore while I'm stuck here trying to talk all my friends into trying Cherry Juleps.

The bump in this thread caused me to read the whole thing for the first time, and the above quote raised a question I've had for awhile. When I make drinks with cream or egg white, that are supposed to froth, it seems like I'm left with a choice between undesirable (for me) ice chips but a full froth, or double-straining the chips out but also significantly reducing the froth. Any thoughts? I usually go with the fine straining because I really don't like ice chips in a drink that wants to be creamy and smooth. It seems to me that this choice is also central to this hard-shake concept, where bubbles are claimed to be at the heart of the goal.

My local Bevmo has a whole shelf of the stuff, but the Bevmo website says no such product exists. I bought an extra bottle just in case. I'm planning on ordering some Cherry Marnier from England next month since you can't get it here.

I finally think I'm getting somewhere with this drink. I've tried a few different ingredients and ratios. I set out to create an eggnog cocktail that I could shake up in a minute without the imposing list of ingredients in real eggnog. I based it on the ratios of the Alexander, but split the 1 oz of liqueur from that recipe into two half-ounces of different liqueurs. The Noël Cocktail 1 oz Bourbon (something smooth) 1/2 oz Benedictine 1/2 oz St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram 3 good dashes Angostura bitters 1 oz heavy cream Shake like crazy to froth the cream double-strain dust w/ ground nutmeg I think it really captures the feel of eggnog, but it's just a few seconds away. To my taste, I could beef up the bourbon to 1 1/2 ozs, but a few folks I've offered it to, who thought from the first impression that it would be traditional nog were taken back a little by how boozy it turns out to be in the finish. It isn't eggnog, it's a cocktail. This is the first cocktail I've ever dared to post. Tweaks or comments, please. [edit- oops, I left the bitters out of the photo]

Would be nice if the drink was "built" in the glass...

Interesting related thread

It burns your throat the whole way down and crosses your eyes so bad you can't see straight for five minutes?

I'm bumping this for a kind of embarrassing reason. I've never made a white russian. I kind of skipped over most vodka drinks when I started getting into cocktails. But as time goes by the respect for this drink seems to ooze out of the pores of even the most erudite cocktalians, and I've thought I should go back and revisit this adolescent introduction to drinking. So I tried to look up a recipe for proportions, and that's where I got stopped. I don't exaggerate: there are no two published recipes that are the same, or even really similar. I've seen it listed as an equal parts drink, a 3:2:1, and almost no recipes give any more info for the cream other than "top off w/cream". I figure it's a mix-to-taste deal. Also, I see that a lot of recipes call for building the drink in a rocks glass and floating the cream on top. Seems like you'd be drinking cream for five minutes and then the drink would change into a black russian at the bottom. I've seen suggestions for using vanilla vodka, Goldschlagger, etc to add flavors to the drink. Some of these sound pretty good. Can I ask y'all for your takes on this drink?

First I've heard of this concoction, but I've already decided I'll try it out at my Halloween speakeasy party. (A note for any newbies like m'self trying to look this up in Imbibe!, it's listed as Philadelphia Fish-House Punch)