Craig E

I guess the sticklers will say make a "Bourbon & branch" with water from whatever local creek was used by the distillery, but I'd start with any decent water.

Stenton, also by @Rafa. Scotch, CioCiaro, Punt e Mes, Cherry Heering, orange juice, mezcal rinse, garnished with orange peel (lemon peel) and brandied cherry. Cherry Heering dominated the first sip, sweet and fruity. Then the complexity of the amaro and vermouth enter in. Shifts from fresh fruit to dry fruit. This seems like it's going in a bunch of directions but it holds together well. In the finish I got a strong Tootsie Roll flavor.

Report back with your impressions!

David Wondrich's Reanimator, which was a recipe that came with my bottle of Nonino: equal parts with rye, plus a lemon twist. A lovely drink, but certainly on the sweet side. Next go 'round I might squeeze a little lemon juice in there, or shift the proportions towards the whiskey, or use a more assertive rye, or some combination thereof.

A Spritz is a classic Venetian way of drinking it with sparkling wine and soda that's great. Audrey Saunders's Intro to Aperol (with gin, lemon, simple, and bitters) is absolutely delicious. Holly Roberts's Ortensia is a Negroni riff that's not bad, though maybe Punt e Mes would count as exotic.

Oh, this is a good one: the Blue Collar. 2 oz rye 1⁄2 oz sweet vermouth 1⁄4 oz CioCiaro 1⁄4 oz maraschino liqueur 2 ds orange bitters 2 ds Angostura Lemon twist I've come to realize certain accompaniments really bring peanut butter out of Rittenhouse for me and that happened here. Well balanced and tasty. More complex and interesting than a Red Hook, which is a fave.

@Rafa's Sultan (rye, brandy, lemon, Pedro Ximénez sherry, Cynar, mole bitters). The sherry is the feature flavor, lending its strong fig/date flavor, here maybe coming through most as golden raisins. On the heels of that, less expectedly, I got some cherry from this. The Cynar and bitters double-team to provide a pleasant complex finish. It served well to help me get over my favorite football team's heartbreaking opening-day loss.

When I saw that the Mixology Monday theme for this month is "Drink Nerdy" (hosted by The Shrubbery), I thought "that's right in my wheelhouse!" As I have mentioned before, one of my nerdy passions is wordplay, specifically inventing pangrams (phrases that use every letter of the alphabet). I believe I may be the world's most prolific author of original pangrams. So my first thought was coming up with a new mixed drink recipe that is itself a pangram. So I give you The Lazy Dog: Muddle a few jalapeno slices in a rocks glass. Mix in 2 oz. blanco tequila, 1 oz. dry vermouth, & ice. Is this a great cocktail? No. The muddled pepper overwhelms everything else. A different kind of vermouth might've been more suitable, but I needed that "Y"! And though I bet a wedge of lime might go a long way to salvaging this, I thought it merited starting over. And thus was born The Quick Brown Fox: Equal parts rye whiskey & mezcal joven; dash each of orange & xocolatl bitters. This felt a bit more complete, not unlike a nice interesting Scotch. You'd have to like strong boozy drinks of course, especially with the bottled-in-bond rye I used. And, like the previous drink, a sweetener of some kind would be a welcome addition. But I'm calling this a success.

I quite liked a Negroni riff a friend made me recently using Tattersall Bitter Orange. Tattersall is a local distillery (Minneapolis) and I'd imagine the distribution might be limited to the region, but it's worth keeping an eye out for it. Essentially this Campari substitute emerges from state liquor laws: as I understand it, to sell alcohol at a distillery you're restricted to spirits and liqueurs made on-site. Thus Tattersall (which started with [excellent] gin and vodka) has wound up producing a very wide product line with their own fernet, bitter orange, cherry liqueur, creme de fleur, etc., so that they can offer Hanky Pankies, Negronis, slings, Aviations, etc. in their cocktail room. For amari, besides the Bitter Orange they have a Tattersall Fernet (which I liked on my quick tasting - not as methol-ly as Branca I think) and a Tattersall Amaro (which I haven't tried).

Okay, I sat down with two shot glasses of the rums diluted 1:1. I'm not an experienced taster so take this with a grain of salt. At dilution, to my nose Hamilton 151 had an aroma of cognac and alcohol; new Lemon Hart was more subdued. The taste differed; I got brown sugar Pop Tart and overripe fruit. In the LH I think I got red apples. On the finish, Hamilton seemed "hot" in the temperature sense, a deep and long lasting warmth. LH seemed more "hot" in the spicy sense, black pepper. I think diluted Hamilton had more character, and for that reason that rum might well be superior in many cocktails. But both feel well crafted, not raw at all, and if the goal is to boost the octane of a cocktail while keeping it accessible, the smoothness of Lemon Hart might serve well. I'm curious how both match with the older bottlings of LH but I don't have access to those.

I've never tasted either of the older labels of Lemon Hart: my interest in cocktails got serious only after the imports stopped. I bought a bottle of the Hamilton 151 a while ago and have almost worked my way through it, liking it a lot. When I got home I poured a shot of each (Hamilton and the new LH) to do a quick and dirty taste test, but it quickly became apparent that these are just too hot to drink neat with any discernment. I would say that the Lemon Hart burned with alcohol less—was a little smoother—thought that may just have been because I sipped it second. But maybe that tameness is connected to the disappointment your Instagram guy felt in the cocktail context. I'll do more testing.

Hey, look what I found!

"Diablesse" at Marvel Bar (palm syrup, Amaro di Angostura, Sombra, Clement Blanc). Really interesting. So often you see mezcal bases split with tequila—I think using a blanc agricole is a brilliant twist. ETA: tried this at home with Sfumato and agave syrup and it worked pretty well.

Cocktails at the home bar of one of my mixology gurus, so I brought over samples of my homemade Amer Boudreau, pineapple syrup, and tonic syrup. Came home with bottles of Vecchio Amaro del Capo and CioCiaro, both new to me.

Order of Neptune: equal parts aquavit, mezcal, blanco tequila, and PX sherry, with 2 dashes mole bitters and an orange twist (for which I used grapefruit). This was an odd melange of flavors. Sweet and savory. At first I thought it wasn't working, but the finish on this was fascinating and kept me interested. If your tastes appreciate the unexpected this is worth trying; it has many layers.

What is that behind the gin?

I'd consider Phil Ward's Martica close, with its split base of cognac and Jamaican rum. (I know you're familiar because I see you're the one who posted it to Kindred!)

Still in search of a cocktail use for Sfumato, I subbed it in @EvergreenDan's No Groaning (a Negroni riff with gin, Zucca, and dry vermouth). The starting point was looking for recipes that use Zucca, which also don't seem likely to be too sweet based on the other ingredients, since I find the Sfumato to be quite sugary. I do think the dry vermouth helped dry this out. Net effect was rather Cynar-ish.

Tried Misty Kalkofen's Low Rider, subbing Amaro Sfumato Rabarbaro for the Zucca. 2 oz Blanco tequila 1⁄2 oz Zucca 1⁄2 oz Crème de Cacao Dash Angostura Sweet and smoky, with an odd finish that, after a bit, tasted like the numbing stuff you'd get at the dentist. Perhaps my old cheap creme de cacao was to blame. At any rate, this was drinkable, but in the end not that different from, and no better than, sipping the Sfumato on ice by itself.

Is the "(or Zucca)" supposed to be appended to the third line then?

Recent buys, all new to me except for the Ramazzotti, which is for the Amer Boudreau I'm cooking up. Which is a deeper rabbit hole, rums or amari? My alcohol-free cleanse ends tomorrow; pondering the best break-fast.

At first I was very impressed with your daring garnish, but then I realized I'd misread it as "Small Hand grenade."

@EvergreenDan I don't know if that would mitigate, or exacerbate, the torture!

All new things to me, motivated by this stuff being priced to move (got all this for $30 total). Excited to try them all, but just started a two-week clean-eating challenge that forbids alcohol.

Any opinion on them? I ask because I saw some on clearance at a local liquor store.