Suave Agave

[ThinkingBartender]

After receiving a certain Mister Winchesters newsletter, which featured a drink made with cardamon-infused tequila...

Arabian Margarita: fresh apricot and lemon, shaken with Cardamom infused Herradura tequila and apricot brandy.

It set me a'thinking...

The only other cardamon drink I could think of was one which I encountered at Genevieve At Lonsdale House (48 Lonsdale Road, Notting Hill, london, W11 2DE). That drink was basically a Manhattan, but with a couple of muddled cardamon seeds added before stirring.

A while later I was eating something I cooked using Cardamon, and while dwelling upon its fragrance, I decided that it would go well with chocolate, of some sort. Cardamon Tequila prehaps? lime? and so on, until I came to this thing..

Suave Agave

1 1/2 shots Tequila

3/4 shot creme de cacao (white)

1/2 shot fresh lime juice

1 shot Apple Juice

2- 3 Cardamon seeds (muddled)

Muddle the cardamon seeds. Then add along with all other ingredients to a cocktail shaker, and then add ice. Shake hard, then double strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Squeeze a lemon twist over the drink, and then add the twist as the garnish.

The words "agave" and "suave" should rhyme, as I am using the spanish pronunciation of "suave".

Cheers!

George

Edited October 5, 2004 by ThinkingBartender (log)

[slkinsey]

Sounds interesting, George.

It also interested me to see the inclusion of apple juice. Seems like a number of bartenders I have talked with lately are experimenting with apple juice. Have you noticed this trend? What do you think it brings to the table? To be honest, it's something I would never have thought of using.

[KatieLoeb]

Apple juice or sparkling cider like Martinelli's are good mixers for more "autumnal" and wintery cocktails.

Here are a couple from last winter I created with the then day bartender at Striped Bass. We had to come up with cocktails for a Seagram's vodka sponsored contest, so we chose the Apple flavor since there are so many other vanilla, orange and citrus vodkas, we thought we'd do something different.

Apple Sparkler

served on the rocks

.75 oz. Seagram’s Apple Vodka

Splash Apple Pucker

Fill with sparkling Cider

Spiced Apple Spritzer

served in a white wine glass on the rocks

.5 oz. Seagram’s Apple Vodka

2.5 oz. Chaddsford Spiced Apple Wine (you could easily substitute chilled mulled cider and white wine for this)

Fill with Club Soda and garnish with dried apple slice.

George - your Suave Agave sounds very yummy!

[shelora]

Would you be using a reposada tequila to make the drink?

s

[bacchant036]

on apple juice, i think it's a greatly underrrated mixer, i love the stuff, theres a new (ish) company in the UK called sundance which does a range of about 10 different kinds which were great to play around with, the differences in flavour and style were quite amazing.

on the tequila, find the best tequila to infuse is sauza hornitos, it has a almost delicate flavour which works really well with citrus flavours (by far my favourite margarita),

and on cardamon - on a never ending search for orange flower water (please if anyone knows where i can get the damn stuff in london please let me know!) through every supermarket in china town and brick lane yesterday i came across cardamon extract (along with some other well strange stuff - pandan, kewra water, snake vodka) which i'll be having a good experiment session sometime soon.

ciao

[ThinkingBartender]

The great thing about apple juice is it's ability to fade into the background of a cocktail, without being totally absent. Once you have created a recipe which you don't want to drastically alter further, you can add apple juice for volume. It is, IMHO, a great substitute for water. Take for instance the Tre, it uses Havana Club 3yo, gomme, chambord, apple juice. The apple juice element is merely there as a form of dilution, IMHO, to fill out the drink to a servable size. I am not saying Apple juice is completely neutral in flavour, but combined in certain ways, it almost is.

Cheers!

George

[ThinkingBartender]

10 types of apple juice? I take that means from different varieties of apple.

I am referring to the apple juice you get in cartons, and is very mild.

George

[JAZ]

I really like cardamom with apple -- I always include a few cardamom pods when I make mulled cider. I wouldn't have considered tequila for the base, though; that sounds intriguing.