Pantelleria Cocktail

[slkinsey]

From today's Shaken & Stirred column by William L. Hamilton:

It's now December, and you can think about ice storms or you can think about Pantelleria, a volcanic island between Italy and Africa where Giorgio Armani has a house.

I prefer to think about Pantelleria, which is also a cocktail on an excellent specialty list at Pace, the newest of Jimmy Bradley and Danny Abrams's restaurants, on Hudson Street in TriBeCa. The Pantelleria is a gimlet at heart, with gin and lime. But it has orange blossom water in it too, which is an ingredient in Sicilian and North African cooking. Orange blossom gives the cocktail the fruit of citrus fruit, not the citrus, which you usually get in a drink, with the sharp fragrance of a fresh orange.

When I first saw the name of this drink, I was expecting to see a cocktail that used capers. Pantelleria is famous for capers, and most dishes "alla Pantelleria" feature capers as a primary ingredient. The cocktail was developed by Pace beverage director Peter Botti.

2.5 oz : gin (Plymouth is recommended)

1.5 oz : fresh lime juice

0.5 oz : simple syrup

4 drops : orange blossom water

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with orange twist.

I think I have all these ingredients at home, so I'm going to give this a shake later tonight.

[slkinsey]

Well, I tried it. Reaction? <shrug>

I wonder if the published formula is not entirely correct. 2.5 ounces of gin to a whopping 1.5 ounces of fresh lime juice (with only a half-ounce of simple syrup to balance) makes for what I would call a "new school gimlet." It's very sour, although just balanced enough to be drinkable. It also tastes so strongly of lime that even the gin barely comes through. The orange blossom water makes its presence felt every so often, but as a very mild aftertaste that tends to be lost in the overwhelming flavor of lime. I'd like to try this drink with half the lime juice.