The following post is sponsored by Frangelico. Cocktail name, development, recipe and photography are completely my own. Check out Frangelico online and follow them on Facebook for more exciting recipes.

Is it summer finally? Are we there yet, Mother Nature?

Up here in the tundra Montreal, the warm weather has been *such* a tease lately. We’ve had one of those springs where two days of delightful, sun-dappled, sleeve-shedding weather are followed by a near-week of chilly, damp, Debbie Downer-weather.

At times like this, I find that crafting a pre-emptively summery cocktail helps. It’s like a rainsundance for fanciful imbibers like us! (Here in French Canada, we might call it a bellwether for belle weather! *har*har*snort!)

Now, a lot of you know me. You know I can’t resist the occasional chortle-inducing pun (see above), just as you know that my usual summer-sippin’ routine calls for juleps, juleps, juleps and juleps.

A julep’s got most everything I look for in a summertime cocktail. The crushed ice keeps the drink colder, longer and the mint’s cooling and refreshing. But the bourbon — can I do one better on the bourbon? I love (read: luuurrrve) bourbon’s languid sweetness, but how about lightening up its syrupy-ness with some more playful flavors, a little tartness and an unexpected grace note or two three: A hint of nuttiness, a whiff of vanilla, a certain je ne sais noisette? (p.s. Bonus points if I can do all this without glopping on a ton of calories. What up, bathing suit?)

To make the Summertime Smash, I improved upon (if I do say so myself) the julep by halving the bourbon and replacing it with Frangelico. The hazelnut-flavored liqueur, more delicate in flavor and body, makes for a less heavy cocktail and one with more going on in the glass. The flavor of the Frangelico also allowed me to introduce some lemon into the recipe.

(Note: I know it seems that a plain-old julep, nothing but mint and bourbon, should pair easily with lemon, but you’d be surprised. It needs a bridge ingredient, a harmony-maker if you will. Enter Frangelico!) (I’ve also done this before with ginger beer.)

Once the hubs and I open our backyard for the season, I’m thinking the Summertime Smash may end up my go-to cocktail for entertaining al fresco. I have a hunch that those friends who find my mint juleps too heavy and cloying will appreciate the more lilting qualities of the Summertime Smash, while those who do love juleps will enjoy the refreshing, slightly fizzy presto-change-up. (Which I’ve also done before; see World’s Greatest Rye Perfect Manhattan.)

Hey, summer? Ready when you are.

Check out Frangelico online and follow them on Facebook for more exciting recipes.

The Summertime Smash

1 ounce Frangelico

1 ounce bourbon (I used Buffalo Trace)

1 teaspoon sweetener of choice (granulated sugar, simple syrup, or mint-steeped simple syrup; see Tasting Notes below for recipes and tips)

A splash of two lemon-spiked seltzer 

About 8 large mint leaves

Crushed ice

Mint sprig and lemon wheel, to garnish

Place mint leaves in bottom of a rocks glass. (It’s up to you whether you want to use a highball, a Collins glass, etc.) Pour sweetener on top of leaves and muddle together well. Fill glass with crushed ice. Pour in bourbon, then Frangelico. Top with seltzer. Give the drink a gentle stir, then add your garnish. Enjoy!

Tasting Notes

My preferred method for making simple syrup is to mix equal parts sugar and water in a small saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally. As soon as the mixture reaches a boil, turn off heat and let cool to room temperature, then store in the fridge.

To make mint-steeped syrup, add a good handful of mint leaves to the above mixture as soon as you’ve removed it from heat. Let the leaves steep 10 or so minutes, then strain them from the mixture and toss.

If you choose granulated sugar as your sweetener, pour just a teaspoon or so of water on top of your mint and sugar before muddling. The liquid acts like a hood that keeps the mint’s fragrance down in the bottom of the glass where you want it, rather than allowing it to release into the air.

Make lemon-spiked seltzer by simply squeezing a lemon wedge into a liter-sized bottle of seltzer. Or, you can just use plain seltzer when making your cocktail, then squeeze a little lemon over your Summertime Smash to finish it off.

First and, I guess, foremost: When I say “JC,” I’m talking ’bout Jersey City, not Jesus Christ. Although now that I mention it, perhaps this post’s/cocktail’s name will SEO some hyperChristians my way. In which case, give God the glory and pass me the bar nuts, flock! I think Jesus was a cool dude with lots of nice things to say — even if he did prefer wine over the hard stuff.

Second: The cool dude who’s the real star of this post is my cousin-in-law Christ, the inventor of this cocktail and a Jersey-proud resident of the OJC. So proud, in fact, that the native New Jerseyan lives on Jersey Avenue in Jersey City, New Jersey. Or, as he’s dubbed the sum-total effect of his address… SuperJersey.

Last month the PhoBlograpHusband, the baby and I were down in JC for a visit and Chris turned me on to a hard-stuff sipper he’d whipped up: A nice draw of Tito’s Handmade Vodka, flavor-spiked with a bunch of bitters; the combo he shared with me on that day was 3 dashes Fee Brothers Cranberry Bitters, 2 dashes Fee Brothers Peach Bitters and 1 dash of Fee Brothers Old Fashion Aromatic Bitters.

OK, you know how, like, when you’re a chef at a sushi place, or a resto that mainly serves charcuterie, your job is pretty much to be a top-shelf sourcer — to just track down and procure the best ingredients, then stay the hell out of their way? That’s what the Super JC is like.

I probably should go on and on about Tito’s here, but I’ll let the Internet do the talking on that. Suffice it to say Tito’s — well, there are probably vodkaficionados who think that Tito’s is the Secondcoming, and it’s very, very, very smooth and let’s just leave it at that. Also, if you follow this blog, you know that Fee Brothers is practically the only bitters I stock. Likewise, I really don’t know if I would bother making this drink with a vodka besides Tito’s, because you want that smoothness so that there isn’t a hint of shiver getting in the way of your bitterific finish.

So anyway, I knew all along that Chris had this sort of surprise-wizard-genius side to him — he’s good at coming out of seeming nowhere and blowing your mind, walk-on-water-style (ask him sometime about the amazeballs speech he pulled out of his drunk butt at cousin Tim’s rehearsal dinner). And I knew this was one of those times, and it needed to be blogged.

One tweak I made (because of course I had to): I swapped out the peach for rhubarb bitters. Just has a bit of a brighter, tarter flavor to it. Sorry, Chris; I know that’s not very kosher of me. This drink is the bomb, by the way.

The Super JC

3 ounces Tito’s Handmade Vodka

3 dashes Fee Brothers Cranberry Bitters

2 dashes Fee Brothers Rhubarb Bitters

1 dash Fee Brothers Old Fashion Aromatic Bitters

Combine vodka and all bitters in an ice-filled mixing glass. Stir briskly with a bar spoon for about a minute. Strain into an ice-filled glass of choice. (You’ll see in the pics that I prefer a stemless wineglass for this drink.)

]]> http://fiveoclockcocktails.com/2013/05/20/the-super-jc/feed/ 0 rosemauralorre Super JC1 Super JC3 Super JC2 Super JC5 http://fiveoclockcocktails.com/2013/05/16/the-sweet-martini/ http://fiveoclockcocktails.com/2013/05/16/the-sweet-martini/#comments Thu, 16 May 2013 22:18:23 +0000 rosemauralorre http://fiveoclockcocktails.com/?p=2609 ]]>

By the creamy, swirly look of it (as seen in pic above) + by the name of it => This cocktail must contain ice cream or at least cream-cream, no?

No.

(If I’ve now gotten it in your head that you simply must have an ice cream-based cocktail tonight, I’ve got you covered.)

But it is sweet, a-doy, and that’s thanks to the hit of grenadine.

Now, even though it’s called the Sweet Martini, and even though I just told you it’s sweet, let’s back up a moment and acknowledge that this isn’t the kind of sweet that passes for sweet nowadays. (I’m gonna stop saying “sweet” so much from here on out. Cool? Sweet.) What I mean is, this isn’t some sugargasm. This isn’t a Cosmo or a Type 2 Diabettini or a Sloe Comfortable Yo’ Mama Shops at Target (wuh? I may be tipsy).

This is sweet-as-the-opposite-of-dry, not sweet-as-a-molasses-sundae-with-sprinkles-on-top. It’s grownsed-up. It’s very 1960s. And it’s time you tried one. 

Now see, the pic below is much more witches’-brew than Candyland-princess. So, you know, focus on that.

The Sweet Martini

(As published in, ahem, The Big Book of Martinis for Moms)

1 ½ ounces dry gin

1 ½ ounces sweet vermouth

¼ ounce grenadine

Lemon twist, to garnish

Pour your gin, vermouth and grenadine into an ice-filled cocktail shake and shake vigorously for about 20 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail or martini glass and add your garnish.

Me: Hey, J. and M. [our favorite married-couple-with-new-baby-in-Montreal friends] invited us over on Mother’s Day afternoon for cocktails. J.’s mother and grandmother are in town. J. says her mother and I will get along because we’re both drinkers.

The PhoBlograpHusband: Wait — for cocktails?! [J. doesn't drink; M. will drink beer but only because that's the law in Canada.]

Me: I know, right? J. even emailed me their list of what booze they’ve got in the house and, omg, it’s sooo “we never drink hard liquor.” It’s, like, gin, vodka, Jack Daniel’s, a little bit of dry vermouth, OJ.

PHB: We should bring our own stash over.

Me: Totes. Let’s bring over bourbon, sweet vermouth and bitters for Manhattans.

PHB: We should bring over Campari, too, ‘cuz then with their gin and our sweet vermouth we could also do Negronis.

Me: Ooh, Negronis!

[Cut to: M. & J.'s apartment. The PhoBlograpHusband makes a Negroni for J.'s grandmother but, being an all-alcohol cocktail, it's too much of the hard stuff for her. PHB goes back to the drawing board, re-emerges with something the color of a Kodachrome sunset.]

Me: What. Is. That?! That looks lovely! Can I taste it? [Tries to steal J.'s grandmother's cocktail right out from under her nose while still appearing as if I'm on her best behavior.] Oooh, wow, that’s nice and smooth — and wait, hey, that tastes like grapefruit! But wait, we don’t have any grapefruit juice here, do we? How’d you do that? What’s in this??

Harriet’s Highball

1 1/4 ounces vodka

1/2 ounce Campari

About 2 to 3 ounces orange juice

Combine all 3 ingredients in an ice-filled cocktail shaker. Shake vigorously for about 20 seconds. Strain into a martini glass, a cocktail coupe, or an ice-filled highball.

Tasting Notes

I think you could add a dash or two of almost any bitters to this drink — Angostura, Peychaud’s, rhubarb bitters, peach bitters, Fee Brothers Old-Fashioned Bitters — to your liking to give it a bit more darkness and depth.

Also, possible garnishes: Grapefruit peel, lemon wedge, mint sprig.

The first time I ever drank alcohol (Mom, stop reading now) was at a party at Jeff Dakin’s house. I was 16, I think, and there was Budweiser in cans. As I couldn’t stand the taste of the champagne of beers, I emptied a can into an oversized, plastic cup and mixed it with OJ, which was all I could find in the Dakin family fridge that struck me as even plausible to combine with pissy lager. And so my career in mixology began .

I remember being so embarrassed by this that I only did my mixing when nobody else was in the kitchen, but I also remember coming up with a name for my concoction — the Rosebud — which means I must’ve talked to other kids there about it, or at least that I saw the humor in what I was doing.

If I’d known then about red wine and Coke, think 0f how boldly I could’ve plundered Mr. and Mrs. Dakin’s wine stash instead of making do with OJ’d-down, mass-produced swill. Imagine my rapt, pimple-pocked audience as I explained that rendering cheap booze palatable for consumption was a noted hallmark of youth across the seas! Think about what a precocious, pretentious ass I would’ve sounded like, expounding upon my own multiculti self-awareness. (Why, I may as well have checked my humility at the door and enrolled as one of Suri Cruise’s classmates at Avenues!)

In Spain, red wine and Coke — sometimes known as Kalimotxo or Cocavino — are often mixed together to drink at parties or street festivals. It’s kinda considered a kids‘ drink (as in “these crazy kids today,” not “my kid just turned 9 months old”) because, as my behavior chez Dakin evidences, an adolescent’s bank account mandates the purchase of cheap, less-than-desirable-tasting bilge, just as a teenage mindset is a prerequisite for believing that mixing dolla hooch with Coke sounds like an awesome idea.

Myriad suggested ways to prepare/guzzle red wine and Coke: Sometimes Kalimotxo is served in a short, glass tumbler; other times it’s served in a “tall” glass, except for those other, other times when a “one liter, plastic drinking glass” is what’s called for. Then there’s that thing where you half-empty a two-liter of cola, pour your one-liter bottle of vino in, and voila! You’ve just bartended up a party-sized batch that comes in its own, cooties-friendly, communal chug jug.

Likewise, varying flavorings abound. I’ve read that ouzo, blackberry liqueur and a lime twist are all good ideas (not all at the same time). So when I decided it was time to try my hand at red wine and Coke — grownsed-up style, mind you — I systematically worked my way through the options. My findings:

- I started with just red wine, Coke and a healthy-sized lime twist. Getting that hit of citrus up the nostrils before diving in was palate-confusing, but in a good, refreshing, smile-inducing way.

- Instead of blackberry liqueur, I did a 15ml of creme de cassis, as that was the closest facsimile I had on hand. This combo tasted like a good imitation of bad wine. It was like church wine, really — very heady and juice-like in the way cheap, sugary booze often is.

- I will admit, I did not try doing a dash, nor a splash, nay, nary a drop of ouzo. That just sounded nasty.

- Ultimately, straight-up, equal parts red wine and Coke was what I liked best. The drink was pleasingly crisp rather than syrupy sweet. Still a curious bugger, to be sure, but one I could easily envision myself enjoying around adults my own age, which is probably how old Mr. and Mrs. Dakin were at the time, now that I think about it.

The Kalimotxo

4 ounces red wine

4 ounces cola

Lime twist (optional), to garnish

Pour red wine, then cola into a large, ice-filled tumbler or stemless wine glass. Garnish with lime twist if desired.

Tasting Notes

Ice is key here. I simply cannot recommend this beverage at room temperature, even though I’m sure it’s often consumed that way, what with its bottle-swigged-at-street-fests rep. Don’t. Use lots of ice! (Pre-chill your red, in fact.)

I made this using a Spanish Garnacha. It is literally the cheapest red wine they sell at my nearest SAQ (about $10), but it’s not bad at all. (We drink it at dinner all the time.)

H.L. Mencken called the martini the only American invention as perfect as a sonnet, but I think the Sidecar goes one better: It’s as engrossing and enrapturing as the Great American novel.

Cue the Jay-Z soundtrack bandwagon sound effects Jazz Age music — it’s The Great Gatsby week at The Five O’Clock Cocktail Blog!

Honestly, few cocktails rival the singular, joyful, I’d-know-it-blindfolded taste of a Sidecar. It’s so much more than the sum of its triumvirate parts. How one drink with only three ingredients — cognac, triple sec, lemon juice — can prove so palate-memorable is beyond me and always has been. How that same drink has stood the test of time so well, having been invented in either Paris or London during WWI, only boggles the mind further. Most Sidecar tales note that the bar patron for whom the drink was made was an American officer stationed overseas during the war, so like the Martini, we Americans can at least claim some bit of its heritage. Also, kinda like Gatsby — erm, Fitzgerald, erm, Gatsby — with the pond-traipsing and the Paris in the roaring 20s and all that Jazz Age, right?

(By the way, I should mention that I’ve tagged all of the blog’s appropriately Gatsby-esque cocktails for easy perusing here. Bonne fete!)

Although it contains more than a splash of lemon juice, the Sidecar reminds me in flavor and look of A-list, all-time-classic cocktails that are liquor-only: the Manhattan, the Negroni and, mais oui, the Martini. Visually, it bears a beautiful translucency and a melon-gold-sunrise hue (as unique as its taste) that, I mean — the Sidecar is a one-glance, one-sip, complete endorphin rush, is what I’m trying to say.

One potential peccadillo I must own up to here. I prefer my Sidecars with a granulated sugar rim. That may sound sidecrass to some, but let me assure you that this cocktail’s overall flavor profile is only buoyed by the piquant, saccharine sting of some table sugar. (Yes, I even prefer it to my ballyhooed favey fave, the confectioner’s sugar rim.)

As you can see in the pic above, I got a little Art Deco-playful with my sugared rim for the sake of the Gats. Isn’t there a moment in one of the Great Gatsby trailers when Carey Mulligan’s pearls go flying? There we go; we’re sipping our Sidecars, we’re riding shotgun with one of the great American love storeis and like F. Scott, the pearls are tripping in the wind and we’re riding high on life.

The Sidecar

2 ounces Cognac Salignac

1/2 ounce triple sec

1/2 ounce freshly squeezed lemon juice (plus a little extra for stickying up the rim of your glass)

Granulated sugar, for the rim

First, prepare your glass: Dip the rim of a cocktail or martini glass into a shallow saucer of lemon juice. (Or, alternatively, run a cut lemon along the lip of the glass.) Then dip or roll your sticky’d-up rim in a second saucer of granulated sugar. Set glass aside. Combine three liquid ingredients in an ice-filled cocktail shaker. Shake vigorously for about 20 seconds. Strain into your glass.

Tasting Notes

The Sidecar is so foolproof, you can more than get away with no-name triple sec and whatever-name cognac, both of which I’ve used here.

To make the more dramatic sugared rim I mentioned and pic’d above, take a cut lemon half and use it to sort of draw a big, fat, diagonal stripe on a portion of your martini glass’ bowl. Then roll that portion of the bowl in a saucer of sugar.

Yes, I know a round-bowled cocktail couple would’ve been more Gastby-era apropos than a V-shaped martini glass. I like the V’s for doing sugared stuff.

]]> http://fiveoclockcocktails.com/2013/05/08/the-sidecar/feed/ 0 rosemauralorre Gatsby car2 Gatsby car4 Gatsby car3 Gatsby car5 http://fiveoclockcocktails.com/2013/05/06/the-applejack-saze-wack/ http://fiveoclockcocktails.com/2013/05/06/the-applejack-saze-wack/#comments Mon, 06 May 2013 20:44:36 +0000 rosemauralorre http://fiveoclockcocktails.com/?p=2561 ]]>

Some people discover pencillin. Others spill battery acid and then somehow, suddenly, they’ve invented the phone. Me? I improvise Sazeracs with applejack brandy.

While riffling through my ever-beloved Difford’s Encyclopedia of Cocktails recently, I was stopped dead in my tracks by Simon Difford’s recipe for a Sazerac. Ask any goomba how to make a classic one and you’ll be told rye whiskey, bitters (Peychaud’s, sometimes Angostura too), a sugar cube, and an old-fashioned glass coated with absinthe. Well, that’s just not good enough for Monsieur Lord Simon Difford, Esq., Ph.D. VII…

I know I reference Simon’s namesake book a lot, and as a straight-up, serious-minded reference tome it practically cannot be beat. But I’m starting to think Simon Difford might be part peacock. He’s quite the fancy lad; you can tell from his recipe write-ups, with their ostentatious notations. Oftentimes he’ll call for “chilled mineral water (omit if wet ice)” which I will admit to you, my fellow peanut-gallery proletariats, I just don’t get. Is Simon McFoppishstein making his cocktails with dry ice? Does he live in a space colony?

Rather than rye, Master Simon’s Sazerac employs a mix of cognac and bourbon — cognac because Mr. Peychaud often mixed his eponymous bitters with brandy, and bourbon “as is more communally used to make this drink today.” (Um, no, Knight of OnePercentershire; us down here in Proleville use rye, not bourbon, and by the way, the word is commonly.)

Because I am a class warrior, I decided to take on Difford’s rococo Sazerac. (Never mind that I’ve yet to craft an actual — ahem, I’m sorry, communal — Sazerac for this blog.) Then I discovered gravity our cognac had been 86′d by a PhoBlograpHusband who’d taken to secret brandy nightcaps as of late. So I grabbed the neck of my next-closest bottle: Applejack brandy.

My new favorite way to describe bourbon-based cocktails is chewy, and the Applejack Saze-wack is like the freaking caramel nougat of bourbon-based cocktails: Mondo chewy. Nay, even rococo chewy. Freaking Baroque chewy. It’s absolutely delish — well-balanced, intriguing — and my new favorite mistake.

The Applejack Saze-wack

(A riff on Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, Ph.D.‘s Simon Difford’s Sazerac as found in his book on page 367)

2 ounces Laird’s Applejack Brandy

2 ounces Buffalo Trace bourbon

1 ounce Lucid absinthe

1 ounce simple syrup

3 dashes Peychaud’s bitters

3 dashes Angostura bitters

Combine brandy, bourbon, simple syrup and both bitters in an ice-filled cocktail shaker. Shake vigorously for about 20 seconds. Strain into a chilled, absinthe-coated highball, rocks or old-fashioned glass.

Tasting Notes

I will concede to Mr. Difford that his method for coating a glass with absinthe is preferable to the norm. Rather than rolling a splash of absinthe around the interior of a glass by hand, he simply fills the glass with ice, pours in his absinthe, then fills with cold water. (Or, as he insists upon, “chilled mineral water.”) Then he lets that stand while preparing the cocktail. In this way, you can chill and coat the glass at the same time. Point, Difford! En garde!

Ceci n’est pas une Cosmopolitan. 

Girly-looking, manly-named!

Here we have a Tuxedo Martini. It is of a piece with the Stork Club, a cocktail I blogged a few weeks back, in that both were christened after the New York City hotspots where they were invented. Allow me to quote my ever-dogeared copy of Difford’s Encyclopedia of Cocktails:

“Created at the Tuxedo Club, New York, circa 1885. A year later this was the birthplace of the tuxedo, when a tobacco magnate, Griswold Lorillard, wore the first ever tailless dinner jacket  and named the style after the club.”

A few things:

- Griswold. Lorillard. That’s like National Lampoon’s Vacation + Gilmore Girls-ish surname somehow = The hoity-toitiest moniker EVER. Clearly, Griz did not just invent the tuxedo, but also the monocle and the spat.

- Having said that, there is apparently some dispute as to the veracity of that whole sartorial yarn.

- Invented in 1885! That is one seriously ancient cocktail. By comparison, the Stork Club (the business, not the drink) didn’t even open until 1929. This makes me think of Midnight in Paris, when modern-day Owen Wilson and Roaring 20s-era Marion Cotillard time-travel back even further to the Belle Epoque. The Tuxedo is one ultra-hyper-meta nostalgic tipple, is what I’m saying. And also, as I’ve said before, a perfectly imagined era of yore is a perfectly good reason to prepare oneself a cocktail.

So how’s it taste?

The Tuxedo’s got an alcohol-y middle to its flavor profile, as any wet martini is wont to have. Of course, the fact that my brain keeps processing its visuals and telling me it’s a Cosmo only adds to that wobbliness. The finish, however, is the bomb, with an intruguing and not-at-all-over-the-top sweetness to it.

The Tuxedo Martini

(This recipe’s kinda like a mash-up between the one in Difford’s and the one in my Big Book of Martinis for Moms)

2 ounces vodka or dry gin

1 1/2 ounces Martini & Rossi dry vermouth

1/2 teaspoon Luxardo

4 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters

Lemon twist, to garnish

Combine all liquid ingredients in an ice-filled mixing glass and mix briskly with a bar spoon for about a minute. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Run the pithy side of your twist along the lip of your glass, then use it to garnish.

Tasting Notes

Maybe some folks would have my head for suggesting that this cocktail could be made with either vodka or gin. My feeling is, the other ingredients are quite potent and powerful, such that if vodka’s your jam, or it’s all you have on hand, etc., it’s going to suffice.

Difford, by the by, uses Tio Pepe fine sherry instead of Luxardo in his recipe, as well as Angostura orange bitters instead of Peychaud’s.

In some circles, the El Presidente is otherwise known as a Cuban Martini. It’s also one of those cocktails with slippery origins; in my Difford’s Encyclopedia of Cocktails, this is the fourth of four known El Presidente recipes printed. Variations include:

- El Presidente #1: Light rum, pineapple juice, lime juice, grenadine; a slim change-up on a classic daiquiri, replacing its simple syrup with pineapple juice. (Which, now that I think about it, is a great idea.)

- El Presidente #2: Light rum, dry vermouth, bitters. Difford’s describes it as “bone dry” and “rather like a rum-based, old-school Martini.”

- El Presidente #3: Light rum, dry vermouth, Cointreau, grenadine. A Trader Vic’s recipe, of which Vic himself allegedly said, “This is the real recipe.” (But I think he claims that about all of his concoctions? At least about the Mai Tai, which he said he flat-out invented.)

- El Presidente #4: Light rum, dry vermouth, Cointreau. “Dry but not bone dry, with balanced fruit from the triple sec and vermouth.” Ding ding ding ding ding, we have a winner!

Now that I’ve tasted this, I might actually propose a fifth version with a splash of club soda or even tonic. The former because of  the mojito-Cuban link, the latter because this El Presidente also manages to remind me of a nice, sweaty gin and tonic, which is actually one of my most favorite things to drink on the first hot day of summer.

But as-is is still a-plenty good. Crisp, light… dare I say, in its own weird way, Moscato d’Asti-like? (There I go with the fizzy thing again.)

Just try it.

El Presidente #4

(Taken pretty much straight-up from Difford’s Encyclopedia of Cocktails)

1 ½ ounces Bacardi Superior light rum

¾ ounce Noilly Prat dry vermouth

½ ounce Cointreau

Lemon, lime and/or orange twists, to garnish

Pour all liquid ingredients into an ice-filled mixing glass. Stir briskly with a bar spoon for about a minute. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and add your garnish.

I have seen recipes for champagne martinis that call for just vodka and sparkler. I have come across others (more than I would have guessed) that all swear by a spoonful of raspberry puree in the bottom of the glass, with some fizz and whatever else on top. And I have read that just bubbly and Cointreau is what constitutes a proper Champagne Martini — if “proper” is even a descriptor we can properly use when discussing a cocktail that bears, at best, a second-cousin resemblance to a proper-proper martini-martini.

My new favorite acronym is MINO — Martini in Name Only. It was, I will admit to you devout drinkers, a fact of life I had to swallow (straight, no chaser) when I agreed to author a cocktail book called The Big Book of Martinis for Moms. Clearly, not all 175+ recipes in the book are vodka- and or gin-based, for one thing. Believe you me, I did strive to make as many of the book’s recipes fall in line with a classic martini’s most hallowed guidelines. As it turns out, Mom does not live on vermouth alone.

Anyway, I wasn’t down with all of those other Champagne Martini variants referenced above. Just vodka and bubbly? Too stiff and fumey. With a spot of jam? I’m intrigued (and inclined to adopt a British-nanny affect), but sounds messy, so pish-posh, ol’ chum, and fanks but no fanks! (Besides, I don’t think moms need any more messes to clean up. For that matter, do any of us?) Cointreau and champagne? OK, but can’t we do better than that?

Here’s better.

The Champagne Martini

3-4 ounces champagne

3/4 ounce Cointreau

1/2 ounce Luxardo maraschino liqueur

2 dashes Fee Brothers Peach Bitters

Combine Cointreau, Luxardo, and Fee Brothers Peach Bitters in an ice-filled mixing glass. Stir briskly for about a minute with a bar spoon. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Top with champagne.

Tasting Notes

Obvs, you can use either capital-C Champagne (du France) or little-c champagne (sparkling white wine) for this recipe, just whatever you have on hand.

For that matter, you can forego big-C Cointreau and just use little-t triple sec if that’s what you’ve got.

Lastly, speaking of drink-it-if-you’ve-got-it, I find this is a great recipe for leftovers. Like when you need something to do with that opened bottle of bubbly, and who doesn’t always have way too much triple sec on hand? (I swear my bottle of triple sec predates Will & Grace.) Leftovers — they’re not just for moms!