Me Elsewhere: A is for Apple

My latest Down the Hatch column is up now at Eat Drink Films. This month the focus is on that all-American “cyder spirit” applejack. I write about three cocktails suitable for the winter months, admitting that the standard-bearer for applejack drinks is not among my favorites and nominating two overlooked ones for this season’s imbibing. Be sure to read the entire issue, packed as usual with goodness. As a bonus, here’s the first time I heard about applejack, from The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes.

Cocktail of the Week: The Honeymoon

Nothing like paging through an old cocktail book and chancing upon a drink that sounds like it would suit your palate – and for which you possess all the ingredients. The quencher in question is the Honeymoon, the tome Patrick Gavin Duffy’s Official Mixer’s Manual. Only it isn’t.

The Honeymoon is one of a host of cocktails that first appears in a 1916 book with the pedestrian title Recipes for Mixed Drinks by Hugo Ensslin. Ensslin toiled behind the stick at the Wallick House in Times Square, described by David Wondrich in Imbibe! as “one of New York’s second-rank hotels.” While Ensslin may have lacked the chops to “earn him a place in the oral tradition of New York bar lore,” he performed a far greater service. He recorded how bartenders prepared drinks in the period prior to Prohibition, knowledge that would have otherwise been lost. Among the cocktails he preserved for posterity are the Aviation and the Deshler. The treasure trove of tipples he left behind greatly influenced Duffy and Harry Craddock of The Savoy Cocktail Book fame, both of whom plundered Recipes wholesale.

Despite its New York origins, the Honeymoon became a fixture on menus at Los Angeles’ Brown Derby restaurants, an impressive accomplishment considering they had their own signature cocktail. There’s a drink with the identical recipe called the Farmer’s Daughter. I want to say it’s named after the funky chalet-style hotel on Fairfax, but the dates don’t work.

An apple brandy sour with dual sweeteners, the Honeymoon has partisans who insist it be made with calvados. No doubt that’s an impressive version, but bonded applejack hasn’t disappointed me in this drink yet. The spirit-forward recipe below is from Jim Meehan’s PDT Cocktail Book. The apple’s crispness predominates, but is pleasantly modified by notes of citrus and a potent blast of sweetness courtesy of Bénédictine resulting in a fuller, rosier flavor. The Honeymoon is a blushing bride of a cocktail, a smart, tart beverage worthy of the attention given to many of the other drinks Hugo Ensslin remembered for us.

The Honeymoon

2 oz. apple brandy
½ oz. orange curaçao
½ oz. Bénédictine
½ oz. lemon juice

Shake. Strain. No garnish.

Want more Cocktail of the Week? The first fifty-two essays are available in the Kindle bestseller DOWN THE HATCH: ONE MAN’S ONE YEAR ODYSSEY THROUGH CLASSIC COCKTAIL RECIPES AND LORE. Buy it now at Amazon.com.

Cocktail of the Week: The Jack Rabbit

For the last Cocktail of the Week before the holidays – and the final original CotW post of 2013 – I want to break new ground. David Embury observed that “the overwhelming majority of our cocktails are of the Sour type.” Endless invention springs from an elemental formula of spirit, citrus, and sweetener. That third ingredient might seem the most prosaic, but even in the drinks featured here it has come in several forms. Sugar, either as bitters-soaked cube or simple syrup. Grenadine. Honey. Certain liqueurs, like Cointreau.

With the Jack Rabbit, we’re going all Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys on the sour. That’s right. Time to bust out the maple syrup.

The Jack Rabbit, originally known as the Applejack Rabbit, turns up in 1927’s Here’s How! by the pseudonymous “Judge Jr.” Much of that guide was cannibalized by Harry Craddock for his Savoy Cocktail Book three years later. Early recipes called for equal parts maple syrup and apple brandy, astonishingly “one hooker” or approximately two and a half ounces of each. Tastes and syrups were obviously different then, but this is a ratio right out of Super Troopers. Embury, in The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks (1948), offered a spirit-forward version. He deemed it “not half bad” and also noted that the drink is sometimes known as the Applejack Dynamite “for no reason at all.” Perhaps because it’s better than not half bad.

Jim Meehan helped restore the Rabbit’s glory (as well as its longer name) by including it in The PDT Cocktail Book. He specifically recommends Grade B maple syrup, the darker, thicker variety with a more intense flavor that makes it superior in cooking and baking. I don’t do much cooking and baking. I do eat a lot of pancakes, though, so what I had on hand was Grade A dark amber syrup – think of it as the highest level of the maple minor leagues – and that served me in good stead.

The recipe below comes courtesy of Erik Hakkinen of the Zig Zag Café. The Jack Rabbit practically demands to be served at brunch; maple and apple pair as wonderfully in the glass as they do on the breakfast plate, with the zing of lemon an added bonus. Not that you should limit this cocktail to sprawling midday repasts. Enjoy one anytime this season, while chestnuts roast on an open fire, or you draft the litany of half-truths that constitutes your holiday newsletter, or you search feverishly for the Allen wrench that’s supposed to be in the box. It’s too good a drink to pass up.

PS. My holiday newsletter will be a little late this year. But it’ll be worth waiting for.

The Jack Rabbit

1 ½ oz. Laird’s Bonded Apple Brandy
½ oz. maple syrup
½ oz. orange juice
½ oz. lemon juice

Shake vigorously. Strain. Garnish with a lemon peel.

Want more Cocktail of the Week? The first fifty-two essays are available in the Kindle bestseller DOWN THE HATCH: ONE MAN’S ONE YEAR ODYSSEY THROUGH CLASSIC COCKTAIL RECIPES AND LORE. Buy it now at Amazon.com.

Cocktail of the Week: The Widow’s Kiss

The first time I heard the name Bénédictine, I assumed it was a tincture stashed in the nurse’s station at my Catholic school. “We’ll rub a little Bénédictine on that knee, then you can go to Sister Edna’s music class.”

I soon developed another impression of it. I’ll allow the brilliant novelist Ross Thomas to sum it up. In his 1989 novel The Fourth Durango, some bent city fathers – well, father and mother – are planning a dinner for the next lamsters who want to hole up in their burg. The mayor isn’t sure if she should offer dessert: “If they want sugar, I think I’ve got some B&B (Bénédictine & Brandy) left.” When the offer is made, nobody wants any.

Sweet. That’s the operative word for Bénédictine. But it’s an idiosyncratic sweetness, with a long finish redolent of honey and a feisty undercurrent of spiciness. Put it in a mixed drink and you’ll know it’s there, which is why it tends to be used in small amounts. But used it is, with regularity, and thus it was that I added its highly distinctive bottle to my home bar.

Pictured: my less successful variation

The French liqueur is just coming off its 500th anniversary, if you believe the press packet. Like chartreuse, it has in its history a monk zealously guarding a secret recipe. In 1510 Bernardo Vincelli, described in sacred texts – namely Bénédictine’s website – as “not apparently an expert in herbalism but more an alchemist,” crafted a medicinal elixir at an abbey in Fécamp. Of course, the recipe was lost during La Révolution only to be miraculously rediscovered in 1863 by wine broker Alexandre Le Grand, who proceeded to make a killing on it. Le Grand played up the religious angle; each bottle is marked D.O.M. for Deo Optimo Maximo, or “To God, Most Good, Most Great.”

To inaugurate my bottle I went with a classic. The Widow’s Kiss is one of the great fall cocktails as well as a postprandial staple. But to make it, I’d have to wrestle with a host of spiritual questions.

Calvados or apple brandy? Purists insist on France’s Calvados for this drink. This one was easy: I didn’t have any Calvados, but I did have Laird’s Bonded Apple Brandy. (In this instance, however, I would not settle for applejack.)

Chartreuse? The Widow’s Kiss is a divine concoction in part because it uses both of your monk-made liqueurs. Some bartenders don’t object to using the more potent green chartreuse, but I would insist on yellow. Its flavor is less intrusive and pairs better with Bénédictine.

Shaken or stirred? Customarily this query would never be raised; a cocktail without citrus would always be stirred. But the father of the Widow’s Kiss, George Kappeler, a bartender at New York’s Holland House hotel, made a point of calling for it to be shaken in his 1895 tome Modern American Drinks. What to do?

Sweet or sweeter? The common thinking among bartenders is that the Widow’s Kiss is too sweet for contemporary palates. As a result, many mixologists dial down the liqueurs considerably; Jim Meehan, in The PDT Cocktail Book, suggests turning the traditional ratio of 2:1:1 to an astonishing 8:1:1, using 2 ounces of Laird’s apple brandy to a quarter ounce each of Bénédictine and yellow chartreuse along with two dashes of Angostura bitters. I made this version first, stirring it per Meehan’s instructions, and found it a solid if uninspired mix.

Being an American, I had my own remedy: more! I upped the liqueurs to half an ounce, certain that would liven up the joint. Instead that combination was worse, tasting like abnormally sweet if high-end apple juice.

In his book Imbibe!, David Wondrich observes that “this drink is a balancing act, and if one thing is out of whack, everything is.” He calls for rigorous adherence to Kappeler’s original proportions, and for shaking them once assembled. I did so, and was rewarded with an ambrosia of unbridled complexity. The crisp and the sweet move in perfect sync, their choreography inspired. I have my doubts that Brother Vincelli was an alchemist, but Brother Kappeler may have been. It just goes to show that the old ways are often the best, whether from 1510 Normandy or 1895 Manhattan.

The Widow’s Kiss

1 oz. apple brandy
½ oz. Bénédictine
½ oz. yellow chartreuse
2 dashes of Angostura bitters

Shake. Strain. Garnish with a cherry.

Want more Cocktail of the Week? The first fifty-two essays are available in the Kindle bestseller DOWN THE HATCH: ONE MAN’S ONE YEAR ODYSSEY THROUGH CLASSIC COCKTAIL RECIPES AND LORE. Buy it now at Amazon.com.

Cocktail of the Week: The Newark

It’s no surprise October is National Applejack Month. No other American spirit is so associated with autumn, each crisp sip redolent of harvest time. Applejack, the name borne of the colonial practice of concentrating cider through freeze distillation (i.e., leaving it out in the cold) or “jacking,” has been available commercially in the United States almost since the United States opened for business.

What is a surprise is my newfound ability to acquire the good stuff. In my local supermarket yet.

Laird & Company have long been America’s preeminent producer of applejack, which is apple brandy blended with neutral spirits. The country’s oldest licensed distillery also makes a 100 proof bottled in bond apple brandy. The uncut version has a brilliant flavor, not on par with Calvados – the French apple brandy that is the finest liquid known to man – but close. For years it was only available on the East Coast. Here’s how it good it is: it’s worth checking a suitcase for. I was once asked by the bartenders at New York’s Death + Company to courier several bottles as a gift to the team at the Zig Zag Café here in Seattle. I did so without keeping one for myself. Lousy Catholic school education.

I was on my ritual pass through the liquor section of my neighborhood store when I glimpsed a distinctive label. I stood rooted to the spot until Rosemarie happened past to confirm that I was not experiencing some miraculous visitation. The premier variety of Laird’s Apple Brandy is now for sale on the West Coast, without any of the fanfare such an announcement deserves.

The Jack Rose is the best-known applejack cocktail. I wanted to inaugurate this bottle with something different. The Newark is the brainchild of Jim Meehan and John Deragon of New York’s PDT. It’s another spin on the Brooklyn, this one not named after a neighborhood in that borough but the largest city in the state Laird’s calls home.

The cocktail uses applejack for a base instead of rye while keeping the Brooklyn’s maraschino. In place of Amer Picon – another bottle that led to a trip to baggage claim – is Fernet Branca. The Newark has a complex, almost rolling flavor, yielding different notes as it settles. The unmistakable presence of Fernet frequently predominates, held in place by the maraschino. The taste of apple, even with the high-octane Laird’s, is always present but forever distant, like a memory. A fitting profile for a fall cocktail non pareil.

The Newark

Jim Meehan and John Deragon, PDT, New York

2 oz. applejack, ideally Laird’s Bonded Apple Brandy
1 oz. sweet vermouth
¼ oz. maraschino
¼ oz. Fernet Branca

Stir. Strain. No garnish.

Want more Cocktail of the Week? The first fifty-two essays are available in the Kindle bestseller DOWN THE HATCH: ONE MAN’S ONE YEAR ODYSSEY THROUGH CLASSIC COCKTAIL RECIPES AND LORE. Buy it now at Amazon.com.

Cocktail of the Week: The Liberty

One of the benefits to living in Seattle is that come the most wonderful time of the year, there’s no need to fool around with holiday cocktails. Not when plenty of bars in town are making drinks suitable to the season. Rob Roy does a full Advent calendar, offering a different concoction every night in December closing with a Blue Blazer – Scotch set afire and poured between metal mugs – on Christmas Eve. (This year’s variation featured chartreuse. I missed it.) Sun Liquor serves up superlative egg nog. Earlier this week at Vito’s I savored the warm rum variation known as a Tom & Jerry, presented in the traditional mug. Says Tom & Jerry right on it.

Still, on occasion the Christmas spirit moves me to fix an appropriate yet simple cocktail. The weather demands crispness, which sends me straight to the applejack. But around the corner is the start of the new year, with its hope of sunnier times and balmier climes. Why not acknowledge that promise with some rum?

The Liberty brings both tastes together to smashing effect. The drink is often served over crushed ice as a summer cooler. But I find that its smooth blend of introspection and anticipation, up in a cocktail glass, plays every bit as well at the holidays. (Who am I kidding? The Liberty is pure alcohol, so whatever the calendar says it packs a wallop.)

The original recipe, as it appears in The Savoy Cocktail Book and Patrick Gavin Duffy’s Official Mixer’s Manual, is as basic as can be: applejack, a smaller quantity of rum, sugar. Later iterations called for a dash of lime juice, which makes a nice addition. The Liberty may not be an obvious Yuletide option, but it’s one guaranteed to make the season bright.

The Liberty

2 oz. applejack
1 oz. rum
¼ oz. simple syrup
splash of fresh lime juice

Stir. Strain. No garnish.

Cocktail of the Week: The Jack Rose

Gather ‘round, children. (Editor’s note: Children should not be reading Cocktail of the Week posts.) I am about to instruct you in how to make a cocktail incorrectly. Because there are times when incorrect is better than nothing.

The Jack Rose has an illustrious history. Jake Barnes downs one with George, the barman at the Hotel Crillon, in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. David Embury cites it as one of his six basic cocktails from which all goodness flows in The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. The other five, for those scoring along at home, are the Martini, the Manhattan, the Daiquiri, the Sidecar and the Old-Fashioned. In the intervening years, it would seem, Mr. Rose has been lapped by the field.

By rights the drink should be an American perennial considering that the central ingredient is applejack, a domestically produced “cyder spirit” made from, you guessed it, apples. The principal producer of applejack is Laird & Company, the pride of Monmouth County, New Jersey. They counted George Washington as a loyal customer, made applejack for troops during the Revolutionary War, and have been commercially selling it since 1780.

For a time the Jack Rose was thought to be named for East Coast underworld smoothie “Bald Jack” Rose, or a Jersey City bartender known by that handle even though it wasn’t his name. In The Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book (1935), Albert Stevens Crockett states that the drink, when properly prepared, has the same coloring as a Jacquemot rose and should hence be the Jacque Rose. I’m with them what belly up to the bar called Occam’s Razor: the drink is made with applejack, and is rose-colored. Mystery solved.

Ingredient #1, obviously, is applejack. Embury believed that the Jack Rose’s lack of popularity even in 1948, when his book was first published, stemmed from the absence of “an apple brandy made with the same loving care as cognac.” At present, Laird’s makes a 100 proof bonded applejack that might very well have met with Embury’s approval. It packs a punch as well as a bold, crisp taste. Sadly, it’s impossible to find outside the Tri-State area. I have personally ferried bottles from the East Coast to Seattle, even though Washington State is lousy with apples. I have it on the authority of bartender extraordinaire Murray Stenson – profiled in the current issue of Imbibe magazine! – that if you don’t have Laird’s bonded, there is absolutely no point in making a Jack Rose. But I wanted one, and settled for Laird’s readily available 80 proof variety. (Note that you can substitute the French apple brandy Calvados. Also note that many bartenders will reduce the amount of applejack when lucky enough to be using Laird’s bonded.)

Ingredient #2 is lemon juice. Unless you prefer lime, as some do, to serve as bulwark against –

Ingredient #3, grenadine. Customarily it’s in equal proportion to the citrus, which certainly would make sense if I were using, say, the house-made grenadine at the Zig Zag Café. I’ve sampled that on its own, and would drink it by the glass, pour it on top of ice cream, fill a waterbed with it. I’d have considered that amount had I prepared my own grenadine by combining pomegranate syrup and superfine sugar. What I had on hand, though, was the bottled kind, perfectly acceptable by the spoonful but a little too cloying in this quantity. And as I said, I really wanted a Jack Rose. So I adjusted accordingly, and that’s reflected in the recipe below. The cocktail was still a satisfying one, the bite of the apple evident over the tartness of the lemon, the grenadine providing color and a dash of sweetness. My advice is to have a Jack Rose made the right way, by a professional and with Laird’s finest product, to understand why Embury placed it his pantheon. Once you do, even pale imitations will occasionally hit the spot.

The Jack Rose (beggars not choosers version)

2 oz. applejack
.75 oz. lemon juice
.50 oz. grenadine

Shake. Strain. No garnish.