MxMo LXXIX: Resin—Mister Moose

Hey folks. It’s time for another magical Mixology Monday. I’d like to thank our hosts Christa and Shaun of BoozeNerds for their inspiring and intensely aromatic theme, Resin. They write:

We thought hard about a theme that would work well for this time of year, and after contemplating the food, booze, and decor we like for the holidays, we settled on “Resin.” From savory rosemary in a stuffing, to a delicious juniper-y gin in a martini, to a fragrant fir ornament or garnish, our friends the evergreens have a lot to offer. The challenge: come up with an ingenious creation using the resin-y ingredient of your choice. Zirbenz, retsina, hoppy IPA, pine-nut puree, even? Sure! Spirit, garnish, aroma, all are fair game. Whatever resin means to you, we want to hear it.

It’s definitely late autumn in San Francisco. It doesn’t freeze here, but the days are noticeably shorter and there’s a scent of of wood smoke in the chilly evenings. What better way to prepare for the coming Thanksgiving holiday than an evergreen-scented drink?



Mister Moose

• 2 oz gin
• 1 oz Zirbenz Stone Pine Liqueur
• 1 oz sweet vermouth
• 1 oz lemon juice
• 1 oz ginger beer
• 1 generous dash Bar Keep Baked Apple Bitters

Lightly shake all except ginger beer with ice. (Don’t over-dilute.) Strain into a double old fashioned. Top with ginger beer and add fresh ice. Rosemary sprig garnish.
ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

The Zirbenz is a surprisingly easy, versatile ingredient, adding a unique balsam spice. Here it’s accentuated by the ginger, bitters, and the earthier herbs in the vermouth. The gin works as a background taste to lengthen the evergreen notes and dry the whole thing down.

MxMo LXXVIII: Intercontinental—Time of the Saison

Howdy folks! It‘s another fine Mixology Monday. Today our host is my San Francisco Bay Area neighbor Stewart Putney of Putney Farm. I can always count on Stewart for inspiration and an adventure in the experience of taste, and his theme for this MxMo, Intercontinental, is certainly no exception.

Everywhere we travel these days we see cocktails on the menu. And not just here in the USA, but all around the world. And that’s not only the drinks, but the ingredients as well…. So let’s celebrate the global reach of cocktails with an “Intercontinental” Mixology Monday challenge. Create a cocktail with “ingredients” from at least 3, but preferably 4, 5 or 6 continents. And if you can include Antarctica, then you get a Gold Star.

OK, I missed Antarctica. And Oceania. (There was a well-intentioned Vegemite experiment. Not so good.) But as usual, I was thinking of my own current preoccupations and wondering how they related to the theme at hand. Lately, I’m most interested in fermented beverages, brandy cocktails and food pairing, and this MxMo offering could represent all of these things. It’s based on a saison (Belgian-style farmhouse ale) made here in the U.S. with the addition of grains of paradise, an African spice reminiscent of black pepper, ginger and citrus oils. I pumped up the alcohol with calvados, a Normandy apple brandy—not too much. There’s a ginger liqueur to represent Asia, and allspice liqueur and Peruvian bitters to represent the Americas.



Time of the Saison

• 1 oz calvados
• 1/2 oz Domaine de Canton
• 1/2 oz lemon
• 4 dashes Amaro Chuncho
• 1/4 tsp St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram
• Ommegang Hennepin (about 4 oz)

Lightly shake with ice all except the Ommegang. (Just box it back and forth 2 – 3 times.) Strain into a stem glass. Top with beer.
ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Delicate fruit, spice and little bubbles, this is bright and light enough to accompany a meal of seasonal related flavors. Here in North America, it happens to be autumn but don’t let that stop you from mixing one up if you’re somewhere entirely different.

Many thanks to Stewart for hosting and for his great theme.

MxMo LXXVII: Smoke!—Smoky Mountain Boogie

It’s time again for another Mixology Monday. A big Fogged In thank-you to our host Elana of Stir and Strain for a theme close to my heart, a flavor I crave intensely—smoke. There’s any number of exciting ways to work with smoke in cocktails. For this round, I thought of an ingredient I like a lot, smoke beer. Today I’ve used a favorite oak smoke doppelbock by Schlenkerla in a riff on a classic bourbon cocktail that normally calls for champagne, the Seelbach Cocktail. The original version is a house specialty of the Seelbach Hotel in Kentucky.



Smoky Mountain Boogie

• 1 oz bourbon (Buffalo Trace)
• 1/2 oz Cointreau
• 7 dashes Regans’ No. 6 Orange Bitters
• 7 dashes Bar Keep Baked Apple Bitters
• 5 oz smoke beer (Schlenkerla doppelbock)

Stir bourbon, Cointreau and bitters briefly with ice and strain into a chilled pokal or other slender pilsner glass. Fill with smoke beer. Orange twist.
ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Smoke, fruit, spice and refreshing bitterness. Both bitters are perfect complements to the doppelbock.

MxMo LXXVI: Fire!—Voice of Temptation

Sliding this one in under the wire for our superb host, Muse of Doom. It’s another Mixology Monday, and our theme is Fire! The Muse writes:

Tiki-philes have their flaming spent lime shells and scorpion bowls. Classic cocktailers have the magic of a flamed orange zest. Molecular mixologists have their Smoking Guns. (And yes, frat boys have their flaming shots.) Even brunchtime drinkers have spicy Bloody Marys.

You don’t have to go full Blue Blazer, not nearly—heck, you could go full Fireball Whiskey! (Or Fire Rock Pale Ale, etc.) You could riff on the Old Flame or come up with an inventive name of your own. You could even use a good firewater or burned wine. (And if you’re grilling fruit, save some for me, will ya?)

In essence, bring the heat! Bring the Fire! Bring your inspiration!

Well, I like a little barbecue as much as the next cocktail enthusiast—maybe more. I had limited time for this challenge but mezcal with a flamed fruit garnish would give me a little smoke and a little fire. So I pulled out my trusty Lemon Hart 151 and a steel bowl, and cut a slice from an apple.

Flaming anything should be done with caution, especially if in a hurry, so I put a bowl of water underneath my crucible, and a potholder under the whole setup. Three pinches of brown sugar on the apple slice gave it a little caramel, and there was just enough rum to wet the apple but burn itself out after a bit.

The cocktail to go under this burnt offering is a pairing of straight apple brandy and the Lemon Hart mellowed by molasses and lemon, rich and intense—almost an apple gastrique effect.




Voice of Temptation

• 1 oz straight apple brandy
• 1/2 oz Lemon Hart 151 rum
• 1/2 oz lemon juice
• 1/4 oz molasses
• 1/4 oz mezcal

Shake hard with ice and strain into an old fashioned. Ice cube. Flamed apple garnish. (See above.)
ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

MxMo LXXV: Flip Flop—Chancery Cocktail

It’s that happy time again, Mixology Monday. Our host is the incomparable Frederic of Cocktail Virgin and our MxMo moderator. Many thanks to him for stepping in to host when many other cocktail writers tend to be becalmed, whether from Tales of the Cocktail or from the heat of summer here in the Northern Hemisphere. Fred’s theme is Flip Flop, which he describes thus:

I thought of the theme for this month’s Mixology Monday shortly after making the Black Rene, an obscure drink from Pioneers of Mixing at Elite Bars: 1903-1933. The combination of brandy, amber rum, lemon, and Maraschino was tasty, but I felt that the recipe could be improved if I swapped in different ingredients. Taking a page from Max Toste of Deep Ellum who converted the Black Devil into the White Devil, I flipped around the ingredients to be pisco, white rum, lime, and Maraschino instead. With this combination that I called the White Rene, the drink really sang but it was still recognizable as being an alteration of the original recipe. Others have done similar swaps with grand effect including the Bluegrass Mai Tai that that changes the two rums to two whiskeys and swaps lime for lemon from the classic while holding everything else the same.

We enjoy substitution games here at the Lounge, and we love classic cocktails and their variations. Flip Flop reminds me a bit of Stewart Putney’s excellent Inverted theme, so I’ve worked with the same cocktail as on that round, The Chancellor. I’ve had fortified wines on the brain, and thought right away of the white port I’ve been so fond of lately as an exchange for the ruby of the original recipe. The blended scotch became a single malt, the dry vermouth turned sweet, and the orange bitters transformed to apple.

 

Chancery Cocktail

• 1 1/2 oz single malt scotch (Laphroaig 10)
• 1 1/2 oz white port (Quinta do Infantado)
• 1/2 oz sweet vermouth
• 3 dashes Bar Keep Baked Apple Bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Caramel and wood from the barrels had me drinking this a little too fast, like the flavor descriptor I was trying to think of was just around the bend. I guess I could have used a milder and less iodine malt, but the Laphroaig I bought this afternoon called to me. Since it was intense enough to trample the other stuff in the glass, I used an equal amount of port. (The balance seems roughly like the classic Chancellor recipe when made with my preferred base, Johnnie Walker Black Label.) The apple bitters are a perfect complement to this gold-hued version of the highbrow classic.

MxMo LXXIV: Cherries—Silver Spurs

A very warm Fogged In thank-you to Andrea of Gin Hound for Hosting this month’s Mixology Monday, and for her excellent theme, cherries. These stone fruits are essential to so many great and varied cocktails that it took me a while to decide on a direction that I hadn’t explored before. But lately I’ve been working with wine-based ingredients, which suggested a cherry-sherry combination. Tequila seemed a natural compliment to both.



Silver Spurs

• 1 1/2 oz blanco tequila
• 3/4 oz amontillado sherry
• 1 barspoon Maraschino liqueur
• About 1/2 tsp mezcal

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Lemon twist.
ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Off-dry; delicate fruit and florals. Black pepper from the tequila softened by the sherry.

MxMo LXXIII: Witches’ Garden—Reynardine

It’s time again for Mixology Monday. This month, Mark Holmes of Cardiff Cocktails invites us to show off our mad herbalist cocktail skillz with his awesome theme, Witches’ Garden. I was expecting this challenge to help me welcome in the summer time with something light and bright, but ended up with a velvety room-temperature potion of rosemary, sage, and port wine goodness.




Reynardine

• 1 1/2 oz cognac
• 1 1/2 oz port
• 3-4 sage leaves
• 1 sprig rosemary (an inch or so)

Bruise the herbs lightly but thoroughly in a splash of the cognac. Add the remaining cognac and the port, stirring well. Strain through mesh into a snifter or other balloon-shaped glass.
ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

The herbs bring out savory notes in the port and brandy. Rich and subtly aromatic, this would be just the thing for a winter night. On a May afternoon, it’s contemplative and still, and casts a strange spell.

Mixology Monday Roundup: Drink Your Vegetables

It’s Mixology Monday wrap-up time! As your host, I’m truly having an amazing time with MxMo LXXII: Drink Your Vegetables, reading about all the exciting drinks and imaginative ways of combining booze with veggies. The turnout for this event shows the diversity of cocktail enthusiasts, and I’m very pleased to see some regulars, as well as some first timers who found inspiration in this theme.

First up is JFL of Rated R Cocktails, who answers that crunchy question, “What’s up, doc?” with Bugs Bunny, a rye-based carrot number to appeal to even the sharpest rabbit.

If it didn’t already feel like a vegetable patch around here, Raffaele Bellomi of The Shorter Straw brings us a trifecta of vegetal delights. The Green Wiseman (pictured) is fueled with gin and rocket. (That’s arugula here in the States.) Il Sangue di Maria is an unusual cachaça-tequila combo with celery and cherry tomato. Bitter Cup is a striking Pimm’s with fresh citrus, the traditional cucumber, and a big burst of Angostura Bitters.

Next we have a pair of Martinis by DJ HawaiianShirt of Spirited Remix. The Martini au Chef de Cuisine has a lacing of red onion than might just conjure my Gibson-loving great aunt from the great beyond. The companion piece, the Martini au Jardinier, is an herbal number. Parsley seems a quasi-vegetable, eaten as such in tabbouleh and pancake restaurants.

Scott Diaz of Shake, Strain & Sip entices us with the artichoke-based Cynar in his Choke On This Drink. With rye, vermouth, bitters and fig-infused cognac, I’m sure I’d choke with pleasure.

If the Fogged In Lounge seems a little low and salty from time to time, our honored visitor Matt L. Miller helps us out with the Low Country Celery, a dirty genever Martini with a little celery action and a spicy green bean.

Raul Zelaya of Death to Sour Mix brings us The Cherry Belle, and a rather sophisticated belle too, with pisco, sake and radish. Wow.

Ian Lauer of Tempered Spirits uses tomato syrup and Cynar to deconstruct a complete culinary concept as a cocktail with Ciao, Provence! I’m getting hungry.

As a scotch fan, I’m intrigued by Moscrop by Mark Holmes of Cardiff Cocktails. An unusual blend of peaty malt, sweet romano pepper juice and chili-infused vermouth, it looks a tasty thing of smoke and bite.

The incomparable Fred Yarm of Cocktail Virgin Slut and our fearless MxMo leader whips up a handsome Going Back to Mezcali by Donato Alvarez: smoky, herbal, sweet and of course vegetal. I’m intrigued by the way it looks like red like Aperol and tastes of cucumber. And is the rhubarb in Aperol a vegetable? Looks like chard stems but we eat it like a fruit. Sort of like the cucumber being a fruit but we eat it like a vegetable. OK—enough of that or my head’s gonna explode.

Nick of The Straight Up presents his Gentian Dream, an all-aperitif-and-bitters extravaganza featuring artichoke (Cynar), rhubarb (Aperol), celery bitters, and an herbal elixir supergroup.

Booze Nerds’ Christa and Shaun bring us a pair of cocktails featuring offbeat vodka infusions: celery root in The Night Market (which has sweet potato shochu as well), and watercress in The Hippy Chick. I’ve shown the HC here cuz I can’t resist a green drink.

More crazy infusions! Steve and Paul of Cocktail Buzz infuse moonshine with parsnip and soju with carrot as shown to rooty effect in their Logan 5.

I think if I had a Lazy Sunday Punch, a blended tequila drink from Elana of Stir and Strain, I might never get out of my chair. Floral notes, grapefruit and a cucumber spear seem to add up to a refreshing afternoon of idleness.

Andrea of Gin Hound lays down some of the hippest beets ever. There’s the fascinating, Fernet-driven Ode to Bax Beet Pinot, and then she goes and makes her own beet beer on which she bases the Beet Beet Cooler. How cool is that?!

More beets! Zach, who writes The Venture Mixologist, gives us the elegant, cachaça-based Beet Down.

And just when I think I’ve seen every Bloody out there, Jacob Grier of Liquidity Preference posts the Indonesian-themed, Batavia arrack-based East Indies Bloody Mary. Total cocktail dementia.

At the other end of the spectrum, Tri2Cook, with typical quiet charm, brings us an as-yet-unnamed sweet potato-bourbon whiskey cocktail. Sounds tasty like Southern cooking.

Speaking of Southern style, Joel DiPippa, who writes Southern Ash, presents The Sanguinary, which might be the rye cousin to Zach’s Beet Down. Really diggin’ all the beets.

What veggie cocktail party would be complete without a sangrita? Lindsay Laubenstein of Alcohol Alchemy comes to the rescue with a tomato version, Barrio Tequileria’s Housemade Sangrita.

Stewart and the folks at Putney Farm blow me away as usual.  For this challenge, they make an infused gin with their own veggies and stuff. And then they make a drink with it. It’s called The CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Cocktail. I’d support that any day.
 

David of Things I’ve tried to make does us the honor of making his first post a Mixology Monday. His yet-unnamed grapefruit-chili tequila libation looks like a tasty way to begin a blog.

Muse of Doom writes in from Feu de Vie (at the stroke of midnight—how singularly appropriate) with the slightly wry I Stubbed My Toe on the Way to the Arena, featuring smoky scotch and a familiar tomato-based condiment.

 
And my own Mexican Pumpkin Fizz offers a winter squash for all seasons, with tequila and chilies.

I would like to thank everyone who participated for all their awesome drinks, articles and effort. I’d like to thank Mixology Monday moderator Frederic Yarm who makes it all happen. And thank all you readers out there for dropping by to see us do this incredibly fun monthly cocktail writers’ event. Cheers!

MxMo LXXII: Drink Your Vegetables—Mexican Pumpkin Fizz

Greetings, folks. It’s time once again for another Mixology Monday post. The theme for this MxMo is Drink Your Vegetables, and I happen to be the host this month, challenging participants to find or invent a drink using one or more vegetable-based ingredients. (After all this drinking and writing about cocktails, we could use the vitamins.) So it is with particular pleasure that I present a vegetable ingredient for your delectation and wonderment, the squash. This would refer to the hard-skinned types including pumpkin, butternut, acorn and the like, sometimes called winter squash. These are available year-round. I’ve researched the matter to learn that the soft-skinned ones are called summer squash. There’s only so much you can do. (I reckon a zucchini wouldn’t survive a frost but can’t say I’ve seen it one way or the other. San Francisco, while chilly, doesn’t freeze. As people have said before, it’s hard to get a handle on the weather in these parts.)

Regardless of when you can find a winter squash, it is inseparable in the United States from an insanity that prevails from Halloween to Christmas, a dementia numerous in its symptoms, one of the weirdest being the delusion that everything tastes better with the addition of a large, tough, orange vegetable. You walk up to a coffee counter and they want to sell you a pumpkin latte. I always smile sweetly, exclaiming, “I would like a squash in my coffee, please!” The barista tends to look nervous.

I suspect what this bit of marketing is really about, and why it succeeds, is that people like pumpkin pie spices, and will have them in their coffee, beer, yogurt or whatever. A pumpkin pie is a very good thing indeed.

But the flavors of this group of similar orange squashes, while distinctive, are delicate and versatile, and lend themselves to lots of different treatments—not necessarily cinnamon, clove and ginger. The drink recipe below plays with the winter squash in more of a warm-weather way, the vegetal sweetness combining subtly with blanco tequila, chilies and lemon. A salt-cocoa rim brings out more salinity and earthiness. And it’s effervescent and without added ice in the glass, so I’ve declared it a fizz.



Mexican Pumpkin Fizz

First we need some squash-chili syrup.

SQUASH-CHILI SYRUP

• 1 c hard-shelled squash, peeled, diced
• 1 c raw sugar
• 1 c water
• 1/2 tsp chili flakes

Combine and bring to a boil, then simmer, stirring occasionally, until the squash is soft enough to mash. Strain off the liquid and mash the pulp. Recombine and double strain. (I put a fine strainer in the top of a measuring cup, and poured the squash mixture through a coarser sieve that I held over the fine one and the cup, pressing lightly with a spatula.)

And now for that drink.

MEXICAN PUMPKIN FIZZ

• 2 oz blanco tequila
• 1 oz squash-chili syrup
• 3/4 oz lemon juice
• 1 oz soda water
• coarse salt, for rim
• unsweetened cocoa, for rim

Chill a 6-ounce glass. (Delmonico, fizz, juice glass, etc.) In a saucer, combine a little coarse salt and unsweetened cocoa, enough to rim half the glass. Moisten half the rim with a cut lemon and dab the outside carefully in the salt-cocoa mixture. Shake tequila, syrup and lemon with ice cubes. Strain into prepared glass. Top with soda.
ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Light, bright and tingly, with an aroma of chocolate from the half-rim. I was tempted to throw every mole-style spice at the thing but quickly decided that I was not dealing with a dragon but a moon moth. The tequila used will have a considerable impact, whether it’s a pungent, mineral one, or a softer, more caramel one. I could go either way. Any left over syrup could go in savory glazes, and would be amazing on a vanilla dessert.

MxMo LXXII: Drink Your Vegetables—Low Country Celery

Guest blogger Matt L. Miller sends us an original recipe in response to this month’s Mixology Monday, the theme of which is Drink Your Vegetables. I, Rowen, have the pleasure of hosting this MxMo here at Fogged In Lounge, and invite participants to create a drink around one or more vegetable ingredients in any form. Matt responds with a celery-salted Holland gin Martini illustrated by his photo and description below.



Low Country Celery

• 2 oz genever gin (Genevieve)
• 1/2 oz dry vermouth (Dolin)
• 2 shakes celery salt

Stir vigorously over ice. Strain immediately into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with one spicy pickled green bean (Tillen Farm).

Strangely, Anchor Distilling has found it necessary to add the following warning label to Genevieve, their genever-style gin: WARNING: This is NOT a gin for making martinis! It is a “Genever” or “Schiedam” style gin, for old-fashioned cocktail recipe mixing. Or enjoy it on the rocks! Well, I suppose some people had complained. But I’m an iconoclast, so I decided to make a martini variation despite the warning, having run out of more orthodox recipes for genever. Strongly herbal, of course, but with a real backbone from the rye. It needed salt to go with the genever’s funkiness. And maybe something bitter to cut the genever’s sweetness. Celery salt? Perfect! Leafy vegetables were brought out by the salt, the Dolin vermouth added some more flowery herbal notes, and the celery completed the salad. Oh, and a spicy pickled bean for fun and distraction.
MATT L. MILLER

Mixology Monday Announcement

MxMo LXXII: Drink Your Vegetables

Monday, April 22 will be the 72nd Mixology Monday, and I will be your host here at Fogged In Lounge. Our theme: Drink Your Vegetables. Want to get more vegetables but you’re always eating on the run? Maybe you hate vegetables but feel you should get more of them? Well then, how about a vegetable cocktail? No, not that nice little glass of red stuff Grandma put at each place setting—we’re talking something with a kick in it. You can definitely start with the little glass of red stuff and expand it to a Red Snapper-style drink like a Bloody Mary. Or how about a cucumber-scented cooler like a Pimm’s Cup, or maybe a cocktail featuring a vegetable-based ingredient like Cardamaro or celery bitters? Maybe you’ve been wondering if you can get more mileage out of that juice extractor before consigning it to the garage sale. However you get them in that glass, be prepared for the most fun with vegetables ever. Here‘s what to do.

1. Find a drink or create one featuring one or more vegetable-based ingredients in some form. Make the drink, and post a photo, the recipe, and your charming bar talk about the thing on your blog, Tumblr, or eGullet’s Spirits and Cocktails forum. If you don’t have any other way of posting, you can also email it to me at foggedinlounge (at) gmail (dot) com.


2. Include in your post the MxMo logo and a link back to both the Mixology Monday and Fogged In Lounge sites. Once I post the roundup of all submissions, a link to that post as well would be grand.


3. Let me know about your awesome submission before 11:59pm PDT on Monday, April 22 by posting a link to your post in the comment section on this post or by shooting me an email at foggedinlounge (at) gmail (dot) com.

Have fun and remember: Don’t just vegetate—drink your vegetables.

MxMo LXX: Inverted—Reverse Chancellor

A big Fogged In thank-you to Stewart Putney of Putney Farm for hosting this month’s Mixology Monday, and for his challenging theme, “Inverted.” Stewart has tasked us to come up with a drink recipe that is some way turned upside down, whether that be a reversal of the ratio of a classic or any of the elements turned on their head in some way.

Well, the composition process is sort of twisted here at the Lounge to begin with so I had to decide how I’d make this demonstrably inverted and not merely warped. I ended up restacking the measures of a great recipe just to see if I could color inside the lines and still come up with something inspired. For this exercise, I went with a superb standard, the Chancellor. Regular visitors may recall that scotch is a favorite ingredient around here, and the Chancellor is the… the prime minister of scotch cocktails. Whisky, port, dry vermouth, orange bitters—what more could you want?

Except that to invert the ratios I’d need a stand-in for the orange cocktail bitters. This was going to be the base of the drink so two ounces of something meant to be an accent might be a lot. Maybe an amaro, a type of bitters constructed as a beverage, would make more sense. Of the ones I had on hand, Torani Amer seemed the best match: mellow and distinctly orange-scented.

And since I was making adjustments, I changed the blended scotch in the original recipe for a single malt that would work a little better in the accent role, the smoky, peaty Laphroaig. I had always been curious about using it in a Chancellor anyway.

Reverse Chancellor

• 2 oz Torani Amer
• 1 oz dry vermouth
• 1/2 oz ruby port
• 2 dashes Laphroaig 10 year

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Rich and evocative of the original. I’d definitely make this again.

MxMo LXIX: Fortified Wines—Whispers of the Frost

Many thanks to Jordan Devereaux of Chemistry of the Cocktail for hosting this month’s Mixology Monday, and for his very fine and tasty theme, Fortified Wines. Here at the Lounge, we’re big fans of port, madeira, and the whole range of sherries. The rich flavors and little dose of extra alcohol make these wines perfect for wintertime drinking, alone or in cocktails.

Here’s a classic recipe I’ve liked for a long time which has two fortified wines, port and sherry. Most recipes I’ve seen don’t mention what sort of sherry, though a very sweet one seems too heavy for the port. Also, most recipes call for sugar, which is totally dispensable, even with a dry sherry.



Whispers of the Frost

• 3/4 oz bourbon
• 3/4 oz port
• 3/4 oz sherry (Amontillado)

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Lemon twist.
SOURCE: COMPOSITE

Elegant fruit and nuts brightened by the spray of lemon oil from the twist. Mellow and warming. Have two—they’re small.

MxMo LXVIII: Humbug!—Snakebite

A big Fogged In thank-you to JFL of Rated R Cocktails for braving the hazards of the season to host a Mixology Monday. His theme is “Humbug!” After an evening on the town trying to find a friendly beer or two in a San Francisco filled with smug, banal, poorly socialized revelers, “humbug” seems about right.

JFL invites us to “create or find a drink that is Anti-Holiday Season, or personifies your favorite Holiday Villain.” After last night, I might just become a holiday villain myself, but maybe it’s wiser to retreat with an anti-holiday drink instead. Behold the classic Snakebite. No fake cheer here—just cider and lager. To dress it up a little, I served it with an evil clown. Everything’s better with an evil clown.

Snakebite

• 1 part beer
• 1 part cider

Built in a pint glass.
TRADITIONAL RECIPE

Samuel Smith’s Organic Lager and Crispin Natural Hard Apple Cider combine in a tasty, undemanding pint, good for drowning out those awful voices of the nitwits all around you. Humbug!

Special thanks to Dave Hauslein and everyone at Healthy Spirits for gamely playing along, as always.