Summer

— No. 154 —

Spagett

Wet City’s bar­tender Reed Cahill cre­at­ed the Spagett in 2016 when the bar opened. For 3 years it had a cult fol­low­ing with the reg­u­lars at Wet City. Fast for­ward to 2019 where Alex Delany wrote an arti­cle for Bon Apétit mag­a­zine pro­claim­ing the drink his new favorite sum­mer drink, and now we have the world­wide craze we see today. The idea behind the drink is sim­ple. It’s an Aper­ol Spritz, but sub the Cham­pagne (or Pros­ec­co to be accu­rate) for the …

— No. 149 —

Baku

Baku is a cock­tail bar­tender Reed Cahill cre­at­ed for Wet City’s open­ing cock­tail menu. This cock­tail was inspired by Japan­ese high­balls. They tend to focus on get­ting as much com­plex­i­ty and depth of fla­vor from a short list of ingre­di­ents as pos­si­ble. We want­ed a breezy sum­mer rye drink that would be acces­si­ble to non-rye drinkers as well. The earth­i­ness of the macadamia orgeat plays off the rye well, while the cream soda gives it its soft, smooth tex­ture.  The 18–21 …

— No. 146 —

Basil Smash

The 4th of July is one of my favorite hol­i­days, and I cel­e­brate every year by host­ing a par­ty com­plete with home­brewed shandy and fresh sum­mer cock­tails. Because my gar­den is usu­al­ly over­flow­ing by this time of the year, I like to take advan­tage of that by cre­at­ing cock­tails packed with fresh herbs. This year, I’ll be serv­ing my adap­ta­tion of the Basil Smash. The Basil Smash was orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed by Jörg Mey­er of Le Lion — Bar de Paris in Ham­burg, Ger­many. Accord­ing to Jörg, he …

— No. 137 —

Corn ‘n Oil

Through all of my research I haven’t been able to iden­ti­fy the ori­gin of this fan­tas­ti­cal­ly sim­ple cock­tail. If you do your own dig­ging you’ll find a few infor­ma­tive arti­cles out there and most of them will list Cruzan Black­straps Rum as the base liquor. It’s this rum that gives the cock­tail it’s crude oil com­plex­ion and it’s fit­ting name. How­ev­er, I find that the Cruzan Black­strap Rum over pow­ers the sub­tleties of the faler­num, the real star of this recipe. …

— No. 135 —

City Paper Cocktail

The Bal­ti­more City Paper con­tact­ed me about cre­at­ing a sum­mer cock­tail to fea­ture in their next issue. Click here for the arti­cle. They want­ed to inspire read­ers to get cre­ative and mix up sum­mer cock­tails that take full advan­tage of the sea­son’s plen­ti­ful herbs. I chose to fea­ture Thai basil and bol­ster its anise tones with the anise fla­vors in Gal­liano and Pey­chaud’s Bit­ters. Since we’re in the mid­dle of a hot sum­mer, I kept the recipe light and refresh­ing using …

— No. 134 —

The Fencer

The Lucien Gaudin is a clas­sic but obscure cock­tail that cel­e­brates the well dec­o­rat­ed French ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry fencer of the same name. You may notice it shares sim­i­lar­i­ties with the Negroni. Both fea­ture gin and Cam­pari. The Lucien Gaudin how­ev­er has the dis­tinct pres­ence of orange, both from the fla­vor with the Coin­treau and in aro­ma of the orange peel gar­nish. The Lucien Gaudin is a dry, crisp clas­sic that is light on its feet. Lucian Gaudin 1 oz …

— No. 129 —

Bee’s Knees

The Bee’s Knees cock­tail is a gin, lemon and hon­ey clas­sic that dates back to pro­hi­bi­tion. The phrase “bee’s knees” was pro­hi­bi­­tion-era slang for “the best.” In that time, the addi­tion of ingre­di­ents such as cit­rus and hon­ey were often used to cov­er the less than ide­al smell and taste of bath­tub gin. Improv­ing the taste of an infe­ri­or gin may have been the goal, but the result was a fan­tas­tic con­coc­tion that can hold its own today. Cale­do­nia Spir­it­s’s …

— No. 124 —

El Comediante

Kitchen Kon­fi­dence recent­ly post­ed a won­der­ful arti­cle fea­tur­ing my cock­tail El Come­di­ante. Kitchen Kon­fi­dence comes high­ly rec­om­mend­ed. It’s an excel­lent source of inspi­ra­tion. This cock­tail is a recipe I cre­at­ed for the Nicaraguan restau­rant La Fin­ca y El Mar. I recent­ly went down to their beau­ti­ful restau­rant and trained their bar staff and cre­at­ed their cock­tail menu. El Come­di­ante has been one of their most pop­u­lar cock­tails to date. Recipe 2 oz red bell pep­per infused rum 1/2 oz gin­ger syrup …