Angostura Bitters

— No. 150 —

Dandy

Did you know that Bal­ti­more defied Pro­hi­bi­tion and still served alco­hol? It’s true, Bal­ti­more was a wet city dur­ing Pro­hi­bi­tion. When the rest of the nation went dry dur­ing Pro­hi­bi­tion, Mary­land was the only state that refused to pass an enforce­ment act to sup­port the fed­er­al restric­tions. Thanks to stub­born, free-think­ing Mary­land rule-break­ers, the Chesa­peake Bay became the prime port of call for the nation’s boot­leg­gers, mak­ing Mary­land the wettest state in the union. Ok enough with the his­to­ry lessons. …

— 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. 123 —

Hidden Charms

This cock­tail is named after one of my favorite Howl­in’ Wolf songs Hid­den Charms. It’s the Nux Wal­nut Liqueur, how­ev­er, that’s the hid­den charm in this recipe. It’s hard not to fall in love with the com­bi­na­tion of wal­nut and whisky. I usu­al­ly enjoy this smokey lit­tle trea­sure dur­ing the cold­er months, but don’t let that stop you from sip­ping one when sum­mer comes back around. Recipe 1 3/4 oz blend­ed scotch whisky 1/2 oz Carpano Anti­ca Sweet Ver­mouth 1/2 oz …

— No. 109 —

Manly Deeds Womanly Words

Beer cock­tails are a pop­u­lar trend right now. As you may have noticed from my events, when sum­mer comes around I like to focus my cre­ative juices on a few beer cock­tail recipes. This one stood out from the rest. If you think you’re get­ting off easy on the alco­hol per­cent­age, don’t fool your­self. This cock­tail packs a man­ly suck­er punch. It’s sneaky, hid­den by all those pret­ty flo­ral and herbal tones. This is exact­ly why I named the cock­tail …

— No. 108 —

Justice For All

Jus­tice For All is a cock­tail I was com­mis­sioned to cre­ate and serve for a Baltimore/DC adver­tis­ing fir­m’s client par­ty. This recipe is a twist on the clas­sic Side­car. I ramped up the fla­vor pro­file and added my own per­son­al touch with a home­made hon­ey syrup that fea­tures notes of chamomile, clove and black pep­per­corn. To bal­ance the addi­tion­al sweet­ness I also includ­ed a bit­ter­ing-agent in Mon­tene­gro Amaro. Side Note: Wash­ing­ton D.C.‘s mot­to is “Jus­tice For All”, so it seemed …

— No. 104 —

Elephant Flip

As you may know, I great­ly admire the Franklin Mort­gage and Invest­ment Co.‘s cre­ative cock­tails. Dur­ing my last cou­ple vis­its, a cer­tain cock­tail stole the show. It had my whole par­ty ques­tion­ing the foun­da­tions of log­ic and rea­son. I present to you (insert drum roll) The Ele­phant Flip. When I first tried this cock­tail, I knew I had to seek out its cre­ator. The bar­tender who devel­oped this beau­ty is the Franklin’s own Christi­na Ran­do. She has giv­en birth to …

— No. 101 —

Pressure Drop

The Pres­sure Drop, a cock­tail cre­at­ed by Man­hat­tan’s Death and Com­pa­ny, is undoubtably a wor­thy addi­tion to my series fea­tur­ing the best cock­tails from my trav­els. New York City boasts some of Amer­i­ca’s best cock­tail bars. If you’re in the Big Apple, seek out Death and Com­pa­ny and pull a stool up to the bar. The Pres­sure Drop was eas­i­ly my favorite cock­tail on their menu. It’s such an out­stand­ing cock­tail it even made it on Syl­vain’s menu all the …

— No. 100 —

Manhattan

There are as many vari­a­tions to the Man­hat­tan’s his­to­ry as there are to its recipe. The most seduc­tive sto­ry, which is wide­ly regard­ed as false, is that the cock­tail was invent­ed for Lady Ran­dolph Churchill (Win­ston’s Moth­er) at the Man­hat­tan Club in the ear­ly 1870’s. This sto­ry might not have sur­vived the test of time, but the cock­tail cer­tain­ly did. It’s a clas­sic that I like to enjoy with a cig­ar and some good con­ver­sa­tion. The one ques­tion you’ll need …

— No. 98 —

The Six Inch Gold Blade

One of my favorite speakeasy style cock­tail bars is The Franklin Mort­gage and Invest­ment Com­pa­ny in Philadel­phia. Their cock­tail menu is the best I have come across in my trav­els. Yup, I said it… the best. They even have a sec­tion in the menu quot­ing a Howl­in’ Wolf song called “I asked for water and she gave me gaso­line.” The menu is very coura­geous and their exe­cu­tion and style is flaw­less. A few of their cock­tails are fea­tured in this mod­ern cock­tail …