Featured Issues

— No. 114 —

Bonne Fée

Ah, to live the bohemi­an lifestyle, sip­ping a Bonne Fée and lis­ten­ing to the lit­tle birds chirp away in my gar­den. Maybe I’ll reread my favorite book and smoke a hand rolled cig­a­rette. Maybe I’ll meet up with friends for mac­chi­atos and polit­i­cal­ly dri­ven con­ver­sa­tion. Maybe, but first the Bonne Fée. Recipe 1 oz Absente 1 oz water 1/2 oz lemon juice 3/4 oz house made grena­dine 1/2 oz Cam­pari 6–8 mud­dled mint leaves Top with 1 oz of club …

— No. 113 —

Cherry Gastrique

A gas­trique is a caramelized sug­ar, deglazed with vine­gar that is often used by gourmet chefs as a thick, sweet-and-sour sauce. But what’s good for the goose is good for the gan­der. A gas­trique can help you bright­en the fla­vor and col­or palette of your favorite cock­tail recipes. The recipe for my cher­ry gas­trique is below, but feel free to exper­i­ment with dif­fer­ent vine­gars such as red wine, cham­pagne or cider vine­gars. Try pair­ing these vine­gars with oth­er accent fla­vors …

— No. 112 —

Thus Always To Tyrants

Thus Always To Tyrants, the infa­mous phrase shout­ed as John Wilkes Booth jumped from Ford The­ater’s bal­cony after he assas­si­nat­ed Abe Lin­coln. The phrase is said to have orig­i­nat­ed with Bru­tus dur­ing the assas­si­na­tion of Julius Cae­sar. It’s also the Vir­ginia state mot­to. So what bet­ter whiskey to fea­ture in this cock­tail than Bow­man Broth­ers Small Batch Vir­ginia Whiskey. I incor­po­rat­ed a touch of Smith & Cross Rum and home­made cher­ry gas­trique to include a cher­ry vanil­la com­po­nent. Then I …

— No. 111 —

The Gaucho

The inspi­ra­tion for this recipe was the mar­riage of tequi­la and cof­fee. You can see this unex­pect­ed pair­ing in a hand­ful of suc­cess­ful Latin Amer­i­can cock­tails (e.g. Mex­i­can Cof­fee). With the help of a local barista I cre­at­ed a small batch of cof­fee bit­ters espe­cial­ly for this recipe. You can buy cof­fee bit­ters at Cock­tail King­dom. And to tie in yet anoth­er fla­vor of South Amer­i­ca I topped The Gau­cho off with an Argen­tin­ian red wine (Mal­bec) float. Recipe 1 …

— No. 110 —

Ginger Rogers

The Gin­ger Rogers is the per­fect pool­side cock­tail. It’s refresh­ing and it’s easy to make. Not to men­tion mint, gin, gin­ger, and gin­ger ale are per­fect com­pli­ments. Ide­al­ly you’d want to use a collins glass for this cock­tail, but when you’re pool­side you’ll take what you can get. This recipe was cre­at­ed at Port­land’s Zefiro in 1995 by Mar­co­v­al­do Dionysos. It gained its pop­u­lar­i­ty at Absinthe Brasserie and Bar in San Fran­cis­co where it was one of the most ordered drinks. …

— 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. 107 —

Trader Vic’s Mai Tai

It’s get­ting hot out, so I’m shak­ing up a Trad­er Vic’s Mai Tai. Before I get into the recipe there are a few things we should prob­a­bly dis­cuss first. The Mai Tai comes with its fair share of dra­ma. First, this clas­sic cock­tail has been slaugh­tered so many times that most patrons would­n’t rec­og­nize the clas­sic ver­sion if you put it down in front of them. You know what I’m talk­ing about. That neon pink con­coc­tion dom­i­nat­ed by bot­tled pre-mix­es, …

— No. 106 —

Magellan Gin Video

The first in our series of three videos stars Mag­el­lan Gin. I make my most pop­u­lar cock­tail, the Cucum­ber­ous, at the famous Brew­er’s Art bar in Bal­ti­more, Mary­land. Be sure to keep an eye out for the next two videos fea­tur­ing Absente. Cheers!

— No. 105 —

Mojito

Like the Mai Tai and the Man­hat­tan, there are mul­ti­ple schools of thought on build­ing the per­fect Moji­to. If you’re look­ing to learn the old method of mix­ing the Moji­to direct­ly in the glass, check out the Havana Club web­site for some inter­est­ing videos. They’ll show you what you need to know. As for me, I don’t like a mint sal­ad in my drink. I’ll take the fla­vor, and leave the flot­sam behind. So, for this post, we’re going to make a …