This drink, the Loss Leader, was cre­at­ed by Reed Cahill at Wet City for a week­ly event we’ll be hav­ing togeth­er where we cre­ate a spe­cial cock­tail menu each Mon­day. The “Loss Leader” name comes from a cou­ple of drinks that Miles Mac­quar­rie did at Kim­ball House in Atlanta. He dubbed these cock­tails “Loss Lead­ers” due to their use of ingre­di­ents that were unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly expen­sive or rare for use in cocktails.

With that said, the star of this recipe is Coc­chi Baro­lo Chi­na­to. Coc­chi Baro­lo Chi­na­to is fair­ly uncom­mon as a base ingre­di­ent, but it offers a lot more com­plex­i­ty than a straight­for­ward rosso ver­mouth due to the base wine being 100% Neb­bi­o­lo from Baro­lo (one of Reed’s favorite wine­mak­ing regions). The Xicaru Mez­cal plays real­ly well with the earthy, herbal bit­ter­ness of the Coc­chi Baro­lo Chi­na­to, and the Angos­tu­ra Amaro just amps that up one more notch while pro­vid­ing some addi­tion­al resid­ual sug­ar. We served it with a seri­ous­ly dark choco­late (in this case 85%) since serv­ing choco­late with Baro­lo Chi­na­to is a fair­ly com­mon region­al prac­tice in Italy after din­ner. The cock­tail trends a bit sweet, but by no means cloy­ing­ly so. The dark bit­ter­ness of the choco­late and the slight hint of salt real­ly pairs nice­ly in a sip-then-bite combo.

Recipe

• 1 1/2 oz Coc­chi Baro­lo Chinato
• 1 1/2 oz Xicaru Mezcal
• 1/2 oz Angos­tu­ra Amaro
• Dark choco­late
• Pink Himalayan salt

Recipe by Reed Cahill