Cocktail #11: Saturn

I love "space age" kitsch, music, and movies. Of course, there are also space age tiki drinks! I decided to give the Saturn a try this week.

A little different than many exotic cocktails based on rum, the Saturn is instead based on gin, which was a nice change of pace this week. Many write-ups of the origin of this cocktail mention famed tiki bartender J. “Popo” Galsini. Apparently he created it at a tiki bar in California in the 60s and it was originally called the X-15, after the manned rocket plane that achieved 4,520 miles per hour. The drink was supposedly created to appeal to the Douglas Aircraft engineers who apparently blew off some steam at the bar after work. In 1967, the X-15 cocktail was renamed the Saturn after an accident with the aircraft which claimed the life of a test pilot. Also according to Jeff Berry, the cocktail went on to win first place in the California Bartenders’ Guild contest and later the International Bartender’s Association (IBA) World Cocktail Championship (WCC) that year, though apparently there is little to substantiate these facts. In any event... here's what we have, recipe via Jeff Berry:

0.50 oz fresh lemon juice
0.50 oz passion fruit syrup
0.25 oz falernum
0.25 oz orgeat syrup
1.25 oz gin
8 oz crushed ice

Put everything in a blender. Blend until smooth. Pour unstrained into a pilsner glass.

As you can see, I opted instead for one of my new vintage tulip glasses, in part because the yield of this drink would not have come close to topping one of my pilsner glasses, and also because I just thought it looked more space age-y (and staging it with my rocket-shaped cocktail shaker and robots from my small collection also helps!).

I garnished with the hollowed out shell of half a lemon, speared with three toothpicks. I then spiked maraschino cherries to the toothpicks, resulting in a garnish that resembles the Sputnik satellite!

This is only my second cocktail using passion fruit syrup, and again, I found that it really took hold of the drink, and it was difficult to make out any other tastes. If I made this again, I might knock the passion fruit syrup down to a teaspoon or so to enable the other flavors to shine through. That being said, I love passion fruit so I didn't mind too much. As summer comes on, I'm also really enjoying blended drinks - they are like refreshing adult slurpees, which is a-ok in my book.

As for listening suggestions for while you mix and drink, consider the following, one modern, one not:

The modern:


Man or Astro Man? have got to be one of the most fun bands of all time. They take performance art to a new level, and completely embrace the space age / sci-fi / surf aesthetic.

And, for the vintage, the king of space age bachelor pad music, Juan Garcia Esquivel's 1958 master piece, Other Worlds Other Sounds:


Cheers!