Cocktail #44: Callaloo Cooler

I'd seen a few exotic cocktails in the books I've been using that incorporate the liqueur Cherry Heering (the classic, most well known being the Singapore Sling). As Imbibe Magazine notes, Cheery Heering is "a ruby-red liqueur made by soaking lightly crushed Danish cherries and a blend of spices in neutral grain spirits, then cask-maturing the mixture for up to five years, adding sugar during the aging process." This liqueur didn't sound particularly appealing to me, nor particularly versatile. And it is probably yet another $25+ bottle that would barely see the light of day. So, I usually skipped those drinks.

But the other day I was visiting my trusty suburban Binny's Beverage Depot, and took a gander at the airplane bottle section (not available in Chicago city limits locations due to blue laws). Sometimes you can find weird spirits in the airplane bottle section - spirits that you don't normally use, and certainly don't need an entire bottle of - for a couple bucks. As I spun the rack, I noticed a cherry liqueur (though not the actual brand, Cherry Heering). Price: $1.99. Done. I took it home, and looked it up online to compare it to the genuine article. Turns out this version - Montmorency - is made in Bosnia-Herzegovina (rather than Denmark), has an ABV of 25% (rather than 21.8%), and, like Heering, is made from real cherries. Not bad.


I then set out to find a cocktail recipe that incorporated it, and found one in Smuggler's Cove - the Callaloo Cooler.

Created by Melissa Garcia, the recipe is as follows:

1.00 oz. seltzer
0.75 oz. fresh lime juice
0.50 oz. cinnamon syrup
0.50 oz. Cherry Heering
2.00 oz. blended lightly aged rum (I used Mount Gay)
1 dash Angostura bitters

Pour the seltzer into a Collins or highball glass. Add remaining ingredients to a cocktail shaker with cubed or cracked ice. Shake and strain into the Collins or highball glass. Carefully add cubed or cracked ice to the glass to fill and garnish with grated cinnamon and a mint sprig.

This cocktail could easily go into Robitussin territory. But, the proportions are just right. I can imagine that some folks might get a taste of the cherry liqueur and immediately associate with a cough syrup flavor, which obviously would be a turn-off. So you want to measure carefully. For me, I tend to go for spicier, drier cocktails and even though you wouldn't think that cherry fits that description, for me, that is the general profile of this drink. The cinnamon and bitters temper the cherry liqueur in a really nice way, and all the flavors, including the rum, meld together really well. Maybe not one of my absolute favorites, but I did really like this drink and would easily make it again. 

And here's why I love YouTube - the person who posted this writes, "Probably never used commercially this jingle came from a demo record that was found in a job-lot of 78s. The record had 2 versions, this 'cha cha' version and a beat version on the other side."

So, I leave you with a Cha Cha Cherry Heering jingle. Until next time, cheers!

Cocktail #23: the "Martin-Eric" a.k.a. Eric's Martinique

As I mentioned a few posts ago, a few weeks ago we went to the amazing tiki bar in Milwaukee, Foundation. My last drink of the night there, which ended up being my favorite, was their "Martinique." A quick Google search for more on this drink turned up dry, so I can only assume this is a Foundation creation. It is listed on their menu as follows:

"Martinique - rhum agricole, lemon, grapefruit, falernum, Chartreuse, & anise, dry yet full flavored."

I've been wanting to take a shot at recreating it ever since. Today I got my hands on a small bottle of green Chartreuse (I actually am unsure if Foundation uses green or yellow Chartreuse, so I took a gamble; confirmed via Facebook that they use green) and thought I would try mixing one up. Now, I do not have any rhum agricole, which is a rum specific to the island of Martinique (hence the name of the drink). Rhum agricole is produced on Martinique and is made from pure sugar cane juice. I do have a bottle of Rhum Barbancourt, a Haitian rum (perhaps I should call the version that follows the Port-au-Prince?) which is also made from pure sugar cane juice, but due to differences in production methods, terroir, etc. it apparently has a different flavor. I also have a bottle of cachaca, a spirit produced in Brazil, very similar to rum, and also distilled from pure sugar cane juice. If you're interested in more details on the differences of agricole, Barbancourt, and cachaca, head on over here for a full report. (The difference that all of these three spirits have compared to other rum, is that other rums are produced from fermented molasses rather than sugar cane juice.)

Absent the "correct" rum, I decided to combine cachaca and the Rhum Barbancourt. And since I have no anise liqueur, I'm going with a dash of Angostura bitters instead.

My version of Foundation's Martinique cocktail:

0.50 oz. Brazilian cachaca
1.00 oz. Rhum Barbancourt (or use 1.5 oz. rhum agricole if you have it, instead of the cachaca and Barbancourt)
0.75 oz. green Chartreuse*
0.25 oz. Falernum
0.25 oz. fresh lemon juice
1.00 oz. fresh grapefruit juice
1 dash Angostura bitters

Combine all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker filled with crushed ice and shake with vigor. Pour unstrained into a double old fashioned glass (I used the one I bought at Foundation, of course!), and garnish with plenty of mint and flowers if you have them.

The result was lovely, and damn close to how I remember the Foundation version of this cocktail. Chartreuse is produced by monks in France using over 130 herbs, plants, and flowers and it's on the verge of dominating the drink a bit in the quantity I used above. *If I made this again, I would knock it down to 0.25 or 0.50 oz. Chartreuse and use an extra quarter-ounce of the Barbancourt instead. I might also try a version omitting the bitters. This cocktail is spicy and dry, with a hint of sourness, and creates an incredible sensation on your tongue with each sip. I can't recommend it enough! Chartreuse is expensive (about $30 for a 375 ml bottle) but a little goes a long way, so it will last a while. This is a pretty easy drink to make if you have the ingredients, and would be a great drink to add to your tiki cocktail party!

In honor of the cachaca used in this cocktail, which hails from Brazil, here's a great compilation of vintage Brazilian samba/bossa nova and other music. Get shaking (hips and shakers) - cheers!

Cocktail #21: Suffering Bastard

As my core readers (all 10 of you!) will know by now, this blog and its drinks are heavily influenced by the books and classic recipes relayed by Jeff "Beachbum" Berry and Martin Cate, authors of the Grog Log (JB), Potions of the Caribbean (JB), and Smugger's Cove (MC). The recipe for this week's drink, the Suffering Bastard, appears in all three books above, and each time it's a little different. It wasn't until today, after I had gone shopping, that I absorbed Jeff Berry's recipe in Potions that I realized a) it is the definitive version of the recipe and b) I bought some of the wrong stuff.

In Potions Berry has published the recipe from the private papers of globetrotting bartender extraordinaire, Joe Scialom, most famously of the Shepherd's Long Bar, Shepherd's Hotel, Cairo, 1940s (which makes an appearance in one of my favorite films, the English Patient). Apparently devised as a hangover cure for the 11th Hussars - British troops stationed in Egypt during the Second World War, there are many versions of this drink floating around, and Berry himself published a different version in his Grog Log. What seems to be the definitive version, from Potions:

1.00 oz. gin
1.00 oz. cognac
4.00 oz. ginger beer, chilled
0.50 oz. Rose's Lime Juice Cordial
2 dashes Angustura bitters

Shake everything - except ginger beer - with ice cubes. Stir in ginger beer. Pour unstrained into a double old fashioned glass (I used my double old fashioned mai tai glass I bought at the fabulous Foundation Bar in Milwaukee). Garnish with an orange slice and mint sprig.

My version, cobbled together from the three above books:

1.00 oz. London dry gin (I used Bombay Sapphire)
1.00 oz. brandy (I used Pierre Duchene Napoleon V.S.O.P. which I got for cheap at Trader Joe's)
4.00 oz. fancy ginger ale
0.50 oz. fresh lime juice
0.25 oz. Demerara sugar syrup
2 dashes Angustura bitters

Same method as above. I garnished with an orange wheel, three pineapple leaves, speared with a home made maraschino cherry. My one misstep that keeps my version from being the same as Cate's in Smugger's is I used ginger ale instead of ginger beer. So it goes. Nevertheless, the result was fabulous.

Refreshing, yet with a small kick from the brandy, this cocktail goes down easily. The bitters and the nose from my homemade maraschino cherry lend a hint of spiciness to the cocktail which is amplified by the ginger.

Surely, had I used ginger beer, the result would have been even better. This is without a doubt one of my favorites out of 21 cocktails I've made over the last 21 weeks. Perhaps it's because fall is just on the horizon, but I find myself being drawn more towards this type of tiki drink lately - more dry, more spicy, less sweet. At Foundation in Milwaukee - easily one of the best tiki bars I've ever been to - I had their "Martinique" cocktail - rhum agricole, lemon, grapefruit juice, falernum, Chartreuse, and anise - and it was my favorite drink of the night. I need to cobble together some dough to buy a bottle of Chartreuse to try to recreate it. Anyway - the Martinique's flavor profile was more on the spicy, dry side, than sweet. And it was wonderful!

As I mixed up this drink, I put on an LP I recently bought used at Vintage Vinyl in Evanston, IL - Ellis In Wonderland by Ray Ellis and his Orchestra. I admit without embarrassment that I bought this solely on the merit of it's cover. As it turned out, it's a really pleasant 1950s instrumental - some would derisively call it "elevator music" - but I love it. You can check it out, of course, on YouTube:


Cheers and thanks for reading!

Cocktail #18: Three Dots and a Dash

A lot of preparation went into this week's cocktail (more on that in a minute). I first had this cocktail at the eponymously named tiki bar here in Chicago, Three Dots and a Dash. It's the name of the drink invented by Donn Beach in the 1940s and is also Morse code for the letter V - symbolizing victory in World War II.

While reading the Smugger's Cove book by Martin Cate, I noticed that he had a version of this drink, with the recipe as follows:

0.50 oz. fresh lime juice
0.50 oz. fresh orange juice
0.50 oz. honey syrup
0.25 oz. John D. Taylor's Velvet Falernum
0.25 oz. St. Elizabeth allspice dram
1.50 oz. cane AOC Martinique rhum agricole vieux
0.50 oz. blended aged rum
1 dash Angustura bitters

Cate always recommends mixing in a drink mixer, but absent that contraption, I filled a cocktail shaker with about 12 oz. crushed ice, added all the ingredients to the shaker and shook for about 30 seconds. I then poured everything unstrained into my trusty tiki mug (Cate recommends using a Pilsner glass).

Garnish with three maraschino cherries and either a pineapple chunk speared on a cocktail pick or three cherries and a pineapple leaf (to symbolize the three dots - cherries, and dash - pineapple).

A couple of notes: the closest rums I had were a 4-year rhum Barbancourt (closest to the Martinique rhum agricole) and a Hamilton Demerara. St. Elizabeth allspice dram is notoriously difficult to find (though if you're in Chicagoland Binny's carries it at some locations), and also costs a pretty penny (considering how little of it is called for in recipes and how rarely it would probably be used) so I decided to make my own - click through for more info on that. The falernum I made a few months back finally took a turn for the worse about a month ago so I just bought a bottle of John D. Taylor's - which seems great. Finally (and I really got lazy here) I was out of honey syrup and didn't feel like making another batch so instead I just used a couple drops of honey - sue me.

In addition to making my own allspice dram, I also utilized the maraschino cherries I made myself for the garnish. If you're interested in that process - check it out. Bottom line on that is the expensive Luxardo ones are probably better; grocery store ones would also do just fine. Mine were also very spicy and cinnamony.

The first sip was a little overwhelming in the spiciness department. I've never had allspice dram before, so I have no idea how my homemade DIY version stacks up to the St. Elizabeth commercial version. So, that could have thrown things off a bit. I spent about another five minutes taking pictures of the cocktail and then started drinking it again, and by that time some of the ice had melted diluting it a bit which greatly improved the drink, in my opinion. It was still spicy with strong notes of cinnamon, clove, and allspice, but only just on the verge of being too much. Next time I might use a hair less of the allspice dram due to its strength, but I think it turned out quite well. As I kept sipping this cocktail, I enjoyed it more with each sip and it seemed quite close to the drink I remember having at its namesake. Not quite there, but close.

If you can find or make allspice dram, and you've got some falernum, I highly recommend giving this one a try. Play with the amount of allspice dram and start easy with it - you can always add another dash or two.

Given the World War II era provenance of this cocktail, I'll leave you with one of my favorite WWII era songs, which is odd, endearing, and will get stuck in your head for hours (and is also in a hilarious scene in Twin Peaks!). Cheers!