MixMo LXXIII: Witches’ Garden – Southside

May is a month when vegetal world starts to flourish. So this month’s Mixology Monday event has been awarded with an appropriate spring-related theme. It was cleverly called «Witches’ Garden» by Mark Holmes who hosts the event at his Cardiff Cocktails tumblr.
Here is an excerpt from explanations that Mark gave in his announcement post:

 

As far back as we can look, the use of fresh herbs have been prevalent in the world of mixed drinks. From the early days of the julep, through Williams Terrington’s 19th century Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks, to Don the Beachcomber’s ahead of their time Tiki drinks, fresh herbs have always been at the forefront of mixology. So lets take influence from the bartenders that once ruled the world of mixology, raid your herb garden that too often gets neglected, and start mixing.

read more

MixMo LXIX: Fortified Wines – Bon-Accord

New Year holidays are over, but Frederic continues fun announcing next Mixology Monday event. Thanks to Jordan Devereaux whose Chemistry of the Cocktail blog hosts the event for choosing so excellent choice – «Fortified Wines».

Fortified wines are known as old and reliable cocktail components used in many mixed drinks such as cobblers, punches, flips, sangarees. Later they started to concede their positions to vermouths which are fortified wines too but also are aromatized with herbs, roots etc.
Anyway, Jordan challenge us with such words:

 

For this month’s Mixology Monday, I’d like to see what you all can do with these versatile wines. They can play many different roles – from taking the place of vermouths in classic drinks, to providing richness and sweetness in winter tipples, to serving as a base for lighter aperitifs. Whether forgotten classics or new creations, let’s see what you can put together.

For me, it was easy decision to select between few fortified wines I can buy in Moscow. Sherry is my obvious choice.

read more

MxMo LXVI: Bein’ Green – October’s Still Green

Happy to see MixMo online cocktail parties back in action. It was a blow for me to miss «Equal Parts» event due to my illness. Excellent topic, very interesting. My respect is to Frederic for that event and for reviving MixMo parties, of course.

Also my warm words come to Ed of the Wordsmithing Pantagruel who hosts the current party and has invented a topic for it. So timely now, «Bein’ Green» is the theme for the party and Ed’s explanation is:

read more

M5 Raspberry Punch

Last summer was a busy time for me. I’ve planned to produce some homemade infusions and liqueurs and spent a lot of time gathering berries, fruits and herbs, selecting and preparing them and eventually infusing various spirits with selected stuff.

Raspberry infused gin was the first point in my to-do list. I’ve decided it in winter when I’ve enjoyed Clover Club with raspberry syrup time after time. But that’s not the only cocktail where raspberry gin could be used. Many gin-based cocktails and longdrinks definitely benefit from substituting raspberry infused gin for regular one. But the first drink where I’ve started to use my raspberry gin was a punch variation which has been improvised by myself once when I’ve wanted to drink something refreshing and berry-flavoured.

read more

Сhicago Cocktail

A little classic this time – Chicago Cocktail. Impressed with French 75 and Ritz Cocktail, I was in mood for emptying another bottle of prosecco. The matter depended only on recipe, and I’ve founded it in The Savoy Cocktail Book.

Who invented the cocktail and why he called it Chicago as the cocktail consists of brandy, curaçao, bitters and sparkling wine. Harry Craddock did not mention so who knows…

Anyway, Chicago Cocktail won my sympathy from the very first time when I’ve tried it. True classic, it was simple and delicious – what else do you want to get from a cocktail?

read more

The Reverb Crash

Funny that the first Tiki drink I write about is not of those famous drinks such as Mai Tai or Zombie. There is more fun because my Tiki season has started when summer comes to the end. Anyway, I’m drinking Tiki cocktails from time to time during last three years but get only just ready for writing about it.

My choice was a bit spontaneous. I was in mood for something exotic when buying two big pink grapefruits in a local store. Juiced, they’ve provided me with a 0.5L bottle of fresh grapefruit juice, and that was a reason for making grapefruit inspired Tiki drink.

So I’ve switched over to The Reverb Crash, a relatively new Tiki cocktail in which grapefruit juice works with passion fruit syrup and rum.

read more

Alizé Daiquiri

Do you love classic Daiquiri? If you ask me, I’ll answer that I didn’t understand it until I’ve got used to mix there aged Cuban rums only. Cocktails with lime and white rum make me sick, to be honest. Too acid and plain for my taste. A few years later Moscow stores offered too little rum and there were mainly cheap white rums: Cuban pair Varadero and Havana Club and Puerto Rican Bacardi, of course. Later the situation has improved a lot but since those times I dislike «ron blanco».

So now I’m used to take medium-bodied aged Cuban rums when I need to mix Daiquiri. Maybe that’s wrong but the cocktail benefits from strong and distinct rum flavour. Also I’m choosing aged rums when I want to make some fruit twists on classic Daiquiri. And this time I’ve used it in my passion fruit inspired cocktail.

Here I’ve used Alizé Gold Passion, a modern liqueur based on Cognac and passion fruit. With Cuban rum, it creates wonderful tropical aroma – fruity, spicy and exotic.

read more

Homemade absinthe

This summer I had received two gifts from one of my readers, namely Alexander aka lookovka from Krasnodar, Russia. There were three (in sum) small bottles with various homemade absinthes made by Alexander. I’m not familiar with absinthe-consuming culture as earlier I had have a little experience with two Czech-style absinthes and nothing more than that.

So I just tasted all the absinthes and wrote my impressions below. Hope it will be useful for Alexander and also it signs that not only vodka is produced in Russia.

read more

Gin Daisy

Here is the third report about what I was drinking this summer. The first and the second were about Gin Fix and Tom & John Collins respectively. Now the post about Gin Daisy completes a story about gin summer adventures.

In my post about Gin Fix I’ve explained in details my vision concerning differences between Gin Fix and Gin Daisy. It’s just an opinion based on some old cocktail books and posts of respected bloggers as well.

read more