Item: Syrups » Orgeat syrup

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.

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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.

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Gin Fix

I have a secret: my favourite summer drinks are based on gin so it’s not Mojito or Paloma but Tom Collins, Gin Fizz, Gin Fix, Gin Daisy, Gin Smash etc. I found it a bit weird when I saw people going mad about Mojito or Cuba Libre. Sure, rum is exceptional in tiki but I can’t imagine summer without dry Gin & Tonic or Negroni.

So I’m going to talk about simple long drinks with gin, lemon juice and sugar. Honestly, I don’t know how far I’ll go but Gin Fix is the first drink I want to talk about.

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The Transfiguration Day

That was inspired by Cheri Loughlin’s article about Drambuie. Some cocktails mentioned there imprinted themselves in my mind. One of them, The Forty-Five, was earlier on my blog, adapted and tried with various whiskies.

Created by Jamie Stephenson, Drambuie global ambassador, Renaissance is another cocktail with Drambuie I like very much. And for me, it was another target to adaptation and changing.

My experiments with Renaissance were very productive so eventually  the recipe has been heavily changed, and I decided to rename it to The Transfiguration Day because…

Because the taste of the new drink reminded me of  our patrimonial tradition to celebrate together old Russian Orthodox  feast called Yablochny Spas, or The Transfiguration Day.

Maybe it was too conceitedly but my remembrances were too lively. I could’n resist that temptation.

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Bourbon Sours

For some time bourbons became my favourite strong alcohol I’m used to utilize in cocktails.

I think the perfect companion for bourbon is fresh orange juice possibly with lime juice or syrups to bring sweetness and sourness to the balance. I’ve knew it from my own experience but later I’ve got that this combination is well-known so I’ve ended my attempts to find a perfect recipe and started to search for the known mixologists’ cocktails.

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