Item: Wines & wine-based » Vermouth (dry)

Tuxedo Cocktail

I’ve learnt about Tuxedo cocktail from David Wondrich’s Esquire Drink Database. So I thought that it’s made exclusively with sherry. Once enjoying Tuxedo with genever and dry sherry, I started to search for more information about this cocktail. To my shame, it appears that Tuxedo was a well-known and popular cocktail in the first half of 20th century.
The oldest source I could find, Harry Johnson’s «New And Improved Bartendes’ Manual» described Tuxedo as a cocktail with French vermouth, not sherry.

Later sources, «The Savoy Cocktail Book» and «Approved Cocktails, authorized by UK bartenders guild» also mentioned Tuxedo with vermouth. Moreover, «The Savoy Cocktail Book» contains two Tuxedo versions.

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Rain Forest Martini

After New Year I felt I need a break in my long season of whisky and gin consumption. For me, the best way to forget about single malts or gin-based cocktails is to create new and unusual cocktail using exotic components.

This time I’ve took Van Gogh Açai-Blueberry Vodka for my next exercise.

When I bought this spirit, I’ve visited Van Gogh Vodka website and get disappointed with it. Recipe I saw there were too dull and trite. So since that time I started to make my own cocktails with Van Gogh Açai-Blueberry Vodka.

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MxMo LII: Forgotten Cocktails – Cameo Kirby

Forgotten Cocktails, that’s the topic for November 2010 Mixology Monday event hosted by Dennis at his Rock & Rye blog.

The topic is not easy as it seems at first time. Here in Russia cocktails are not forgotten, they’re unknown.

I’ve remembered one cocktail  I saw earlier at «Approved Cocktails, authorized by UK bartenders guild» by Harry Craddock. Cameo Kirby, it looks like another Martini-like cocktail, and then I’ve tried it but can’t find anything about it in Internet except one more Google-book  «Gourmet’s Guide to New Orleans» by Natalie Vivian Scott and Caroline Merrick Jones.

The title Cameo Kirby is known thanks to old movie released in 1923. Who knows, maybe the cocktail was named after that criminal drama.

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Woodward

I have to admit that I count grapefruit juice as a perfect mixer. Despite it’s not as popular as lime juice, grapefruit juice brings richer flavour, fresher fragrance and unique bitter and tart aftertaste.

I prefer pink grapefruits because I think they give more constant taste than white ones.  Pink grapefruit juice combines perfectly with gin, vodka and tequila. But does it work with scotch?

Recently I’ve found simple cocktail recipe at CocktailDB in which blended scotch mixes with grapefruit juice and dry vermouth. It’s called Woodward, and I was going to learn how it works.

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The Bloodhound Cocktail

One more article about summer cocktail with berries I failed to post at the right time because of two-month abnormally heavy heat in Moscow.

The Bloodhound Cocktail isn’t modern recipe. I saw it on Noilly Prat promo website and later found it in two books I have available.

The first book was Frank Meier’s «The Artistry Of Mixing Drinks» (1936). The second one was Mardee Haidin Regan’s «The Bartender’s Best Friend» (2003). And I found another third version at the CocktailDB. All these recipes differ from each other so it was interesting to me to find my own perfect variant.

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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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Flora’s Own

Some cocktails have been created to be stylish.

Genius take classic ingredients, mix it in good proportions and… A little magic, and now we have Dry Martini, Manhattan, Margarita and a lot of other good cocktails men like to drink.

But what women want? Ha-ha-ha, not love. I mean what do they want to drink? For them Manhattan is too dry, Martini is too strong…

Maybe Cosmopolitan, a perfect drink for girls?

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