This is, hands down, my favorite cocktail.  It is rich and complex, bitter and sweet and herbal all at the same time, with a real sharpness to it.  It’s a classic cocktail and a perfect pre-dinner drink for whetting the appetite.

Read below for the full recipe!

The Sazerac

2 oz Brandy or Whiskey (we did half of each for this recipe)
3-4 Dashes of Peychaud’s Bitters
1/4 oz Simple Syrup
1 Dash Absinthe

You’ll need two glasses for this one.  Fill one with ice to chill and set aside for a moment.  In the other, combine the spirits, bitters, and syrup.  Stir well with ice – give this a good 50 or more stirs.  Dump the ice out of the first glass, add a dash of Absinthe, swirl the glass to coat the inside with the Absinthe, then pour out any excess.  Strain the cocktail into the first glass, garnish with a lemon twist, and enjoy.

This is an old cocktail, a variation on the Old Fashioned that was invented in New Orleans some time in the mid-1800s.  It was first made from brandy and gets its name from the Sazerac-de-Forge et Fils cognac. Starting in the 1860s, a nasty bug called Phylloxera wiped out most of Europe’s grapes, and the Sazerac cognac (along with many others) disappeared.  Bartenders switched to whiskey, which works just fine in the Sazerac, either rye or bourbon or a combination of both.  Brandy is the most traditional.  My personal favorite is apple brandy, which gives the Sazerac a nice roundness.  Play around with this one.

 

Don’t skimp on the Peychaud’s bitters, which give the Sazerac much of its color and a lot of its flavor.  Some recipes call for adding Angostura or other bitters, but after lots of experimenting I can say: don’t.  Don’t worry about the Absinthe: it has a dramatic reputation that it doesn’t really deserve. It’s an herbal liqueur, a lot like Benedictine or Chartreuse, that gives the Sazerac its sharpness and a lot of its complexity, but the legends about it causing hallucinations, madness, or death are just that.

Don’t forget the garnish which, like all garnishes, should pitch in and not just sit around looking pretty.  Cut a piece of lemon peel, just the yellow part and not the bitter white pith.  Twist it over the drink to express the oils into the drink, which helps blunt some of the bitterness and balance all the different flavors.  Rub the rim of the glass with the lemon and either toss it away or into the drink.  Sip your Sazerac, savor it, and get to know why this is the official cocktail of the Big Easy.

Photo Credits: Nole Garey for Oh So Beautiful Paper

Today’s cocktail, the Aviation, involves an obscure but fascinating liqueur – Creme de Violette, which went out of production following Prohibition but recently resurfaced.  This is a really interesting drink, not like anything I’d had before.  It’s sour and sweet with a strong hint of almond from the Maraschino liqueur (made from Marasca cherries and their pits), and a floral finish from the Creme de Violette (literally flowery – the Creme de Violette is made from violets).  It also has the really unique color of a cloudy blue sky, from which I’m sure it got its name.

This is a drink that could star in its own soap opera.  A hit before the First World War, it disappeared in the 1920s and was replaced by another cocktail masquerading under the same name, only to reappear years later with no memory of where it had been all that time.  Ok, so maybe I’m overselling it a bit, but this fantastic drink has a really interesting history.

Read below for the full recipe!

The Aviation

2 oz Gin
1/2 oz Maraschino Liqueur
1/2 oz Lemon Juice
1/4 oz Creme de Violette

Combine and shake over ice, then strain into a cocktail glass.  Garnish with a cherry and enjoy.

 

The first mention of the Aviation was in 1911, when flying still had a tremendous air of glamor, adventure, and sophistication (some things have not been improved by progress).  But, by 1930, the Aviation appeared in recipe guides missing an ingredient: the Creme de Violette.  What happened?  Prohibition.  I suspect Creme de Violette was just too obscure an ingredient to justify the risk of smuggling it in from Europe.  Everyone seems to have forgotten that it was ever part of the recipe.  Recipes have described the impostor for decades, and it has been impossible to enjoy a true Aviation.

Until now!  A few years ago, Haus Alpenz started importing a Creme de Violette by Rothman and Winter from Austria, and suddenly all sorts of vanished drinks started reappearing.  This Creme de Violette is a rich dark purple that gives the drink its color and sweet, floral finish.

The Maraschino liqueur and, especially, the Creme de Violette may be hard to find in a lot of places.  Keep looking!  It’s worth it.

The Toddy is a drink that has stood the test of time, dating back to the American Colonial period.  It’s delicious, smooth, and – when made hot – keeps the cold at bay better than most anything else.  This version incorporates both apples, making it sweeter and fruitier, and apple brandy, a quintessentially American liquor.  Looking for something to keep you warm this fall?  A drink to follow Thanksgiving dinner?  This is your drink.

Read below for the recipe!

Hot Apple Toddy

2 oz Applejack or Apple Brandy
1/4 oz simple syrup
1/4 oz honey
1 splash lemon juice
4 oz boiling water
1/2 of a baked apple

Slice an apple in half and bake it in the oven at 350° for 30-45 minutes until soft.  Peel off the apple skin (it should come off easily once baked), combine the apple with all the liquid ingredients except the water and muddle together until the apple has dissolved into pulp.  A pinch of nutmeg or cinnamon can work well here.  Strain into a mug or a tempered glass and – the best part on a cold night – add the boiling water (a little at a time if you’re using a glass to avoid cracking).  Garnish with an apple slice or cinnamon stick and drink piping hot.  Enjoy the feeling of warmth returning to frozen limbs.

 

If you’re in a rush, you can always skip the baked apple.  A Hot Toddy, made from spirits, sugar, and hot water is pretty great with or without the fruit.

A note on spirits: You can make this drink with brandy or whiskey, but applejack or apple brandy make this a drink our earliest forebears would have enjoyed on a cold night on the frontier.  Pretty much everyone back then was making and drinking applejack.  Applejack was traditionally made by freeze distillation: fermented apple cider would be frozen in winter, the ice skimmed off periodically to reduce the water content and increase the proof until you had brandy.  When John Chapman, better known today as Johnny Appleseed, traveled around the country in the early 1800s planting apple orchards, he planned to sell them to settlers not so they could bake pies, but so they could make, sell, and drink applejack.

It’s not so easy to get real applejack these days.  Laird’s sells a liquor and calls it applejack, but it’s really a blend of apple brandy and (mostly) neutral spirits, which means a lot of the color and flavor is added artificially.  Look for an unblended, aged apple brandy or Calvados.  You’ll get pretty much the same flavor and body, though they’re not freeze distilled.