My bottle of triple sec has been abandoned on my bookshelf (which stores more liquor than books these days) and the reason is the Tommy’s margarita.

This is my new favourite summer cocktail (not that we’ve had much of a summer) and I can describe it in one line: it’s a margarita that replaces the sugar and triple sec used in normal margaritas with agave syrup. Maybe the novelty hasn’t worn off for me but I prefer this version – it tastes simpler and more pure than a traditional margarita.

The recipe I use is:

• 60ml tequila
• 30ml lime juice
• 15ml agave syrup

I’ve seen a variety of different proportions for this drink. Some use a 3:2:1 ratio, but I like using the same 4:2:1 ratio that Julio Bermejo, co-owner of Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant in San Francisco (the home of this cocktail), recommends.

As for the agave syrup – well, it might seem like an oddball ingredient if you’re not familiar with it (it’s a thick sweet substance made from the agave plant, which is also used to make tequila) but I actually found a bottle of organic agave syrup in the health food section of my local Coles for only $5.05, while a reader pointed out in our forum section that you can also buy it from the Simple Syrup Co at Eveleigh Markets.

Many bartenders then cut the agave syrup with water for cocktails, but I don’t bother – I think it’s perfect as is.

Anyway, shake the ingredients with ice, strain into a salt-rimmed glass (the salt is optional, but I like it) and voila! Provided you use fresh lime juice and a good tequila (at the moment I’m using Espolon reposado, which is a 100 per cent agave tequila – you can read my dissertation on what a 100 per cent agave tequila is in a previous story of mine on sangrita), it’s impossible to mess this drink up.

Related posts:

1. Sangrita and margarita recipe
2. Paloma cocktail recipe
3. Day of the Dead margarita and other cocktail recipes from Drift

I have mixed feelings about the Amaretto Sour. On one hand, it would never make my top 10 list of favourite cocktails and yet – and this is a big yet – drinking one always makes me happy.

This conflict is due to its simplicity. There are only two key ingredients – lemon juice and amaretto – and it’s the balance of the lemon’s sourness and the amaretto’s nutty sweetness that makes this work. I appreciate how pared back this is and yet, as with anything that comes too easily, I don’t entirely respect it.

Amaretto fans might argue there’s more to it, however, since the liquor also has an underlying bitterness that I like to accentuate by adding a dash or two of bitters.

There are a number of amarettos you can use for this cocktail but I’m using Disaronno Originale at the moment (and here’s a nerdy fact: even though Disaronno tastes like almonds and many call it an almond liqueur, it doesn’t contain almonds at all. Instead, it contains apricot kernel oil, burnt sugar, and what the company calls the “essence of 17 selected herbs and fruits”).

The proportion of amaretto and lemon juice varies from recipe to recipe but I like the following sugar-free recipe that results in a tart, sour – but not too sour – cocktail that has a nice tang to it:

• 45ml of amaretto
• 30ml lemon juice
• dash of bitters (Angostura or orange bitters work well)

If I feel like a bit of colour and sweetness and there’s no-one around to judge me, then I’ll also add a tiny dash of grenadine.

Shake the ingredients and either strain into a martini glass or, as the photo shows, throw the lot with ice into a tumbler and voila! If you want to be girlish, you can rim the glass with sugar (a little lemon juice around the rim will help the sugar stick) and pop in a cherry (actually, I’d argue a real man wouldn’t be threatened by a cherry in his glass – but that’s a debate I won’t go into just now).

Related posts:

1. Whiskey Sour cocktail recipe
2. Pomerancza and Earl Grey sour cocktail recipe from Zeta Bar
3. Ruby Martini cocktail recipe

I tried to be healthy. Really, I did. I was in the supermarket the other day, saw a pink grapefruit, and decided to buy it to make up for my nights of alcohol abuse. But then, tonight, as I saw it sitting forlornly on my kitchen bench, I realised the only way I would ever devour it is in a cocktail.

The challenge with pink grapefruit is that it’s not only sour but has a bitterness to it – and so my habit of making drinks with cocktail bitters in them had to be pushed aside.

As such, after experimenting and failing miserably with an array of concoctions and recipes too gruesome to mention, I settled on a relatively well-known recipe that worked beautifully – the Ruby Martini.

Actually, that’s misleading. If you Google “Ruby Martini” (and I can’t believe Google has now become such a common verb) you’ll see an array of different recipes. Some call for cranberry juice, others call for grenadine. However, some used pink grapefruit juice, citron vodka and triple sec – a combination that’s not a world away from a Cosmopolitan. The proportions of each varied from recipe to recipe and all added sugar syrup, but here’s what worked for me:

• 1 and 1/2 shots of pink grapefruit juice
• 1 shot of lemon/citron vodka (vodka is known to go well with pink grapefruit)
• 1/2 shot of triple sec

Shake with ice and pour through a strainer into a chilled martini glass. Rub some of the grapefruit peel around the rim, twist the peel, and drop in.

The result is a drink that’s easy to make and where the main flavour comes from the pink grapefruit, meaning you can get pickled without feeling too guilty. If it is too sour then you can always add a touch of sugar syrup but I think it ought to be tart. Alternatively, and I realise this might just sound wrong to some, if you add a few drops of a good quality bourbon then that actually adds both a touch of sweetness and some complexity (and doesn’t everyone use bourbon as a sugar substitute? I’m thinking of adding it to my morning coffee). Another alternative might be to add a sugar rim to half the glass so that you can decide for yourself how much sugar you want in each sip.

PS I do realise I’ve made fun of people who make drinks with the word martini in them when they didn’t have either gin or vermouth in them. I know I’m being a hypocrite by writing this recipe. But, after drinking several of these babies (it’s amazing how much juice you can extract from a single grapefruit), I no longer care.

Related posts:

1. Paloma cocktail recipe
2. Amaretto Sour cocktail recipe
3. Cosmopolitan cocktail recipe

After stumbling on adult fiction at a young age, when I rapidly gave up Judy Blume in favour of fictional sex and alcoholic endeavours from the likes of Chandler, Fleming and Wodehouse (not that I knew what sex was – quite frankly, I still have some questions), I had visions in my head of gentlemen scoffing potions in the morning to battle hangovers and of men drinking mint juleps at the Kentucky races. It was a foreign and barely imaginable world to me – but it was also a masculine world. And then, when I finally came of age, it was a disappointment to find that cocktails were largely considered a frothy, feminine affair in my own town and era.

Times, however, are changing – as the recent Diageo Reserve World Class Bartender of the Year competition showed, with the third and final round asking Australia’s bartenders to create a classic gentleman’s cocktail inspired by pre-prohibition recipes, using either Ron Zacapa 23 rum, Talisker 10-year-old single malt Scotch whisky or Johnnie Walker Gold Label Reserve scotch.

The top three contenders in Sydney were:

• Tim Phillips from the member’s-only Level 6 at Ivy (which I checked out for the first time for the tasting – it’s a bizarre, 50s-style place, complete with femme fatale hostesses who could have come straight from one of the novels of my youth. Apparently Level 6 was going to be Justin Hemme’s personal apartment until he realised that having the Pool Bar underneath was too noisy. Now it can be your after-work bar (complete with two hot tubs) if you have more than five grand to spend on the membership fee)
• Luke Redington from Eau de Vie
• Luke Ashton from Duke Bistro (which is the bar/restaurant above the Flinders).

Both Redington and Phillips made variations of the flip, a type of cocktail that uses a whole egg. Actually, the original flips were mainly an American affair made with beer, rum and sugar that were heated by “branding” – ie sticking a red hot iron in them (a good site where you can read some classic flip recipes is Historical Foods). However, they’ve since evolved to become a type of cocktail that involves egg, spirit, sugar and spice (often nutmeg) and were known to be a gentleman’s morning helper.

(Incidentally, one reason why flips might have been good as hangover cures is that eggs contain cysteine, a chemical which helps break down acetaldehyde, a toxin produced by the alcohol in your stomach).

What’s interesting about Tim and Luke’s versions is they both use quail eggs, the reasoning being they’re roughly the same size as a chicken’s egg was back in the day. As someone who hasn’t had a flip in over two years, I forgot just how creamy both these flips were, even though no cream or milk was used (One difference between a flip and an eggnog is that no cream is used in a flip).

It’s also worth noting, for those who want to follow the flip recipes listed below, that both Tim and Luke’s recipes call for the ingredients to be dry shaken to emulsify them before adding ice.

Tim Phillips – Ivy Level 6: The Royal March Flip

Ingredients:

• Half a fresh fig (or tbsp of homemade fig conserve if unavailable)
• 10ml lemon juice
• 40ml Talisker 10-year-old single malt Scotch whisky
• 30ml Ron Zacapa 23 rum mixed with honey
• 1 whole fresh quail’s egg

Method:

• Add ingredients, dry shake, then shake with ice. Serve up and garnish by spraying with an atomizer filled with ‘Ron Zacapa 23 rum Cinna-man Eau de parfum’. If you’re wondering what the hell this is, it’s basically the bastard child of cinnamon sticks macerated in rum that’s been put into an atomizer)

The result is a smooth drink that has a whisky backbone and a cinnamon aroma. If I hadn’t tried it in Level 6, where a bevy of femme fatales were cruising around the billionaire clientele, I’d no doubt be able to focus more on the drink. Instead, I just gulped my drink while wondering how I can start earning more money.

Luke Ashton – Duke Bistro: Ashtons Elixir No. 23

Ingredients:

• 45ml Ron Zacapa 23 rum
• 10ml Amaro Ramazotti (an Italian liqueur that’s sweet, bitter and spicy – it gives the drink a medicinal feel)
• 4 dashes homemade ‘Muddy Moonshine Stomach Bitters’ (Ashton says he made this with corn whiskey and was influenced by an old Jerry Thomas recipe – btw, to digress further, you can read Jerry Thomas’s classic recipes at the Classic Mixology site)

Method:

• Combine all ingredients in chilled mixing glass and chill and dilute with large ice cube.
• Drop orange twist into the glass.
• Strain drink into frozen miniature labeled bottles (after all, who doesn’t have these on hand?)
• No garnish needed.

Ashton says this drink was inspired by the traveling snake oil salesmen of the US who used to peddle their wares on the back of their wagons (I know this is tragic, but it made me think of this Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson video clip for Say, Say, Say).

It’s a strong, no-holds barred drink that kicks like a mule. I like it but, at the time I drank it, I couldn’t imagine myself wanting to drink it again because it is so potent. Now that I’m writing about it, however, I’d die to have another one. It might be addictive.

Luke Redington – Eau de Vie: Foppish Flip

Ingredients:

• 40ml Johnnie Walker Gold Reserve Scotch whisky
• 20ml Laird’s bonded Apple Jack brandy
• Half a barspoon (2.5ml) of Branca Menta (this is an Italian liqueur with mint flavours (it’s a cousin of Fernet Branca)
• 15ml of maple & champagne reduction (it’s basically a syrup)
• 1 whole quail’s egg

Method:

• Add ingredients, dry shake, then shake with ice. Strain into a refined gentleman’s glass and garnish with a dusting of nutmeg and a spot of fanfare.

To be honest, there’s no way on earth I’m going to make a maple and champagne reduction at home – I’m far too lazy – which is a pity, since this is a great flip. On one hand it’s smooth and easy to drink (I’d be happy to have this as my every day pre-coffee morning drink) and yet there’s a complexity in its flavour. It’s also possibly the first time I’ve ever had Branca Menta in a cocktail.

And … that’s it. Quite frankly, I wrote four times as much as I planned to for this post. Still, if you have any flip/gentlemen/femme fatale musings, feel free to leave a comment below:

Related posts:

1. Tiki cocktail recipes (and the winner of last week’s Appleton Estate rum competition)
2. Day of the Dead margarita and other cocktail recipes from Drift
3. Jameson whiskey cocktail recipes

When 42BELOW vodka created a summer cocktail for Shaggy’s 42nd birthday we decided to publish the recipe for four reasons:

1) We liked the instruction to shake the drink to tune of Boombastic (the one that has the Mr Lover Lover lyrics).
2) We like free vodka
3) If you can’t drink tropical cocktails in summer, when can you drink them?
4) We like free vodka

As you can tell, we’re deep thinkers here at Bar Zine.

42Below says the Hurricane Shaggy is a Jamaican take (albeit one with vodka rather than rum) on the classic Hurricane cocktail – so without further adieu, here’s the recipe:

• 30ml 42BELOW Pure Vodka
• 30ml orange juice
• 45ml pineapple Juice
• 10ml Monin Vanilla Syrup
• 10ml sugar syrup*
• 10ml lime juice
• 30ml passionfruit pulp

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice and add all ingredients except the passionfruit pulp. Shake and strain into a tall glass filled with ice. Garnish with the passionfruit pulp and voila!

The result is a well balanced tropical fruit cocktail – and the passionfruit and vanilla syrup really lift the drink. My only tips after making this myself is to add a second shot of vodka (ie put in 60ml rather than 30ml) to give it a bit more of a kick and to only shake it to the first 10 to 20 seconds of Boomtastic – any more and your hands will stick to the shaker!

* You can make sugar syrup yourself by boiling a 50:50 mix of caster sugar and water. When it hits the boil, let it cool and it’s ready to use.

Related posts:

1. Alabama Fogcutter cocktail recipe
2. Tommy’s margarita cocktail recipe
3. Ruby Martini cocktail recipe

Tequila’s arguably the most misunderstood spirit there is. We all know about tequila shots, margaritas and hangovers but the tequila most of us drink is a world away from the good stuff. So what’s the difference?

The main one is whether or not it’s made from 100 per cent agave. Agave is the plant tequilas are made from (and no, they’re not cacti) but if the bottle you buy doesn’t say 100 per cent agave then the chances are almost half of it is actually some kind of grain spirit that’s been added to the agave (this type of tequila is called a mixto).

To me, that’s the most important point to look out for. You then have aged tequilas – called reposado and anejo – but that doesn’t necessarily make them better. After all, tequila isn’t whisky and while a silver tequila is usually cheaper, it can also sometimes be nicer than an aged one, depending on your tastes and the brand.

I could talk about other factors such as the type of barrels used, the altitude of the agave, natural fermenting processes and so forth but instead I’ll just say one other thing: if you do get a 100 per cent agave tequila, try sipping it rather than shooting it and ignore the usual salt and lemon accompaniments. And, if you really need something to go with it, then try sipping it with sangrita.

Sangrita (which is very different to sangria!) is a citrus and chilli chaser for tequila, although calling it a chaser is misleading since what you ought to do is take a sip of the tequila and then a sip of the sangrita and continue alternating them. The idea, as I believe Christine Sismondo (one of my favourite alcohol authors) once said, is to fight fire with fire.

There is no standard sangrita recipe. A lot of people add tomato to it, some pomegranate. The only constants are that it needs to be red (the name means “little blood” in Spanish) and it should have orange juice and lime juice in it. For more variables, some add onion, others grapefruit juice, Worcestershire sauce and Sismondo even recommends adding Clamato, some Canadian drink made with clam and tomato juice (incidentally, I saw Clamato for sale at the deli at the Sydney Fish Markets).

The sangrita recipe I use is:

• orange juice
• lime juice
• pomegranate juice with some dashes of grenadine
• tomato juice (I actually pulped a small roma tomato for this)
• six or seven dashes of Tabasco
• a small amount of finely minced onion
• a single splash of Worcestershire sauce

This might sound disgusting to some but I swear it’s addictive. I didn’t give proportions for the juices above because, quite frankly, I think you need to mix it to your own taste – but I would say I don’t think the tomato or the pomegranate should overpower the orange or lime juice.

Talking of pomegranate, the reason I added some grenadine to it was to add some sweetness to counter the pomegranate’s and the lime juice’s sourness. I’ve noticed that most sangrita recipes call purely for grenadine but pomegranate juice would probably have been used traditionally and, while it’s hard to find pomegranate-based grenadine, it’s relatively easy to find pomegranate juice in the supermarket – so to me it made sense to do it this way.

You can ditch the tomato and the onion if you want – but if so, I’d add an extra splash of Worcestershire sauce. I do, however, recommend keeping at least either the pomegranate juice or the tomato since they not only add the much needed redness, but also a certain savoriness to the drink.

Of course, you could ignore all the above and drink the tequila as it is – or make the following margarita recipe:

• 3 parts tequila
• 2 parts orange liqueur (ie triple sec or Cointreau, depending on your budget)
• 1 part lime juice (has to be freshly squeezed – if you don’t do this, then don’t make a margarita)
• Sugar to taste (I use caster sugar, but sugar syrup would be better)
• Coarse salt

A margarita is ridiculously easy to make. As long as you use freshly squeezed lime juice and add some sugar to sweeten it to your taste, it’s really hard to go wrong. I prefer margaritas to be shaken with ice and strained but, if it’s a really hot day, you might want to create an icy slushy – although I wouldn’t.

You certainly, however, need to rim the glass with salt – to do this, run some lime juice around the rim so the salt will stick.

Voila!

PS the margarita recipe above is fairly standard but recipes vary. Some people add more lime juice, others add orange juice (although I strongly disagree with this) and some use Gran Marnier and think triple sec is for trailer trash like me. However, this is the recipe I personally prefer. However, if you make margaritas or sangritas in a different way, feel free to leave a comment below:

Related posts:

1. Tommy’s margarita cocktail recipe
2. Paloma cocktail recipe
3. Flying Fajita Sistas – Glebe

As someone who at 11 read every violent and vicious James Bond novel by Ian Fleming, I always remembered Bond’s tip for drinking vodka (as mentioned in Moonraker):

Shake some pepper onto the vodka’s surface and let it slowly settle to the bottom of the glass. Dab the remaining grains still floating with your finger and then drink.

In Moonraker James Bond did this in front of his crusty boss M, who looked at the super spy as if he were a fancy nancy.

“It’s a trick the Russians taught me that time you attached me to the Embassy in Moscow,” apologized Bond. “There’s often quite a lot of fusel oil on the surface of this stuff – at least, there used to be when it was badly distilled. Poisonous. In Russia, where you get a lot of bathtub liquor, it’s an understood thing to sprinkle a little pepper in your glass. It takes the fusel oil to the bottom. I got to like the taste and now it’s a habit.”

So when I interview Bob Nolet, who creates the premium Ketel One vodka from the Nolet Distillery in Holland, I can’t help but ask if he heard of this habit.

“No,” he says firmly, adding (and possibly thinking I’m slow witted) that vodka’s purity has continually improved by leaps and bounds over the past century.

“Quality has changed a lot,” Nolet says. “Nowadays we have equipment at the distillery that measure impurities up to parts per million, parts per billion – it’s almost ridiculous but that’s how far it goes these days, and that wasn’t available years ago.”

He adds that the taste and mouth feel of a good vodka come from the distillation and that it’s important not to freeze the vodka.

“Taste it at room temperature – you’ll see the difference,” Nolet says.

He adds that Ketel One can be served on the rocks but that most people drink it neat and when it comes to martinis he suggests making them purely with vodka and to not put any vermouth in it.

In the interests of investigative reporting I decided to try this out and made two martinis with Ketel One. I found that when I made a martini with no vermouth at all it was good but I have to say that when I then made a martini with two and a half shots of vodka and half a shot of vermouth it became beautiful and makes for a decent alternative to a classic gin martini.

In addition to Ketel One there’s also Ketel One Citroen, which has a fresh citrus aroma and is made from lemons and limes around the world, from West Africa and Spain to the Caribbean – although Nolet says that “the main taste profile is from a lemon from Sicily – it’s more of a sweet lemon, which is why Ketel One isn’t so harsh.”

What happens is that the oils from the various lemons and limes are combined and blended into the vodka and the result is surprisingly flavoursome. Not surprisingly, Nolet believes the Cosmopolitan – which requires a lemon vodka such as Ketel One Citroen – is one of the best cocktails invented: click here to see our Cosmopolitan recipe.

Disclosure: I did, in the interests of drinking free alcohol (and I’ll defend that right to the death!) receive some bottles of Ketel One vodka so I can research vodka recipes thoroughly. Hey, someone has to do it …

Related posts:

1. A lazy schmuck’s guide to making old-fashioned dry martinis

After reading Cosmopolitan, an entertaining book written by New York bartender Toby Cecchini – the man credited with reinventing the Cosmopolitan in the late 80s, which in turn led to its huge success (somewhat to his horror, especially when it became the signature cocktail in Sex and the City) – I wanted to make the drink myself.

Cecchini says that although the Cosmo looks like a girlie drink, it’s actually meant to taste tart and not sugary.

In the back of his book he lists the proper Cosmopolitan recipe as:

• 5 parts lemon vodka
• 5 parts triple sec or Cointreau
• 4 parts fresh lime juice
• Dash or two of cranberry

The drink then needs to be shaken well, strained into a cocktail glass and served with a fat twist of lemon.

Cecchini says the main problems people make with the Cosmopolitan is not using fresh lime juice – or not using enough. He also adds that triple sec is as good to use as Cointreau for this drink but a hell of a lot cheaper and that the cranberry juice is really just used to add a little colour and that only a small amount should be added to the drink (the Cosmo should look pink and not red).

To be honest I never made – or even tasted – a Cosmopolitan before but I decided to make one according to Cecchini’s recipe (I used Ketel Citroen as the lemon vodka) and was surprised by how much I loved the cocktail. It isn’t sweet at all: rather, there’s a beautiful citrus tang to it and the drink balances the sweet and sour flavours perfectly. In short – and I never thought I’d say this before making the drink myself – I actually love it.

Related posts:

1. Ruby Martini cocktail recipe
2. Amaretto Sour cocktail recipe
3. Alabama Fogcutter cocktail recipe

Complex, seductive and (if well made) smooth, the sazerac is the cocktail that started it all (some claim it’s the first cocktail ever made).

Hailing from New Orleans, the sazerac was originally made from absinthe (New Orleans was, with the exception of Paris, the absinthe capital of the world at one time), Peychaud’s bitters and cognac – but then the recipe evolved and it’s now traditionally made with rye whiskey instead of cognac.

In Australia, however, you’ll have two problems when making a sazerac: finding Peychaud’s bitters and finding good quality rye.

Quite frankly, I couldn’t get my hands on Peychaud’s for a long time. I trawled Sydney’s bottle shops, I asked bar staff to slip me some on the sly, but all to no avail. As such, I originally used Angostura instead since it’s also based on the gentian herb but then a number of bartender friends had harsh words with me and said that I was committing a cocktail sin (and, in retrospect, that’s fair enough). Finally, one of them did pass me a bottle on the sly and another recommended I try Cocktail Kingdom in the US. Since then, I have never looked back.

As for the rye: well, I found Jim Beam Rye whiskey at Dan Murphy’s (it comes with a yellow label) and while it worked a treat in a whiskey sour, I didn’t like it in the sazerac. The problem is that a sazerac relies heavily on the spirit for flavour so it’s worth using something that tastes deep and complex. Bourbon, however, is usually too sweet for a sazerac, which is already being sweetened by sugar, although Woodford Reserve does apparently have a high rye content and is more complex than most bourbons. I tried it in a sazerac and the result worked well, although if I were to do it again I’d use less sugar.

However, I prefer using either a good cognac, an Islay single malt whisky (which adds a nice smokiness) or an aged blended whiskey (I tried an 18-year-old Jamesons Irish whiskey – which I usually like straight – and it worked a treat). It might be decadent to use such a great whiskey* on a cocktail, but then cocktails ought to be about decadence. However, out of everything I’ve tried so far, I prefer using Hennessey VSOP cognac. I’ve also had two knowledgeable bartenders suggest using a mix of cognac and rye.

I have, however, finally found a place that sells a wide range of rye whiskeys (they have a shopfront in Double Bay) – World of Whisky. The rye I’d choose would probably be either Rittenhouse or the Sazerac brand.

As for the absinthe: well, the most traditional absinthe for this would be the Jade Nouvelle Orleans, which is distilled in France by a New Orleans native and is closer to the type of absinthes made in New Orleans over a century ago than anything else you can come across.

The final result is a stiff drink that, as far as construction is concerned, is as traditional a cocktail as you’ll find – namely a mix of spirit, bitters, sugar and ice. I even stuck with muddling a sugar cube rather than using sugar syrup to be historically accurate.

As such, without further ado, here’s the sazerac recipe:

• 1 sugar cube
• 1 shot of rye whiskey (although some recipes call for up to two shots) or cognac
• 2 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
• 1 dash Angostura bitters (although you can leave this out**)
• absinthe
• lemon peel

Instructions

1. Chill one tumbler or Old Fashioned glass with ice.
2. In a second Old Fashioned glass (or mixing glass or shaker, although traditionally it’s done in an Old Fashioned glass), muddle or crush a sugar cube with the dashes of bitters (some also add a few drops of water). Add ice cubes and whiskey/cognac and stir until cold.
3. Empty the first glass of ice and pour a small amount of absinthe into it – just enough to coat the inside.
4. Strain the second glass (filled with the whiskey, bitters and sugar) into the first, chilled glass with the absinthe.
5. Garnish with a twist of lemon peel, although I like using grapefruit or orange peel for this. Rub first around the rim and twist over the drink to release some of the peel’s oils. Some people refuse to drop the peel into the drink afterwards – but this is up to you.

Voila!

*PS If anyone’s spell checking this story out of boredom and wondering why I spelt whisky in two different ways, remember that it’s (usually) spelt with an e for American and Irish distillers and without one for Scottish, Canadian and other international distillers. Incidentally, I’ve yet to taste an Australian whiskey, although we do have some distillers here …

** PS 2 I find that if I only use one shot of whiskey or cognac then it’s best not to add Angostura – but if I use two shots then a dash of Angostura on top of the Peychaud’s works well.

Related posts:

1. Bedtime Blazer cocktail recipe
2. Whiskey Sour cocktail recipe
3. Alabama Fogcutter cocktail recipe

I was young and alone in Paris on my birthday when I fell in love with whiskey sours.

This was longer ago than I care to recall but I do remember wandering down some small street on the Left Bank near midnight, the Seine just minutes away, desperately in search of a bar so I can celebrate the passing of another year.

Instead of finding a sophisticated wine bar or brasserie, however, I instead stumbled on a place that looked like a 1960s brothel except I could hear live music coming from inside. I took a deep breath and walked through the curtains only to see a hair metal band cranking out Van Halen covers to an oddball crowd lounging on red leatherette seats while a well stocked bar taunted me from the sideline. Since it was ten minutes to 12 and I didn’t think I’d find another bar in time, I ordered my very first whiskey sour.

I’ve had better (and worse) whiskey sours since then but I loved how the lemon’s sourness went with the smokiness of the whiskey and the sweetness of the sugar – and so my love affair began.

The whiskey sour isn’t the most noble of cocktails – some consider it to be a little rough or downmarket and it will never be a symbol of elegance and sophistication like the martini – but I still consider it a classic. And, as with many classics, there are debates on how to make it.

The whiskey sour recipe I personally use is this:

• 2 shots of rye whiskey
• 1 shot of fresh lemon juice
• 1 shot of sugar syrup
• 1 sweet or maraschino cherry

Shake with ice and pour into a tumbler or old fashioned glass with ice. The cherry is essential.

Having said that, many people would argue with the above.

To start with, some would say an egg white ought to be added to the mix to create foam on the top and add texture to the drink.

I can’t argue with this since I’d probably be in the minority but I personally don’t consider it necessary. I absolutely love the aroma of citrus and while the smell of the egg white is almost negligible, I still think it interferes unnecessarily with the drink. Plus, and call me squeamish if you will, I just don’t like to mix raw egg with my citrus if I don’t have to.

Then there’s the question of what type of whiskey to use. After having whiskey sours with a variety of bourbons and whiskeys I’ve decided that, at least for me, rye whiskey is perfect. It has a taste – almost a tang – that stops me from liking it straight (unlike other bourbons and whiskeys) but that goes perfectly with the lemon in this drink. Having said that, whiskey sours are often made with various bourbons or even Irish or Canadian whiskey instead. Some people insist any upmarket bourbon, such as Woodford Reserve, will work for this drink.

You could arguably make this with less sugar to make it more sour but adding a cherry is, by most bartenders’ measures, necessary. The problem is finding a good one.

Although maraschino cherries have a lovely origin that involve hailing from the Croatian coast and being preserved in liqueur, their popularity in the beginning of the past century has led to less tasteful methods of mass production that involve blanching them of their natural colour, dyeing in some hideous neon shade and preserving in brine and calcium salts (however, in their defense, it is a myth that some are preserved in formaldehyde – even though they may taste like they had been).

Unable to find a better solution than glazed cherries in Sydney I’ve decided as a temporary measure to use jarred sweet cherries. Unlike maraschinos these are squishy rather than firm but at least they’re natural, taste great and add the needed touch of sweetness to the sour as well as an extra splash of colour.

Talking of adding colour, when I trialled my recipe on the Bar Zine Facebook page I received the kind suggestion that a New York Sour is worth trying. The basic difference between a whiskey sour and a New York sour is that the latter has a thin float of dry red wine on top. After researching this drink I have found other good reports on it but, to be honest, my own attempt failed miserably. I wouldn’t say the wine ruined the drink but it didn’t exactly add to it either, although the layer of red on top of the yellow was nice to look at until it all blended into a reddish slurry. But as I said, that’s just my two cents worth – if you have any thoughts then feel free to leave a comment below:

Related posts:

1. Amaretto Sour cocktail recipe
2. Pomerancza and Earl Grey sour cocktail recipe from Zeta Bar
3. Jameson whiskey cocktail recipes