Lockdown recipe diary #3: Happy Moments

Scotch whisky has long had a slightly weird position with regards to cocktails. You can pick up any old cocktail book and find any number of recipes for gin or American whiskey drinks, but not many Scotch ones. A quick glance at Martin’s New & Improved Index of Cocktails & Mixed Drinks (app store - seriously, if you haven’t got it, get it) lists 2,588 recipes but only 79 are defined as having a “Scotch base.”

While that’s not a lot compared to other spirits, there are some gems in there that haven’t hit in the same way as some of the more famous rediscovered classics of recent years (your Last Word or Aviation, for example, or your Seelbach…no, wait). One of the them is Happy Moments from Approved Cocktails Authorized by the United Kingdom Bartenders’ Guild in 1937 - I first encountered it when Robin Honhold put it on the first menu at the Lucky Liquor Co. back in 2013.

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Happy Moments

35 ml / 1 oz Scotch whisky (I used a 6yo single cask Glenglassaugh from the Bramble Whisky Co.)
20 ml / 0.66 oz dry vermouth (I used Noilly Prat Dry)
10 ml / 0.33 oz passion fruit syrup
10 ml / 0.33 oz orange curaçao

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker. Fill shaker with ice and shake for 10-15 seconds.
Strain into a chilled Nick & Nora glass and garnish with a twist of lemon zest.

As ever with vintage recipes, I employed a bit of adaptation when we put this back on the menu in 2019. The original recipe has equal parts of whisky and vermouth plus we took the opportunity to add a bit of acidity into the passion fruit syrup, adding a 1.5% scaling of powdered citric acid. This recipe from Epicurious is a pretty good start or there’s commercially available versions; just add 1.5 grams of powdered citric acid to 100 grams of finished syrup.

Lockdown recipe diary #2: Teller of Tales

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One of the fun parts of my job has been working with really amazing people to do super fun things. One of those amazing people is Georgie Bell, Bacardi’s global scotch whisky ambassador (and Whisky magazine’s 2020 scotch whisky brand ambassador of the year), and one of the super fun things was working with Edinburgh Food Studio to create Craigellachie cocktails to accompany a dinner celebrating Burns’ Night back in January 2019.

Teller of Tales

45 ml / 1.5 oz Craigellachie 13yo
15 ml / 0.5 oz amontillado sherry
15 ml / 0.5 oz Martini Riserva Rubino vermouth
7.5 ml / 0.25 oz Cherry Heering
10 ml / 0.33 oz raisin shrub

Pour all ingredients into a mixing glass. Fill with cubed ice and stir for ~20 seconds.
Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a twist of lemon zest.

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Craigellachie

There’s a great many distilleries that haven’t made a lot of their whisky available under their own name, and Craigellachie was one of them for most of its history.

The distillery was established in 1891 and the house style uses unpeated barley dried using an oil-fired heater, bringing a hint of a smoky, sulphurous note to the whisky.

Raisin shrub

150 g raisins
150 g water
300 g granulated cane sugar
150 g red wine vinegar
75 g balsamic vinegar

Combine raisins and water in a large airtight container and leave for at least 6 hours.
Add sugar and leave for at least 4 hours.
Add red wine vinegar and balsamic vinegar. Stir until sugar is fully dissolved.
Strain out solids and transfer to a clean bottle.
Keep refrigerated.

Yields ~400 ml.

Outbound: storm in a julep cup

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How big of a deal is three percent? If you're talking about whiskey, apparently a lot. Last weekend, the news that Maker's Mark was to be bottled at 42% ABVinstead of its current level of 45% ABV brought forth the full range of reaction from the Internet - y'know: disbelief, anger, torches and pitchforks. While the subsequent decision to reverse the ABV reduction has been broadly welcomed, some are starting to draw differentconclusions.

(Not that any of the above is actually relevant in certain markets.)

Topically, there's a very interesting NYT article from Harold McGee. The title? To enhance flavor, just add water.

The eternal Sydney/Melbourne rivalry takes another turn as the former is named Australia's bar capital.

A lot of good people in the Edinburgh bar/cocktail scene get some well deserved exposure, courtesy of the Scotland on Sunday, though the thing itself makes everything feel a little more like Portlandia than I remember it.

A couple of gems via the excellent if acronymically-complex TYWKIWDBI - Mixing alcohol with diet soda may make you drunker  and a pretty epic wine poster for the oenophile in your life.

Fare thee well, thou first and fairest

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Every year, Scots throughout the world set aside January 25th for celebrating the life and work of our national poet, Robert Burns. The man's influence extends far beyond the borders of this little corner of Northern Europe - where would the literary tradition be without "the best laid schemes o' mice an' men", or indeed his influence on the Romantic poets who were to come? - and into some interesting areas.

Now, this being nominally a blog about cocktails and all, would be the point at which I'd direct your attention to the Bobby Burns. It's one of the all-time great Scotch whisky drinks and is more than worthy of carrying the name.

But I'm not going to do that. One of the hallmarks of Burns' poetry is finding the profound, the wonderful in something that might seem otherwise unremarkable. In To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough(1785), one of his most famous works, Burns takes that initial calamity - for the mouse, at least - as the starting point for a train of thought that takes in man's attitude to the world he inhabits and whether all the bells and whistles of civilisation are ultimately worthwhile.

By all means, if you have access to some vermouth and Bénédictine, raise a Bobby Burns to commemorate Burns' 253rd birthday. Me, I'm going to leave off wearing any tartan or listening to bagpipes. I'm going to pour myself some Scotch and see where it takes me.