A Classic Variation With No Fuss Required
This month's cocktail eschews the traditional format to focus on leveraging the depth of the liquor cabinet you've built over the last year
The Cocktail - Mediterranean Mix
To be honest, I’m a bit surprised that I stuck with this theme for a full year. Sure, some months were more full-featured than others, but there was still a new cocktail each of the last 11 months featuring an ingredient in your cabinet, a new one to add, and once to create yourself.
For this 12th month, let’s do it a bit differently. If you’ve followed along, you’ve built quite a cabinet. Some ingredients have gotten lots of use, some not so much. But you have all kinds of great drinks you can make just by mixing what’s already in your cabinet, no purchasing or cooking required!
The easiest way to do this is usually to riff on the Negroni (which, you might remember, is how this all started a year ago).
The classic way to do this is take a spirit, a fortified wine, and a bitter and add equal parts of each. That pretty much always works, believe it or not, though the original is always hard to top. And you no doubt have options to do that with what you have around, and I recommend you try. But this month, let’s focus on some ingredients that are maybe less-used and put them to work in a new format
What You Have - Amontillado, Grappa, Creme de Cassis
This almost meets the classic Negroni requirements. Grappa is a serviceable spirit for a Negroni. Sherry is a fortified wine. But, Creme de Cassis is far from bitter. So can we really call this a Negroni variation?
I say yes, and here’s why:
Amontillado doesn’t have the sweetness of most fortified wines, and it has a bracing quality from the acid and oxygen that, while it’s not bitter, still read as “strong.”
So then, the Creme fulfills the sweetness and, often, fruitiness you expect from many other fortified wines.
And the Grappa retains some funk along with the high alcohol content that helps keep everything together, a lot like the botanicals in gin do in the classic drink.
It’s also fun for me to imagine driving from Valencia to Genoa on the Mediterranean coast picking up a local ingredient in each country and making a cocktail from the result.
What to Buy - Nothing :)
This time, we’re just using the collection we’ve built over the last year.
What to Make - Again, Nothing :)
Nothing freshly-made this time - not every great drink necessitates creating something yourself!
The Recipe
The trick here is that equal parts doesn’t quite work - the cocktail is a bit over-sweet and doesn’t have the bracing quality you expect from a Negroni-style drink. So, here we up the Sherry and decrease the Creme - that adds some additional bite from the sour/bitter notes of the Sherry and dials back the sugar. It also covers a bit more of the Grappa must, but certainly not all of it. It’s a Negroni riff, so just stir it with ice and strain it!
1 oz Grappa
1.25 oz Amontillado Sherry
0.75 oz Creme de Cassis
This is a strong, fruity cocktail in a similar way to a classic Negroni. It trades the orange for berry, the herbs for sour citrus, and juniper for grape must, but the impression is similar.
For something you can literally just pour out of your cabinet, it carries an awful lot of complexity. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you’ve enjoyed building that cabinet with me over the last year. I’ve certainly enjoyed sharing it.
So, What’s Next?
That’s a great question, and I don’t have a great answer right now. The Cocktail of Month that’s run for the last year won’t continue, at least not every month. I’ve got some ideas for different formats, but you can certainly still expect to see my in your inbox (at least) every month with thoughts, vignettes, and recipes. Subscribe so you don’t miss it!