#28. Champagne Cocktail

We had some champagne because neighbor A brought some to drink with strawberry basil sorbet. Strawberry basil sorbet and champagne is not in this book, but it is delicious. Note to everyone: get some strawberry basil sorbet, and some champagne, and combine, as it is delicious.

Ensslin's champagne cocktail is angostura bitters, a lump of sugar, orange peel, lemon peel, and champagne. This is a pointless drink, so I'm going to add a new tag: pointless. Look: you're already drinking champagne. Drink the champagne and be happy. Or, if you must add something to it, fine. Get some sorbet. This other stuff is just silly and a needless delay between you and your champagne.

Difford's version is similar but involves cognac too. He doesn't see much point in it either, I might add.

#22. Brandy Cocktail

This isn't even really a cocktail. Brandy, plus two dashes each syrup and Angostura bitters. Do you like brandy? I don't. Do you like brandy when it's been barely modified with the faintest whisper of bitters and sugar? No? You think it basically tastes exactly the same as straight brandy, only colder, because you shook it with ice?

Yes. That's what I also think. I need more tail in my cocktail. This just lingers in your mouth, with a super-strong, hot, alcohol taste that's just too strong for it to taste like anything. I feel like this sort of drink is the booze equivalent of putting way too much wasabi on your sushi. It's fun, but at a certain point, it just tastes like wasabi, and you forget that any other tastes were involved. (I'm assuming you're drunk when you're eating the sushi. That's why you're so forgetful. It's only fair that you be drunk when you eat the sushi, like I'm drunk now, so that the phenomena are equivalent.)

I want to say that this might be a drink you'd like if you really liked brandy, but on second thought, if you were a brandy connoisseur, you wouldn't put up with your brandy being adulterated, so this drink is for no one.

I chose it because I'm drinking alone, and I like saving the stuff that seems like it could actually be good for when friends are around. When you're drinking alone, you shouldn't drink anything too tasty. That makes it too fun. Drinking alone needs to be a little unpleasant. Just to be safe. For safety.

#9. Absinthe Cocktail

Finally, we get somewhere. Absinthe, water, syrup, Angostura bitters. L gave me a lovely bottle of absinthe more than a year ago. It was beyond time for us to break into it for a test. Glad we did, but sorry I didn't start in on it earlier, as it's tasty.

I am not yet familiar enough with the Angostura bitters to have much of an opinion on them. This cocktail has such a strong absinthe character that I couldn't tell you what the bitters are adding. It would be a nice experiment to leave them out and try it again, and then try a third time, using the bitters. Also not sure about dashing--it's possible I should have used more.

In any case, the simple combination of high quality absinthe (Lucid is the name--don't know about your town, but in New Orleans, this is one of only a couple of available absinthe labels, and it's a top-shelf operation) and sugar makes for a lovely licorice sweetness that's simple and great. There are a lot of other recipes in Ensslin's book that involve absinthe, but I'd be perfectly happy to work my way through the rest of the bottle using this mix alone.