#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.

#19. Bourbon Highball

My neighbor-to-be came by too, and brought a bottle of Maker's Mark, because he's awesome like that. I'm a total bourbon novice, but this stuff was pretty great, and I suspect I could learn to appreciate it, and plan to.

The highball is pretty straightforward. Booze, ice, fizzy water, lemon peel. Ensslin says carbonated water or ginger ale, but that strikes me as ridiculous. Ginger ale and carbonated water or about as different as could be, despite looking the same. Winn Dixie has club soda in aluminum cans, so I got some--I can't recycle glass bottles, so I didn't want any of those, and the usual way it's available is in liter bottles, and I never need a whole liter bottle before it goes flat. We drank a lot today and didn't make it all the way through a single can. (I'm finishing it off now, with lemonade. Mmmm. Lemony.)

This is a pretty basic operation. So long as you basically like the base spirit, a little fizzy water and lemon peel can only make things better. Works for me.

#16. Gin Cocktail

So- the recipes available to me have increased substantially, due to the addition of orange bitters to my liquor cabinet. Thanks, Martin Wine Cellar! That's a pretty good store. I wasn't paying that much attention to the wine, which of course the place is named after. But, they had a pretty great selection of spirits, too, so anything that Rouse's can't provide me I can probably get there, unless I can't get it anywhere. That is also a thing that will happen.

This gin cocktail barely has enough stuff in it to call it a cocktail. It's just gin plus orange bitters, with a twist of lemon.

But, it does prove that my vermouth-drinking skills are terribly weak, since I probably liked drinking this more than almost any of the previous entries that included vermouth. I'd still prefer a gin & tonic to this gin cocktail, and I'd have enjoyed this more in a better chilled glass or (blasphemy!) with a piece of ice. But, i found it quite tolerable. The bitters and lemon peel, I think, were just enough of a distraction from the gin to keep this from feeling too strong. It's pretty strong, obviously- it's essentially pure gin, plus a few drops of flavoring, plus the trivial amount of water that melted during the stirring.

Not bad, though. Not bad.

#10. Bill Lyken's Delight

I had high hopes for this drink. Or, at least, I hoped it wouldn't be terrible, but it kind of was. Equal parts dry gin and dry vermouth, topped with 4 dashes curacao, shaken with lemon and orange rind, served with a cherry.

The blue curacao left the drink an unpleasant blue-green that made it look like it was going to taste horrible. Its actual taste didn't do much to change anyone's opinion. The dry vermouth taste dominates, with only the slightest citrus character as competition. I don't know what the point of the cherry was at all.

I wanted the curacao to do something more interesting than it did. I probably used more than strictly necessary--the dashes turned into perhaps a half ounce, in a drink split three ways. But, the main factor here is the dry vermouth. If you don't like it, you won't like this drink.

We talked this one through a bit as we endured it. To the modern palate, it's odd to have so many drinks that don't involve any mixers but rather just booze. GG noted the Delight's odd combination--it tastes both too hot and too sweet. "Hot" meaning that the taste and feel of the alcohol is quite pronounced. Usually, sweetness covers up heat and makes a drink taste "weaker" than it actually is. In this case, the cocktail managed to taste too strongly of alcohol while remaining cloyingly sweet. This apparently delighted Bill Lyken, but Bill must have had bad taste in drinks. I never need to drink one of these again.

Closest corollary in Difford's guide would be the Snyder martini, which is the same basic mix

minus the rinds. I'm going to assume that it isn't terribly good either.