#30. Saxon Cocktail

Further adventures in nonsense names: The Saxon. Half a lime, a couple dashes of grenadine, Bacardi (specified by name as some sort of product placement arrangement), and orange peel.

Here's my opinion on this drink: how many different variations on rum plus citrus plus sugar do we really need? A dozen? A thousand? A dozen thousand?

Yes, that's right; we need a dozen thousand, and that's why we've got the Saxon. Which of these ingredients do you think makes it the saxon? The Caribbean rum? The Mediterranean fruits?

This is a fine drink but you have more room in your head for trivia than I if you see any value in keeping all these nearly-identical drinks straight in your brain.

#29. Jackson Cocktail

Here's a nice one: One-to-one orange gin and Dubonnet, plus orange bitters. I assumed, based on previous infusion experiments, that there was no reason not to just leave some oranges in some gin for a long time and call that orange gin. Correct me if I'm mistaken! Good thing no one reads this. Otherwise I'd probably get corrected all the time. ("What? The Golden Bronx Cocktail is my favorite! I drink them every afternoon at the Gentleman's Club!")

Anyway, orange gin, Dubonnet, orange bitters. Lovely! I enjoyed gin and Dubonnet previously, and the extra citrus is understated and delicious. Note to self: make more orange gin, so as to make more Jackson Cocktails.

Difford's doesn't even include orange gin as a possible ingredient. For shame! For shame!

Caught up!

That does it for the August / September backlog. Now, onwards and upwards! Hooray!

#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.

#27. Golden Bronx Cocktail

Ah, yes. Some more egg, please.

We drank this one purely in the name of efficiency. The Bronx, you may remember, was 2:1:1 gin, sweet vermouth, and dry vermouth, with orange juice. The Golden Bronx is the same, plus an EGG YOLK. I can only assume that this was someone's idea of breakfast, or a health tonic, or a masochistic trick. It certainly couldn't have been because someone had a Bronx, which is a pretty reasonable drink, and then decided that it needed an egg yolk for that extra something special.

We only made it because we had an egg yolk left over from the Beauty Spot. And so that we could cross it off the list.

I don't remember enjoying this all that much. Mostly, I just remember thinking over and over again about how I was drinking an egg yolk. I see no reason to try this again.

#26. Beauty Spot

Two-thirds gin to one-third grenadine. Oh, and an egg white.

I believe this drink was the beginning of my downfall, but I'm well on the way to recovery so I forgive you, Beauty Spot. That is an absolute huge amount of grenadine. I've been making my own with straight sugar and either pomegranate juice or pomegranate and cherry, and I'm pretty sure I use slightly less sugar than generally recommended. But even that way, a 2:1 ratio of booze to syrup is a sweet mess.

And the egg, yes. The egg white. On the one hand, it adds some nice froth. On the other hand, that's a lot of egg. With no soda water or anything to cut things a little, it starts to feel like an awful lot of egg. Or maybe that's purely psychological? And I'm just not over thinking that drinking raw egg is a strange thing to do? Not that strange a thought, considering that there is no question but that drinking raw egg is kind of an odd thing to do.

Not a terrible drink, mostly because it's too sweet and nothing that's too sweet can be all that bad. But, pretty unlikely to be a part of my regular repertoire.

Where Were We?

September got away from me, is what happened. A final night in August (or maybe September?) found me drinking too many of these concoctions and suffering the obvious consequences. The worst thought is that, since they went undocumented, I may have to drink them again. We shall see.

But, no, this is not one of the millions of abandoned blogs. I deleted my abandoned blogs already so as to limit my blog footprint. It's just the right thing to to.