Day 59.1: Lake & Palmer Got Left Out, Too.



Looks and tastes like cherries

Today we have some good news and some bad news.  The bad news is that we will not be reviewing today’s scheduled drink, the Emerson.  Had we been reviewing the Emerson, we would have mentioned that it is a combination of gin, sweet vermouth, lime juice, and maraschino liqueur.   We planned on using Heering's Cherry Liqueur as our maraschino liqueur. After yesterday’s debacle, I began to wonder if that was going to be the right ingredient for the job.  I did a little research and discovered that it was not;  maraschino liqueur and cherry liqueur are not the same thing. Why would they be? After all maraschino is "bittersweet, clear liqueur flavored with Marasca cherries." How stupid for us to assume that cherry liqueur would be the same as cherry liqueur.



Cherry something

The good news is that the Heering web site says that their liqueur is the “original ‘Cherry Brandy’”. Cherry brandy is exactly what we needed yesterday to properly make the Cherry Sling.  So for the first time in TBIAW history we are going to re-test a drink. Today we have the Cherry Sling with “cherry brandy” instead of the incorrect ingredient we used yesterday, cherry brandy.

Even though we are excited to correct our mistake, we are still a little miffed about these product labels.  We can possibly blame ourselves for not knowing that maraschino liqueur and cherry liqueur are not the same thing.  On the other hand I’m not sure how we could have known that something with “The Original Cherry Liqueur” on the label is actually “cherry brandy” and something that says “brandy distilled only from a mash of pure Oregon and Washington cherries” isn’t cherry brandy.  In other news, we also learned that up is now down and The Time is not the worst song in recent memory. 
 

Queen Margrethe is the Queen of Denmark





Copenhagen, Denmark.  It is in Denmark.



That isn’t the end of the problems with the Heering liqueur label, though.  Clearly the bottle wants to give the impression of being Danish. On the label is a seal from Margrethe, the Queen of Denmark.  It also says “Peter F. Heering Copenhagen” and “Peter F. Heering Denmark”.  They really aren't being too subtle. I'm surprised it doesn't come in a Viking helmet made of Lego.  Now let’s take a peek at the back of the bottle:

Product of Sweden, eh?   Once again, TBIAW reveals a member of the global New Wold Order conspiracy.  I have to say I wasn't as shocked as I was two months ago when we discovered that “Italian” Galliano is made in Holland.  If Finlandia Vodka turns out to made in Poland I don’t know who I'll turn to.

As far as the drink itself, the "cherry brandy" made a huge difference compared to the cherry brandy.  We tried it straight first, as is our custom with new spirits.  It was fairly viscous with a sweet cherry taste.  Like many liqueurs, it had a strong similarity to cough medicine.  In the Cherry Sling that sweet thinkness really balanced out the lemon juice nicely and turned what was something horrible into something quite nice.  Well, I thought it was nice, Mrs. Bottle thought it still sucked.

Overall Rating for the Cherry Sling

Taste: 3 – I thought it was a 4, but Mrs. Bottle didn’t like it at all

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 7 –  16% alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Cherry-Flavored Brandy

1 oz Lemon Juice