Drink 195: The 24 Days of Christmas

Greetings and welcome to the 2011 TBIAW Holiday Gift Guide!  Some poor misguided souls might think that mid-January 2012 is too late for a 2011 holiday gift guide.   Those people do not work for the US Postal Service.  Here in the cosmopolitan Charlotte Metroplex, home of such landmarks as the Bottle is a Wonderland Estate, South Carolina,  and the NASCAR Hall of Fame, people are still receiving mail from November.  This is why I always use FedEx to deliver transplant organs.

Sadly, Mrs. Bottle and I were victims of this horrible tragedy of delayed mail.  I did not receive my December 16^th issue of Forbes magazine until January 7^th.  This was an important one, too, for it contained the annual ForbesLife Gift Guide.  I rely on this each year to help me figure out what luxury items to purchase for Mrs. Bottle.  Had this issue arrived on time I would have known that the Burgundy Persian-lamb Wulling jacket by the Row ($12,000 – Barneys) should be under the tree.  Instead Mrs. Bottle received a White Chinese-polyester jacket by the Wal-Mart ($43.99 – Wal-Mart).  In fact, my issue was so late that Barneys no longer has the clearly superior jacket.  Maybe I can find a different one for next year.

The tree is made from bumble bones
image: Forbes.com

I don’t have time to cover everything.  It is January after all.  I have time to mention a few, though.  For men I was going to recommend the Halston Velvet slippers until I saw that they are “price upon request”.  Something tells me that they will be more than these superior ones.  Alternately you could get this $7,000 ping pong table.  It is actually a good deal because it doubles as a beer pong table dining room table so you are getting two pieces of furniture for the price of one.  Its 900 pounds of concrete could also be useful if you ever need to make sure a body never floats to the surface.  You are practically losing money by not owning one.

For the audiophile in your life they suggest the Basis Inspiration Turntable.  A turntable?  Seriously? People who insist on vinyl can be kind of annoying.  I’m guessing that people who insist on vinyl and own a $54,000 turntable are probably not an exception.  For the same price as that turntable you could buy  a USB turntable to convert your precious records to MP3 and 215 160GB iPods so you can listen to them.

Finally, for those of you with precious darling children, they bring you $1,200 ladybug earrings. I say go for it.  If you think you can't afford it go ahead and use the college fund money.  It will pay off.  When you have to get a doctor to remove thousands of dollars of jewelry from your little angel’s nose it will create a fun story for years to come.  College can’t teach you those kind of life experiences.

Vampire Eric really
wishes he had legs
so he could get a sip

In honor of these high-falutin’  gifts we decided to have the Grand Mimosa, a mix of Champagne,  Grand Marnier, and orange juice.  Since we just spent all that money on gifts, we used cava instead of champagne.  We are not made of money after all.  The drink was okay, but both Mrs. Bottle and I thought that it was not as good as a classic Mimosa which excludes the Grand Marnier.  Even better is plain cava, which excludes the orange juice as well.

Overall Rating for Grand Mimosa

Taste: 3

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackout: ??? – The recipe did not give champagne proportions

Ingredients

0.5 oz Grand Marnier

1 oz Orange Juice

Champagne

Drink 172: All That's Missing is the Asbury Jukes

A little over a week ago we tried the Wallis Blue Cocktail, which we found quite delicious.  It is essentially a gin Margarita.  Surprisingly, that post received a comment.  A reader suggested that we try another gin drink called the Southside because he had heard it was “very tasty.”  He even provided a link to the recipe.  As we have shown by our one reader-requested drink, we are always happy to honor a fan’s request as long as the drink happens to be in our Mr. Boston guide.  In this case the guide does have a South-side but it only bears a slight resemblance to the recipe linked since it ignores several key ingredients.  If the supplied recipe was Alec Baldwin, the Mr. Boston version is Stephen Baldwin.

Prettiest leaf this
side of Leif Garrett

 All hope was not lost though as the guide has a second drink called the South-side Fizz which is a bit closer but still not an exact match.  We decided to have a head-to-head showdown between the two recipes.  Of course another sabot got thrown into the machinery when a third recipe got posted to the comments.  Since this third recipe came directly from the person who claims it is tasty we altered our plan and decided to use her recipe vs. the Mr. Boston recipe.  We did this even though we had already scheduled the other recipe. We hope you appreciate the steps we take to keep things from getting stale at TBIAW.   Seriously.  This is a lot of work for very few readers.   It would probably be more efficient to just send a couple of e-mails or a mimeograph instead of dealing with the blog.

The challenger

Normally when we make a mixed drink that calls for gin we use Tanqueray.  Not this time, though.  Our Southside fan said “do NOT use Tanqueray.”  I’m not sure what she has against Tanqueray (maybe Tanqueray owes her money?) but we honored her request.  She suggested alternatives Plymouth, No. 209, and Hendrick’s. Of those, we only have Hendrick’s, but we decided to go with Bombay Sapphire instead because I didn’t want to use 4.5 oz of Hendrick’s on mixed drinks.  It is only to be used for Gin and Tonics or for getting crunk.

After we retrieved a bottle of Sapphire from our vast gin cellar, we studied the recipes carefully.  There were a few differences so we’ve provided a handy chart to highlight the main ones:

                                              
The differences definitely created two distinct drinks each imperfect in its own way.   The Mr. Boston version was a little too watery in my opinion primarily due to the fact that you are instructed to fill the glass with club soda once the other ingredients are in place.  I hate this type of instruction.  We need precision in our recipes (unless it is telling you to add simple syrup to-taste, as in the fabulous Dragon Street Cobra Tamer No. 1) Right in their own book it says a highball glass is 8-10 ounces. This means that an instruction to “fill glass” could lead to up to a two-ounce variability in the drink.  I double-checked the math.   It is that type of inattention to detail that lead to the financial meltdown.

Mrs. Bottle still preferred the Mr. Boston version to its challenger, though.  She found it refreshing while she thought the reader’s version was a bit too sweet.  I also found it a bit too sweet but I thought the muddled mint provided a more interesting flavor than the Mr. Boston one.  The challenger called for an entire ounce of simple syrup as opposed to ¾ ounce lemon juice which was bit much for us.  We added more lemon juice which helped but still left the drink a bit too syrupy.  In fairness, our reader said that less simple syrup will make it less sweet.  When we make this again we will heed that advice.  I am interested to replace the club soda with champagne as well.

Ultimately, since Mrs. Bottle preferred one and I preferred the other the answer to which is better is as muddled as the mint should be.

Overall Rating for the South-side Fizz

Taste: 3

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 3

Drinks Until Blackouts: 9 – 13% Alcohol depending on glass size

Ingredients

2 oz Gin

1 oz Lemon Jucie

1 tsp Simple Syrup

? oz Club Soda

Alternate Recipe

2.5 oz Gin – NOT Tanqueray
¾ oz Lemon Juice
6-8 leaves Mint

1 oz simple syrup (less for less sweet)
1 oz club soda or champagne (very dry)

In a cocktail shaker: Muddle the mint with the lemon juice before adding the gin & simple syrup. Use a handful of ice and shake until the shaker is too cold to hold. Strain & serve it up (not over ice) into a chilled martini glass. Top with club soda or champagne. Garnish with whole mint leaf.

Drink 94: Dash Dash Fizz Fizz

The Leaning Tower
of Fizz-a

Today we have the Ritz Fizz, a mix of Champagne, amaretto, blue Curaçao, and lemon juice.  It tasted exactly like what you’d expect if you had a glass of Champagne and did not add amaretto, blue Curaçao, or lemon juice.  The recipe called for a dash of each of the other ingredients.  Maybe our definition of a “dash” isn’t the same as Mr. Boston’s, but the dashes weren’t enough to be detectable.  You could smell lemon but I think that was mostly due to the lemon peel garnish.

The good news is that both Mrs. Bottle and I like Champagne so we liked this drink.  We can’t give it a perfect five, though, because this is a blog about cocktails, not Champagne.  A blog about Champagne would probably be kind of boring, but at least you wouldn’t have to drink any Scotch.

Overall Rating for Ritz Fizz

Taste: 5

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 4 – Lemon twist

Drinks Until Blackout: 9 – 11% Alcohol

Ingredients

4 oz Champagne

1 dash Amaretto

1 dash Blue Curaçao

1 dash Lemon Juice

Day 12: From Russia With Lush

At the Bottle Wonderland Estate we have an abundance of guest bedrooms.  Occasionally a guest occupies one of them and yesterday was one of those times.  In honor of our esteemed visitor we made twice our normal number of drinks (1) and invited her to be a guest taster.  It was sort of like when Anthony Bourdain guest judges on Top Chef, only our guest judge is not a douche.

Cold and Frosty Like a Russian Winter

We ended up choosing the Russian Cocktail and the Stockholm 75. The Russian Cocktail is equal parts vodka, gin, and crème de cacao.  We were expecting an abomination, but it was actually pretty good.  Our guest judge raved, “smells interesting” and “yeah, I don’t know”.  Mrs. Bottle took a sip and gushed, “it’s not as bad as I expected”.   It had a nice chocolate finish, but with an alcohol content of almost 40% it is no girlie drink.  Ivan Drago told Rocky, “I must break you”.  About 3 Russian Cocktails would do the trick.

Next up was the Stockholm 75. That is kind of an odd name for a drink so we did some research. The best we could determine was that the drink was named after the Red Army Faction's1975 siege of the German Embassy in Stockholm.  I’m really looking forward to trying other drinks named after sieges. I bet the Stalingrad 1942 is delicious. 

The Stockholm 75 recipe calls for citrus flavored vodka, lemon juice, simple syrup, and Champagne.  We would never sully high- end Champagne in a mixed drink, so we broke out the Rondel Cava.  “Cava” roughly translates from Spanish as “cheap sparkling wine”. This cava is only $8 a bottle but it easily tastes as good as a $9.50 bottle.   Like most siege-based drinks, it is served in a sugar-rimmed glass.  We all found this drink delicious and our best one to date.  It might have something to do with the carbonation.  It might have something to do with having just consumed a Russian Cocktail. 

Fizzier Than It Looks

There were a number of firsts for this entry:

1.     First guest judge

B.     First time making multiple drinks

3.     First time we liked a drink enough to make more than one.

That’s right, both our guest judge and Mrs. Bottle liked the Stockholm 75 enough to have a second one.  They both eschewed the sugar rim on the second since Mrs. Bottle felt the sugar rim made the drink sugary.

It is hard to argue with that logic. 

Ratings on a 10-point scale:

Russian Cocktail

Taste: 7

Ease of Preparation: 8

Presentation: 9 – Simple and classic

Drinks until blackout: 3

Stockholm 75

Taste: 10

Ease of Preparation: 6

Presentation: 8 – Our lack of rimming skill held it back

Drinks until blackout: 6 – Only 12% alcohol but the bubbles might go to your head