I designed this custom cocktail for 7 Delicious Creative Albuquerque Cocktails. There’s nothing about it that says you can’t be sippin’ on one outside of the Land of Enchantment, plus it’s refreshing as heck, so let’s get drinking!
Uptown Cooler
If you’re not familiar with my general sentiment on the “moonshine” category of liquor, let me refresh your memory: generally, unflavored moonshine is pretty gross and unpleasant to drink. Plus those damn mason jars spill all over you when you’re pouring them!
So, another opportunity to review another moonshine came to my attention and it’s not made from corn. That’s right, Manhattan Moonshine this is a oats-and-rye mash, plus it comes in an ornate art deco bottle (not a jar!).
I thought I might dislike Manhattan Moonshine as much as I had the gasoline-burn from previous jars I’ve tasted, but I didn’t. This is a good whiskey, one that I could sip on the rocks, even. It’s spicy, warm and shockingly flavorful for something that has no barrel time at all. Manhattan Moonshine will cost you twice what white lightnin’ runs, retailing for $45 a bottle.
As a respectable-tasting whiskey, I figured it was a good idea to serve this like other ryes I enjoy: in a Manhattan. It was too good of a cocktail-naming opportunity to pass up:
Manhattan Moonshine Manhattan
Galliano’s vanilla-and-spice flavor profile makes is a pretty flexible liqueur in many different types of cocktails, from light and fruity to rich and savory. In the spring, we mixed Galliano with tequila in an Hola Harvey, and now it’s time to mix Galliano in a tiki drink.
Note that we’re using orange curacao in this cocktail (for the first time on this blog, actually). In the past, when an “orange liqueur” was called for, I’d just use Bols triple sec. The two “orange liqueurs” are different, though, and here’s a brief summary thanks to Camper English:
Without further delay, here’s Harvey’s Tiki Hut:
Special thanks to our sponsor Galliano L’Autentico.
If you aren’t already aware, mezcal is an increasingly popular liquor among the craft cocktail crowd. It’s distilled from agave, like tequila, but while all tequila is mezcal, not all mezcal is tequila.
Let’s differentiate mezcal from tequila. You remember hearing about a “worm” in a tequila bottle? Some brands of mezcal do that, but I don’t think tequilas do. From there, the flavor is where you really start to tell a big difference.
I hadn’t tasted mezcal until recently (hear us taste Don Amado for the first time on the podcast). Compared with agave-brother-tequila, mezcal is much smokier. Much smokier. I heard someone say “mezcal tastes like a campfire,” and I think that’s a great description. From what I’ve read, that flavor has to do with the way the agave is baked to prepare for distillation. There is less muggy-ness to mezcal, too, as the smoke is predominant. If you like smokier scotches, mezcal might be an interesting liquor for you to try.
Traditionally just served on the rocks, mezcal is appearing on cocktail menus now, and there is a lot of ways to experiment with it. At Tales of the Cocktail, we tried the following cocktail. Tasted alone, it was overly smoky, but that smoke paired perfectly when the drink was served with ribs.
Sealed Deal (by Ivy Mix)
Brandy is one of the 5 base spirits that most cocktails are based on (the others are vodka, gin, whiskey and tequila) For some reason, I don’t have much brandy in my home bar. In fact, I currently have 1 bottle, Presidente, pictured above.
Brandy is the result of distilling wine, though brandy can be made from grapes too, like in Grappa or Pisco, even (almost) Ciroc vodka, though Ciroc’s not aged, so it’s not quite brandy.
The bottle of Presidente I have, a gift from a friend who traveled to Mexico, is the most popular spirit in Mexico. Surprised? Yeah, me too. It’s by no means a complex spirit, and you can get a bottle for around $10 here in the States, which is a great value for a 3-year-old aged spirit. The taste of Presidente is mild (it’s only 35% abv), a little sweet, and pretty pleasant with just a little touch of cheap-liquor-burn. It’s easy to drink straight from a snifter and like I said, you can’t beat the value for a sipper or a cocktail base.
The Brandy Crusta is a classic cocktail in every sense. Recipes for the drink appear somewhere near the mid-1800s, and it’s the inspiration for what’s probably the most popular brandy cocktail today, the Sidecar. Try this one out at home:
Brandy Crusta
I’ve covered Galliano before, the famous electric-yellow herbal liqueur from Italy. It’s the critical ingredient that turns a simple Screwdriver into the Harvey Wallbanger cocktail. We’ve tasted it a few months back on the podcast, too (listen here).
For Cinco de Mayo this year, I found a tropical recipe that riffs on the Harvey Wallbanger that’s both easy and tasty:
Hola Harvey
Special thanks to our sponsor Galliano L’Autentico.
Teeling is a very interesting whiskey in several ways. Firstly, the whiskey is distilled from all (or almost all) corn, making it sweet and pleasing particularly to a bourbon drinker. Next, Teeling is finished in rum casks, adding some fascinating flavor elements to the whiskey (Teeling has said it’s their goal to make an interesting Irish whiskey). If you tend towards American whiskeys, this Irish is likely to be very pleasing for you.
When I first tasted Teeling on Instagram, a few people chimed in saying they really like it, and I can see why. Though only available in the U.S. for a year or so, it’s an absolute darling with it’s fans. A 6 year old whiskey, Teeling will run you about $35-40 for a bottle. I’ve enjoyed sipping on Teeling and though it’s wonderful on its own, it also mixes really well in cocktails like the Paddy:
Paddy Cocktail
Last week, Lisa and I tasted Teeling Irish Whiskey on the podcast.
I recently got a new bottle of Bacardi (with the logo and font redesign) and I flipped through my cocktail books for some classic white rum cocktails. This one fascinated me – basically a rum version of a 50/50 Martini (equal parts liquor and vermouth), but with the addition of bitters.
As I looked around the web for versions of this drink, I think there should be two different versions of what I made here. First, the Palmetto with dry vermouth should use orange bitters, not aromatic, as the drink would be relatively clear and the flavor probably would be better. Second, you can make a Sweet Palmetto which would use rum, sweet vermouth, and probably your standard aromatic bitters.
Try both, and see which you prefer!
Palmetto Cocktail
There have been a handful of cocktails in the last few months that are liquor-and-chocolate combos, like the Commodore or the Floridita. Here’s another one that’s simply whiskey, creme de cacao, and bitters, and has a pretty awesome flavor profile. It’s an easy dessert cocktail without being overwhelmingly sweet.
Fox River
My first homemade cocktail was a Borodino, which is a 1:1:1 variation of the drink pictured here. If you’ve ever visited our Buyers Guide section, you’ve seen that the first 4 bottles of liquor I recommend that you buy are vodka, gin, triple sec, and dry vermouth. This cocktail uses 3 of those 4.
The cool thing about this particular cocktail is that subtle adjustments to the brands you use, particularly in the gin and triple sec, will make a big difference in the flavor of this drink. For instance, a barrel-aged gin, or Cointreau instead of a simple triple sec will give you all sorts of flavors to play with. Also there’s no garnish, so if you’re still growing your home bar this should be a cinch to make.
In this case of my cocktail, I decided to use Brothers Old Tom Gin, a local Albuquerque gin from Left Turn Distilling, a gin that’s a touch sweet with heavy citrus. Here’s how to make Our Stanley:
Our Stanley
