A Cocktail for Prince Albert

The Black Velvet was originally put together as a tribute drink on the death of Britain's Prince Albert.  It is recommended for occasions where "champagne is in order, but seems a bit too formal." (like, say, getting a Prince Albert...)  I think this makes a fantastic morning after drink, especially since it's about the easiest possible mixed drink to make.

  There is a version of this made with cider known as a Black Adder.  

Drink #6: Black Velvet

• 1oz chilled bubbly
• 1oz chilled Guinness

Add first champagne, then Guinness into a chilled flute.  

We went with the book's suggestion of dry champagne, though I may have liked this better with prosecco.  I'm not entirely sure the drink is worth making unless you have company over.  Maybe you're throwing a bachelor party or the sort of baby shower where the women disappear off and leave the men in the kitchen to chat awkwardly over finger food. If you're alone, it's not a huge improvement over a cold Guinness and isn't worth opening a bottle of champagne for unless you have a stomach of spandex and can really get down a bottle of champagne and an equal part of Guinness.  If you do have a stomach of spandex, post a picture in the comments.

Final verdict

Perfectly fine, not going to go out of my way to make again

A Learning Experience

The flavor text for this drink begins: "Tradition dictates that any variation in the Bellini's recipe is a bastardization best shunned."  Given the amount of work we've put into finding the correct liquors, glasses, etc. for the rest of this project, you'd think that upon reading that we'd take extra care to make the Bellini exactly like the recipe called for.  You would, of course, be wrong.

The Bellini was created by the proprietor of Harry's Bar in Venice, Italy.  Legend has it that Cipriani, the proprietor, put together this drink and found the color reminiscent of the robe of a saint in a painting by Giovanni Bellini.  While the Internet is unclear on which painting it is, my best guess is the Madonna and Child with Saints Peter, Catherine, Jerome and Lucy, which is near the altar of the San Zaccaria in Venice.  The kneeling saint, if she is indeed a saint, has a robe that is close to the bright pink color of a correctly made Bellini.  The painting is arranged so that at particular times of day a beam of light hits each saint's robe in turn (cite), so it is easy to see how this would have left an impression on a Venetian bartender.                                     

Drink #5: Bellini

• 4 oz prosecco (an Italian sparkling wine)
• 1 oz white peach puree

Peel and puree 3-4 white ripe peaches, mix with 1oz simple syrup and strain, chill.  Pour 1oz nectar into chilled champagne flute, top with prosecco.

The astute among you will notice that we didn't quite make it to saint's robe color.  Our first recommendation for this drink is to make it when peaches are actually in season and you don't have to choose between unripe fruit from Chile and a can.  Secondly, yellow peaches, even organic ones, are not a recommended substitution.  Finally, puréeing and muddling are really not the same thing, no matter how much you don't want to clean the blender.

The end result was that while the prosecco was delicious on it's own, the drink as a whole was a flop and borderline undrinkable. 

Final Verdict 

Worth a re-try using the proper recipe during peach season.

Accept No Substitutions

The main problem I have with today's drink, the Bacardi Cocktail, is that after the Aviation it is a significant letdown.  There is nothing wrong with it, and I'd feel comfortable ordering it at a bar in some sunny place where I just want something cool and slightly inebriating.

There is also some interesting history: apparently during prohibition this drink, whether or not it was actually made with Bacardi, was insanely popular.  The basic drink is just a daiquiri, which though delicious is rarely anything to write home about.  Grenadine started to become popular on mainland America (the "pink" daiquiri), and the Bacardi name ended up stuck to the drink. The Bacardi family had earned a level of notoriety for producing rum for the Spanish court and then using the proceeds to fund Cuba's independence movement.  They had enough clout on the US mainland that they convinced a New York appellate court in 1936 that the Bacardi cocktail could only be made with authentic Bacardi rum.  It may still be illegal: I'd love to hear if anyone has ever ordered this and had it made with another rum.

Drink #4: Bacardi Cocktail

• 1.75 oz Bacardi light (Wiki recommended superior)
• 1 oz lime juice
• .5 tsp simple syrum 
• dash grenadine

Shake with ice and strain.

The handsome man in the background is our friend Shamik, who was over and helping us taste.  Since we'd already gone through a round of Aviations, we decided that this made an acceptable second drink.  

I have has rum on my mind recently after having tasted a wonderful spread of rums last weekend.  Now that I've has some more interesting rum, I'm more and more convinced that crossing the Bacardi family is necessary to enjoying this drink.  We had some rums that tasted like scotch and smoke and some that tasted like candy.  Some of the complex candy rums (Matusalem, in particular) would be delicious in this, as I bet a real Cuban rum would be (but, of course, we would know nothing about real Cuban rum).  

Final Verdict

Boring with Bacardi, possibly tasty with something more complex

The Prince of Cocktails

Three drinks in, and we have already arrived at what I'm willing to bet is the best drink in the book.  Maybe it's because "Aviation" anagrams as "I to Avani", or because the flavor text claims the drink makes you smarter, or because I simply can't resist a preserved cherry, but this is my current default drink to judge the quality of a bar. (My shitty-bar default drink is an Amaretto sour, mostly because it's one of the few drinks that I don't think can be made undrinkably bad.)

The new liqueur this drink introduced was maraschino liqueur.  I've been saying "liquor" generically on this blog up until now, but seeing maraschino liqueur written out forced me to look up the difference.  The consensus on the Internet seems to be that "liqueurs" refers to alcohols with added sugar whereas "liquors", while they may still be sweet, have no added sugar.  Cordials used to be in their own category, namely booze with fruit sugar added, but they've been subsumed into generic "liqueurs" over the last century.

Back to maraschino liqueur.  This is a clear, sweet liqueur that tastes faintly of cherries.  The liquid in your jar of maraschino cherries has no resemblance whatsoever to maraschino liqueur.  I've never had this happen to me, but the author of the book warns against telling a bartender how to make this drink if you don't see a bottle of actual maraschino liqueur on the shelf in case they decide to feed you cherry flavored corn syrup.

Drink #3: Aviation

Recipe from Cocktails:

• 1.5 oz gin
• .5 oz maraschino liqueur
• .75 oz lemon juice (about a half lemon)

Shake with ice and add a maraschino cherry.

I used Hendricks again because I still haven't developed a taste for dry gin (though I am working diligently to rectify this).  In case it's somehow still in doubt, I love this drink.  It's interesting without being in your face or requiring you to be in the mood for a complicated drink.  It's not too sweet, but it doesn't feel like it'll make you sprout a carpet of chest hair.  It's good on a hot afternoon, before a meal, after a meal, as a late weekend breakfast...

After I made this drink for the first time, I started ordering it everywhere I went.  My favorite Aviation to date has been at the Vespers bar at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas.  The Vespers bartender added in a few drops of Creme de Violette before adding a perfect preserved sour cherry.  Creme de Violette is what happens when you take ten meadows worth of violets, boil them down into a cup of goop, and let said goop ferment until it's ready to attack in full violet glory.  I made all of that up, but it's easy to overdo the Creme de Violette (I bought this one: http://www.alpenz.com/images/poftfolio/violettefacts.htm); I think a few drops make this drink just a little sweeter and more complex, but more than that and you'll have a mouth full of flowers.  Recently, we've taked to just swirling some in the glass and dumping it out before pouring the shaker in.  This gives a little less violet than I like but is foolproof for making drinks for guests.

Final Verdict:

I'm off to go make one right now.