Sips & Synopsis

• This Weeks Makings

• Trivia Question

• Drink of the Week - Vieux Carré

• Behind the Bar - Stirring

• Bonus Cocktails

• Mocktail or Zero Proof Option

This Weeks Makings.

The porch chairs have gone cold. Last week I was still eating dinner out there. This week I was back inside by seven.

Fall arrives Tuesday evening, September 22. The equinox lands at 00:05 UTC on the 23rd, which puts it at 8:05 in the evening on the East Coast and 5:05 on the West.

So this week we are making the Vieux Carré. Rye, cognac, sweet vermouth, and a spoonful of Bénédictine, stirred and poured over one big cube. A New Orleans drink from 1938, built for a room with the windows shut.

In this week's newsletter:

• The Vieux Carré, five ingredients from a bar that turns in circles

• Stirring, and why a shaker would wreck this drink

• Two bonus cocktails, one agave and one rum

• A trivia question about the three letters on a bottle of Bénédictine

• A zero proof version with the same spice and weight

Trivia Question❓

Every bottle of Bénédictine has three letters on the label: D.O.M. What do they stand for?

• A. The initials of the man who first bottled it

• B. A Latin phrase meaning to God, most good, most great

• C. Dry Orange Maceration, the method used to make it

• D. The name of the abbey where it is still distilled

Answer at the bottom of the newsletter

The Vieux Carré

Rye, cognac, sweet vermouth, and a spoonful of Bénédictine. Stirred, never shaken, and poured over ice in a glass you already own.

Ingredients

• 1 oz rye whiskey

• 1 oz cognac

• 1 oz sweet vermouth

• 1 teaspoon Bénédictine

• 1 dash Peychaud's bitters

• 1 dash Angostura bitters

• Ice for stirring, plus one large cube for the glass

• Lemon peel to garnish

Directions

1. Add the rye, cognac, sweet vermouth, Bénédictine, and both bitters to a mixing glass

2. Fill the mixing glass two thirds with ice

3. Stir for about 30 seconds, until the outside of the glass is cold and wet

4. Strain into a rocks glass over one large cube

5. Twist a lemon peel over the surface and drop it in

Why It Works
Walter Bergeron made the first one in 1938 at the Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans, where he was head bartender (the hotel tells the story here). The room he made it in still turns. The Carousel Bar goes a full circle every fifteen minutes.

Three spirits sounds like too many until you taste it. Rye brings pepper, cognac brings fruit, and sweet vermouth sits underneath holding the two of them together. The teaspoon of Bénédictine is the part people skip and should not. It is honey and herbs and a little baking spice, and it fills the gap between the whiskey and the brandy. Two bitters instead of one, because Peychaud's is floral and Angostura is dark, and this drink wants both ends of that. The hotel's own printed recipe pours a full ounce of Bénédictine. Start at a teaspoon and work up from there if you want it sweeter.

Behind the Bar - Stirring

Here is the rule, and it covers almost every drink you will ever make. If there is citrus, egg, or dairy in the glass, shake it. If everything going in is spirit, vermouth, liqueur, or bitters, stir it.

Shaking beats air into a drink. That is what you want in a sour, where the foam and the cloudiness are part of it. Do that to a Vieux Carré and you get a pale, frothy, watered-down version of a drink whose whole appeal is weight and clarity.

How to stir well:

• Fill a mixing glass two thirds with ice, not all the way

• Put the back of the bar spoon against the inside wall and push the ice around in a circle

• Keep the spoon moving and the ice turning in one smooth ring, no clatter

• Go about 30 seconds, until the outside of the glass frosts and your fingers complain

• Strain immediately

Thirty seconds sounds long. It is not. You are doing two jobs at once, chilling the drink and adding about a quarter of its volume in water, and that water is not a flaw. It is an ingredient. A Vieux Carré stirred for ten seconds tastes hot and tight.

A few tools that help:

• A mixing glass with a heavy base so it stays put

• A weighted bar spoon long enough to reach the bottom

• A julep strainer, which sits down in the mixing glass and holds the ice back

None of it is required. A pint glass and the handle of a wooden spoon will get you most of the way there.

Bonus Cocktails

Two more this week. One smoky, one light, neither one touching the rye.

The Oaxaca Old-Fashioned

Reposado tequila with a half ounce of mezcal underneath it.

Ingredients

• 1.5 oz reposado tequila

• 0.5 oz mezcal

• 1 teaspoon agave syrup

• 2 dashes Angostura bitters

• One large ice cube

• Orange peel to garnish

Directions

Add the tequila, mezcal, agave syrup, and bitters to a mixing glass with ice. Stir for about 30 seconds. Strain into a rocks glass over one large cube. Twist an orange peel over the surface and drop it in.

Why it works
Phil Ward made the first one at Death & Co in Manhattan in 2007, after the owner brought mezcal behind the bar for the staff to play with (Punch has the account). Half an ounce of mezcal is a small pour and it changes the whole glass. At that dose smoke reads as a flavor sitting behind the tequila. Any more and it stops being a background note. Reposado does the rest, because a few months in oak leaves enough vanilla in the tequila to meet the agave syrup halfway.

El Presidente

Rum, blanc vermouth, a little orange curaçao, and a spoon of grenadine. Pale pink and completely dry.

Ingredients

• 2 oz aged or gold rum

• 0.75 oz blanc vermouth

• 1 teaspoon orange curaçao

• 1 teaspoon grenadine

• Orange peel

• One cocktail cherry, optional

Directions

Add the rum, vermouth, curaçao, and grenadine to a mixing glass with ice. Stir for about 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled coupe. Twist an orange peel over the top, discard the peel, and drop in a cherry.

Why it works
This one comes out of Havana in the 1920s and was named for a Cuban president. Eddie Woelke, an American bartender working at the Jockey Club during Prohibition, is usually credited with it, and usually credited is the honest way to say it. The attribution has never been settled (Punch lays out the history). The teaspoon of grenadine is the only sugar in the glass, which is why the drink finishes dry instead of sweet. Measure it. A free pour turns this into fruit punch.

Mocktail or Zero Proof Option

The Zero Proof Vieux Carré

Black tea for the whiskey, spiced honey for the Bénédictine, and the same lemon peel over the top.

Ingredients

• 2 oz strong brewed black tea, cooled (Assam or English breakfast)

• 0.75 oz spiced honey syrup

• 0.25 oz fresh lemon juice

• 2 dashes non-alcoholic aromatic bitters

• One large ice cube

• Lemon peel to garnish

Directions

For the syrup, simmer a quarter cup of water with one clove, one allspice berry, and a strip of orange peel for five minutes. Take it off the heat, stir in three quarters of a cup of honey, let it cool, then strain it.

For the drink, add the tea, syrup, lemon juice, and bitters to a mixing glass with ice. Stir for about 20 seconds. Strain over one large cube. Twist a lemon peel over the top and drop it in.

Spirit-forward drinks are the hardest ones to do without alcohol, because what you are missing is weight and not flavor. Tannin is the closest thing to a substitute, so brew the tea at double strength. The clove and allspice stand in for the Bénédictine, which is where most of the spice in the original comes from. Stir this one too. Shaking it puts air in it, and a heavy glass is the whole point.