The Latin Negroni: The Agavoni

One of the things that I've been seeing crop up more and more in both cocktail bars and in the cocktail nerd community is the mixing of geographically disparate spirits to make unconventional cocktails.  Although cocktails have always combined spirits from different places (think gin and vermouth or absinthe and rhy) for certain spirits, there seems to be a limited amount of geographic diversity.  I don't see too many Northern European spirits like genever gin mixed with rum for instance.  Sometimes there is a good reason for that because the flavors just don't work out but other times I think some creativity is rewarded.  That brings up a drink I made last night, the Agavoni, courtesy of Bastian Heuser editor of the German magazine, Mixology.

As the name somewhat implies, this drink combines agave, the primary ingredient of tequila, with the Negroni, an Italian cocktail that includes gin, Campari, and sweet vermouth.

The Agavoni

Ingredients
0.75 ounce of blanco tequila (Tres Generations)
0.75 ounce of Campari
0.75 ounces of sweet vermouth (Dolin)
2 dashes of orange bitters

Directions
Fill an old fashioned glass with ice cubes.  Add ingredients and stir gently.  Garnish with a grapefruit peal.

Outcome
I thought that, while sharing the Negroni's bitter interplay between the vermouth and the Campari, the Agavoni, felt a little more accessible, even with the orange bitters.  The tequila created a smooth, almost herbal background when combined with the bitters and grapefruit peal oils.  All and all, this makes a nice sister drink the Negroni.  It is not as clean as the Negroni, but the added complexity is coherent and purposeful.

Mixology Monday: The Hiding Quetzal

This week's Mixology Monday, hosted by Adventures in Cocktails, challenges participants to create a cocktail highlighting a niche spirit.  I've been recently playing around with a bottle of guaro, a Costa Rican spirit, which I picked up on vacation.  Guaro, as I've described before, is sugar cane-based and very mild, perhaps closer to vodka in flavor than to rum.

My recent attempts to accompany the spirit with mild secondary ingredients to highlight it have led to weak and muddled cocktails - in part because of a misguided foray into watermelon juice.  Here, I've decided to flip things rather violently with the Hiding Quetzal Cocktail, named after the famous but elusive Costa Rican bird, surrounding the spirit with very strong and opposing flavors. 

The Hiding Quetzal

Ingredients

1 ounces of guaro

0.2 ounce of Benedictine

0.25 ounce of Campari 

0.25 ounce of lemon juice

Directions

Shake ingredients with ice and garnish with a lemon peal.

Outcome

I enjoyed this drink quite a bit.  The guaro provides a background flavor and texture.  You can taste the guaro initially but it quickly gives way to a surprisingly good interplay between the Campari (maybe the most bitter spirit I have) and the Benedictine (perhaps the sweetest).  The lemon juice brings the flavors together and keeps the drink on the savory side.   

Consuming the Shame Part 1: Ginja

As mentioned in my last post, I have a small bottle of a Portuguese liqueur called Ginja, perhaps the most unusual thing in my liquor cabinet.  It's 38 proof and taste very sweet, like the syrup in a bottle of maraschino cherries.  It isn't as strong a flavor as my Luxardo Maraschino liqueur and does not feature as complex a flavor profile.  Traditionally, it is either sipped as a dessert or taken in shots.  Further adding to my challenge, I think I bought a crappy brand.  I saw this particular brand in a lot of stores and picked it up pretty cheap, but looking at Google Images, there are some bottles that look nicer, though I really can't gauge quality on this type of drink at all.

Before getting to the drinks, a couple thoughts about trying to salvage "challenging" spirits. 

1. Don't be afraid to fail, because you probably will.
2. Feel free to throw away bad drinks.  If something taste bad, don't feel guilted into finishing it.  It will make such experimentation most unpleasant.
3. Don't use the highest end spirits to mix your first tries.  You will waste good booze.
4. Make half drinks.  Since you will probably make mistakes, make them smaller.
5. Start simple and work towards complex.  Before you understand the basics of how a spirit works with others, avoid more complex concoctions.
6. Find analogues and work from there.  For instance, if yours is a sweeter, tarter, stronger, or weaker version of a more common spirit, consider trying a variation on a drink using that spirit but adjust the ratios of all ingredients based on the special characteristics of your new spirit.

Onto the trials and errors.
My first attempt was a variation on the Boulevardier, which uses bourbon, Campari, and sweet vermouth.  The idea was to balance the sweetness of Ginja with the bitterness of Campari.  This drink, as I will discuss, deserves no name.

Ingredients:
1.5 ounces of bouron (Jim Beam)
.5 ounces of Campari
.5 ounces of Ginja

Directions:  Stir with ice and strain into a chilled glass and garnish with a lemon peal.

Outcome:  Utter failure.  Perhaps the ratios could have been a bit different (the Boulevardier uses more vermouth and Campari.  Really though, I don't think this had much of a shot.  The Campari overwhelmed the Ginja, which mixed with the bourbon to give a sickly, sort of medicine-like aftertaste.  I did not finish the drink.

My next attempt, which I will call The Slipper, was a variant on a martini.  This was not very ambitious but avoided the bad interplay between the bourbon and the Ginja.

Ingredients:
2 ounces of gin
.5 ounce of dry vermouth
.5 ounce of Ginja

Directions:  Stir with ice and strain into a chilled glass.

Outcome:  Surprisingly not bad.  Not particularly good, but certainly drinkable.  If anything, I probably could have added a bit more ginja, as it kind of get's lost behind the vermouth and the gin (I used Beefeater).  As pungent as Ginja is, the drink's nose was dominated by the gin.  The balance was relatively good and the contrasts in flavors worked reasoanbly well.  At a technical level there was nothing wrong with the drink, I just didn't particularly like it.  I think this is a personal thing that I have with cherries.  I like cherries - I just don't really like them in stuff. Cherry pie?  No thanks. Jam?  I'll pass. Garnish for a Manhattan? I'll go with the orange peal.

My last attempt took for inspiration a drink I found on Webtender I think.  I'm calling it Abe's Revenge. 

Ingredients:
2 ounces of orange juice
1 ounce of blended Scotch
.5 ounce of sweet (French) vermouth
.5 ounce of Ginja

Directions:  Stir ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled glass.  Further recommendation, unlike what I did, strain the OJ through a sugar sifter to get rid of the pulp. It will make your drink look nicer and taste smoother.

Outcome:  Legitimately decent.  This drink was something that I might have again at some point.  The interesting thing is that the tastes seem to progress - from OJ, to scotch, to Ginja and vermouth.  The cherry gives the drink a pleasant smell and the flavors balance relatively well.  I'm still not in love with the cherry flavor of Ginja, but it works pretty well here.

The Old Pal Cocktail

Ingredients

1 ounce of rhy
3/4 ounce of dry vermouth
3/4 ounce Campari
lemon twist

Directions:  Stir and pour into a cocktail glass and garnish with lemon

Taste (flavor, balance, and clarity): 7
I'm of mixed minds about this drink.  If you want a strong but tart drink, this is an excellent choice.  The taste is layered with the rhy and Campari coming through and the vermouth laying in the background.  On the other hand, it is not balanced.  That might not always be a bad thing though.  While I typically don't prefer drinks with multiple sweet or bitter taste (the vermouth and Campari are both pretty bitter, as is the lemon), the drink has a very coherent flavor profile, which I appreciate.  While I'm usually not a fan of putting ice in drinks, I think it really helped the Old Pal.  Because the drink is so strong, it lends itself to sipping. Further, I think the ice took away the "sharpness" of the vermouth so that as the 20 or so minutes that I drank the the Old Pal wore on, the flavors blended better and the rhy came through a bit more, which was a good thing.

Versatility (when and for who the drinks works): 3
 This is a strong drink that one must sit down and savor to enjoy. I don't think of the Old Pal as something I would quaff on my patio while working the grill.  This is more a drink that I sip while chatting with friends or reading.  This is not a drink for the casual imbiber, such as my wife.  Most of my friends shy away from particularly bitter drinks and they don't get too much more bitter than this.

Hassle (cost and time):  9
This drink is really easy to make.  Just dump the ingredients in the shaker, stir poor, and garnish.  Further, the ingredients, especially with my middling rhy and Martin and Rossie vermouth were quite cheap. 

Overall:  6
I initially didn't much care for this drink, finding the Campari and dry vermouth redundant, as the drink settled and the ice melted a bit, it really came together though.  More than bitter, I would call this drink spicy, with relatively hash notes from the Campari and rhy and accented by the lemon. That said, I think the Old Pal is for a very specific setting and won't work well for most people, hence the low rating - but for the right person and the right time, it can be a low-effort gem.

 Potential Improvements
 I like the interplay with the rhy and the Campari, though I might use a tad less of the former, as it's by for the strongest flavor in the drink.  My concern is more with the dry vermouth, which feels a little redundant with the Campari and perhaps pushes the Old Pal to be a little bit more bitter than is ideal.  I might try replacing it with 1/2 ounce of Contreau.  Alternatively, 1/2 ounce of lemoncello would maintain the citrus flavor of the lemon and Campari but sweeten the drink little.

Update:  The Orange Pal
I made this cocktail again but substituted 1/2 ounce of Contreau for the vermouth.  Although perhaps a little less coherent, I thought the drink had better balance.  A friend of mine tried it and though it was an elegant cocktail that was much less challenging than the traditional Old Pal.  Though Contreau is a bit pricier than vermouth, I'll bump this cocktail up to a 7.5 because I think it is more balanced and a lot more people would enjoy it than the rather bitter Old Pal.