Tuesday, January 27, 2009

An Unlikely Success


This recipe stopped me in my tracks as I was paging through my Beverage Alcohol Resource manual, and not just because the name of the drink is The Dreamy Dorini Smoky Martini—though that name is enough to give one pause.

I was surprised to find it, one, because it's a vodka cocktail and B.A.R. chieftains are not known for their endorsement of vodka, and, two, it's the creation of Pegu Club's Audrey Saunders, another non-vodka lover. With those twin endorsements, I felt I had to give it a spin. Here's the formula:

1/2 oz. Laphroaig 10-year Scotch or other peaty Scotch
2 oz. Vodka
2-3 drops Pernod.

Shake well over ice. Serve up in Martini glass with lemon twist.


Mighty particular on her scotch, isn't Audrey? Well, I didn't happen to have Laphroaig on hand. Truth to tell, I usually don't have more than two single malt scotches on hand at any given time. A bar, I ain't. So I used one of my favorites, Cragganmore, which is a Speyside, not an Islay like Laphroaig. So sue me. And, since the B.A.R. guide was published before there were so many absinthes on the market, I used Pernod's absinthe.

Anyway, I think Audrey has something here. You can impose any flavor on vodka, of course, and the mistake most mixologists make with the spirit is to smother it in flavors, usually fruit flavors, until you're not aware that they's liquor in the drink at all. That is not the case here. The scotch and Pernod accent the vodka, both in color and flavor. The drink is still clear, so you don't forget you have a white spirit in your hand. And the scotch and Pernod are in small enough amounts that the only suggest themselves, like a fog creeping in along the edges of an otherwise clear night.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This drink sounds pretty interesting -- very dry, where a lot of vodka cocktails are focused on sweet and/or sour. I'm a fan of smokey scotch in small doses, and I've been meaning to try both Pernod and the new Pernod Absinthe, but haven't gotten around to either yet. Have you had both, and if so, do you have a preference?

Ruck U said...

I'm excited to try this with Core Vodka, an apple sourced vodka from NY (www.harvestspirits.com)