Author: Bob Westal

It’s blood orange season and they seem to be in every supermarket here in LA and hopefully it’s the same wherever you are. These tangy, purple fleshed citrus treats and their bright-red juice have long  been associated with Blood and Sand but that’s about it for classic cocktails.  I’ve messed around with sanguinary citrus a few times – including another sour variation near the start of this whole pandemic business. Time for another go. Blood Sage is credited to Ryan Magarian, a longtime restaurant/bar guy who is the co-founder of Aviation Gin with Ryan Reynolds. It’s therefore presumably designed to complement Aviation, but is it…

The absurdly alcoholic Vesper is one of the most celebrated cocktails that many of us secretly hate. Once known only to hardcore 007 fans and cocktail geeks, the Vesper appeared in the very first James Bond novel and was either created by author Ian Fleming himself or, if you believe Wikipedia, his bartender friend, Ivar Bryce. The drink finally hit the big time 53 years later when Daniel Craig ordered it onscreen in the wildly successful film version of the original Bond adventure, “Casino Royale.” But there was a problem. As cocktail super-historian David Wondrich explained in 2006, the ingredients in the drink had…

2022 is hours away but I’m going around the usual New Year’s fizzy wine folderol. Instead, I’m saluting second, third, and fourth chances with the Corpse Reviver #2. It remains among the most popular drinks unearthed in the 21st-century classic cocktail revival and it’s got more than its share of devotees. I last looked at it in 2012 so it’s high time for an update. As some of you will know, the drinks in the Corpse Reviver subgenre were putatively intended as post-bender pick-me-ups during a time when alcoholism wasn’t so much a disease as a national sport. We have better cures now,…

When I first started researching this here Merry Christmas DOTW edition, I found a recipe for something claiming to be Edgar Allen Poe’s eggnog. Sadly, I’ve found no evidence that the dark lord of American letters really had anything to do with the invention of today’s frosty delight. Indeed, while it’s clear that Baltimore Eggnog has over a century of history behind it, I’ve found little about its provenance or even whether people in Baltimore still drink this stuff. I hope they do as this is one of the better variations I’ve found on the deliciously simple eggnog template. The primary twist…

It’s time to get a little festive here at DOTW. According to The Spruce Eats, the Snowball Brandy Cocktail originally comes from something called Applegreen’s Bar Book published circa 1900. 121 years later, this is my first encounter with a drink that deserves to be a household name. It’s a simple, delicious fizz, and works well, even with the cheap stuff. The Snowball Brandy Cocktail 2 ounces brandy ½ ounce simple syrup (2-3 teaspoons of superfine sugar if you insist) 1 large egg white or 1 ounce of pasteurized packaged egg white Ginger ale or ginger beer to top, preferably chilled Combine all…

After a couple of months of messing around with mezcal and finding its arguable equivalent to the Margarita, I realized I had a cocktail-sized hole to fill. It’s been about 10 years and 6 months since I looked at the standard version of the world’s most popular mixed drink. The Margarita is a relatively recent invention and was all but unknown before the 1970s. That’s not surprising since tequila itself was exotic to most Norte Americanos until about the time a surf-tune named for the spirit hit the Top 40. David Embury – author of the opinionated booze-lit classic, The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks – dismissed…

You can make a margarita with mezcal in place of tequila but it’s very much its own spirit and deserves its own flagship cocktail. I nominate the Mayahuel. Likely invented at a shuttered New York cocktail bar of the same name by bartender Phil Ward, and still on the menu at a mezcal-centric tavern in D.C., the Mayahuel has the right balance of sour, sweet, boozy, and floral/earthy flavors to bring out the best in mezcal. It adds two transformational ingredients to the margarita template: agave and a special type of salt that’s kind of buggy. You see, mezcal is…

I’m still learning the ways of mezcal but, in terms of what you can do with it, it’s not so different from tequila, gin, or whiskey. I’m going to get more into its distinctive flavor – somewhere between tequila, gin, and a smoky dryish Scotch – in the next post. For now, we have another treat from the mixologists at Mezcal Amarás. It’s a fun sour with my favorite non-booze cocktail ingredient, egg white. What’s especially interesting to me about this one is how the flavors blend – what stands out, and what doesn’t. The Pineapple Sour 2 ounces Mezcal Amarás….or Brand…

It’s a little embarrassing to admit after nearly a decade, but this is the first DOTW with mezcal. I’ve enjoyed drinks made with the misunderstood cousin of tequila at bars but, until very recently, nary a bottle of the stuff has passed through the doors of palatial DOTW Manor. Lucky me, the good people at Mezcal Amáras have seen fit to throw some bottles at me along with the professional photography you see right here. I once figured that the only inherent difference between mezcal and tequila was that the latter had to be made from agave grown in Mexico’s…

It’s been a rough week-month-year-decade-century-eon. Labor Day Weekend, however, is here and while many realities suck big weenie, we can focus on things that are fun.  And, for me, fizzes using egg white are easily the funnest kind of mixed drink. They are the bomb, the cat’s PJs, and all that, plus a bag of kettle-cooked chips, the ne plus ultra of boozy refreshment if you will. Disagree? I will fight you. Today’s drink is my transformation of the already delightful Hemingway Daiquiri into a delightfuler, more sugary, milk-shake headache inducer. I’d like to think it could have lightened the…