Bitters

This twist on the classic whiskey cocktail is the perfect companion to the fall season.

Created during World War II by Donn Beach, the name is Morse code for “Victory.”

The delicate orange flavor of Aperol melds well with bitter lemon soda in this crisp cocktail.

This play on the classic whiskey smash incorporates spicy, dark rum and the pride of July farmers' markets everywhere: fresh cherries.

Coffee-Cherry Simple Syrup lends fruity and floral notes to this refreshing summer cocktail. The name is misleading: the syrup contains neither cherries nor coffee beans. When harvesting coffee, farmers pick coffee cherries, which are shelled for their bean pits. The beans are roasted to become the coffee you know. While the cherries are usually discarded, you can actually steep their husks in hot water for an aromatic tea.

Wine spritzers are an excellent way to bluff your way through the wine hour. Spend your time and money on the accoutrements ("fancy" club soda, fresh garnishes, big ice cubes) instead of the main ingredient (wine) and still impress guests.

This is a cocktail everyone should master. Bonus: It gives you a chance to experiment with all those new bitters.

Poring through old cocktail books, we noted that every reputable bar had a house recipe for bitters. Originally we played with infusing bitter herbs and spices in absinthe but found the task too time-consuming and the results too inconsistent. We settled instead on a blend of different absinthes, Green Chartreuse, and bitters to create just the right balance of anise and bitterness.

According to cocktail historians, this cocktail first appeared in print in 1895 in Modern American Drinks by George J. Kappeler. Although this drink has fallen into obscurity today, it appeared in every respectable cocktail book printed in the early twentieth century, with the same easy recipe. It seems this drink always had the favor of knowledgeable bartenders and connoisseurs, as its unique blend of flavors could be very challenging to the untrained palate of the casual drinker. In other words, this drink is best recommended for people who have moved beyond simple straightforward flavors and are looking for a carnival in the mouth. The Widow’s Kiss is a seasonal experience best enjoyed when it is cold outside. This classic cocktail is also one of the few cocktails we recommend as a digestive or an after-dinner cocktail.

The Yellow Jacket cocktail was inspired by chance circumstances and a little harassment. For weeks, we had toyed with the idea of mixing together Partida Reposado tequila and St-Germain elderflower liqueur, but there was a piece of the puzzle missing. Then one evening, a bunch of obnoxious cocktail geeks came into Employees Only to stump the bartenders by ordering the Last Word cocktail. After being satisfied with that drink, they asked if we knew of another drink with Chartreuse. At that moment, Yellow Chartreuse became the ingredient needed to bind together the elderflower and tequila. So pretty and elegant, the rich yellow color grabs your attention. The true beauty of this drink, though, is the interplay of the ingredients. The light oak on the Partida Reposado tequila works so well with the St-Germain, and they in turn produce a perfect ground for Yellow Chartreuse to bring it all into balance. The orange bitters play a key role. This cocktail is similar in style to the Widow’s Kiss cocktail (page 141), as they both contain very sweet herbaceous ingredients balanced by high alcohol content. It’s named for the yellow jacket wasps that inhabit agave farms and tequila distilleries.

This is a cocktail that was composed by one of our bartenders, former U.S. Marine Steve Schneider. According to him, he got tired of mixing White Ladies and wanted something more exciting and powerful to offer as a gin cocktail. When asked to describe his intention, he simply said: “Alongside a beautiful lady should be a handsome man in a tux. By replacing Cointreau with a touch of simple syrup and orange bitters, you are getting an easy, yet stunning White Lady variation, which is more appealing to the modern palate.”

Pisco became popular on the West Coast, especially in San Francisco, during the days of the Gold Rush. Many ships would bring men from the East Coast around Cape Horn, through the Strait of Magellan and up the West Coast. One of the stops for provisions was the popular port town of Pisco. There they would load up on the eponymous brandy and bring whatever was left with them to Northern California. Soon the spirit became a commodity on the trade route of the western seaboard. (This would, of course, later decline with the creation of the Panama Canal cutting Peru out of the route.) The Pisco Punch was created during the late 1800s by a barkeep named Duncan Nicol at the Bank Exchange and Billiard Saloon in San Francisco. The exact recipe was never shared with anyone but was enjoyed by the likes of Mark Twain and Jack London. After Nicol’s passing, those who knew offered up their interpretations of the Pisco Punch.

The Pisco Sour is the official drink of Peru; there is even a National Pisco Sour Day, celebrated the first Saturday in February. Pisco brandy was first established by Spanish conquistadors, who planted grape vines as they traversed the mountainous terrains of Chile and Peru—and Chile also claims the Pisco as a national treasure. There is good reason for the debate, as Pisco was the first distilled spirit in the New World. The now-classic Pisco Sour was created in the 1920s by ex-pat American bartender Victor V. “Gringo” Morris at the Morris’ Bar in Lima, as a local variation on the Whiskey Sour. The cocktail became a favorite among the locals and quickly spread up the West Coast of America as far north as San Francisco, where it was popular by the late 1930s. This version contained pisco brandy, egg white, lime juice, simple syrup, and aromatic bitters served frothy and straight up. A specific kind of lime called Limon de Pica is the right ingredient for the Peruvian classic. Some places in Peru grate nutmeg or cinnamon on top of the cocktail to finish it; our version includes the nutmeg. The Peruvian Pisco Sour is the perfect brunch companion as a restorative drink: musky and clean, with a rich texture and alluring bitters.

We have served this variation of the Pisco Sour ever since we first learned about the drink in the mid-1990s. There weren’t many Pisco choices available back then, so we worked with what we had. One brand we used was Pisco Capel Reservado from Chile, a blend of 30 percent Muscat and 70 percent Pedro Jimenez and Torontel grapes, which give the spirit a nice sweet full flavor, as it’s aged in wood for up to 6 months. Because of the slight oak, it combines beautifully with fresh lemon juice, so our variation was a gringo-styled sour, tall over ice. Little did we know that the true Peruvian Pisco Sour (page 115) was created by a gringo as well.

There is an old tale about a creature that dwells in the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey. The Jersey Devil is three and a half feet tall, with hoofed hind legs, claws on its front legs, a horse-like head, and bat wings. Rumored to be born of a witch and Satan himself, the Jersey Devil has been blamed for odd sightings, missing people, and stolen livestock since colonial days. Around the same time the legend was born, the Laird family began distilling apple cider. Perfecting the family recipe for applejack, the Laird & Company Distillery became the first commercial distillery in America and is still in business today. They even weathered Prohibition, selling sweet cider and applesauce until they received a special license to produce “medicinal brandy.” Their two main products are Laird’s Apple Brandy and Laird’s AppleJack. The brandy is a 100-proof spirit distilled solely from apples; the AppleJack is a blended spirit of 35 percent apple brandy and 65 percent whiskey. Our Jersey Devil cocktail artistically uses the 100-percent apple brandy and blends it with a unique ingredient—the English Bishop, which calls for roasting a clove-studded orange in a fire and infusing it with port wine. This drink was one of the first to fall into our “fancy cocktail” category because of the detail in the ingredients. It’s also a killer drink and can be successfully used to bait and tranquilize a Jersey Devil.

We will not simply turn a blind eye to the contemporary version of the Old Fashioned—it was the first cocktail we were taught that used bitters. Somewhere between the 1890s and 1930s, what probably started out as an ornamental garnish of orange and cherry fell into the mixing glass and got muddled with sugar and bitters. We see evidence of this drink in Burke’s Complete Cocktail and Drinking Recipes from 1936, in which the fruit is muddled, whereas during the same period Old Mr. Boston Bartender’s Guide continued to add the fruit after making the drink. More than likely it was a trick used during Prohibition to mask poor-quality booze that stuck with many and was passed down over the generations. Today, many look down on this version of the cocktail, mostly because of the use of commercial, artificial maraschino cherries. Many young cocktail enthusiasts may not have enjoyed this cocktail in its original form, so we offer this restoration for them.

The name “Old Fashioned” here refers to what was once known as the Whiskey Cocktail. It is a cocktail in the simplest terms: spirit, water, bitters, and sugar. Sometime in the late 1800s, the use of the word “cocktail” broadened far beyond its original definition, so it was necessary to come up with a new moniker to distinguish the older cousin. Many self-described purists will argue that there is only one way to make this drink properly. We disagree. So if you decide to order a whiskey cocktail as an Old Fashioned, be precise about what you want. Intentionally being ambiguous about your order is just a nice way of being obnoxious.