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1 ounce spirit (vodka, cognac, some mezcal see note)
1 ounce cherry heering
.5 ounce triple sec (Cointreau)
.5 ounce Creme de Cassis
generous splash of chocolate bitters
Shake or stir over / with ice, strain into an up glass. No garnish. Well, if you want to put a really nice cherry in there, no one will stop you. A twist is fine, too.
If you leave the chocolate bitters out, you have Adult Cough Syrup. If you are into that sort of thing.
Equal parts vodka, cherry heering and triple sec, with the chocolate bitters, but without the Creme de Cassis is also tasty, but meaningfully different.
Regarding the mezcal, anything smoky will overwhelm the rest of the drink. Crema del Maguey, however (which has a bunch of agave syrup in it) works fine. So if you do opt for mezcal, think about adding agave syrup or something similar.
I don't drink rum or gin, because they give me headaches (no, I don't know why either). I don't see any obvious reason you couldn't make this work with either of those as the base spirit.
This drink works well in a collins glass, full of crushed ice, especially if you add 1 ounce simple syrup. My husband referred to the cognac version of this drink, over crushed ice, with simple syrup, as "Brandy Candy".
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My 2018 New Year's Resolution was to get better at making more drinks consistently. I made a lot of Vanderbilts in January, especially after I discovered how good Vanderbilts are when you use chocolate bitters instead of Angostura. I figured I would make a pink drink in February and initially assumed that would be a cosmo. But I already had the cherry heering, and we had recently discovered how amazing Creme de Cassis was. I figured if you put those two in a drink with clear spirits, you'd probaby wind up with something pink and wonderful. I did some fiddling with teaspoon and tablespoon measurements before advancing to the proportions above.
I really wanted to get away from 2:1 drinks, since that is basically all I make. Prior to this, I had tinkered with existing drinks (adding Nocino to a manhattan, swapping the bitters in the Vanderbilt), but had not attempted a completely new recipe. It was a really fun process, altho complicated enough that I don't know how often I will do this (I have some food oriented plans around things like upside down pineapple cake, for example). I don't normally like extremely sweet drinks, but a lot of people do like them. I felt like it should be possible to produce a sweet drink with a lot of depth of flavor, that could be served up or over ice, and with an easily swapped base spirit, to please many people.
1.5 ounce Remy VSOP (or Rare Hine)
1.5 ounce Cointreau
1.5 ounce Cranberry Juice (RW Knudsen Just Cranberry or similar, so it can be from concentrate but no other ingredients)
.5 ounce Benedictine
Chill a coupe. Lime the rim. Sugar the rim. If you feel like it, you can garnish with lime wheel. Chill and mix or shake the ingredients. Enjoy!
If you don’t have benedictine and plain cranberry, you could probably use some more sweetened cranberry option instead. It would probably be good, if you like the cranberry beverage you choose.
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Copyright Rebecca Allen, 2018.
Created February 10, 2018 Updated April 6, 2018