Washington Cocktail
2 Dashes Angostura Bitters. (2 dash Angostura Bitters)
2 Dashes Syrup. (1 teaspoon Small Hand Foods Gum Syrup)
2/3 French Vermouth. (1 1/2 oz Noilly Prat Dry Vermouth)
1/3 Brandy. (3/4 oz Chateau Pellehaut Armagnac Reserve)
Shake (I stirred) well and strain into cocktail glass.
A Vermouth Cocktail with a stick, there is nothing wrong with this cocktail, in fact rather enjoyable. The combination of French Vermouth and Brandy makes more sense to me than the combination of French Vermouth and Whiskey.
In fact, it kind of reminds me of a light version of of my coworker’s drinks at Heaven’s Dog, Dion Jardine’s, amusingly named variation on the Brooklyn, Brandy Does Brooklyn:
Brandy Does Brooklyn
1.5 armagnac
.75 dry vermouth
Shy .5 maraska
Shy .5 picon or amaro nonino
Stir and strain into a cocktail glass.
Now, if only Dion would get his act together and launch the blog he has been threatening, “Drinking with Bartenders”.
This post is one in a series documenting my ongoing effort to make all of the cocktails in the Savoy Cocktail Book, starting at the first, Abbey, and ending at the last, Zed.
Very similar to a Metropole, one of those drinks that when I crave it, nothing else will do. Not that I crave it terribly often.
I don’t think you want the accounts of your night at The Phonebooth published on the web, it might devalue your opinions on cocktails
Well, I’d hate to let it get out, how much of a lightweight I am…
But wouldn’t that have to be for a different blog, “drinking with elderly, dilettante bartender, techworker, blogger geeks”?
Or how about a blog called “younger bartenders who got ICED at work”?
Just a thought, but might they have used the two measurements with the understanding that the 3 dashes of bitters and 3 of syrup would fill up the remaining 1/6 of the drink? Sort of a 1:1 of brandy Old-Fashioned and dry vermouth?
JC. Possible, I suppose, though very few other recipes are written similarly. If the bars “pour” was small enough and the dashes generous enough, those 4 dashes would be probably be plenty to make up for the missing Sixth.
I’m not sure what the issue is here with the 1/2 French and 1/3 Brandy, my editions say 2/3 French and 1/3 Brandy, which since these recipes are in fractions of the whole, is really all that makes sense?
Oops, you’re right Robert, that must have been a transcription error on my part. Amusingly, those are the proportions I made, anyway.
And this might explain why Heaven’s Dog has a *well* armagnac…