Amortentia (Harry Potter Cocktail)

My wife, daughter and my wife’s best friend were organising a ‘Harry Potter Night’ on Saturday evening. All three of them are big fans of the Harry Potter movies. They picked their favourite movie from the series and were even doing a complete themed dinner. My daughter was wearing her Hogwarts shirt. Of course, they asked me to mix up a themed cocktail.

I made my take on the famous Amortentia Love Potion. Sometimes it’s made as a simple mix of cranberry juice, vodka and grenadine syrup. I searched for a more complex-flavoured recipe to make my variation. I wanted to use Drebbel Gin, which actually sounds like it’s from a Harry Potter movie anyway 😉   

Amortentia

Ingredients
40 ml Aperol
40 ml Pomegranate juice
25 ml Drebbel Gin
75 ml Prosecco

Method
Add Aperol, pomegranate juice and gin to your shaker with lots of ice. Shake hard for 15 seconds. Strain in a cocktail- or coppa glass with lots of fresh ice. Add chilled Prosecco and give it just one or two gentle stirs. Garnish with raspberries and pomegranate.

P.S. This cocktail is also perfect for pre-batching. But do remember not to shake the bottle !!!

Disclaimer: All pictures and texts are copyrighted by Geert Conard and Esito Management & Communications unless stated otherwise in the article. While some items might have been gifted by the producer or distributor, these are in no way paid promotions or recommendations. 

The Slightly Yellow Dirty Dog - Mellow Corn

Each year I seem to discover a few spirits that are somehow ‘different’ and really leave their mark in my memory. This year I had this feeling with Eddu buckwheat whisky from Normandy (FR), but also with this old-school Mellow Corn from Kentucky (US). For starters they might get the prize for least attractive labelling. But this screaming yellow bottle does have a nice surprise inside.

Mellow Corn is a Straight Corn Whiskey, which seems to be the predecessor of Bourbon. With this bottle we are absolutely going retro in booze-history.

Mashbill: 80% Corn, 12% Malted Barley and 8% Rye. Bottled at 100-Proof (50% Alcohol). Aged four years in a once-used bourbon barrel. The result is a lighter, straw coloured spirit. Heaven Hill is one of the last distillers that still produces this unique Straight Corn Whiskey.

My followers know I like a good Bourbon, so you can already imagine that I also like this whiskey. With 80% corn it’s pretty sweet, but at the same time it has a lot of spicy influences.

• Nose: Oak and delicate spices
• Taste: Full-bodied and textured, with a softly spiced sweetness.
• Finish: Sweet and chewy like a Barbadian rum.

Americans love to drink Bourbon, chased by a shot of pickle brine. They call this combination the pickleback. This tradition shows that “pickled” matches really good with corn whiskey. That brought me to the idea to use this whiskey for a variation on the Dirty Martini. I know that back in the days of illegal moonshine, they already did this with unaged spirit and called it the ‘Dirty White Dog’.

Slightly Yellow Dirty Dog

Ingredients
50 ml Mellow Corn Whiskey
20 ml Leoncé vermouth
10 ml Olive brine

Method
Add everything to your mixglass with lots of ice. Stir for 30 seconds. Strain in a chilled Martini glass. Add an olive.

Disclaimer : All pictures and texts are copyrighted by Geert Conard and Esito Management & Communications unless stated otherwise in the article. While some items might have been gifted by the producer or distributor, these are in no way paid promotions or recommendations.

Mom Gin Love

Watch out Moms, there’s a new sister in town !!!

Mom Gin, the popular Gin brand by Gonzalez Byass, released the third bottling of their spirit, still targeting our queens. This time they released a pink gin, still with lots of sweet strawberry flavours. They infused the gin again with strawberries after the fourth distillation. The result is a very fruity and easy sipping gin with a soft finish.

I’m not really a big fan of sweet gins. Sometimes even in cocktails, they seem pretty hard to balance. Do I like this bottle? I think I like it best pure on ice in a tumbler, as a companion for a sweet dessert. Hold the tonic, for me it’s optional but not really necessary.  

Disclaimer: All pictures and texts are copyrighted by Geert Conard and Esito Management & Communications unless stated otherwise in the article. While some items might have been gifted by the producer or distributor, these are in no way paid promotions or recommendations.

The Hokey Toki

I really don’t want to end up in a discussion about Japanese whisk(e)y versus Scotch whisky, but just let me say that these day in Japan they have some excellent bottles which work pretty good in cocktails. Suntory Toki blended whisky is one of my favourites for clean and tasty Japanese-style drinks.

Hokey Toki

Ingredients
60 ml Suntory Toki Whisky
15 ml Amaro Montenegro
15 ml Benedictine
2 dashes Regan’s Orange bitters
1 dash Grapefruit bitters

Method
Add all ingredients to a mixing glass with lots of ice. Stir for 15 seconds and strain over a large cube of ice. Garnish with grapefruit. 

Disclaimer : All pictures and texts are copyrighted by Geert Conard and Esito Management & Communications unless stated otherwise in the article. While some items might have been gifted by the producer or distributor, these are in no way paid promotions or recommendations. 

The Louisiana - Rittenhouse Rye

Fans of Double Strainger know that my favourite cocktails are the Old Fashioned and the Sazerac. The Old Fashioned I always relate to dark speakeasy bars, the Sazerac is the official cocktail of New Orleans. You could even call the Sazerac the New Orleans variation for the Old Fashioned. 

Today I’m shaking a very tasty variation on the Sazerac called The Louisiana. Unlike the Sazerac, you will need your shaker for this drink to get it mixed just right.

I used Rittenhouse Rye Whiskey as the base for this drink. If you ask bartenders around the world about their favourite Rye whiskey, Rittenhouse will absolutely be the top answer. 

If you want to lower the alcohol level for this drink, you can easily lower the amount of rye whiskey to 35 ml without changing the rest of the recipe. The 100-proof spirit will take care of it. Top quality spirit.

• Mashbill : 51% Rye, 35% Corn, 14% Malted Barley.
• Aroma : Dried fruits, sweet peppers, toffee.
• Taste : Clean, rich, cocoa, citrus, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla.
• Finish : Maple-like spiciness

Louisiana

Ingredients
50 ml Rittenhouse Rye whiskey
5 ml Absinthe
25 ml Cinzano sweet vermouth
15 ml Benedictine
3 dashes of Peychaud's bitters

Method
Add everything to your shaker with lots of ice. Shake for 12 seconds and double strain in a chilled coupe. Garnish with a cocktail cherry.

Disclaimer : All pictures and texts are copyrighted by Geert Conard and Esito Management & Communications unless stated otherwise in the article. While some items might have been gifted by the producer or distributor, these are in no way paid promotions or recommendations.

Spirits In Beringen 2021

Each year I’m more than happy to visit Spirits in Beringen, the local whisky and spirits festival in my town, Beringen. What I like most about this festival is that this is really the place to taste some old and rare bottlings. And also for this edition, that was a fact.

Stijn Hiers was presenting his new book on whisky and already whispered that he is working on his next book which will be a trip through America, focusing on all local spirits. 

At the booth of “Whisky from Belgium”, Patrick showed me the first bottle of his range which will release 4 bottlings each year, for 10 years. This first whisky is 10 years old, distilled at Wave Distillery in Dinant. Aged on virgin oak and bottled at 61% ABV. Lots of honey and vanilla. Looking forward to the next bottles, because he will also use different finishes.

“Brugse Whisky Company” was the most interesting booth. They didn’t sell any bottles, they came to Beringen to gain some visibility. Their core business is ageing whisky on different small casks, adding flavours to create maximum result. More or less what Daniel Quanten is also doing. He made me taste a fantastic Cognac.

This year I also gave the whisky club a challenge. I wanted to taste a spirit that was exactly my age, distilled in 1968. Ivo Drabs came to the rescue with a fantastic Prunier Cognac. I expected the Cognac to be slightly sticky and sweet and with a tempered alcohol level. Not at all. The balance was just perfect and the Cognac still had a great cask strength of 48,8% ABV. Ivo started his business with the range of Cognacs from Vallein-Tercinier. He build his knowledge to the point that he wanted to target for pure quality at cask strength. He found this at Cognac Prunier. The whole range is at cask strength with Cognac from the best regions.

Spirits in Beringen did it again. They succeeded in surprising us with some great old and rare bottles. This year we also got to taste a (free!) festival bottling. I was already happy when I saw the Douglas Laing logo on top of the bottle. This Old Particular was a great whisky from Cameronbridge.

Looking forward to next year's edition. 

Disclaimer : All pictures and texts are copyrighted by Geert Conard and Esito Management & Communications unless stated otherwise in the article. While some items might have been gifted by the producer or distributor, these are in no way paid promotions or recommendations.

The Perfect Grape Martini

Over the past years I’ve already covered lots of Martini cocktails on this blog. The variations are almost endless: Dry Martini, Reverse Martini, Breakfast Martini, Espresso Martini, Pornstar Martini,… But I don’t think I ever mixed up a real 50/50 Martini. 

The 50/50 Martini is actually more or less the original Martini, with even parts gin and vermouth. Sometimes confused with the Perfect Martini, which still has more gin than vermouth, but it does split the vermouth in even parts dry and sweet vermouth. 

Fact check 
In recipes pre-1900 the Martini was made with even parts of Old Tom Gin (a sweeter style of gin) and sweet vermouth. Around 1920 the Dry Martini became popular with a mix of dry gin and dry vermouth. The ratio changed to 2:1 which developed even further with just a rinse of vermouth as the most extreme. Unless you’re a fan of Churchill and only “look at the bottle of vermouth from across the room, while pouring a glass of gin”, but that quote might also be a myth 😉 

Martini Basics  

• Dry Martini : A Martini with much less vermouth. The less vermouth, the drier your Martini. Ratios can be anything between 3:1 and 100:1 (=just a rinse)
• Wet Martini : A Martini with more vermouth, which makes it sweeter than average. The more vermouth, the ‘wetter’ your Martini. A classic Wet Martini today is 3:1, which is just above the threshold for the Dry Martini. 
• 50/50 Martini : A wet Martini with even parts gin and vermouth
• Reverse Martini or Upside-Down Martini : A wet Martini with more vermouth than gin
• Dirty Martini : A Martini with a splash of olive brine added to the recipe
• Perfect Martini : A Martini where the vermouth is split in even parts dry and sweet vermouth. 
• Naked Martini : A Martini without vermouth. Churchill would have loved it 😉 

There are three standard garnishes for Martini drinks to pick from : A green olive, a lemon twist or a pickled onion, which changes the name to a Gibson.

Last week I received a parcel with a bottle of gin and a bottle of vermouth, both created by François Lurton, winemaker in France with Sauvignon Blanc grapes. I have met François a few years ago at the Belgian launch event for Sorgin, I still remember his passion for the grape. These two bottles are created with a lot of love for the fruits of his vineyards. No better choice for a 50/50 Martini.

The Perfect Grape Martini

Ingredients
1 part Sorgin Gin
1 part Leoncé Extra Dry vermouth
1 dash of orange bitters

Method
Add all ingredients in a mixing glass with lots of ice. Use even parts gin and vermouth. Stir for 15 seconds and strain in a pre-chilled coupe. Garnish with a couple of grapes. 

Disclaimer : All pictures and texts are copyrighted by Geert Conard and Esito Management & Communications unless stated otherwise in the article. While some items might have been gifted by the producer or distributor, these are in no way paid promotions or recommendations.