Boozehound - Jason Wilson [11]
Discard the ice from the packed old-fashioned glass; add the absinthe and swirl just to coat the chilled glass, pouring out any that remains. Strain the cognac mixture into the chilled glass. Twist the lemon peel over the drink, rub it around the rim of the glass, then use it as a garnish.
Finally, perhaps my favorite use of cognac and absinthe—as well as a spirit called Dubonnet—is in the Phoebe Snow, named after one of the most famous advertising mascots of the twentieth century. Phoebe Snow was a fictional woman in flowing white who extolled the virtues of the “clean” anthracite rail travel on the Lackawanna Railroad: “Says Phoebe Snow/about to go/upon a trip to Buffalo/‘My gown stays white/from morn til night/upon the Road of Anthracite.’ ” Why someone named this particular drink—which is brownish red—after Phoebe Snow is anyone’s guess. With its French ingredients, perhaps it’s what one bartender imagined a sophisticated lady, dressed in white, would sip in a dining car on the Lackawanna Railroad.
PHOEBE SNOW
Serves 1
1½ ounces cognac
1½ ounces Dubonnet
½ teaspoon absinthe
1 dash angostura bitters
Fill a mixing glass halfway with ice. Add the cognac, Dubonnet, absinthe, and bitters. Stir vigorously, and then strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
So what exactly is Dubonnet? Obscure spirits become obscure for many obscure reasons. But there may be no bottle more enigmatic than this fortified wine. Its strange journey from popularity to obscurity begins with malaria; involves the French Foreign Legion, the Queen of England, and Pia Zadora; and ends with it languishing on the dusty bottom shelves of your local liquor store, usually next to the vermouth.
Luckily for us, malaria hasn’t been endemic in the United States in decades. If it were, we might be better acquainted with Dubonnet and its category of wine-and-cinchona-bark-based aperitifs called quinquinas. Long before the days of modern medicine, a cinchona bark extract called quinine was the only weapon against the deadly mosquito-borne parasite that caused malaria. And so, by the nineteenth century, pharmacists were continually mixing up ways to mask the bitter taste of quinine in a drink. British colonials began drinking gin mixed with quinine-rich tonic water in South Asia and Africa for prophylactic reasons.
During the French conquest of North Africa in the 1830s, the government offered incentives to anyone who could create a recipe that would help make quinine more palatable to the soldiers. Not long afterward, Dubonnet was born, created in 1846 by a Parisian chemist named Joseph Dubonnet. Its “infusion of sensual flavors” (according to the bottle) “won world-wide acclaim after Madame Dubonnet began serving it to family and friends.” An image of Madame’s cat remains the brand’s logo. Dubonnet’s distinct port-like flavor is spiced with cinnamon, coffee beans, citrus peel, and herbs (a secret formula, of course), but the quinine is what creates its slightly bitter edge.
Dubonnet reportedly is a preferred tipple of Queen Elizabeth II and was favored by the late Queen Mother. “I think that I will take two small bottles of Dubonnet and gin with me this morning, in case it is needed,” the Queen Mother once wrote to her butler in preparation for an outdoor lunch (this handwritten note was sold at auction for £16,000).
Dubonnet even had a sort of moment in the late 1970s and early 1980s when Pia Zadora starred as the “Dubonnet Girl” in television commercials. Those might be among the cheesiest liquor ads of all time: Zadora plays sensually with ribbon and peers out between gauzy curtains while her Continental lover approaches by motorcycle—wearing a helmet, tuxedo, and white scarf—for their rendezvous. Excellent, really, if you’re a connoisseur of Eurotrash, as I am. It may help you forget for a moment that, these days, Dubonnet is actually made and bottled in Bardstown, Kentucky.
Dubonnet comes in either Rouge or Blonde, and let me be clear about one thing: the white is to