Boozehound - Jason Wilson [42]
I find that Tuaca mixes best with whiskey. I’ve made several variations of a Manhattan, my favorite of which I call a Livorno, for the town where Tuaca is made.
LIVORNO
Serves 1
1½ ounces bourbon
¾ ounce Tuaca
2 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
Preserved or maraschino cherry (this page), for garnish
Fill a mixing glass two-thirds full with ice. Add the bourbon, Tuaca, and bitters. Stir vigorously for 30 seconds, then strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with the cherry.
Another Tuaca favorite mixes it with Scotch on ice, then tops it with tonic water and a squeeze of lime. Think of this Scottish-Italian tall drink as a sort of Tuscan-influenced Rusty Nail with the refreshing addition of tonic. I recommend using a lighter Scotch (not too smoky or peaty) with notes of vanilla and sherry, such as Glenfiddich or Glenkinchie.
UNDER THE TARTAN SUN
Serves 1
1½ ounces Tuaca
¾ ounce Scotch
3 ounces tonic water
1 lime wedge
Fill a highball glass with ice. Add the Tuaca and the Scotch, then top with the tonic water. Squeeze in the lime wedge, drop it into the drink, and stir lightly.
Beyond Jägermeister:
The Redheaded Slut Revisited
It has become a tradition in New Orleans to hold a jazz funeral—with a coffin and a procession through the French Quarter—for a truly bad, embarrassing cocktail that the bartenders who attend the annual Tales of the Cocktail event believe should die. The first year, they laid to rest the Appletini, that girls’-night-out stalwart based on neon-green Sour Apple Pucker schnapps. The time had come. If bartending was ever to move forward as a respectable craft, then sacrificing one of the 1990s faux-tini drinks seemed reasonable. Very few tears were shed.
The following summer presented a slightly different scenario. A funeral was held for a well-known shot with a rather off-color name, served in so many college bars: the Redheaded Slut. Consisting of equal parts cranberry juice, peach schnapps, and Jägermeister, the Redheaded Slut is meant to be taken in one gulp, usually after shouting something like “Woo hoo!” At first I thought, Yeah, good riddance, Redheaded Slut, with your nasty mix of herb, licorice, cinnamon, and cloying artificial “peach” odor. But later, I started to think its burial might have been misguided.
Please understand: I am by no means here to defend the Redheaded Slut. I think anyone who serves one of those 1980s shots-with-a-naughty-name—Sex on the Beach, Slippery Nipple, Screaming Orgasm, Dirty Girl Scout—should be forced to listen to an iPod that plays only Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” over and over again.
When I look at recipes for this drink genre in a book I own called Big Bad-Ass Book of Shots, I am struck by how often the drinks are based on a very small group of ingredients: Jägermeister, peach schnapps, Bailey’s Irish Cream, Southern Comfort, cranberry juice. Sometimes more than one of them. Sometimes all of them. Clearly, more time was spent on coming up with a risqué name for most of these than on the formula for the drink itself.
But then I think, I’m not being fair. Perhaps hundreds of years from now when the history of our era in bartending is written, this type of shot will represent a primitive but significant stage of the craft. Sort of like cave paintings. In the 1980s and 1990s, most bartenders were working with what they had, without access to the sorts of obscure flavors and ingredients we now enjoy. What bar in 1984 had Old Tom gin or maraschino liqueur or crème de violette? Maybe, I thought, instead of an RIP for the Redheaded Slut, I should turn my attention to helping it evolve. So I spent a lost summer weekend trying to reengineer it.
It’s not as if the shot did its job well, anyway. We all know the purpose of a shot, and Jägermeister at 70 proof