Punch Drunk

Punch is fun. And it makes an especially good party offering, as the hosts don't have to spend their evening "behind the bar," so to speak, but can mingle freely with their guests. Well, actually, it is usually only served at parties nowadays, though once upon a time it was a standard libation. You just don't see it that much anymore.

The main problem is finding punches that are interesting, and also not too sweet. Because so often, punches are made (or refreshed mid-party) by people who have already had way too much to drink - I am sure you have seen it: A soused host debonairly dumping sickly sweet rum into some sort of sickly sweet juice, concocting a recipe for one of the worst headaches in the world.

So, after some years, I have refined my list of punch recipes to just a few. And of those, these two are the best. They are deeply flavorful, complex, and not too sweet. They work wonderfully as holiday party punches, but are not limited to that service.

By the way, here is a good book about the history of punch by David Wondrich.

Without further ado:

Kentucky Cardinal Punch
Courtesy of Imbibe Magazine.

Says Imbibe, succinctly: "This punch from Kentucky bartender Kyle Higgins gets a strong fruity backbone from Southern Belle shiraz, a robust Australian wine aged in used Pappy Van Winkle whiskey barrels." 

It was incredibly difficult for me to track down this wine. Originating from Australia's R Wines Winery, I finally found a distributor in New York (and reasonably priced, too). I had a friend lug up a few bottles. In any case, I have not seen any since. I am sure nothing tastes quite like it (thanks to that aging in Pappy van Winkle bourbon whiskey barrels), so choose whatever bold wine you can find and don't expend energy on regret.

8 cups Southern Belle Shiraz, or other bold, spicy red
2 cups rye whiskey
2 cups brandy
1 cup sweet vermouth
1/2 cup Carpano Antica
1 lb granulated sugar
2 cups Moscato d’Asti
8 cups sparkling water
Ice block (freeze water in a Bundt cake or loaf pan)
Garnish with orange twists

Combine shiraz, rye, brandy, vermouth and Carpano in a pitcher. Slowly stir in the sugar until dissolved. Refrigerate for several hours until cold. When ready to serve, place ice block in punch bowl and pour chilled mixture over. Top with moscato and soda water and serve. Garnish each serving with an orange twist.
Makes approximately 50 servings.

Bourbon Punch with Pink Grapefruit and Mint

Courtesy of Melissa Clark, Bon Appetit. Makes 8 to 10 servings.

This is quite an interesting punch. Sort of a mix between a Mint Julep and Brown Derby. It is not too sweet, and has a tart, citrusy sparkle to it, thanks to the mingling grapefruit, mint, and club soda. The ingredients may seem a bit unusual, but this was a successful punch at one of my holiday parties. Very flavorful and with mass appeal. I doubled this recipe.

Hors d'oeuvres

• 1/3 cup water
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 15 fresh mint sprigs, divided
• 4 cups strained fresh pink grapefruit juice
• 2 1/2 cups bourbon
• 12 dashes angostura bitters
• 1 cup club soda

Stir 1/3 cup water and sugar in small saucepan over low heat until sugar dissolves. Increase heat and bring to boil. Add five fresh mint sprigs. Remove from heat; cool syrup completely.

Strain syrup into punch bowl. Add juice, bourbon, and bitters; mix in soda and 10 mint sprigs. Add a block of ice to bowl.

A note about ice blocks: You want an arctic hunk of ice. While you can certainly buy blocks of ice, it is is easy to use a large Tupperware container, or as suggested above, a Bundt pan, to create a frozen block or ring of ice. Just freeze the water over night or longer to be sure it is solid! Have a backup ready, too, in case the first block melts too much.

If you are not serving the punch immediately, keep it refrigerated until you are ready to serve, and then add the ice to the punch bowl. Yes, you need a punch bowl. Bottoms up!

Whoa, whoa!

The Kentucky Longshot, the Back Forty, and the Mint Julep

In honor of it being Kentucky Derby Day 2011, I am posting a couple of bourbon recipes I found. It is a day for bourbon, and there are many choices... For a few more, visit this article "Beyond the Julep" by the Wall Street Journal.

The first is called the Kentucky Longshot, and it is a great way to use Domaine de Canton Ginger Liqueur. According to Gary Regan, who adapted the recipe in Joy of Mixology, the drink was created in honor of the 1998 Breeders' Cup by the late Max Allen Jr., a bartender at the Seelbach Hilton Hotel in Louisville, KY. 

The drink has an interesting fusion of flavors, with a good spice from the bourbon (I used my standby, Wild Turkey 101), Angostura, and ginger (I used the aforementioned Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur), followed by a sweeter note of the peach (Hiram Walker Peach Schnapps) and the unique, floral aspect of the Peychaud's. One might think the liqueurs would make this drink too sweet, but that is not the case. It has some sweetness, not too much, and is complex in its depth. You can add more bourbon and bitters or adjust the ratios of the liqueur and brandy. Think of it as a Manhattan with liqueurs replacing the vermouth.

Kentucky Longshot

• 2 oz bourbon
• 1/2 oz ginger liqueur
• 1/2 oz peach brandy
• 1 dash Angostura bitters
• 1 dash Peychaud's bitters

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. The recipe I took this from recommends garnishing with three pieces of candied ginger (representing "win, place, and show"). One piece is plenty, though.

I also found a recipe online for The Back Forty, devised at the restaurant of the same name in New York. It's very much like a whiskey sour, but with an unusual and delicious distinction: it is made with Vermont maple syrup. The syrup, to my taste, is less sweet than your average simple syrup, so is ideal for a sour that has the notes of candy without being sickly sweet.

The Back Forty

2 oz bourbon

4 teaspoons of maple syrup

1 oz fresh lemon juice

3-5 dashes of Fee Brothers orange bitters

In a shaker with ice, shake all the ingredients vigorously, to ensure that the syrup is well-mixed. You could also stir the syrup with two teaspoons of hot water to dissolve it, then add the other ingredients.  

Strain into an ice-filled rocks glass. Garnish with a lemon or lime wheel, or a cherry, and enjoy. Perfect for a summer day.


Note: You can also make the sour mix by the batch: 1 part maple syrup to 1 part lemon juice.

Julep cups, courtesy of Anne & Todd, Derby Day 2011

Finally, it is Derby Day - the day of the famed Mint Julep.  There are certainly many variations of the julep, from a big ol' glass of glass of bourbon over crushed ice (with a sprig of mint for fashion) to bourbon with mint-infused simple syrup, to bourbon and various liqueurs. in common, perhaps, they should all be very, very cold. Crushed ice adds a lot of water to the drink (which is probably not a bad idea if you're in the big ol' glass of bourbon mode), but it also allows the cocktail to become extremely cold. The idea is to stir the drink until frost forms on the outside of the glass (or a nickel- or silver-plated julep cup, if you happen to have one).

Here is my variation on the julep:

The Mint Julep

3-4 oz Kentucky bourbon
1 oz peach brandy
Bunch of fragrant mint

Muddle a generous portion of the mint and the ounce of peach brandy in a glass (gently: just bruise the mint to allow the bouquet to flourish). Remove the bruised mint. Pour in the bourbon, fill with crushed ice - right to the top of the glass - and stir in a clockwise motion with a swizzle until the outside of the glass (or julep cup) is frosted. Or as long as you can stand. Add a fresh mint sprig as garnish; the sprig should be generous enough to provide fragrance while sipping...

Bottoms up.

The Mai Tai

If you have not had a Mai Tai at the House Without a Key in Waikiki, you cannot be blamed for thinking that this is a sickly sweet "umbrella drink" made with rum, sour mix, and pineapple juice. Fun while eating at your local Tiki-themed restaurant, but not to be taken seriously.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Mai Tai is a serious drink. Made well, as demonstrated by the House Without a Key, it is elegant, potent, and flavorful - and not too sweet at all. Of course, if you are averse to even a touch of sweetness in a cocktail, you might find this too sugary, but try it anyway. You will be surprised. I certainly was. I made it my mission to try as many Mai Tais as I could find in Oahu, realizing ahead of time that I would be in for many a generic pineapple drink with umbrellas and fruit. A sucker tourist with a sugar headache. And I never, not once, had one as good as that at the House Without a Key. Even at the neighboring, fancy hotels with beach-side terraces. They were all made with pineapple juice (not an ingredient in the Mai Tai), were too sweet, and had a one-dimensional flavor, sort of like a mass-appeal drink for people to swill rather than savor.

Who invented the Mai Tai? I am not sure (Don the Beachcomber claimed to have invented it in 1933), but Trader Vic's Victor Bergeron has a good story about creating it in 1944:

I was at the service bar in my Oakland restaurant. I took down a bottle of 17-year-old rum. It was J. Wray Nephew from Jamaica; surprisingly golden in color, medium bodied, but with the rich pungent flavor particular to the Jamaican blends. The flavor of this great rum wasn't meant to be overpowered with heavy additions of fruit juices and flavorings. I took a fresh lime, added some orange curacao from Holland, a dash of Rock Candy Syrup, and a dollop of French Orgeat, for its subtle almond flavor. A generous amount of shaved ice and vigorous shaking by hand produced the marriage I was after. Half the lime shell went in for color ... I stuck in a branch of fresh mint and gave two of them to Ham and Carrie Guild, friends from Tahiti, who were there that night. Carrie took one sip and said, 'Mai Tai - Roa Ae.' In Tahitian this means 'Out of This World - The Best.' Well, that was that. I named the drink Mai Tai. - From "Mai Tai" in the Bartenders Database, retrieved 2011-4-30.

You can find the classic recipes used at Trader Vic's and Don the Beachcomber's here. My recipe is down below.

After a visit to the islands, in a state of despair at being back in Boston after time spent in paradise, I set about to emulate the Mai Tai at House Without a Key. I wanted it to be strong and not too sweet. As a starting point, I looked at Dale DeGroff's recipe in The Craft of the Cocktail, and I looked at Gary Regan's recipe in Joy of Mixology, as these two books have informed and inspired me endlessly. In the end I adapted their formulas until I found a drink that closely resembled the Mai Tai I recalled from House Without a Key, but which has its own distinctions.

This cocktail is more about the right flavors than the name on the bottles, but I suggest Cruzan Aged Rum as a starting point, as it is inexpensive but good quality, and not too fine to mix. From there, try longer-aged gold/amber rums. Some darker rums (Whaler's, Myers's) strike me as too bitter to be the main ingredient in this drink, but can be floated on the top to create a teak-colored surface that tempers the sweetness of the curacao. Also, many recipes (such as these) call for a combination of aged golden and dark rums in the drink, and it is certainly fun to experiment. One more note: This drink calls for orgeat (a sweet syrup with an almond flavor) or falernum (a similar sugar syrup, with more of a clove flavor), which can be hard to track down (I found them, along with a huge collection of bitters, at The Boston Shaker). These syrups make the drink quite sweet if over-used, so I actually substitute those with amaretto liqueur, and it adds the almond nuance without the sugar syrup sweetness.

The Mai Tai is a perfect summer cocktail - and a true classic. Drink it while listening to Andy Cummings' song "Waikiki," or any other Hawaiian music from the 20s or 30s (sung in English, called hapa haole) and you can almost imagine the sweet, fragrant breezes of the south Pacific caressing your senses as beachboys surf the long waves of Waikiki beach with lovely wahines held aloft in their burnished arms...

Mai Tai at House Without a Key

Mai Tai

2 oz aged rum
3/4 oz orange curacao
3/4 oz fresh lime juice
1/4 oz amaretto liqueur
Float of dark rum

Shake the ingredients with ice, and strain into an Old Fashioned glass (rocks glass) over ice cubes.

Float 1/4 oz or so of dark rum over the surface (I use Gosling's Black Rum).

Garnish with a lime round and a mint sprig (unless you have orchids). Thread the mint sprig stem through the center of the lime and float in the middle of the glass. Bottoms up!