Mixology Monday: The Innocents Abroad

Hello from Louisiana! GarnishGuy and I are back home until Christmas, spending time with family and eating far more than we ought to. We're hoping to sneak away to New Orleans later in the week to celebrate our anniversary (eight years!) and check out some bars. Until then, we've been having fun experimenting with the contents of my parents' liquor cabinet, which has definitely grown since I started this blog! Last night's cocktails were, appropriately, the De La Louisiane and the Vieux Carre - both big hits.

Since we were pretty busy leading up to our trip, I didn't have much time to experiment with cocktails for this month's Mixology Monday. Luckily, the theme of this month's challenge, hosted by Stacey Markow, is digestifs. And I've had an absolutely fantastic recipe for a digestif that I've been looking forward to sharing. It's not an original recipe, but it's so good I can't resist sharing it for this challenge.

There's an excellent new restaurant in Boston's South End called SRV. It's a "Venetian-style Bacaro and wine bar" from the folks behind The Salty Pig and Canary Square, two of our favorite spots. We first went there for a drink while we waited for a table at Toro. We ordered a couple of cocktails and several of their bar bites, and we were really blown away. The bar snacks were ridiculously good: salt cod brandade on black bread with herbs, soft boiled quail eggs with white anchovies and a crunchy garlic pangrattato, grilled octopus with pine nuts and preserved lemon... I need to stop talking about this, I'm making myself really hungry right now.

The cocktail menu at SRV is heavy on amari and vermouth, which I love. They have a vermouth of the day ("We always drink to world peace") and some really great cocktails. One of these is The Innocents Abroad: Fighting Cock bourbon, Amaro Nonino, Gran Classico, and Kina L'Aero D'Or. It's been a while since I was so blown away by a cocktail that I thought, "I HAVE to make this at home," but that was what I thought about The Innocents Abroad, and I didn't really care how many bottles of liquor I needed to buy (three, it turned out - four if I wanted to use the same bourbon). On our second visit, I worked up the courage to ask the bartender for the recipe, which he happily shared. I hope they won't mind me re-posting it here, so that others can know the joy of this wonderful drink.

The Innocents Abroad is a perfect digestif. We recently made it after dinner for a couple of friends, and it was wonderful: sweet with just enough bitterness. It has an almost syrupy texture, thick on your tongue. It's one of those cocktails where the ingredients knit together so perfectly and tightly that it's hard to pick them all out. It's nutty, citrusy, and herbal, with the lovely flavor of the Amaro Nonino in the middle of your sip and the distinctive bitterness of the Gran Classico and Kina L'Aero at the end. It's definitely one of the best cocktails I've tried this year.

History: This cocktail was created for SRV by David Spielburg. According to this article, it's a something of a riff on the Paper Plane. I imagine it must have been named after the book The Innocents Abroad, or the New Pilgrim's Progress by Mark Twain, which tells the story of his travels through Europe and the Holy Land on a retired Civil War ship.

The Innocents Abroad

1 1/2 oz. bourbon (Fighting Cock recommended)
3/4 oz. Amaro Nonino
1/2 oz. Gran Classico
1/2 oz. Kina L'Aero D'Or

Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass with ice and stir until chilled. Strain into an Old Fashioned glass and garnish with a lemon twist.

Recipe courtesy of SRV.