Bottle Buy: Apricot Liqueur

I've always wanted this blog to be a resource for people who don't know a lot about making cocktails at home, and part of that has been introducing new ingredients as I add them to my bar and start making cocktails with them. So I was alarmed when I realized I had posted the Periodista without saying a thing about its star ingredient, apricot liqueur. Specifically Rothman & Winter Orchard Apricot.

Apricot liqueur may seem a bit specific or obscure if you've only got limited space in your bar, but it's an ingredient that comes up surprisingly often. It appears in a number of recipes from the early 1900's, and in a lot of rum cocktails and Tiki drinks. Like many ingredients we've discussed, the quality and availability of apricot liqueur declined along with the popularity of the craft cocktail during the mid to late 20th century. But now it's back, and there are tons of classic and new recipes to make with it.

I knew apricot liqueur would be a good buy because I've already made - and loved - several recipes that called for a small amount of it. Not having a bottle, I subbed in a bit of apricot preserves, which really did work pretty well.  But for more apricot-centric drinks like the Periodista and the Tradewinds (below), you need the real thing. And now I can go back and make those other drinks right.

Apricot liqueur is often referred to as apricot brandy. The two terms are frequently used interchangeably, but I think certain aspects of how the liqueurs are made may prevent the word "brandy" from appearing on the label - likely the addition of fruit and sugars after distillation, although I'm not sure. The quality apricot liqueurs are essentially fruit brandies or eaux-de-vie - spirits distilled from fruit other than grapes, in this case apricots.

One of the easiest bottles of apricot liqueur to find, and the one that seems to be recommended the most often in my cocktail recipe books, is Rothman & Winter, which is imported from Austria by Haus Alpenz. It's made from Klosterneuberger apricots grown in the Danube Valley. Two of the other most popular varieties, Giffard and Marie Brizard, are made in France.

Rothman & Winter Apricot Liqueur

Price: $25
Alcohol Content: 24%
Popular Cocktails: Tradewinds, Periodista, Golden Gun, Flor de Jerez, Charles Lindbergh, Hotel Nacional

It's been a while since I made a genuine Tiki drink, but after a couple of recent trips to Tiki Rock in Boston, I was itching to make one at home. I love drinks with coconut creme - Tiki Rock had a Painkiller that was really amazing - and the Tradewinds had been on my list of drinks to make once I finally got my hands on some apricot liqueur. It's an undeniably tasty cocktail, creamy and tart. The traditional garnish is a lemon wedge speared on an inside-out cocktail umbrella (as if the wind has blown it that way), but I thought a mini pinwheel was appropriate.

History: According to Martin Cate in Smuggler's Cove, the Tradewinds originated in the Caribbean in the 1970's. The recipe appeared in Beachbum Berry Remixed.

Tradewinds

1 oz. black blended rum (Cruzan)
1 oz. blended lightly aged rum (Appleton Estate Signature Blend)
1 oz. apricot liqueur (Rothman & Winter)
1 1/2 oz. coconut cream
1 oz. lemon juice

Combine all ingredients in a shaker with 12 oz. crushed ice and a 4 large "agitator" cubes. Shake or flash blend and then open pour into a zombie or pilsner glass. Garnish with a lemon wedge speared on an inside-out umbrella, or a little pinwheel. I added some mint as well.

Recipe adapted from Smuggler's Cove.

Periodista

I can trace my love affair with cocktails back to a single evening. I had just found out that I had gotten a competitive NSF fellowship to support me during graduate school, and my husband and I were going to celebrate. Earlier that week I had picked up a copy of one of those free magazines that used to be all over - I think it was Stuff at Night - and they had a feature on the best cocktail bars in Boston. In my mind there wasn't really anything fancier than sitting at a marble-topped bar and sipping a beautiful drink, so we went to one of the places on the list, Eastern Standard. I don't remember what the magazine said that made us pick Eastern Standard, but I do remember the cocktail they featured: the Periodista, a rum drink made with lime juice and apricot and orange liqueurs.

I don't know why the Periodista in that article stuck in my head. I didn't even order it that night - I ended up getting an Aviation, my first one ever, and realizing that there was so much more to cocktails than I had ever known. But I distinctly remember the orangey cocktail pictured in that magazine. I later tried one elsewhere in Boston and found it to be quite as tasty as Stuff at Night made it out to be. Little did I know that the Periodista is a drink with a story behind it.

The Periodista (Spanish for "journalist") is a happy, crowd-pleasing cocktail. Its flavor is bright and citrusy, with tart lime and sweet apricot playing against each other on your tongue. It's like a Daiquiri with a few extra tricks up its sleeve. It's somehow simultaneously perfect for drinking on a tropical beach or in a Boston dive bar in the dead of winter. It's not hard to see why it became so popular here. It's the how that is a bit more convoluted. If you're curious, read on.

History: I could just tell you what is known about the history of the Periodista, but I would be doing you a disservice. Because if you're at all interested in craft cocktails, the people who make them, and the stories behind them, you should read Devin Hahn's Periodista Tales.

Briefly, Devin Hahn is a writer and filmmaker who lives in Boston. He also enjoys a good craft cocktail. In particular, he became a fan of the Periodista after having one at Chez Henri, a now-shuttered French-Cuban restaurant in Cambridge, in 2007. The menu there indicated that the cocktail originated in Cuba, and was a favorite of Ernest Hemingway. An instant fan, Hahn began ordering Periodistas at bars all over Boston, and bartenders were happy to make him one. This was, in fact, right around the same time that I made my pilgrimage to Eastern Standard and learned about the drink myself. It was not a hard cocktail to find.

Unless, apparently, you left Boston. When Hahn traveled out of the city, no one seemed to have even heard of Periodista. Bartenders at places like PDT in New York and The Varnish in Los Angeles had no idea what he was talking about. And Hahn couldn't find the recipe online or in any cocktail books.

So in 2010, Hahn set out on an epic quest to uncover the origins of the Periodista that he chronicled online in the Periodista Tales. It takes him to some of Boston's most beloved watering holes and introduces a cast of characters that I've come to know well as a cocktail lover in the city - people like Jackson Cannon, John Gersten, and Misty Kalkofen. And then Hahn's search expands, and he meets with luminaries like David Wondrich and Ted Haigh, who share their own stories and insights into the craft cocktail renaissance. It becomes a rumination on the craft of bartending itself, as well as a perfect example of how difficult it can be to find out the real story behind a cocktail.

The only thing wrong with it is that it seems to end prematurely. The last installment from 2011 reads like a cliffhanger. I don't know if Hahn has continued his research since, but I hope he updates us at some point.

If you're short on time and really just itching to get to the punchline (the Periodista Tales is a lengthy read), I will spoil the results of Hahn's research here. The real origin of the Periodista remains unknown, but it does seem to hail from Cuba. The earliest mention of the recipe in print that Hahn could find is from 1948, buried at the back of El Arte de Cantinera, a bartenders' manual from the Club de Cantineros de la Republica de Cuba in Havana.

The Periodista came to Boston when Paul O'Connell and Joe McGuirk were building Chez Henri's cocktail list. They found the recipe in a "little tropical cocktail book," one of those pamphlets that spirits brands used to print. Like El Arte de Cantinera, it called for white rum, but they found it far better with Myer's dark rum. It ended up on the menu. From there, McGuirk took the recipe to the B-Side Lounge, one of Boston's most (in)famous cocktail bars, where many of the greats got their start. As they left to begin their own ventures, they took the Periodista with them. And the rest, as they say, is history.

In his account, Hahn includes the Periodista recipes from many of the bars and bartenders that he interviews - a dozen in all, from the B-Side Lounge's version (which specifically calls for "generic bottom shelf" apricot liqueur and triple sec) to Drink's recipe with house-made lime peel syrup. The one that appealed to me most was Brother Cleve's recipe, which uses Appleton Estate Jamaican rum and included a bit of simple syrup to make the drink less tart. The result, in my opinion, is perfection. But if it doesn't suit your fancy, try adjusting the ratios or checking out some of the other recipes.

Periodista

1 1/2 oz. Appleton Estate aged rum (12- or 21-year recommended, I used Signature Blend)
3/4 oz. apricot liqueur (Rothman & Winter)
1/2 oz. Cointreau
1/2 oz. lime juice
1 barspoon (1/8 tsp) simple syrup

Combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice and shake until chilled. Strain into a coupe and garnish with a lime wheel.

Recipe from Brother Cleve via Devin Hahn.

Frosé

In 2016, a New York restaurant called Bar Primi created the perfect summer cocktail. Frozen, crowd-pleasing, and attractively bright pink, it was destined to reach heights of popularity that most drinks can't even approach. Two years later, it's on the menu of just about every bar with a patio and is as synonymous with white female millennials as avocado toast, pumpkin spice lattes, and Lululemon yoga pants. I'm talking, of course, about Frosé.

A portmanteau of "frozen rosé," Frosé is an evolutionary offshoot of the growing rosé trend of the last few years. It's basically a wine slushie, usually made with lemon juice and strawberries. Its meteoric rise to summertime domination was greatly aided by Instagram, which is filled with photos of this undeniably pretty beverage.

I was always a bit conflicted about Frosé. On the one hand, it looks pretty tasty and refreshing, and don't even get me started on how photogenic it is. On the other hand, it's not exactly what one would call a craft cocktail, and it's become so popular that it almost seems uncool to like it. But a couple of months ago I found myself at a place with a pretty lackluster cocktail list, and Frosé was the only thing on the menu that caught my eye. It seemed like a good occasion to give it a try. And you know what?  It's as frosty and delicious as it looks. And with the temperature in Boston consistently topping 90 degrees for the last week, I honestly couldn't think of anything I'd rather be drinking today.

Making Frosé does require a bit of extra time and effort, but all in all it's much easier than I thought it would be. The first step is to freeze a bottle of rosé. You should not do this in the glass bottle itself - transfer the wine to a ziplock bag, baking pan, or ice cube tray. Once it's frozen, you blend it with some lemon juice and strawberry syrup. You can serve it right away or re-freeze it and blend it again like I did for a more solid consistency. Since it melts quickly in the heat, it seemed like a good idea to give it as much of a head start as possible.

I stuck to a basic recipe here, but it would be easy to dress this up into something even more exciting. I think elderflower liqueur would be an amazing addition. Or maybe Aperol for some bitterness. You can make it more boozy by adding some vodka or another spirit, or play around with other fruits besides strawberries - raspberry would be incredible.

So I am a Frosé convert. And if that makes me basic, then buy me some Uggs and sign me up for a barre class, because I am making loads of this for my next summer party.

Frosé

1 bottle (750 ml) rosé wine
1/2 cup strawberry syrup*
1/4 cup lemon juice

*To make strawberry syrup, combine 1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 cup water in a saucepan and simmer until sugar is dissolved. Add 1 cup of sliced strawberries and simmer, stirring occasionally, until mixture becomes pinkish and strawberries soften slightly (about 5 minutes). Remove from heat and let sit for 30 minutes. Strain and let cool.

Pour wine into ice cube trays or a 13 x 9 inch pan and put it in the freezer until it is frozen. Because of the alcohol content, it will remain softer than regular ice. Meanwhile, make strawberry syrup. When syrup is cool and wine is frozen, combine wine, syrup, and lemon juice in a blender and blend until smooth. Taste and adjust lemon and syrup accordingly - the wine you use can effect how much of both you need. At this point the mixture will be soft and slushy and can be consumed immediately, but for best results pour the mixture back into the pan or into a gallon Ziploc bag and freeze again (it will be too soft for ice cube trays). Return to the blender and blend immediately before serving.

Recipe adapted from Bon Appetit.

El Presidente

The El Presidente is a surprising drink. It might look something like a dry Martini, but one sip and you'll see that it has more in common with a Daiquiri or Mai Tai. It's rum-based, sweet, and citrusy, a spirit-forward Caribbean cocktail that's probably quite different from anything you've had.

If you've never heard of the El Presidente, don't feel bad. It's a cocktail that was set up for failure. Dating back to Cuba in the 1910's, it enjoyed incredible popularity for a while. But post-prohibition, that popularity plummeted. And that's probably has a lot to do with its ingredients.

First, there's rum, which was not a popular base spirit in the post-prohibition 20th century (outside of Tiki bars, at least). Then there's vermouth, which a lot of people didn't know how to store properly, leading to requests for ultra-dry martinis. Not to mention that most bartenders were using the wrong vermouth in this cocktail, as you'll see below. And then there's grenadine and orange curaçao. Used in their proper amounts, they round the El Presidente out beautifully. But if you do a Google image search for "El Presidente cocktail," the drinks you see will not look like the one I made - they are all either bright red or vivid orange, victims of the temptation to just pour in more sugar to salvage a sub-par drink.

Luckily for the El Presidente, rum is back in vogue, and so are the old classics. The recipe has been resurrected in its original glory, and it's definitely one worth making.

History:  Like the legendary Daiquiri, the El Presidente hails from Havana, Cuba. Some accounts indicate that the El Presidente's exact origins are uncertain, while others (like this thorough overview at Tasting Table) are pretty confident about their facts. According to them, it was invented sometime in the 1910's and named after Mario García Menocal, the president of Cuba at the time. In 1919, an American bartender named Eddie Woelke moved to Havana to run the bar at the Sevilla Biltmore Hotel. He took an interest in the recipe, tweaking it a bit and popularizing it from his bar.

Apparently Menocal's successor, Gerardo Machado, was quite jealous of Menocal's signature cocktail and asked for his own. A few dashes of orange curaçao were added to the El Presidente, and the Presidente Machado was created. In the 1930's, Cuban bartender Constante Ribalaigua Vert combined the two presidential recipes at the famous El Florida in Havana, using curaçao but dyeing it red to look like grenadine. Today you see recipes called El Presidente with one or the other, or both.

Once Prohibition was lifted, the El Presidente made its way to the States, but something was lost in translation. The recipe called for French vermouth, which usually means dry vermouth. But when bartenders made the cocktail this way, it was decidedly lackluster (probably leading to those heavy pours of orange curaçao and grenadine). After some digging, cocktail historian David Wondrich discovered that the vermouth used in the original recipe came from Chambéry in France, which is historically famous for making blanc vermouth - a sweeter, richer white vermouth. This discovery, along with a resurgence of interest in classic cocktails and ingredients, has allowed the El Presidente to gain the popularity it has always deserved.

El Presidente

1 1/2 oz. white rum (Bully Boy)
1 1/2 oz. blanc vermouth (Dolin)
1 tsp. orange curaçao (Ferrand)
1/2 tsp. grenadine (Stirrings)

Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass with ice and stir until chilled. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with an orange twist.

Recipe adapted from Imbibe.