Bottle Buy: Italicus

If you're not already seeing this beautiful blue glass bottle everywhere, I can guarantee you will shortly. It belongs to Italicus Rosolio di Bergamotto. Not since St. Germain have I seen a new ingredient as talked about and adored. It launched in 2016 and won a number of awards the following year, including Best New Spirit or Cocktail Ingredient at Tales of the Cocktail.

Italicus is a Rosolio, a classic type of Italian liqueur. The name is comes from a species of sundew, Drosera rotundifolia, that was classically used to flavor the liqueur. The plant is called "ros solis" in Italy. Rosolios are also frequently flavored with rose petals, which makes many people (including me!) think that this is where the name comes from. Difford's Guide offers the best explanation and history of Rosolio that I have found if you're interested in reading more about the category in general. While many people outside of Italy are not familiar with Rosolio, within the country it is still frequently made (often at home) and consumed as an aperitivo.

Italicus was created by Giuseppe Gallo. Born in Campania, Italy, Gallo worked as a brand ambassador for Martini & Rossi and has an extensive knowledge of amari and vermouths. He was surprised that no one outside of Italy was drinking Rosolio. He wanted to create a new spirit, drawing on his Italian heritage. He used the citrus fruit Bergamot (the same one that flavors Earl Grey tea) to flavor the liqueur, remembering how his mother would flavor dishes with its zest. The Bergamot comes from nearby Calabria, where it has been grown for centuries and is frequently used in Rosolio. Gallo set out to make a Bergamot-flavored Rosolio that would be at home on a modern bar. "It was really important to me to add to it a modern twist, a new profile that would allow bartenders to play with an additional flavor," he told Tales of the Cocktail.

In addition to Bergamot, Italicus is flavored with cedar, chamomile, lavender, gentian, yellow rose, and lemon balm. It is bittersweet like an amaro, but much lighter, with notes of citrus and herbs. I get a slight menthol flavor from it that I did not expect. It's easy to mix with and makes a perfect aperitif. While its flavor speaks for itself, its beautiful bottle (designed by Stranger & Stranger) doesn't hurt either. It seems to me like a perfect example of a spirit where every aspect, from conception to creation to packaging to marketing, was done to perfection. It's been popping up in cocktails all over Boston and no doubt elsewhere as well.

Italicus

Price: $37
Alcohol Content: 20%
Popular Cocktails: Negroni Bianco Bergamotto, Ipalicus, Spritzicus, Gin and Italicus

While I'm not too keen on the "Spritizicus" moniker its creators gave it, a classic spritz made with Italicus is definitely an enjoyable aperitivo and a great way to try out this liqueur. A garnish of olives may seem strange, but it's a perfect contrast to the sweetness of the liqueur. If you like an Aperol Spritz, switch it up and try some Italicus.

Spritzicus

3 oz. Italicus
3 oz. prosecco

Build in a wine glass filled with ice. Stir briefly and garnish with three Castelvetrano or Gaeta olives.

Recipe from Italicus. Historical and brand information came mostly from Difford's Guide and Tales of the Cocktail.

Mr. Fancypants

Guys, I am so excited about this cocktail. This is officially my first cocktail recipe that is on an actual cocktail menu. You can go to Darwin's Ltd. in Cambridge and order a Mr. Fancypants. And they won't look at you like you're crazy! Despite the silly name I gave it.

Darwin's Ltd. is a chain of cafes in Cambridge that I've been a fan of for a long time. Their location near Harvard was my go-to for lattes and lunch during my postdoc. The Mt. Auburn Street location is a good place to pick up a bottle of wine or some craft beer. But their location on Massachusetts Avenue actually serves wine, beer, and cocktails. They have a cordials license, which is a weird Massachusetts thing - they can't serve hard liquor like straight whiskey, gin, rum, or vodka, but they can serve liqueurs. And there are a lot of great drinks you can make with just liqueurs!

The Mr. Fancypants is a riff on the Boulevardier, one of my favorite cocktails. That's the reason for the name - "boulevardier" basically refers to a fashionable, wealthy person, a man-about-town. The evening I was working on the cocktail, my husband was trying on some new clothes he had ordered, and the prints he had chosen were a bit flashier than what he usually wears. I said, "Look at you, Mr. Fancypants," and that was that.

The base of this cocktail is a spiced rum that is a-ok for a cordials license, and it also contains some of Darwin's spectacular cold brew coffee. If you want to make it at home and don't have spiced rum, try substituting an aged rum. Apple brandy is also excellent.

But if you live in the Boston area, please go check out Darwin's and order one!! I love spots where you can order a drink and work on your laptop or linger with a book, and Darwin's is absolutely perfect for that. They serve wine, beer, and cocktails all day in addition to tons of tasty food and some of the best coffee in town.

Mr. Fancypants

3/4 oz. spiced rum
3/4 oz. sweet vermouth
3/4 oz. Campari
3/4 oz. cold brew coffee

Combine ingredients in a mixing glass with ice and stir until chilled. Strain into a rocks glass filled with ice and garnish with an orange twist. Aren't you fancy!

1919

A few weeks ago I finally went to get a drink at Craigie on Main, a restaurant/bar that has been a Cambridge mainstay for the past ten years. I was drawn to a cocktail called the 1919, which was listed as a "classic" on the menu even though I had never heard of it. The bartender explained that it was something of a local classic, created a few miles away at Drink. This only made me love it more. And I already really loved it. Spirit-forward and rich, it's reminiscent of a Manhattan or a Vieux Carre. It is an absolutely lovely drink to sip on.

The 1919 has a split base of rye whiskey and rum. The recommended rum is Old Monk, which I keep hearing about recently. It's an Indian rum, quite cheap but much-loved. Definitely something I'm going to add to my bar soon! In the meantime, Appleton Estate was a wonderful replacement. Benedictine, Punt e Mes, and Mole Bitters round out the recipe. I personally like reducing the recommended 1/2 oz. of Benedictine to 1/4 oz. to keep the drink from getting too sweet.

History: The 1919 was created by Ben Sandrof at Drink in Boston's Fort Point neighborhood. He named it after the year of the Boston Molasses Flood (affectionately known as the Boston Molassacre) because of the molasses notes in the rum. The Molasses Flood took place on January 15th, 1919 - the day before Prohibition ended. I just realized that I missed the 100th anniversary of this weird and tragic event! Still, 2019 seems like the perfect year to sip on a 1919.

1919

3/4 oz. rye whiskey (Rittenhouse recommended; I used Redemption)
3/4 oz. rum (Old Monk recommended; I used Appleton Estate Signature Blend)
1 oz. Punt e Mes
1/4 oz. Benedictine
1 dash Bittermen's Xocolatl Mole Bitters

Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass with ice and stir until chilled. Strain into a coupe or cocktail glass. No garnish.

Recipe from Cocktail Virgin Slut.
Photos taken at The Canopy Room.

Hurricane

If you've visited New Orleans, you're probably familiar with a cocktail called the Hurricane. Famously served at Pat O'Brien's in the French Quarter, the drink is recognizable by its distinctive glass and technicolor shade of bright red. As a tourist, you might be tempted to lump the it with the other not-so-great cocktails that are readily poured into plastic go-cups for consumption on Bourbon Street. But the Hurricane has a far more respectable history than a Hand Grenade or frozen Daiquiri. And, made correctly, it tastes much better as well. Since Mardi Gras is this week, I thought it was the perfect time to introduce this classic New Orleans drink.

A mixture of rum (a lot of rum), syrup, and fruit juice, the Hurricane is sometimes included in the category of Tiki cocktails. This isn't technically accurate, as Tiki is a very specific movement inspired by Polynesia, and the Hurricane has its roots firmly in New Orleans. But it's definitely an example of convergent evolution in the cocktail world, and you very well might find the Hurricane on a Tiki menu. It fits right in.

So why aren't my Hurricanes that recognizable shade of bright red? Well, not to knock Pat O's - which is totally worth a visit if you're in town - but the Hurricanes served there today are made from an artificial, sugary mix. Which I guess is good news if you want to make yourself a genuine Pat O'Brien's Hurricane at home. But if you're less interested in the nostalgia of your trip to New Orleans and more interested in having a tasty rum cocktail, then you should make your Hurricane from scratch. If you do that, the only bright red ingredient that might be going in is grenadine, and probably just a dash. Your Hurricane should come out closer to the pale orange pictured here.

The original Hurricane was made with three ingredients: gold rum, lemon juice, and a fruit syrup called Fassionola. Since Fassionola hasn't been available for years, most recipes substitute passionfruit syrup. But a bit more goes into Fassionola than just passionfruit: it's a complicated mix of seven tropical juices, dried hibiscus, citric acid, and sugar. Recently Cocktail & Sons came out with a bottled version so you can finally make a genuine Hurricane again. You can also try making your own if you're up for it. I, personally, was not, and Cocktail & Sons is currently sold out, so I used homemade passionfruit syrup.

Perhaps the Fassionola would have given these cocktails the extra bit of complexity they needed, but I wasn't happy with my three-ingredient Hurricanes - I found them a little too tart, a little too simple, and not very reminiscent of the "real thing" from Pat O's. So I started hunting for alternative recipes. There are a lot of them out there. I settled on a variation of Liquor.com's version, which has a little orange juice and grenadine, and uses lime instead of lemon. Perhaps this isn't the "original" Hurricane, but it's the one I like best. Happy Mardi Gras!

History: Pat O'Brien's began its life as a speakeasy during Prohibition. (Supposedly the password to get in was "storm's brewin'.") Once Prohibition ended in December of 1933, it opened legally as Mr. O'Brien's Club Tipperary on the corner of Royal and St. Peter Streets in the French Quarter. In 1942 it moved to its current location on St. Peter.

During World War II, it was difficult for bar owners to get their hands on whiskey, which is what people wanted to drink. Distributors started requiring bars to purchase a certain amount of abundant, easily-obtainable rum for every bottle of whiskey. So Mr. O'Brien found himself with a lot of extra rum lying around and needed a way to convince people to drink it. Thus the Hurricane was born. The actual recipe may have been created by the head bartender at Pat O's, Louis Culligan. The signature glass the drink was served in, shaped like the glass of a hurricane lantern, helped to increase its popularity.

The original hurricane recipe, published by Culligan in Cabaret magazine in 1956, is a simple one: 4 oz. gold rum, 2 oz. lemon juice, and 2 oz. Fassionola.

Pat O'Brien's in New Orleans

Hurricane

2 oz. aged rum
2 oz. white rum
1 oz. lime juice
1 oz. orange juice
1 oz. passionfruit syrup*
1 tsp. grenadine

Shake with ice until chilled and strain into a Hurricane glass filled with ice. Garnish with an orange slice and a maraschino cherry.

*I used the recipe for passionfruit syrup from Smuggler's Cove. First make a 2:1 simple syrup by mixing 2 parts sugar with 1 part water in a saucepan and simmering it until the sugar is dissolved. Let cool completely. Then combine equal parts syrup and passionfruit puree. The best place to find this is your grocery's freezer aisle. Hispanic food stores are also more likely to carry it.

Recipe adapted from Liquor.com. History from Distiller Blog and Wikipedia.

Flor de Puebla

Today is National Margarita Day! As random as these various holidays may seem, I do love how they bring lots of people together to play with the same recipe or ingredient. If you check Twitter, Instagram, or your favorite blogs today, you're almost certain to find dozens of fantastic margarita recipes. And I'm happy to throw one more into the mix.

For this margarita, I infused blanco tequila with dried hibiscus flowers. This gives it a floral, slightly fruity taste and a beautiful bright pink color. Hibiscus is not as hard to find as you might think. I like getting it from my local natural wellness store, which lets you scoop your own teas and spices. It's great because you don't need much for an infusion. But you can also buy dried hibiscus online. Just a half tablespoon of dried flowers in one cup of your spirit of choice will give you a beautiful infusion overnight.

To give this margarita a bit more depth and spice, I also threw in some Ancho Reyes chili liqueur. This is a surprisingly versatile ingredient that goes with lots of different flavors, but it certainly does shine with agave spirits. If you don't have a bottle, you can still make a more traditional hibiscus margarita by subbing in some triple sec or Cointreau. And if you want to keep it spicy, try adding a few jalapeño slices to your hibiscus infusion. I finished off the drink with a hibiscus-chili salted rim - definitely optional, but a fun touch!

Flor de Puebla

2 oz. hibiscus-infused tequila blanco*
3/4 oz. Ancho Reyes
1/2 oz. lime juice
1/2 oz. agave nectar
Hibiscus-chili salt, for rim**

Prepare glass by running a wedge of lime around the rim and dipping it in the salt. Fill the glass with ice. Combine tequila, Ancho Reyes, lime juice, and agave nectar in a shaker with ice and shake until chilled. Strain into the prepared glass and garnish with a few rehydrated hibiscus flowers.

*For hibiscus-infused tequila, combine 1/2 tbsp. of dried hibiscus flowers with 1 cup of tequila in a jar and let sit overnight, shaking occasionally. Strain out the flowers before using.

**For hibiscus-chili salt, crush some hibiscus flowers with a mortar and pestle. Add kosher salt and chili powder (I completely eyeballed the amounts, but maybe 1:2:3 chili:hibiscus:salt). Crush a little more with the pestle to break up the salt and combine the ingredients.

Recipe Round-Up: Hot Cocktails

There's honestly nothing better than being curled up inside with a mug of something hot and boozy while the snow falls. It's been a bit of a weird winter - in Boston our January temperatures ranged from sub-zero to 60 degrees - but that fact still stands. If you're looking for something to drink during the next cold spell, here are ten hot cocktail recipes to warm you up!

1. Hot Toddy. A simple mix of spirit, lemon, sweetener, and hot water, the Hot Toddy is a versatile template. My traditional recipe uses bourbon and honey.

2. Irish Coffee. There's a reason this is a classic. I use Dead Rabbit's recipe: 1.5 oz. Irish Whiskey, 1/2 oz. Demerara syrup, and 4 oz. coffee topped with lightly whipped heavy cream.

3. Hot Buttered Rum. I made this for the first time this winter, and it is fantastic. I thought adding butter to a drink seemed a bit weird, but trust me: butter makes everything better.

4. Mulled Wine. I used to not be a fan of Mulled Wine, and now I can't get enough of it around the holidays. It's so easy to make, especially in a batch for company, and it warms you up to your core.

5. Icky-Poo Tonic. This is a recipe I got from Joy the Baker that my husband and I have come to rely on when we get colds. A mixture of orange juice, bourbon, honey, and hot water, it soothes your throat and your aches and just makes you feel better. The name is ridiculous, but it stuck.

6. Warm Spiced Vanilla. By now you've probably noticed that I don't really own a wide variety of glassware for hot cocktails. ;-) This delicious mixture of bourbon, Bailey's, milk, and lots of other good stuff is a long-time favorite for cold weather.

7. Vert Chaud. If you're looking for something a bit more unique, mix some hot chocolate with Green Chartreuse, top it with a bit of whipped cream, and enjoy. My favorite part is lighting the Chartreuse on fire in the mug to warm it up.

8. Mexican Hot Chocolate with Mezcal Whipped Cream. This one is probably my favorite recipe on this list. It's ridiculously decadent and delicious. Ancho Reyes gives rich hot chocolate some spice, and whipping Mezcal into the cream adds a dreamy bit of smoke to the mix.

9. Montenegro Toddy. I mentioned how versatile a Hot Toddy recipe can be - here's the perfect example. Amaro Montenegro is a great addition for some complexity and bitterness. Try it with your favorite amaro.

10. Ursa Major. This hot tea cocktail is made with honey-bourbon liqueur that is sooo good in a hot drink. You can substitute bourbon and honey if you don't have it. Some Allspice Dram adds a perfect seasonal touch.

Widow's Touch

A few weeks ago, I featured a classic cocktail called the Widow's Kiss made with apple brandy, Benedictine, and Yellow Chartreuse. It's a good drink, but not really something I'd like to make again and again. A lot of older cocktails just aren't quite balanced for modern tastes, and even with PDT's adjusted recipe, the Widow's Kiss tastes like something from another time. To me that's part of the appeal.

The Widow's Touch, however, is another matter. I love this drink. It's an updated version of the classic that swaps out the Yellow Chartreuse for St. Germain, and the switch makes all the difference. In Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, Ted Haigh calls the Widow's Kiss "a cocktail of fall turning towards winter." In that case, the Widow's Touch is a cocktail of fall meeting spring. It's bright, sweet, and floral with flavors of apple and pear.

History: The Widow's Touch sprang from Boston's fantastic bar scene. It was created by John Gertsen when he was at No. 9 Park. He went on to open Drink, one of Boston's best-known cocktail bars.

Widow's Touch

1 1/4 oz. Laird's Applejack or Apple Brandy
3/4 oz. St. Germain
1/4 oz. Benedictine
1 dash Angostura bitters

Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass with ice. Stir until well chilled and strain into a coupe glass.

Recipe from Bon Appetit.