It Wants What It Wants
25ml Scotch whisky (Aberlour 10 Year)
7.5ml Campari
5ml triple sec (Cointreau)
5ml dry vermouth (M&R Extra Dry)
Dash peated whisky (Laphroaig 10)
Dash orange bitters (Angostura)
Dash Peychaud’s bitters
Drop saline (10%)
Stir all except saline over ice and strain into a tumbler containing one large cube. Drop saline onto ice cube.
A reworked recipe this one, something I first put to paper months ago under the name ‘Bad Haircut’. A cocktail very reminiscent of my personal tastes (whisky, amari, bitters) the flavours were quick to balance but the composition seemed too sweet. Early experimentation with fresh orange juice having not been successful, including dry vermouth and increasing the proportion of whisky helped dry it out.
Something like an Old Pal by way of a Jasmine, it opens with the Scotch, the iodine of the peat mixing well into the Campari and orange leaving a slightly medicinal but fresh taste on the tongue. The saline I tend to add at discretion though hesitate before using more than three drops. Having now acquired them, in future I would use Regan’s No.6 Orange Bitters in this (and to be honest, most recipes asking for orange bitters) to add a touch more spice.
The background here is an old lobster box from a reclamation yard - something with rum would probably have been more appropriate perhaps!
Original recipe © Benjamin Talbot, 2018.