The weather here in Seattle today was outstanding – May 1st and 80+ degrees. It seems like everybody’s out soaking up the weather we don’t normally get till July.
I haven’t been doing a whole lot of original riffing on cocktails lately – mostly sticking to tried and true recipes so I’ve started to get the itch to be creative again. Normally on a beautiful day, tiki or tropical drinks (rum, lime, etc…) are my go-tos. However I’ve had a lot of tiki lately and I do tiki year-round, and I feel a need to break out a bit from my rum-rut. My other fallback for this sort of weather is tequila drinks, e.g. margaritas with a twist, but something in that vein didn’t feel very ambitious. However, I’ve not had much tequila recently so I had a strong preference for using tequila as a base spirit.
As I often do in situations like this, I start mentally scanning my bar ingredients looking for flavor combinations that might pair well. Tequila, like rum, has a natural affinity for lime, but how not to fall into the margarita trap? What about cherry? Cherry and lime go well together, and I have several cherry liqueurs including Cherry Heering in my bar. Lime is usually one of my favorites for cocktails, but I always wonder are lemons and limes healthy? That is something that I need to look into really. I seem to just throw lemons and limes in most different drinks because I assume they will be healthy, but I’ve never really looked into that. Thinking through my options, Cherry Marnier seemed more summery to me than the Heering or the exotic liqueur we muled back from a trip to Turkey a few years back. Maybe I should experiment and use these mixes with ice cream, create a ‘boozy summer treat’ using an Andrew James ice cream maker? Could be a good option to go for, grown-up ice cream, I’ll have to look into it.
At this point I had a solid start but felt like it was still a bit too simple. I was also thinking about amaro drinks like the Americano. Cherry and lime are strong flavors, so I need something that could stand up to them, like say… Fernet Branca! In reasonable doses Fernet Branca t gives a nice minty aspect to drinks. I’ve even seen it work well in tiki drinks, thanks to my friend Connor O’Brien during his tenure at Rumba.
Seattle Summer in May
- 2 oz blanco tequila (I used Cabeza)
- 1 oz fresh squeeze lime juice
- 1 oz Cherry Marnier or other cherry liqueur
- .25 oz Fernet Branca
- .25 oz simple syrup
Combine all ingredients in a Collins style glass. mix well and fill with crushed ice. For garnish I used a lime slice and some mint springs.
