Cocktail Obsession: Hemingway in the Hebrides

I have a (bad) habit of conjuring up spirit flavor combinations that sound great in my head, then inflicting those ideas as off-menu request to my favorite Seattle bartenders. An entirely drinkable concoction always arrives, but every so often I hit the jackpot – a killer drink that I need to experiment more with at home. Recently I hit up Erik Hakkinen, bar maestro at Seattle’s legendary Zig Zag Café, with “Something lush… sherry… maybe some spice… and smoke!” Erik smiled, as he’s prone to do, and said, “I got this.”

What Erik created with my loosely defined request knocked my socks off, and he graciously provided the recipe, handwritten on a coaster, sans name. While incorporating all my ideas (sherry, Ancho Reyes for the spice, Islay scotch for the smoke), Erik saw what I was missing – a base flavor to bring together the flavors I’d requested. I had an “Of course!” moment when he mentioned that an apple brandy (Laird’s Bottled in Bond) was his starting point. In Erik’s creation, no one flavor dominates, and the apple, sherry, pepper spice, and smoke flavors harmonize well together.

Naming drinks is always the hard part, and Erik left that to me. Thinking about the ingredients–Spanish sherry, smoky scotch, Mexican pepper (from the Ancho Reyes) and robust apple–it seemed to me like something Ernest Hemingway would drink – robust and manly! (If I do say so myself…) All are bold flavors, strongly associated with their respective countries. Hemingway was born in the US, and traveled in Spain and Mexico, but I couldn’t find a solid reference to him traveling to Scotland. I like to think that if he’d visited, he’d have gone to Islay, home of smoky scotch, which is part of the Hebrides isles, and when he arrived at the bar, he’d have had something like this:

Hemingway in the Hebrides

• 1.5 oz Laird’s Apple Brandy (100 proof, bottled in bond)
• 0.75 oz Ancho Reyes
• 0.75 oz Lustau East India Sherry (sub sweet Oloroso or PX sherry in a pinch)
• 0.5 Laphroaig (sub other smoky Islay scotch)
• 1 dash Angostura Bitters

 Stir over ice, strain into chilled coupe. Express lemon peel over drink, drop in.

Depending on your preference for spice versus smoke, adjust the Ancho Reyes and Laphroaig ratios. A variation on the above that I found enjoyable (and a bit punchier) drops the apple brandy component down, brings up the smoke, and reduces the spice a tad.  I like to think Papa would approve.

• 1 oz Laird’s Apple Brandy
• 0.5 oz Ancho Reyes
• 0.75 oz Lustau East India Sherry (sub sweet Oloroso, or PX sherry in a pinch)
• 0.75 Laphroaig (sub other smoky Islay scotch)
• 1 dash Angostura bitters

Stir over ice, strain into chilled coupe. Express lemon peel over drink, drop in.