A month ago I got a little fixated on the desire to combine my favorite gin with plums and basil. In a dainty frosted coupe, of course.
My first attempt was the best, but I was being a bad scientist and slopping shit around so I can’t remember any of the specifics. I know I took the time to chill my coupe, and my plum was pretty ripe. I muddled the plum with confectioners sugar and 3 large basil leaves, added gin and lemon juice and ice, shook, and tediously double-strained into my coupe. The result was a pretty little lavender hued cocktail, but was kind of thick in the mouth. I guess I battered the pectin out of the plum or something, but the texture wasn’t necessarily upsetting since it was nice and cold. I added a few hefty dashes of Scrappy’s lavender bitters, as I do to most things these days, and that made me forget about the taste I was trying to achieve by pleasantly overpowering everything else.
My second attempt tried to take care of the viscosity by serving over crushed ice in a tall glass, as well as add some lapsang souchong simple. I think I stuck to 2oz. of gin, 0.5oz lemon juice, 0.75oz lapsang simple, a whole ripe plum and basil leaves.
I wasn’t thrilled. I had run out of lemons for juice so it didn’t end up being very potent, and none of the flavors really shone through. I’m not giving up yet though, and am currently back at the drawing board still obsessed with the plum idea. It’s not entirely unfounded, as I am drawing inspiration from Teardrop lounge’s Love in the Afternoon. I think I need to make my smoky tea syrup a bit stronger, and maybe there’s a reason Teardrop chose the enigmatic pluot… Also, mezcal. Hmm.
Having given up on the plum thing, I moved on to lower pastures. I picked up that morning’s leftover tea (chai green tea with the teabag still in), took a sip of the strong brew and decided I wanted some kind of cold chai toddy. In a chilled coupe. That was the extent of my thinking, and I looked into the liquor cabinet for further instruction.
I still don’t have any lemons, so I was looking for an solution to the tartness issue. I used some of this elderflower liqueur that I bought because it wasn’t St. Germain, but turned out to be kind of lousy– but it’s a nicer way to introduce citric acid into drink. I grabbed the Ethereal gin again because I love it so and shook the leftover sweetened tea, gin, and elderflower liqueur together and strained into the all-important chilled coupe:
With my vigorous shaking and the watery sweetened tea and elderflower liqueur, the 2 oz. of gin got pretty diluted. If I had over-planned this, I would have made chamomile tea simple syrup instead of just dumping some of my cold green chai dregs into a shaker. I would have gone shopping for lemons, and never even considered the elderflowers. But as it was, it wasn’t terrible. Just more like a “cooler” instead of a cocktail.
And here’s something totally delicious and easy:
A white whiskey sour with thyme simple syrup. BAM. I used our wicked local Bully Boy white whisky, and the thyme simple was leftover from when I made a big delicious jar cocktail. I had acquired more lemons at this point, so all was well.
Man, that drink is too summery knowing that it’s going to snow tomorrow night. It’s time for me to change the banner again I suppose…
