For those watching the Stakes this afternoon, or those who want to be there in spirit, here’s another now-forgotten recipe from Trader Vic’s…

The Preakness Cocktail

1/2 jigger Italian vermouth
1 jigger Bourbon, rye or blended whiskey
1 dash bitters
1/2 t. Benedictine

Stir with ice, and strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with lemon twist.

I’d never had domestic applejack, just French calvados, but Ted Haigh’s book is positively bullish on it, and a number of mixologists seem smitten with the Jack Rose, a Prohibition-era cocktail featuring the spirit. So seeing that I could pick up a bottle of Laird’s at Cirace’s for less than fifteen bucks, I couldn’t resist.

Consumed straight, I like calvados far better – it has more a mellow brandy taste rather than applejack’s 80 proof whiskey-like kick. But I’d heartily recommend applejack for cocktails: it’s spirit first and fruitiness second and holds up to strong ingredients.

Take the increasingly famous Jack Rose. A simple applejack sour (with lemon or lime), it’s offset with the sweetness and color of grenadine.

Jack Rose Cocktail

1 jigger domestic applejack
juice of 1/2 lime or lemon
2 dashes grenadine

Shake well and strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with lime/lemon wedge.

At first blush it seems like a frou-frou drink, pink and sweet. But a couple sips into it, you’ll be struck by the complexity. At least I was. Cocktail aficionados insist on a good quality grenadine like Angostura or Fee Brothers brand, but I’ve combed most of the liquor stores in Boston and have yet to see anything other than Rose’s grenadine. Perhaps with the right stuff, the drink would be sublime; with Rose’s, though, it was sufficiently tasty.

Or, if you’re looking for something stronger and not-so-fruity, I flipped through the Trader Vic’s guide and found an Applejack Cocktail that’s equal parts applejack and Italian vermouth. Again using the very strongly flavored Punt e Mes, the result was too bitter and disharmonious for my tastes, so I doubled the proportion of applejack in the recipe. Much better.

Applejack Cocktail

1 jigger domestic applejack
1/2 jigger Italian vermouth

Shake and strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with lemon twist.

Too outré? Applejack works well in a highball, with some ginger ale, ice and a lemon wedge. Not bad for cheap hooch.

Laird’s Applejack can be found Cirace and Sons Liquors, 173 North Street, North End and Beacon Hill Wine and Spirits, 63 Charles Street, among other stores.

As my friends know, I like to have a drink of the season. Something that captures my mood and complements the climate. Maybe even that uses seasonal ingredients. A drink for which I can have the ingredients on hand for company or for myself.

Well, after my trip to B Side, the drink of spring for me is the Last Word. Its fruity-dry balance, its pale green color, its perfect alchemy that needs no garnish: I can’t think of a better spring cocktail. It was popular among my friends too, who couldn’t remember the cocktail name so kept calling it the L Word.

It’s not in most guidebooks, even the encyclopedic Trader Vic’s. Thankfully, Paul at Cocktail Chronicles comes to the rescue. I urge you to go read his post for the history of this long-forgotten Prohibition-era drink (that’s half the fun), but for convenience I’ll reproduce the recipe:

The Last Word

1/2 jigger dry gin
1/2 jigger maraschino liqueur
1/2 jigger green Chartreuse
1/2 jigger fresh lime juice

Put ingredients with ice in a shaker and shake well. Strain into chilled cocktail glass. No garnish.

I only see a couple of drawbacks. First, some people don’t like Chartreuse. I love the stuff myself and have a hard time keeping a bottle around, I like it on the rocks so much. But to some, the herbal flavors will remind them of a Ricola cough drop. To them, I’ll just say that in the Last Word, the interplay holds everything in balance; like a Long Island Ice Tea, you don’t so much taste the individual liquors, as the sum is greater than the parts.

Then there’s the ingredients: maraschino liqueur isn’t too cheap and can be a pain to find; and Chartreuse is expensive, often topping forty dollars a bottle, though Martignetti’s currently stocks it for 34 bucks. If you’re unsure about committing to the liquor, or are leery of odd-tasting liqueurs, go try a Last Word at B-Side for a test run. I predict that many of you, even the gin-haters, will fall in love with this one.

The Bronx Cocktail - essentially a perfect martini with orange juice added - is one of those drinks I used to see in guidebooks and recipe lists but never heard of being served. I had never tried one until recently. I imagine two culprit are to blame. First, gin has suffered a precipitous loss of popularity. Second, vermouth itself is used less and less, and the occasion that anyone orders a perfect martini today must be rare indeed. When it comes down to it, drinkers don’t always have patience these days for flavors that aren’t straightforward. We don’t want a complex drink with orange, we want an orange drink.

Shame, too, because in my book the Bronx is a perfect “fruity” drink: flavorful and mildly sweet without being uninteresting or sticky. As before, Punt e Mes picks up seemingly everything is added to, so I highly recommend using that as the sweet vermouth. It’s a flexible recipe: you can increase the gin to make it drier, or you can increase the orange juice or vermouth to taste. Here’s the proportion I landed on:

Bronx Cocktail

2 jiggers dry gin
1/2 jigger fresh orange juice
1/4 jigger dry vermouth
1/4 jigger sweet vermouth

Shake with ice and strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with lemon twist or cherry, if you like.

Charles Swift at the City Record and Boston News-Letter gives us the history of the Ward Eight political machine in Boston. And, just as importantly for our purposes, he revives a vintage cocktail recipe for the Ward Eight, which reputedly was invented at Locke-Ober at turn-of-the-century. The drink’s a variation on a whiskey sour, with a bit of grenadine and orange added in. Using Woodford Reserve bourbon, which I normally find too smoky-tasting for my manhattans, I gave the Ward Eight a try, and it’s excellent. It’s balanced enough to appeal to drinkers who aren’t huge bourbon fans.

Charles gives the recipe, but I’ll repeat it here.

Ward Eight
1 1/2 jiggers rye or bourbon
juice of half a lemon
splash of orange juice
dash of grenadine
scant teaspoon sugar

Shake with ice and pour into a cocktail glass.

In the comments, Whit writes to ask,

I want to use my pretty little Iittala glasses for something on Oscar night–but I never know what kind of drink to serve in them. I guess they are for cordials or vodka shots as your quote said below. What could I serve in my adorable glasses that would just be a way for me to show them off before, after, or along with the real drink of the evening–the martini?

I confess, Whit’s a friend of mine (but I didn’t prod him to leave a comment, I swear!): I’ve seen his cordials glasses and they are adorable. It’s because of them that I know the what Iittala cordials look like in the first place… slender, small tumblers rectangular with a slight flare, not the tapered or rounded shape that’s common. But that’s almost secondary to the larger question: what can one serve in small cordials glasses besides cordials? Is there anything fancier just than pouring some sherry?

What immediately came to mind is the pousse-café, which is the name of a layered cordial drink. It’s based on the idea that different liquors have different specific gravities: water with sugar dissolved in it is heavier than plain water, which is heavier than alcohol. Lower proof, sweeter liqueurs will sink in the glass, more alcoholic, drier liqueurs will rise.

The layering technique is called “floating.” Pour the first layer. Then on the back of a small spoon (this minimized disruption of the layers below), gently pour another thin layer. Wait a few seconds until the layers settle. Repeat with as many layers as you like, taking your time. The result is a lovely banding of different colors and flavors. Here’s a simple and tasty one I created with grenadine, maraschino liqueur, Chartreuse and cognac:

This is definitely Advanced Bartending territory, or at least Intermediate. Not only is there the technique of floating to master (not all that hard really), the drink requires having the appropriate liqueurs on hand. From heaviest to lightest, here are some possibilities:

Crème de Cassis / Grenadine
Anisette
Kahlua
White Crème de Cacao / Maraschino Liqueur
Crème de Menthe (Green or White)
Blue Curacao / Galliano
Amaretto
Tia maria
Drambuie / Frangelico / Orange Curacao
Campari / Yellow Chartreuse
Midori / Apricot brandy / Cherry brandy / Peach brandy
Cointreau / Brandy / Sloe gin / Kummel / Benedictine
Green Chartreuse
Southern Comfort
Kirsch
Cognac
Cream

Ingredients listed horizontally are comparable in density. The further apart in density, the clearer the layers will separate. There are longer lists that include the color and specific gravity of each. Or you can check out vintage recipes that will list strange-sounding combinations with obscure ingredients like crème de violette.

For the most part I avoid these recipes. They’re designed for visual impact, not flavor. Certainly, you want consider different colors in layering a pousse-café; the drink is all about the presentation after all. But don’t make your guest (or yourself) suffer through a Midori, Frangelico and Cream combination because it looks pretty. Pick liqueurs that go well together.

If in doubt, stay simple. Kalhua, Crème de Cacao and Brandy. Or Drambuie, Apricot Brandy, and Benedictine. You don’t have to have tons of brightly colored liquors or expensive, designer glassware to make a pousse-café. A small cordial of just Cointreau with a fine brandy layered on top is elegant, balanced and nearly unbeatable.

Got a cocktail or bartending question? Ask it at bostoncocktails-AT-yahoo-DOT-com.