The great American last-minute bourbon cocktail derby: results are in!
So it was a long weekeend around South Minneapolis with simultaneous neighborhood celebrations of May Day (which is something like a national holiday here in our pinko enclave), Cinco de Mayo, the triumph of Tumblr and the Kentucky Derby, but our interns still found the time to tabulate the results of our bourbon cocktail competition.
There were actually quite a few more entries than anticipated (i.e., three), so this was a tough one. The results could actually be compiled handily into something like The South 12th Bourbon Bar Bible. Maybe a project for when I get laid off again.
Anyway, we begin with a few honorable mentions:
Amanda’s Bardstown, KY-derived Ginger Mark (bourbon, ginger ale, Frangelico) is, as I know from much experience with the ingredients, absolutely wonderful, and Claudia’s Derby Pie Martini (Frangelico, creme de cacao, pecan garnish) gets many, many points for regional specificity. Craig’s high/low-concept Easy Sipper, our lone East Coast entrant, loves the bourbon and the ladies, and who can blame him?
Also notable is Michael Fallon’s high-concept tribute to tipsy sloganeering, The Bruitist Manifesto. I was also fond of the trans-Midwestern suburban high conceptualism of Paul’s Robbinsdale Rickshaw. Kaeti’s Gilded Shadow (named for Louisville poet Jan Mayhall and consisting of bourbon, peach schnapps, cranberry juice, soda and a squeeze of lime) is a fruity, delicious full-on George Tenet-style slam dunk. Meg’s Kalamazoo-bred Dirty Italian (2 parts bourbon, 1 part San Pellegrino, dash of Angostura bitters) is the very defintion of refreshing.
Runner-up is Lorika of Minneapolis, whose contribution seems, on the surface, exceedingly modest. However, when one considers the sort of drink one would make on a slow summer day in Louisville, the type of day wherein you have skipped your retail job and committed to spending daylight hours watching The Young Ones DVD box set in its entirety with your equally slothful roomates, this kind of thing comes to mind:
Rootbeer and Bourbon
1 shot vodka
1/2 shot bourbon
RootbeerTop with rootbeer and stir with straw.
Oh, yeah! Throw in some Skyline cheese coneys and you’re right there.
The winner is Kingfield’s own Jeanne Lakso, whose cocktail hits the precise right notes of sweetness, fizziness, fussiness and an acceptable degree of full-on fruitiness. It also gets points for using a wide range of common and obscure ingredients (resourcefulness!), and for only being acceptable to make in the safety of your home (most bartenders would go totally Pottersville on your ass for for ever asking them to make this in real life). It even makes use of ginger ale, which, in the beloved Commonwealth, is usually Ale-8-1. Also, triple points for using the phrase “half and half,” which I first read at first as meaning, like, creamer. Readers, I give you the delicious Whirly Temple:
Fill a highball glass with ice; add a jigger of bourbon. Pour in the least-sweet ginger ale or ginger beer you can find, half and half with sour cherry juice. Garnish with a thin slice of orange. Maraschino cherry optional.
Jeanne will receive some piece of Derby something-or-other I find in my apartment! Congratulations!
Now, stay tuned for the recipe for Katie’s recipe for the Hillbilly Mint Julep, which will knock your maroon and gray Assumption High School Rockets socks off.
