I broke down on New Year’s Day
and I mixed my drinks
and I lost my way
I walked past the houses
of every friend I’d ever known
and I set off on my own
Having promised a description of the Meursault (pronounced “mer-soo” or something like), I am striking while the proverbial iron is hot within my soul. If you are not a gin drinker, then take heart and have patience; I promise I’ll get the Myers and Bulleit back out ere long.
This drink is the brainchild of my lovely friend the Mead, who once remarked to me:
we need to invent a cocktail called meursault (in honor, of course, of this band, this song in particular: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwCD8dWY6xk). it strikes me as gin-based, with not too sweet a flavoring — perhaps something along cran or other berry lines. a drink, in short, that could make you lose your way, sink you into melancholy over what you’d left behind, and yet somehow also brace you for continuing onward.
So, proceeding on that basis, I got out my gin. Initially I had no cranberry anything around, but I did have a pomegranate, a lime, sugar, and grapefruit bitters, which were mixed as follows: a shot (1.5 oz) of Plymouth, a shot of squeezed* pomegranate juice, ½ oz lime juice, 2 teaspoons sugar, and 3 dashes of grapefruit bitters. It was a good start, somewhat tart with an intriguing texture as well as some fun overtones from the bitters.
I added a bit more pomegranate juice and a touch more sugar the next time around, which edged it away from the tart end of the pH scale. The third time around, we juiced some fresh cranberries (which yields a fairly bitter extract, beware!) and mixed a tablespoonful of it with a shot of gin, a shot of pom juice, ½ oz lemon juice, and a tablespoonful of sugar.
The final iteration took what we’d learned from the first few rounds and fashioned it into something which, when partly prepared ahead of time, mixed up faster. There was still a shot of gin, and still a generous shot of pomegranate juice (I carefully bottled about 7 pomegranates’ worth). Having enjoyed both the lime flavor and the lemon flavor, I mixed and bottled equal amounts of both to use as the ½ ounce of citrus. The sugar was necessary to offset the extreme bitterness of the juiced cranberries, but dissolving it required more shaking than I preferred, so I opted to mix it into yet another jar, this one full of cranberry juice.
The effect of all the bottling was that I could head to my boss’s house and mix up some cocktails for the office’s Christmas party with relatively little vexation. Despite the last-minute substitution of Tanqueray for the less-piney Plymouth, even the people who “weren’t really gin drinkers” loved it. Merry Christmas and happy New Year.**
And I hope that someone is praying for me
out there at home
*Once upon a time, one of my brothers bought a Jack LaLanne power juicer for to make himself healthy drinks. He soon discovered that its purported “easy cleaning” was in fact rather complicated, tired of it rapidly, and handed it off to me. I don’t use it that often, but I love juicing pomegranates with it. POM Wonderful is one of the best pomegranate juices I’ve encountered, but it has nothing on the frothy fuchsia of freshly home-juiced pomegranate.
Which is sort of sad, I guess, for all the people who don’t have a juicer sitting about.
**But even those of us with juicers are doomed to suffer through Not Pomegranate Season, as I am right now, so POM is probably the best stopgap where I live. If one wanted to be really low-key about it, one could mix some gin, some Ocean Spray or Northland cran-pomegranate blend, and dash in some citrus to perk it up. Obviously it won’t give you the same texture, so be wary, as it might give you a touch more melancholy than intended.
Cocktail Phalanx 