Gentleman Caller

Thursday, December 15, 2016

Gentleman Caller

My handsome Gentleman Caller

My Eve app is telling me I am fertile right now. I guess that is why I wanted to devour this handsome fella at the dog park today.

Alas, no man has come a calling in a while so I'll just have to drink my sorrows in this Gentleman Caller.

This is one of those drinks that has classic specs and can be quite versatile. In fact, I originally made it with the rhum agricole, but changed it to gin when I saw we had too many rum drinks on the menu. Is that possible? I think not.

This drink has been names one of the best cocktails of 2016 and has been published in a St-Germain cocktail book called How To Drink French Fluently. In the book I subbed out the hard to find genet for St-Germain. See? I told you it was versatile.

Aperitif and digestives are an essential part of the ritual for eating and drinking. We are a restaurant/bar and our cocktails are tailor made to go with that experience of eating and drinking in harmony. The Gentleman Caller is a light aperitif cocktail consisting of Aperol, Fino sherry, Genepy and gin. The bitter full brightness of the Aperol and Genepy (an herbal French liqueur) prepare the mouth and belly for food, opening up all your flavor receptors.

The Gentleman Caller was inspired by one of my favorite sherry cocktails, The Adonis, from the Savoy Cocktail Book. A fine dry sherry like a Fino or Manzanilla is so elegant and complex. This drink manages to enhance and balance that elegance with other equally complex ingredients. Its a sexy drink too. Served in a Nick & Nora glass, so named for Nick & Nora Charles in the Thin Man Movies of the late 1930's and 40's. Nick Charles was a scoundrel but a gentleman all the same. The Gentleman caller...I like the name as men order the cocktail because they want to be one, and women because they want to have one.