Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a fellow cocktail enthusiast’s wedding at Maison Premiere in Brooklyn. Amongst the guests were some other cocktail enthusiasts as well. Of the 7 drinks one stood out the most was À La Louisiane which is listed in the COCKTAILS App for iPhone. This is the 1937 version that calls for equal parts rye, red vermouth, benedictine and 3-4 dashes of Peychaud’s bitters and absinthe. I tried to recreate it tonight but my wife felt it fell short, she thinks it needed to be sweeter and smokier than the one we had yesterday. Here was the breakdown:
.75 Rittenhouse Rye
.75 Martini & Rossi Red Vermouth
.75 Benedictine
3 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
3 dashes Pernod (I could not find the Absinthe Supreme and thought this would be a reasonable substitute).
.5 ounce of spring water *I use the measured amount of spring water for proper dilution and put it int the freezer for an hour so it is ready before dinner, I like my boozy cocktails icy cold.
Since it fell short, I am thinking to increase the Benectine and try a different rye? Should I use absinthe instead of Pernod? While I know it might not ever be as good as the one I had yesterday, the only other variable is the vermouth, which may have been too sweet?
Would love some input for my newest favorite cocktail!
No guarantee that their spec at the wedding was exactly the same, but…
Also, the drinks at M-P were not freezer batches. Temperature has a profound effect on taste, as does dilution, particularly with all these complex ingredients, and freezer batches typically require a different spec from a stirred drink for that and other reasons.
Thank you for this Martin! Yes the podcast specs are way different, and I am actually a little surprised. I wonder what they mean about “overproof” rye, Rittnhouse is 50% alcohol but overproof tends to mean OVER 100proof? The vermouth for sure might have been an issue. I should have watched more closely, but it was crowded and I did see they were making them to order (not batching), I only add the water in because while I know it takes time to for the cocktail to come up to correct temperature, in a warm room/day like that, I like to control the dilution perfectly. If I wanted to drink it immediately, then I would stir, but I find that stirring (the way I do it) gives me .75 ounces of water dilution and it’s not cold enough. I was watching a cocktail segment on America’s Test Kitchens (they have a recent mixology book out by the way), and while I trust them for food and cooking, when it comes to mixology I am not sure yet. They suggest drinks should be 25-35% diluted with ice. I will try again tonight after work but before dinner, thanks!
That site specs Wild Turkey 101 rye, so just over 100 proof. In my experience, though the word overproof comes from the rum world where historically the “proof” was whether the rum would burn with gunpowder (i.e. about 57% ABV), in the whiskey world it has broadly come to mean “over the more common ABV strengths,” say 50% plus.
That matches the more spirit-forward NYC aesthetic first published in the 2011 PDT Cocktail Book.
2 oz Wild Turkey Rye (not specified whether 80/81° or 101°)
3/4 oz Dolin Sweet Vermouth
3/4 oz Benedictine
3 dash St. George Absinthe
3 dash Peychaud’s Bitters
Stir/strain/coupe/3 cherrys on a pick.
Boston’s aesthetic back then was equal parts with 3 dash Peychaud’s and either 1 dash/few drops or a rinse of absinthe based on the Green Street and Eastern Standard bar bibles. I’m not sure if the cocktail kids are even drinking classics like that any more over all the clarified and processed drinks that are so popular today. The only place I’ve seen it on the menu in the last few years is a neighborhood spot that has bartending veterans from the late 90s and 00s behind the stick, and that one is equal parts too.
My wife (who has a better palate than me) said this one from the podcast and the one Frederic Yarm posted was way closer to what we had on Sunday. I can find Wild Turkey 101 bourbon but not rye (and in fact I remember the bartender pouring from a Wild Turkey bottle, I just didn’t know it was 101 Rye). While I thought the rye at 1.75 ounces was a bit heavy, somehow it balances out, but she did suggest I dial that back. Unfortunately I have to work the next 3 nights in a row so I won’t be able to pick back up with this until Saturday, and I hope the memory of the taste does not fade by then.
I’ll chime in here and maybe complicate things further, you might wanna consider a different vermouth too. Cocchi di Torino and La Quintinye have more body and complexity than M&R, in my opinion.
I’ve never used Pernod in my A La Louisianes. I have fond memories of making one with Red Hook Rye and Carpano after I got dumped. My sister-in-law said a cocktail would make me feel better and it definitely did!
(That was also the first drink my friend Marshall ever ordered at the original Passenger in DC. Tom Brown, rather profanely, refused to make it as the bar was slammed. We still laugh about that with him to this day.)
I love this drink, but I have to admit I’ve never tried the original, equal-parts recipe. (I guess I’ll be doing that soon.) I use the PDT recipe, and it’s still a pretty sweet drink that I am not always in the mood for. That VinePair recipe looks like an interesting compromise.
By the way, I like to garnish this with three small Griottines cherries, which to me are a more interesting match than the usual Luxardo cherries.
