I was born on April 15, which means that, most years, when my birthday doesn’t fall on an Easter Sunday it falls on the United States anti-holiday that is income tax day. Being an ides of April baby also means that each and every year I am also reminded of the sinking of the Titantic and the death of Abraham Lincoln.

This year, we all get until 4/17 to turn in our taxes. However, as Saturday becomes Sunday 4/15, I’ll be at the Turner Classic Movies festival in Hollywood where I’ll have a choice between an actual movie about the sinking of the Titanic (1958′s “A Night to Remember”) or I can contemplate my mortality via an avant gardish science fiction movie in which character actor John Randolph has a mid-life crisis and becomes Rock Hudson. (That’s John Frankenheimer’s 1966 “Seconds.”) Movies are about escape, you know.

All of which is a long-winded and self-indulgent way to get to this week’s cocktail, named for a day most of us agree is far worse luck than a Friday the 13th like today but which most of us agree is necessary in some form. Thus, the cocktail classic represents the healthy orange sweet of it — the roads, bridges, schools, fire and police protection we get in return for our taxes — and the bitters of actually paying them. If you note a strong similarity to another drink covered here, you aren’t hallucinating. Believe it or not, Income Tax is both the bitter and the better of the two.

Income Tax

2 ounces gin
1 ounce orange juice (fresh squeezed, for sure)
1/2 ounce dry vermouth
1/2 ounce sweet vermouth
1-3 dashes aromatic bitters
1 orange slice (optional garnish, but since you’re squeezing the orange already…)

As with the Bronx, people are over the map on proportions, and I certainly encourage readers to experiment to their heart’s content with more or less sweet and dry vermouth, OJ, and gin. Nevertheless, especially with the addition of bitters, I found this easy to remember and straight forward version was actually quite the best.

A few notes on ingredients. I’m using Tanqueray (94.6 proof) right now, though I’m sure this will work as well with most other high proof gins such as Bombay Dry or Beefeater. With an 80 proof gin like Gordon’s, it might be a bit sweeter which can either be a good or bad thing. I tried making my Income Tax using both traditional Angostura bitters as well as Fee Brother’s aromatic bitters and it came out fine with both.

I even ran out of my usual Noilly Pratt sweet vermouth — which for some reason Bev-Mo in Orange County, CA has stopped carrying, darn them — and went to an inferior brand that I had sitting around. Still very nice. Like tax day itself, this drink can be attacked but it will never be killed. Would that that were true for the folks on the Titanic and, of course, Old Abe. Fortunately, the magic of cinema can take care of that.

A couple of years back I was in a restaurant bar in L.A.’s Chinatown known for it’s Tiki-style specialties. Not sure what to order, I asked the bartender, an older gentlemen who clearly knew what was what in that venerable Asian-American enclave, what cocktail he liked most to make. “Beer,” he told me, utterly straightfaced. Forget it, Bob, it’s, well, you know where.

In my experience, most bartenders aren’t really big on offering up suggestions that go beyond the best known drinks. That leaves it up to more adventurous imbibers to suggest something a bit different. The only problem is that it’s kind of hard to remember the ingredients and exact proportions of most great cocktails. Not so with today’s slightly unusual but also highly symmetrical dual-spirit concoction. If you can remember “equal parts brandy, rye, and sweet vermouth and bitters” you’ve got this drink mostly down.

My Good Friday 2012 drink is also about as classic as they come. It dates back to 1887 and the second of Jerry Thomas’s seminal 19th century cocktail guides. The name, I gather, comes from Saratoga Springs in Upstate New York. Once upon a time, the town combined spa-like resorts, natural beauty, and also a healthy business in gambling, and not only at the famed race track. In any case, the drink is an outstanding variation on the Manhattan and so simple even the most distracted and busy bartender should be able to manage it — well, assuming the bar even stocks rye.

The Saratoga

1 ounce rye whiskey
1 ounce brandy or cognac
1 ounce sweet vermouth
2 dashes aromatic bitters
1 thinly sliced lemon wheel (borderline essential garnish)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Combine the rye, brandy, vermouth and a dash of two of bitters in a cocktail shaker with lots of ice. Stir or shake it vigorously, and strain the results into a chilled cocktail glass, preferably with the lemon wheel already sitting it in it — not perched on the side of the glass. Sip and contemplate how much harder it must have been to get a hold of the large quantities of ice necessary for good cocktails in 1887.

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I used Rittenhouse Rye which, being 100 proof, stands up really well to the combined sweetness of my beloved Noilly Pratt red vermouth and the wonderfully value priced Reynal brandy. I found the lemon slice to be an essential component. It’s one garnish that really does kind of make the drink, for me anyway. You might also want to give lemon peel/zest a try.

I did do a little experimenting. At the suggestion of a 2009 post on the Alcademics blog, I tried it with some Scotch (the Glenrothes). It was nice, but not quite as nice as with rye. I also tried it with some very good bourbon (Buffalo Trace) which was, however, a bust as bourbon is probably about as sweet as brandy.

Despite the fact that many U.S. denominations frown on booze or ban it outright, it’s nevertheless no surprise that Christian imagery has found its way into the argot of whiskey distillers based in some of the most devout regions on the planet. “The Angel’s share” refers to a certain small percentage of whiskey that seeps into the wood in barrels and usually evaporates.

It’s become a minor trend to refer to this phenomenon. A bourbon fancier’s magazine is named for it, Jim Beam has found a way to extract the bourbon back out of the wood and perversely named it the Devil’s Cut. Meanwhile, famed bourbon distiller Lincoln Henderson, previously associated with the fine brands Old Forester and Woodford Reserve, has crafted a Kentucky straight bourbon he calls the Angel’s Envy.

The booze press has been very kind to this bourbon and for good reason. It’s designed for the serious whiskey lover and is described as being ultra small-batch and super premium. By intelligent design, it’s not as smooth as some products but it mostly justifies its large, but not enormous, price (about $45.00 in most places) by being plenty flavorful. It makes for an excellent Manhattan, quite a sturdy Old Fashioned, and I imagine it would work equally well in most classic bourbon cocktails. It’s also excellent with just a little bit of soda water.

Still, there’s always room for innovation. Henderson and his colleagues finish their product in casks previously used for port, and there is a hint of the richness of the dessert wine in the whiskey’s flavor. Logically enough, port is a significant ingredient in a number of recipes they’ve developed, including the one below that’s pretty ideal for the unseasonably warm weather going on in parts of the Midwest, even if it’s actually a bit cooler than usual here in sunny So Cal. In any case, this beverage is a nice one and simple enough for any soul.

The Angel’s Decree

1 1/2 ounces Angel’s Envy bourbon
1/2 ounce port
1-2 dashes aromatic bitters
ginger ale

Combine bourbon, port, and bitters in a smallish Tom Collins glass with ice cubes and stir. Top off with ginger ale…it’s more interesting if you don’t stir it again at this point. Sip and ask for divine guidance on whether or not your soul will be safe if you try this very tasty concoction with another brand of bourbon.

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I really like the Angel’s Decree but, at the risk of sounding as if I’m in a state of heretical despair, I’m not sure it loves me. My issues with all true red wines — they make me feel, if I may use a technical term, icky — are what drove me to explore cocktails in the first place. Port is easily my favorite kind of red wine but, as I learned again this week, it’s still red and even in very small doses for me leads to feelings that are short of heavenly. That, however, should not stop you from enjoying the drink.

The good news for me is that the sweet vermouth you use in a Manhattan only looks red. (The color is mostly from the caramel used to give it’s sweetness.) I think that’s how I’ll largely be taking my Angel’s Envy. Regardless, I trust no celestial being will be in hot pursuit of my footwear as a result.

Say what you will about me, I am a man of peace. That is why I come to you, this St. Patrick’s Day eve, with a small suggestion. If you should, for some reason, find yourself at an actual Irish bar or pub tomorrow night, please resist the urge to order two drinks, which I will now name.

Now, I actually very much like the beverage we in the States and in England call the Black and Tan, which combines Guinness stout with Bass or another pale ale. It’s sort of the cappuccino of beer. However, as Ben and Jerry found out a a few years back, the name is pretty much the equivalent of naming a Jewish deli sandwich a Marauding Cossack. You see, just as the Cossacks weren’t known for their kindness to Russian Jews, the English Black and Tan militia men were not known for their gentleness to Irish folks during the nation’s war of independence from the British, circa 1920-22. As for the drink known as an Irish Car Bomb, let’s just leave that one alone.

Instead, may we suggest this really very nice little beverage named for the Emerald Isle. Yes, knowledgeable readers will notice a more than slight similarity with a far better known classic cocktail, but that will only make it easier to order if your barman is not familiar — and he likely won’t be.

The Emerald

2 ounces Irish whiskey
1 ounce sweet vermouth
1-3 dashes orange bitters
1 maraschino cherry (very optional garnish)

Combine whiskey, vermouth, and bitters in a cocktail shaker. Shake or stir, as is your preference, into a chilled martini/cocktail glass. Toast, preferably while listening to the Pogues, the Chieftains, the Dubliners, or Van Morrison.

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Now, yes, this is pretty obviously a slight variation on a Manhattan, but the Irish whiskey makes for a drink that goes down as easy as watching John Ford’s “The Quiet Man” on a Sunday afternoon and ordering this non-offensive drink will avoid any situations out of “The Wind that Shakes the Barley.”

As I alluded to above, it’s also a pretty obscure drink. Indeed, every recipe I could find online seems to come pretty directly from, Esquire‘s David Wondrich who, I promise, won’t be mentioned next week for a change. It’s worth noting, however, that he points out the use of orange bitters is also potentially controversial, if you know a little Irish history. I do think, however, your bartender will charitably assume you mean orange fruit and not Orangemen when you request a Manhattan made with Irish whiskey and Regan‘s Orange Bitters.

And now, some music to drink the Emerald by.

The Wikipedia article says that the Bronx — the old school cocktail, not the NYC borough — remains popular in some regions. Well, that region must not be California or anywhere else I’ve visited much, because about the only place I’ve seen or heard anything about it until recently was as a recipe offered on one of my cocktail shakers. Come to think of it, though, I haven’t spent a whole lot of time in the Bronx. I imagine it might be popular there.

In fact, the Bronx was actually one of the first non-martini cocktails I ever made for myself. Don’t ask me why I’ve waited this long to get to it, though I’d be lying if I said it was my favorite. It’s quite tasty and refreshing but it hasn’t blown me away with its flavor like the Mary Pickford did a couple of weeks ago, so I guess it’s not a big mystery why it kept slipping my mind. Still, if you like gin, vermouth, and orange juice, you can’t really go wrong with this hard to ruin aperatif.

The Bronx

2 ounces gin
1 ounce orange juice (preferably fresh squeezed, of course)
1/2 ounce dry vermouth
1/2 ounce sweet vermouth

Combine the ingredients in a cocktail cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake vigorously. By now, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to find that you’ll be straining this into our old friend, the well-chilled martini glass. You may salute the geographical Bronx before sipping, but an actual Bronx cheer is not recommended.

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There are a pretty endless number of variations on this one this, mainly in the amount of OJ and vermouth used. David Wondrich goes so far as to reduce the vermouths to half a teaspoon each, which results in a somewhat punchier, orangier beverage. That recipe on my shaker reduces the gin down to 1 ounce, the sweet vermouth to 1/4 of an ounce, the dry vermouth to an 1/8 of an ounce — don’t ask me how you measure an amount that small, I doubled everything on this recipe whenever I’ve actually made it — and reduces the proportion of orange juice down to 1/4 of an ounce.

Really, you can play with the Bronx all day and all night, it doesn’t seem to change much. This is one drink where you can get a little crazy and no one will get hurt.

For whatever reason, today’s DOTW is not known as “the Tom Johnstone” but is simply “Tom Johnstone.” I could wonder why, but that’s like asking why Chrissie Hynde’s band is “Pretenders” and not “the Pretenders.”

David Wondrich theorizes that the drink is named for a man “who used to write shows for the Marx Brothers.” Since I’m a pretty big Marxian myself and had never heard of Johnstone, I was forced to do a little research and found that, like certain members of the legendary comedy team, Johnstone — apparently a fairly successful songwriter, cartoonist, and adman — was himself somewhat overshadowed by a better known older brother, Will B. Johnstone. If this drink really is his creation, at least Tom Johnstone gets the distinction of having created a somewhat rarish thing: a hard to foul-up Scotch-based cocktail which allows bartenders a few options, depending on taste and what they’ve got on hand.

Tom Johnstone

1 1/2 ounces Scotch
1/2 ounce fresh lime or lemon juice
1/2 ounce Cointreau or triple sec
1/2 ounce sweet vermouth

This one’s easy. Combine all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake or, if you must, stir with cracked or crushed ice, and strain into a martini glass.

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I think what I like most about the Tom Johnstone is that nothing seems to ruin it. My recipe offers substantially more freedom than the canonical Wondrich take. That’s because I found myself liking other versions I found online a bit more, though none of them are even remotely bad.

For starters, even though I often OD on tartness from lemon juice, here I actually prefer it to lime. Also, unlike some other drinks I’ve worked with, this one also works almost equally well with no-name triple sec as it does with Cointreau, the more tart top of the line orange liqueur. I also used some very good Scotch and some pretty cheap Scotch. Both worked dandy.

Tom Johnstone, be you the little known co-writer of “I’ll Say She Is” or some completely unknown bartender, hanger-on, wastrel, or dipsomaniac, I salute you for a very nice mixed beverage. And now, Chico Marx, he who is forever unfairly overshadowed by Groucho and Harpo but not Zeppo, performs a medley that includes the very bouncy “Moonlight Cocktail” starting at 1:50.

Sometimes you just go with a drink to match your mood, and Brain-Dusted is about how I feel this week as my man-flu of last week slowly drifts away. It’s also a great way for me to get rid of the cheap brand of absinthe I picked up a while back, only to find I preferred using Herbsaint in my sazeracs after all.

Aside from the recipe posted by cocktail historian Dave Wondrich, some versions uses pastis or Pernod, which like absinthe are very heavy on the licorice-tasting herb, anise, but which I don’t have in my already well stocked liquor cabinet. One iteration actually increased the proportion of absinthe. If you’ve ever tried it, you know that a little goes a long way, even if you want your brain thoroughly dusted. Another recipe I found a mention of added simple syrup, and I just don’t think adding any additional sugar was needed given the high proportion of sweet vermouth and the relatively sweet and mellow nature of my cheap absinthe. (The brand I used is merely 92 proof; most absinthes are well over 110 and some go as high as 140.)

I stuck with something fairly close to the Wondrich take. Even so, my version of the drink is a bit different than Wondrich’s, but I’ll discuss that after the recipe.

The Brain-Duster

1 ounce whiskey (Canadian or rye, very preferably 100 proof)
1 ounce absinthe
1 ounce sweet vermouth
1 dash aromatic bitters
1 maraschino cherry (optional garnish)

Combine ingredients in a metal cocktail shaker. (If you use a plastic shaker, it’ll take a million washings to get rid of anise/licorice smell of the absinthe.) If you use cracked or crushed ice, stir for a good long time. If you use regular ice, shake for a good long time. Strain into a martini glass with a maraschino cherry for a bit of extra sweetness.

If you really want to get into the brain-dusted vein, you might consider accompanying your beverage with some Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd. Now that’s brain-dusted.

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Mr. Wondrich suggested a 100 proof rye and the Rittenhouse Rye I had on hand should have fitted the bill perfectly. It was nice but still overpowered by the anise flavor of absinthe. (I’m not a big licorice lover, so take that into account.)

The next night, however, I tried with my new friend and a close relative of a heavy duty rye, 100 proof Canadian Club (last discussed here), I was suddenly quite found of the Brain-Duster. I also tried it with regular Canadian Club, and it wasn’t half bad, but 80 proof whiskey and 92 proof absinthe doesn’t quite make for the kind of brain-dusting I needed this week. On the other hand, I tried substituting Bushmills to make this a Hearn, as per Wondrich, which didn’t work for me at all. Maybe with a stronger absinthe…

Oh, and since that 100 proof Canadian Club is very likely not available at your local liquor purveyor, here’s one place that claims to have it online for a very reasonable price. Drink up.

For the second week in a row, I’m revisiting classic variations of classic cocktails that have been mentioned here before but not fully explored. Though supposedly created by an anonymous bartender at New York’s Waldorf Hotel and named for the legendary hero of Scottish folklore, the Rob Roy is a pretty clear case of cocktail plagiarism at its finest. All it really is the Manhattan but made with Scotch rather than with rye, bourbon, or Canadian whisky. Still, as I noted in the second edition of DOTW, a Manhattan is really just a martini made with whiskey and capitalizing on the natural sweetness of rye, bourbon and Canadian whiskey, as opposed to the dry tang of modern day gin.

I also said at the time that I hadn’t figured out yet how to make a Rob Roy taste any good. It did take some time to revisit some recipes and experiment a bit with the more smokey and biting flavor of the Scottish brew in comparison to the sweeter rye and the almost-candy-like-in-comparison bourbon. Here’s the trick as I see it right now: We still use bitters, but we use them more sparingly.

The Rob Roy

2 ounces Scotch whisky
1/2-1 ounce sweet vermouth
1 dash bitters (angostura or orange)
maraschino cherry or lemon peel (garnish)

Add Scotch, vermouth, and bitters — using a light hand on the bitters — in a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice. Shake most vigorously and strain into a pre-chilled cocktail class and sip, preferably while pouring over a volume of Robert Burns’ poetry.

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It’s true that the best laid plans o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley, and the hole in my plans was that I ran out of my beloved dry Noilly Pratt and forgot to try the dry version of the Rob Roy, which appears to be more popular than the less frequently discussed dry Manhattan. Both drinks simply use dry vermouth in place of the sweet variety and, traditionally, change the garnish from the cherry to a lemon peel or, if you’re me, an olive. If so, I would be extra careful with using Angostura bitters especially as Scotch is already a relatively harsh brew compared to North American whiskeys.

In general, though, to reiterate, the major distinction I would make between the Rob Roy and the Manhattan is that I strongly counsel being stingy with bitters on a Rob Roy, while I counsel greater generosity with them on Manhattans. Scotch is a pretty tough form of booze all on its own.

It is with some shame that your humble writer admits that, until a few days ago, he had never tasted Campari. In case you don’t know, Campari is theoretically a very popular Italian apéritif — that’s “before dinner drink” to us English speaking barbarians — that’s essentially a drinkable variety of bitters. You see it consumed with soda in European films and every bar in the world seems to stock it but, classic spirit or not, nobody we know seems to drink it or anything made with it.

So it was with great curiousity that yours truly brought home a bottle of the stuff and broke the lifelong Campari drought. First, a surprising and delicious burst of orangey sweetness reminiscent of a really tasty Italian vermouth, then, a bracing bitterness. A bit strong and not 100% pleasant in the usual sense, but fascinating. Time for had another sip.

Yep, it was good to take the bitter with the sweet. It was better to try the most famous cocktail made using Campari.

The Negroni

1 ounce Campari
1 ounce sweet vermouth
1 ounce dry gin
Twist of orange peel (garnish)

Shake like the dickens and serve in a chilled martini glass. Semi-optional final step: swirl the orange twist around the rim of the glass and “express” it (twist it) over the drink. Drop it in.

If the above seems a bit too sweet for you, feel free to increase the gin slightly and decrease the Campari and vermouth. (David Wondrich‘s version is 1.5 ounces gin to 3/4 ounce Campari and vermouth, and it works beautifully.)

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Folks, I’m going to drop the “royal we” I’ve been using and say in the first person that I really love the Negroni. It appeals to my sweet tooth while also being plenty refreshing on a warm summer day and offering a delicious complexity thanks to the one-two sweet-bitter punch of the Campari, softened by the sweet vermouth and with a terrific tang coming from the gin. For some reason, bartenders I’ve met are skittish about this drink and it has a somewhat “difficult” reputation. My take is that, if you can enjoy a Manhattan, you’re probably more than definitely ready for a Negroni and it’s a lot more accessible than a martini. I love this drink and think you will, too.

The Negroni is often served on the rocks, particularly in Europe, but I tried it that way and, like most “up” drinks served on the rocks, the results were not exciting, almost sickly sweet. It’s also often served anti-James Bond style, stirred and not shaken, on account of the bar worker’s lore that gin should only be shaken when non-alcoholic ingredients are present. I tried that too and decided that worrying about the gin here was complete balderdash. Negronis demand a good shaking.

Oh, and if you’re wondering where the name comes from, it’s simple enough. It seems that a turn-of-the-20th-century Italian count named Negroni was drinking another Campari-based cocktail, an Americano, (we’ll cover that some other time) and wanted a stronger version with some gin in it. That’s the whole story.