I love cocktails, but after an exceptionally tiring day, I don’t always love making them, so it’s nice to have a few options that require minimal effort. While the Old Fashioned, a Martini, and a Manhattan are all great possibilities on such an evening, they all also involve endless questions and debates regarding the right way to make them and innumerable, mostly valid, interpretations. Sometimes, you don’t want a drink with an interesting backstory, much less one offering endless iterations. Sometimes, you just want a sweet something to help you relax and nothing else.
Yes, the Fancy Free Cocktail, which I discovered via Robert Hess’s “The Essential Bartender’s Guide” (you can also see him making one circa 2009 here) is accurately named. You can serve it up (i.e. in a cocktail glass with no ice), but if you’re even lazier, you can build it in a glass and have it on the rocks. Garnishes are entirely optional, in case you can’t bring yourself to grab a fruit peeler or drop a cocktail cherry in. But you’d better like your drink strong and sweet.
The Fancy Free
2 ounces bourbon (rye may be an acceptable substitute)
1/2 ounce maraschino liqueur
1 dash Angostura/aromatic bitters
1 dash orange bitters
1 orange twist or cocktail cherry (entirely optional garnishes)
Method 1: Add the liquid ingredients to a mixing glass or cocktail shaker with plenty of ice. Stir or shake (this is another one I personally prefer stirred) and strain into our old pal, the well-chilled cocktail glass. Add the garnish if you so choose.
Method 2 (the more fancy free Fancy Free): Add all the ingredients to a rocks/old fashioned glass with plenty of ice. Stir a lot and then add the garnish if you’re in a garnishing mood. Drink nice and slow.
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Before there was gin, there was genever — sometimes also called jenever — a concoction that is similar and yet different from the ubiquitous clear booze we now enjoy in our martinis and G&Ts. One obvious geographical difference is that most gins are now made in England or thereabouts, and by law, a liquor can only be marketed as genever if it’s from the Netherlands or Belgium. Only a few brands can be found at all in the United States and, so far, I’ve only seen one on store shelves: Bols Genever. The flavor is definitely different; the manufacturing process is more similar to whiskey, and many detect a more malty flavor.
At the start of Labor Day weekend 2014, I gave you the updated version of the Liberal, a classic cocktail that I still think fits very nicely with a holiday that was created to honor the American labor movement, but which was also placed on the calendar pretty far from International Workers Day (May 1), a holiday associated with labor movements that had more radical connections. As a center-left type who will very definitely NOT be voting for Jill Stein this coming November, I am quite comfortable being described as an old school bleeding heart liberal, and so I am happy to now be providing the old school version of the drink, more or less cribbed from Ted Haigh’s essential “Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails.” On the other hand, I’m sure conservatives could enjoy this drink as well; at least it’s not called The Progressive.
