Summit Sips » Lillet

Drink of the Week: Anodyne

Randy — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 06:08:10 +0000

The Anodyne Cocktail—for whatever ails you. The name means something that alleviates or eliminates pain, so I guess it could apply to any drink, but in this case it was chosen for a medicinal combination of ingredients first tried by Wesley Moore in 2009 when it appeared on Chuck Taggart’s Looka! Gumbo Pages weblog. According to Chuck, the cocktail was inspired by the Perfect Martini which is a Martini made using equal portions of both sweet and dry vermouth.

The first thing you might notice is that this drink doesn’t use a typical sweet vermouth, nor a typical dry one. It wouldn’t be very innovative if it did. Instead, the substitutions are far more interesting and the proportions are such that they setup a wonderful balance between them. As simple as it sounds, it’s much more than a basic substitution riff. What we have with the Anodyne is another

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Drink of the Week: Edgewood

Randy — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 05:46:57 +0000

Ever since it appeared in the March/April 2008 edition of Imbibe Magazine, I have wanted to make the Edgewood by Greg Best, Holeman & Finch, Atlanta. I am not sure why I delayed. Perhaps it was because I rarely buy grapefruit, or maybe I was just waiting until I could get my hands on the right vermouth. In any case, I finally mixed one up tonight and as I expected, it’s a decent drink. The ingredients are not so obscure that it would prevent you from tracking them down, and even if you run into trouble with one thing or another, you can always make a few substitutions and still come away with a solid cocktail. I went ahead and made two versions (it was happy hour after all) and both worked nicely.

The Edgewood by Greg Best 1.5 oz dry gin 1 oz grapefruit juice .5 oz Punt e Mes

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Drink of the Week: Corpse Reviver #2

Randy — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 03:26:36 +0000

We are already a full week into October, and this being the second scariest month of the year (beware of Income Tax April), it seemed fitting that I feature cocktails that would work nicely at a Halloween party. Over the course of the next four weeks I’ll cover my favorite ghoulish classics as we work our way toward the end of the month. Today, I want to show you a cocktail that deserves to be on your list of favorites all year long. Although the name may have you running for the hills, this drink may surprise you with its simple recipe and delicious flavor. The Corpse Reviver #2 is our first Halloween Drink of the Week.

It may sound like a potion that can resurrect the dead, but in this case the Reviver is actually a class of cocktails usually considered “morning-after” refreshments. Nothing helps a corpse recover from

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Drink of the Week: Vesper

Randy — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 02:35:48 +0000

This week I want to keep it short and sweet. The Vesper, or as some call it, the Vesper Lynd, is a drink named after a Bond girl. In fact, it’s the only drink ever invented by a fictional character named after another fictional character. If this is all going over your head, the Vesper is the martini that James Bond orders in Casino Royale, and he later decides to name it after his love interest. Indeed, this is the drink that inspired the graphics for Summit Sips.

Vesper 3 oz gin 1 oz vodka .5 oz Lillet Blanc

Combine in a shaker, add ice and shake to chill. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a twist of lemon.

Bond eyes his Vesper.

For a completely fictional set of circumstances, Ian Flemming created a cocktail that is actually pretty good. As martinis go, this is

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Kentucky Wrap Up: Rain Vodka

Randy — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 03:47:51 +0000

Up on the column of the Rain Vodka still.

I thought I would post a final wrap up regarding my recent trip to Kentucky. I know everyone out there has been clicking “refresh” waiting for the next posts, so I figured a nice conclusion was probably in order. I also wanted to say a few words about another product I brought back home with me from the Buffalo Trace Distillery.

It’s one thing to take a long weekend and go for a drive. It’s something else to set a destination that is 4 states away and takes a full 24 hours to get there and back. Yet, despite the long time spent behind the wheel, Louisville is definitely within reach by car from the Twin Cities. I know the area has a lot more to offer visitors than we had time to see but we focused on the

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Drink of the Week: 20th Century Cocktail

Randy — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 20:13:31 +0000

Overview I’ve thought about this for a while now and finally decided that the new year is a perfect opportunity to start posting a Drink Of The Week (DOTW). Since I just barely made it for the first week of the year, I have not yet decided on the timing for DOTW posts. It makes sense to post before the weekend—like on a Thursday—but as soon as Friday hits, we will be into our second week of the year, so it will actually be the Drink Of Last Week. On the other hand, most people think of the week as starting on a Sunday which completely misses the weekend, and in Minnesota at least, you can’t even buy booze on Sunday! So we will start this off on Thursdays and see how it goes.

My goal with DOTW is to go through a basic drink recipe, showing you how

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