Livorno & Padua's Love-Child

Aperol is one of my favourite ingredients in the last year or so. It's so wonderfully complex, just bitter enough yet retaining tons of elegant fruit/herbs/spice. It really is a brilliant substitute for Campari if you want to introduce less developed palates to classics like the Negroni.

However, it's also excellent for experimenting with (as I'm doing here), or subverting old classics (e.g. introducing it into a daiquiri, with passion fruit or the like). On this occasion, I wanted to bring in one of the world's criminally under-used liqueurs - Galliano. They appear to have been doing lots of fiddling about, reformulating and changing product lines. For this particular one we are using Galliano Vanilla. I suspect Autentico (the more herbal and anisey variant) may work too ... I'll update whenever I give it a try.

This cocktail, as with many things I will post on this blog, is in development. This is the first iteration, but new ones may arise as time goes on. It's a bitter-sweet and complex drink, with distinct notes of vanilla from the Galliano.

The name alludes to the two regions behind the interesting ingredients in here - Livorno, Tuscany (Galliano) and Padua, Veneto (Aperol).

25ml Havana Club Anejo Especial (Golden Rum)
35ml Aperol
15ml Galliano Vanilla
3 dashes Bitter Tears - Lucille Blood Orange Ginger Bitters

1. Add bitters to tumbler glass
2. Add other ingredients
3. Add 4-5 large cubes of ice
4. Stir with a bar-spoon for 20-30 seconds
5. Garnish with citrus peel

I must beg forgiveness for neglecting to take a photo. I'll upload one as soon as I make a new one. It should look much like a negroni, though slightly more orange than red - a hue remniscent of Irn Bru (yum)!

Cuban Colada

After a lengthy hiatus (almost 18 months), and thanks to a little urging from others, I have decided to try to restart my cocktail blogging efforts.

Given that rum is my spirit of choice (which is not to say I don't love everything), and I'm a huge 'tikiphile', let's kick-start with one of my own Tiki cocktails.

For those unfamiliar with it, Tiki is a classic cocktail style, filled with faux Polynesian frippery and questionable garnishes. Rum, fruit and manifold obscure ingredients are the order of the day: orgeat (almond syrup); falernum (spiced lime); cinnamon syrup. If you love Pina Coladas, grass skirts and ukulele music then you'll feel right at home. They're often on the unrefined side, and are "fun", as opposed to the sometimes haughty austerity of prohibition/speakeasy/vintage cocktail stylings.

This is a recipe I'm still refining, so I reserve the right to change the details in the future!

Tiki, unlike many other 'purer' cocktail disciplines, has no shame about using absolutely tons of ingredients rather than the 3-4 used in more conventional mixology

50ml Havana Club Anejo Especial (Golden Rum)
15ml Lemonhart 151 (Overproof Rum)
50ml Pineapple Juice
35ml Lime Juice
10ml Falernum
5ml Orgeat (almond syrup)
5ml Cinnamon Syrup
3 dashes Cherry Bitters (Fee Brothers)

Be warned, the above will make a very full martini glass (as you can see below) - make sure you have a 250ml glass, or down-size the recipe accordingly. With shaken pineapple juice, you get a lovely foamy head - depending on what's to hand, I sometimes think that this is 'garnish' alone, though you can feel free to add anything you want here e.g. exotic flower petals. On this occasion though, I added some cocktail cherries at the bottom. I'm one of those terrible bar-tenders that thinks a Maraschino Cherry can be put into almost anything made from dark spirit; and most other things for that matter.

1. Chill down a martini glass (crushed ice if you have it, cubed ice in water if not).
2. Shake all ingredients, except bitters, with ice
3. Empty glass and put in a few dashes of bitters
4. Double-strain in to glass and serve without garnish

Recipe above only makes ONE of these!

This is still in 'prototype' phase, so let me know how you like it! Happy for constructive views on how to make this even better.