Monday, October 30, 2017

New Cocktails: the Great Satan

I found this Negroni variation through Cocktail Virgin that piqued my interest. Mezcal, much like peated whisky, can be a difficult ingredient to work with because it is so bold, but the heft of a strong amaro and an equally powerful vermouth in the form of Punt e Mes seemed like they could tame it.

The Great Satan

1 oz mezcal
1 oz Ramazzotti
1 oz sweet vermouth

Combine ingredients, stir with ice for 15 seconds, then strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with orange peel.

The nose is dominated by the smoke and plastic from the mezcal, backed up by herbs and mint from the Ramazzotti. The sip opens sweetly with cherry and faint smoke in the background, which becomes stronger towards the back. Herbs and orange peel pop out in the middle. The finish is balanced between the sweet vermouth and plastic-y smoke.

This is a rather peculiar drink. It took a while to grow on my and the plastic notes from the Mezcal Vida continued to through a bit of a wrench in the works. However, the cherry, citrus, and herbal notes provided an excellent counterpoint. I'd be interested to try this again with either a slightly more refined mezcal or possibly a peated whisky in its place.

2 comments:

  1. We stopped using DM Vida at one bar as the quality went from good to cheaper with that plastic note. We kept their higher end mezcals but dumped Vida as our well mezcal for something that tasted better and was cheaper. They probably just tried to push more distillate out of the same amount of agave and the quality suffered.

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    1. I bought my bottle not too long after Vida was first released, but even then it was clearly built to hit a price point.

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