Cocktail

The Islay 75

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March  6, 2014
1 Comment

You'll no longer have to buy a plane ticket to get in on the cocktails at Seattle's Essex: Owners Brandon Pettit and Molly Wizenberg (a.k.a. Orangette) will be sharing their favorite recipes with us, every other week. Drink up, people.

Today: A smoky, citrusy nip that's made for March.

 

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We call this one the Islay 75. Think of it as a distant, northerly cousin of the French 75, that gin-lemon-Champagne confection, but where the French 75 is, oh, say, a Parisienne in cigarette pants, the Islay 75 is a bearded old Scot with a pipe.

Like a lot of our house cocktails at Essex, the Islay 75 bears only a theoretical, winking resemblance to the drink that inspired it. Both have liquor, citrus, sugar syrup, and something bubbly. But where the French 75 uses lemon, the Islay 75 uses orange; where the former uses gin, the latter uses Applejack; and where the first tops things off with Champagne, the second goes with dry cider. (Another use for that cider you bought two weeks ago! Yesssssssss.) 

 

 

The Islay 75 is made for March, the month of top-notch citrus fruit, and you can use anything orange-like you've got: a navel orange, a Cara Cara, a blood orange, even a Pixie tangerine. The better the citrus, the better the drink. But what really seals the deal is the very first step, a quick rinse of the glass with Laphroaig Scotch. The whiff of smoke it leaves behind plays nicely with the flavor of orange -- smoke and orange are, as a rule, good partners -- and when they join forces with Applejack and cider, well, you're very welcome.

With that, we regret to say that we must end today's post on a somewhat dreary note: Craft Cocktails is going on hiatus. Molly has a book coming out shortly, and Brandon is up to his ears in new recipe development for the Essex food menu, and that means that we'll be signing off for a while. Thank you, always, for reading, and cheers to you.

 

Islay 75

 

Serves 1

1 1/2 ounces Applejack
3/4 ounce juice of orange, Cara Cara, blood orange, or pixie tangerine
1/2 ounce rich syrup (2:1 sugar to water)
Laphroaig
Dry cider
Lemon wheel

See the full recipe (and save and print it) here.

Photos by Molly Wizenberg

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MollyandBrandon
Brandon and Molly met because of a mutual interest in food - or, more specifically, when Brandon read Molly's food blog Orangette and sent her an e-mail that included some very effective compliments. The better part of a decade later, they co-own and run the restaurant Delancey and its sibling Essex, in Seattle. Brandon is the chef of both, and when he's not manning the wood-burning oven, he likes to make things from scratch that more sane people would probably buy, like mustard, vinegars, pretzels, and obscurely flavored liqueurs. Molly is the manager / Organizer of All Things at Delancey and Essex, and she is also the author of the New York Times bestseller A Homemade Life and the forthcoming memoir Delancey. They have a young daughter named June, who is excitedly crawling toward the refrigerator as Molly types this sentence, and two dogs named Jack and Alice.

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1 Comment

hardlikearmour
hardlikearmour March 6, 2014
Do you think mezcal would work for the rinse?