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.)
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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
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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