If you’re into craft  cocktails at all, you know that green Chartreuse vanished during the pandemic and is now slowly returning to the shelves, albeit at horrendous prices. It seems that the Carthusian monastery that has made it since 1737 had a literal come-to-Jesus meeting and decided that they would dial back their commitment to supplying the world with one of its essential liqueurs. Ergo, supply < demand = higher prices. Like $100/bottle prices.

Naturally, our brave bartenders and cocktail writers have been feverishly writing articles about the Next Best Substitute for green and yellow Chartreuse. In my bar I already had Boomsma Cloosterbitter, and on a recent jaunt to Little Five Points in Atlanta I popped into the package store there and was stunned to see the Faccia Brutto Centerbe — I had heard that it was as hard to find as the real stuff.

So the other night I had a direct taste test, making a small Bijou^[1] out of each one.

How small? I used only .25 oz of each ingredient — no way was I going to either 1) drink three full Bijous; or 2) pour out a drink containing green Chartreuse, what, are you crazy??

Above you see a quarter-ounce of each liqueur: Centerbe, Cloosterbitter, and Chartreuse. The Cloosterbitter is actually a little greener than the Chartreuse. Flavorwise, Centerbe and Cloosterbitter are very similar to Chartreuse. There are subtle differences, but on the whole I think we’ll be fine using the other two in most cocktails calling for Chartreuse.

Here are the three mini-Bijous, identical in appearance, and again, pretty much the same in taste. There were very subtle differences, but my palate is not that refined (nor am I that driven) that I’m going to nail those differences down when all three cocktails were perfectly yummy. If I handed you the Centerbe or Cloosterbitter version, you wouldn’t know it if I didn’t tell you.

Last night I tried my own Smoky Topaz: 1.5 oz barrel-aged gin (Tom Cat preferred), .75 oz yellow Chartreuse, .25 oz green Chartreuse (Cloosterbitter this time), .75 oz Averna Amaro.

Again, as tasty as with actual green Chartreuse.

But you have already spotted a weakness in my plan: All this time I’ve been hoarding green Chartreuse without giving a thought to the yellow… and now I’m about to be out of yellow Chartreuse with no backup.

More work is required.

—————

^[1] Bijou: 3/4 oz each of gin (I prefer barrel-aged for the Bijou), sweet vermouth, and green Chartreuse

Okay, it’s like this: I don’t know what possessed me to even try this combo, but IT WORKS, PEOPLE.

I also don’t know what to name it, so for the time being, it’s the Weirdo.

The Weirdo

• 1.5 oz gin (I used Bombay Sapphire)
• .25 oz applejack
• 3–5 drops black walnut bitters
• orange peel

I announce — with some astonishment — that I have perfected the Rose-Colored G.

But Dale, I hear you exclaim, what is there to perfect? It’s just a gin and tonic with a float of hibiscus-infused gin on top.

Ah, I reply smugly, but you have not considered the variability of the main ingredient: gin. Normally I use the house gin, which is Bombay Sapphire, but yesterday I decided to use Gray Whale, for no real reason other than I like that gin and have been drinking it more often recently.

The results were a revelation.

I will also say that the hibiscus-infused gin was a little different this time. In getting ready for Alchemy — we always serve the Rose-Colored G at the bar — I was loath to use my dwindling supply of Bombay Sapphire to make a fresh supply of the hibiscus gin, so I bought a small bottle of Beefeater gin and used that. When I had to make another batch upon returning to the default world, I used the rest of the Beefeater. It is now my preferred gin for the hibiscus infusion. (But otherwise I’m not a fan.)

sidebar: At the burn, the 3 Old Men craft cocktail bar served the Smoked Smoky Manhattan, the Smoking Hot Molly, the Rose-Colored G, and the Grassy Knoll. All are my inventions, and we ran out of booze on Friday night. The word had gotten out that 3 Old Men was serving actual craft cocktails and we were swarmed. A proud moment, to be sure.

Whenever I see recipes that call for a specific brand of gin or rye or rum, I usually roll my eyes and just make it with whatever I have in stock, so it’s very weird for me to be doing the same thing here, but I get it: The salinity of the Gray Whale and the cleanness of the Beefeater were amazing together.

The Rose-Colored G

• 1.5 oz Gray Whale gin
• tonic water
• hibiscus-infused gin
• Bittermens Elemakule Tiki Bitters (or other allspice bitters)
• optional lime slice

To make the hibiscus-infused gin, pour Beefeater gin into a glass container and add two or three tablespoons of dried hibiscus flowers. Let it sit for about an hour, swirling it every now and then. You want a bright ruby color. (The infusion in the photo is a little too dark.) Strain and bottle.

To make the drink, make a regular gin and tonic, then gently pour the hibiscus infusion onto the ice so that it spreads out and floats. Dribble 5–7 drops of the bitters onto the ice.

Enjoy!

(Note well that if you don’t have Gray Whale, the drink is still delicious with your preferred gin!)

Not wanting another gin & tonic, not even with my new Beehive Jack Rabbit gin (Utah, delicious), I decided to experiment.

Backstory: A couple of years ago I came across a sunflower spirit called Taza Ray, distilled right here in Georgia in Dalton. There were two versions, plain Taza Ray and Taza Ray Red, which had been aged in barrels. They were yummy (and gluten free!).

Alas, when I went back to the store to get more, it had vanished. This past spring, my Lovely First Wife and I went to Dalton specifically to buy some more. This involved more emails and texts than you might imagine. But the guys there were personable and helpful. They even — upon hearing of my interest in the Taza Ray Red, which they no longer bottled — decanted me my own bottle of fresh-from-the-barrel Taza Ray, which they blend with their regular stuff to make Taza Ray.

So my eye fell on my bottle of Taza Ray. The mental slot machine clicked around, and came up with…

Sunflower Sour

• 1.5 oz Taza Ray
• .75 oz lemon juice
• .5 oz barrel-aged maple syrup

It is quite tasty. I’ve had two. (A second one using Taza Ray Red was not good, so I made the original just to confirm.)

Yesterday, on Mastodon, I was startled to see myself tagged in a ‘toot’ from Gregory Hays, the estimable UVA professor whose translation of the Marcus Aurelius Meditations I prefer. It said:

Wait, what? When I went to check, it seems he had asked whether a cocktail existed called the Indictment. A friend replied that he hadn’t been able to find one, but had a witty list of existing alternates:

All of which are witty indeed!

I answered that I would tackle the problem, wondering whether the cocktail needed to be bitter and dark or sweet sweet schadenfreude, and after only a little thought on a Friday afternoon, I thought, why not both:

The Sweet Sweet Schadenfreude (or, The Indictment)

First of all, it should clearly be a Manhattan in a nod to the present indictment, and let’s add to that a praline liqueur both as a sweetener and as a nod to a possible future indictment, let’s say in Atlanta. A dash of black walnut bitters and a square of bourbon dark chocolate on the side pairs well as the dark and bitter theme, and we have a tasty tasty refreshment with which to end the week.

For extra cheekiness, let’s serve it in an Art Deco Nick & Nora glass with a naked lady stem.

Enjoy!

• 2 oz rye
• .75 oz sweet vermouth
• .25 oz praline liqueur
• 2–3 dashes black walnut bitters
• optional dark chocolate on the side

You know how when you’re in the liquor store and there’s a bottle of something that is just so off-the-wall that you have to buy it to see what it tastes like?

No? Just me, then? Okay.

The bottle in question is a concoction called Nixta, made in Mexico from an ancient strain of maize.

It does in fact taste like corn. It’s not too sweet, and as another reviewer has said, you also get notes of vanilla and something vaguely chocolate.

How to use, though? The bottle is not a lot of help, just suggesting you can add it to “your favorite cocktails.” Honey, please.

I pulled out all the Central American bottles — Ancho Reyes liqueur, Cocalero, tequila, blood orange liqueur — and started playing. I started with cognac as a base, but it didn’t quite work, so I switched to Calvados, figuring the sweetness of the apple brandy would complement that of the Nixta.

I was correct; it worked.

No name yet, but try this:

No Name Nixta

• 1.5 oz Calvados
• .75 oz Nixtos
• .5 oz lemon juice
• .25 oz simple syrup

Shake with ice, strain into a Nick & Nora glass.

It ‘s simple, not too sweet, and refreshing. You can also use tequila instead of Calvados and it’s equally delicious.

Last spring, as I played with the Savoy Cocktail variations, I used the Savoy’s Fernet Branca Cocktail as the starting point. It’s simple recipe: 1.5 oz gin, .75 oz each of Fernet Branca and sweet vermouth.

It was, as I expected, not at all to my taste, but it spawned a whole new zone of experimentation, which I am calling the Grand Unified Vecchio Cocktail Theory, in which you use the proportions of the recipe for the Fernet Branca cocktail and substitute another amaro.

Here’s where it got interesting:

Gin— Even if we ignore the subtle differences in different brands of gin, differences that I am too lazy to learn to distinguish with any refinement, we still have the different types of gin that we can play with:

• London dry gin
• old tom gin
• Genever
• botanical gin
• barrel-aged gin

These different types involve dryness/sweetness, more or less juniper, added flavorings. Within those categories, of course, are scads of different brands of gin, of which I have about 30.

Sweet vermouth— Lots of these available, but I decided on three:

• Carpano Antica
• Cocchi di Torino
• Punt e Mes

Again, the differences are in the herbals used.

Amari— Where do we begin? Whole books have been written about this category of herbal distillations. Suffice it to say that I have more than two dozen amari and have barely scratched the surface.

If we do the math, we have 5 [kinds] of gin x 3 vermouths x ≈24 amari, which gives us 360 possible combinations. The gin-loving soul thrills to the very idea.

I’ve had a blast testing out my Grand Unified Vecchio Cocktail Hypothesis [GUVCH], and the results are very promising. Here’s my most recent one.

Salers Cocktail

Salers is an aperitif, gentian-based, bitter and vegetal, with some citrus notes. I bought it recently because it was mentioned in a couple of recipes, and I decided to plug it into the GUVCH. The results were quite pleasing.

Salers is unusual for the GUVCH since it is a clear aperitif, while most amari that I have are darker.

• 1.5 oz gin, in this case an Old Tom gin
• .75 oz Cocchi di Torino vermouth
• .75 oz Salers Aperitif

Stir with ice, strain into a coupe. Garnish with lemon zest.

It is light and refreshing. You’ll want more than one.