The Steampunk Drink (Part 2)

So – we have Byrrh. Now what?

On the back of the Byrrh bottle, I found what turned out to be 95% of the drink I wanted to make. The Le Negociant is a 4-ingredient French lovefest:
- 1 ounce Byrrh
- 1 ounce rhum agricole (which means "rum made straight from sugarcane, skipping the molasses step)
- .5 ounce elderflower liqueur
- .5 ounce lemon juice

Rhum agricole is by default French, since Clément or Rhum JM are the usual go-tos, and both hail from Martinique in the French West Indies. "Elderflower liqueur" is St. Germain, and do not waste time with anything else. And with Byrrh's pedigree, we're not only solid French, but we're golden on the age of all of the above – 1866 for Byrrh, 1887 for rhum, and 1884 for the process used to make St. Germain. ("Le Negociant", by the way, refers to a French wine producer who buys grapes from a mix of smaller vineyards and combines them to create their own label's release.)

The drink is terrific - the Byrrh's red wine (and, to be clear, this is mistelle – fortified red wine that's sweeter than a traditional red) gives it a front sweetness, the St. Germain gives it floral and citrus notes and a gentle sweetness, the rhum adds a light rum flavor that contributes another sweet note, the herbals and undernotes of the Byrrh and the St. Germain dancing just out of reach. It's a great drink...

Von's 1000Spirits. I took their word for it.

...but I did say the word "sweet" four times in the above paragraph. One of my mandates, as you'll recall, was that the current drink being served was "too sweet." Now, this is not pina colada sweet, but it's definitely going to register as sweet on the palate. This is not necessarily going to be a problem, but the closer I can walk to the border of sweet and tart, the wider the audience I can reach with this drink.

So, we flash forward to September, on a beautiful night in Seattle where my friend Ron and I are walking the streets of Seattle looking for Byrrh. (In reality, we're just looking for drinks, but if you've got a goal, it's purposeful drinking, right?) Surprisingly, there was no Byrrh at Von's 1000Spirits (though I did pick up another nifty trick for the steampunk bartender), and I had a great throwback drink with a nifty local story. At The Diller Room, I got a pity-carding at the door (at my age, always appreciated), and a great side-by-side comparison of a variety of quinquinas. No Byrrh, but I did get to try Cocchi Americano straight for the first time (think Byrrh, but with a moscato base) and the local entry into the category, Chinato D'Erbetti. Both were interesting, but not what I was after...

Finally, we ended up at the Zig Zag Café, tucked away as you head down towards the shoreline from Pike Place Market. Ron had been there the night before, and had sung the praises of the place effusively. Ricardo was our bartender for the evening, and upon asking about Byrrh, immediately produced a bottle of the stuff for our amusement. So, we had him mix up a Le Negociant, parse it out into a couple of glasses for control sample purposes, and resolved to come up with the perfect variant of the drink for our purposes.

After a couple of abortive attempts to add additional ingredients, Ricardo made an observation. The sweet is coming from three sources in the drink; what if we can modify one of the existing spirits in the drink to take the sweet edge off? The Byrrh was off-limits, and the St. Germain is a beloved favorite, so the rhum became the sacrificial victim. I really wanted to keep rum, but didn't want to add a rum that would overwhelm the drink (Bacardi would add a sharp undertone, anything dark would drown out the herbals, and so on).

Suddenly, Ricardo reached over to the rack and pulled down a semi-familiar bottle – Smith & Cross Jamaican rum. This was one of the stars of our rum dinner from a few months ago, providing a knife-like palate-cleansing alongside foie gras. The rum is navy-strength (meaning that it would not prevent gunpowder from igniting), and is a blend of two traditional Jamaican run processes (part aged less than a year, part aged 18-36 months). Adding it to the drink not only took a bit of sweet out (both in its own flavor and in the extra proof knocking a bit out of the front of the drink), it added some additional spice notes that worked beautifully with the drink. And, as required for steampunk purposes, the Smith & Cross mark dates to 1788. We had our cocktail recipe.

The drink is pictured in the
Etched Bullseye Martini Glass
and is available for purchase
on the Contemporary Complements website.

Finally, we needed a name. Adding the Smith & Cross gets us a British/French blend that doesn't have a lot of commonality–Jamaica was a British colony, and I couldn't find anything evocative of a connection between the spirits or the countries of origin. So, I fell back on the original creators of my primary ingredient. We're only swapping one ingredient from the Le Negociant, but both to separate it from that drink, and to not force inebriated passengers to butcher French in front of our poor bartender, a simple nod to The Violet Brothers seems in order.

The Violet Brothers
1 ounce Byrrh
1 ounce Smith & Cross Jamaican rum
.5 ounce St. Germain
.5 ounce fresh lemon juice

Shake with ice in a cocktail strainer. Serve in a martini glass.

It's been a fun ride, and to all of my companions along the way, (especially Ricardo at the Zig Zag), I'm delighted to have a drink that I'm confident to pass along to our steampunk partygoers. Thanks to Kim Maita for the challenge, and if you try it, let me know what you think!