Awhile back, I started making my way through Ted Haigh’s book, Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails: From the Alamagoozlum to the Zombie 100 Rediscovered Recipes and the Stories Behind Them, in a series of posts tagged The Forgotten 100. My original intent was to mix through these recipes in the order which they are presented in the book. However, due to some of the ingredients being obsolete, hard-to-find, etc., that seemed impossible. There is good news on the horizon, though. Thanks to some enterprising folks, a lot of these ingredients are now becoming once again, available to us.
Nevertheless, the first cocktail I made from this book was The Alamagoozlum, which contained genever. Lo and behold, the folks at Lucas Bols brought Bols Genever to the United States and thus, my foray into the world of Forgotten cocktails had begun.
What is Genever? Genever, simply put, is a type of gin. In fact, in my opinion, it is the original juniper-flavored spirit. However, unlike other types of gin (London Dry, Old Tom, Plymouth), it has a very subtle juniper flavor and is more malty in character. Recent Twitter traffic and blog-speak has sparked my interest once again in this spirit, and prompted me to substitute Genever for recipes simply calling for gin. Simply put, as you would substitute gin for vodka in many recipes….do the same for genever when gin is called for.
So…that leads us to The Blackthorn Cocktail. Now there are many cocktails called Blackthorn, Blackthorne, The Blackthorne….most of which call for Irish Whiskey. However, this particular recipe is one from Mr. Haigh’s book, and succeeds those previous recipes by seventy years or more. In this version, we did substitute genever for gin.
The Blackthorn Cocktail (Modified)
- 2 oz Bols Genever
- 3/4 oz Dubonnet Rouge
- 3/4 kirshwasser
