The Spirits #104: Love & Murder

~ Richard’s Version ~ The Dembélé Role ~ Tea & Sympathy ~

Aug 04, 2023

~ LOVE & MURDER ~

30ml Campari
20ml green Chartreuse
10ml gin (or vodka)
15ml lime juice
Pinch of salt (optional)

Place all of the above in a shaker. Add the ice. And then shake it all up. Double-strain into a chilled coupe.

Some L&M notes:

1. The Love & Murder is in cocktail terms, a babe-in-arms. It was invented by Nick Bennett of Porchlight, NYC, in 2021 where it is still on the menu, price: $18. Bennett’s idea was to create an instant classic and so he reached for two ingredients that us aficionados tend to adore, Campari and Chartreuse, but which aren’t common glassfellows. “I was overjoyed that it turned out as good as it did, because on paper it doesn’t seem like it should work,” he told Liquor.com. It was named after a Broadway play (like the Adonis). But which is love and which murder?

2. The original specs were: 30ml Campari, 30ml Green Chartreuse, 30ml lime juice, 20ml sugar syrup, and four drops of saline solution. But as many people in the Liquor.com comments section note, this is not “shockingly balanced”. It’s really sweet. I would agree. To some extent, the whopping alcoholicness of the Chartreuse (55% ABV) and large amount of lime cuts through the incredibly large amount of sugar - but not nearly enough, to my palate. The Chartreuse subtleties were lost; the Campari reduced to a buzz. My wife, quite a good guinea pig, also turned up her nose on sipping this first version and requested something: “A bit less avant-garde.”

3. (The saline solution is a bit of a giveaway actually. As anyone who has necked a substandard Margarita will attest, salt really helps paper over the cracks of a poorly balanced cocktail).

4. So, back to the drawing board! When I am in doubt about a sour-type cocktail, I tend to revert to the trusty 50:15:10 formula - i.e. 50ml spirit, 15ml citrus, 10ml sugar syrup - and then make appropriate tweaks. Here, I figured that the Chartreuse and Campari were sweet enough as to serve as the spirit + sugar element combined. So I simply made this at 30ml Campari, 30ml Charteuse (50+10) with a scant 15ml citrus. It was immediately better. I promise. As my wife, on the sofa, confirmed by saying: “Oh that’s much better. Hmm. Yes.”

5. I could have left it there. But it still wasn’t quite as delicious as I wanted it to be - still just a little too much going on? A longer shake might have sorted this out by providing a little extra dilution. But almost on a whim, I decided to add a dash of gin - just 10ml - and oh my. The improvement was undeniable. This prompted an: “Actually can you leave the glass?”

6. This really just goes to show that it’s hard to reinvent the wheel. Cocktails tend to have spirit bases for a reason - and while the gin is just a soupcon here, it allows the Chartreuse and Campari to perform in their distinctive flair roles, rather as Moussa Dembelé in the mid 2010’s Tottenham midfield. Thinking back, a similar tweak was required to turn the Charlie Chaplin into a modern classic: the original was a rather bizarre equal parts sloe gin, apricot brandy and lime; the improved version is equal parts gin, sloe gin, apricot brandy and lime. I also recall that when I came to the recipe for the Teresa from Gaz Regan’s Joy of Mixology (50ml Campari, 20ml cassis, 25ml lime), a little vodka was required to cut through.

For further adventures with Green Chartreuse, enter this portal.

🖊️I am Richard Godwin.
🧋My instructions for sugar syrup, ice, grenadine, orgeat, etc are here.
🧑‍🏫 My 10 RULES FOR MAKING COCKTAILS are here.
⚗️ My bottle recommendations are here.
📃 The full A-Z recipe archive is here.
➡️ Please find a round up of organisations helping Ukrainians here.

If you like The Spirits, do please forward this to your friends.

PLAYLIST.

Here is an old list of mine that I have found myself returning to a lot recently. It’s mostly but not entirely early 1970s singer-songwriters and I just find it comforting on a rainy summer day, Clifton in the Rain by Al Stewart, rather describing my summer, too.

WHAT I’VE BEEN WRITING

I wrote about the new shape of the working day - or, how everyone my age considers it normal to work long into the evening. (Telegraph)

Remember the nine-to-five? I don’t. I’m 42. If, like me, your working life has been shaped by the 21st-century digital economy, with its 9.46pm emails from the boss and Zoom meetings helpfully inserted into your calendar, the idea of everyone keeping the same hours is an unthinkable relic – like three-martini lunches, or inflation-beating pay rises. What a way to make a living!

WHAT I’VE BEEN READING

Zadie Smith’s The Fraud, her first foray into historical fiction. I’m halfway through and I am thoroughly enjoying it. She’s such good company on the page.

WHAT I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO

David Runciman’s podcast, Past Present Future. Which has made me worry a lot about the future of the planet - but in an informed, highbrow way. The ‘History of Ideas’ episode on Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own is particularly good - and prompted a question that I can’t stop thinking about: why is it that the people who are most angry are also the ones with the most money and power? And why are the ones the most concerned about free speech the ones with the most access to free speech?

CABINET POSTS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

🌿Green Chartreuse
🍒 Maraschino
🍑 Apricot Brandy
🍫 Crème de Cacao
🌷Cynar
🏝️ Falernum
🌵 Mezcal
🐂 Sherry
🧡 Aperol
🍌 Crème de Banane
🐻 Kümmel