The Spirits #70: The Blinker

~ Try Rye ~ The Principle Pleasure of Cocktailing ~ Eyeball in My Martini ~ P****y J***s ~ Against Snacking ~

~ THE BLINKER ~

60ml rye whiskey (or bourbon)
25ml grapefruit juice
10ml golden sugar syrup (2:1)
Three fresh raspberries

Place all the ingredients in the shaker, raspberries included. Add copious ice and shake really, really, really hard for a long time. Fine-strain the liquid into a chilled cocktail glass (through a through a tea-strainer, to avoid raspberry gunk getting into the drink). Grapefruit zest garnish.

Some Blinker Notes:

1) The first known Blinker recipe actually calls for grenadine; raspberry syrup seems to be used in most modern recipes. Avid readers will know that my preferred alternative to raspberry syrup is the less fiddly and much fresher: three actual raspberries + basic sugar syrup.

2) Some bartenders are quite strict on the rye-as-opposed-to-bourbon thing. I’m not strict about anything. If you have straight rye, give it a try. I used Rittenhouse 100 and found its stern, no-nonsense character stood out gruffly against the soft, frilly fruits. A higher ABV (50%+) is good in a sour - but benefits from a really hard shake.

3) White grapefruit, if you can find it. I used Tropicana Golden Grapefruit; it was on special offer.

Eyes eyes eyes eyes eyes.

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🖊️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.

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

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👁️ THE Blinker is one of those old-time sours that opens up a whole sophisticated world. I like it because it’s quite a serious drink - a hefty amount of rye is involved - but it’s also pink and approachable. It was first recorded by Patrick Gavin Duffy in his Official Mixer’s Manual of 1934 (above), only with proportions more appropriate to a long drink: 2oz rye, 3oz grapefruit, 1oz grenadine. I believe it was David Embury who reimagined it in the sour format, and Ted Haigh (in his Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails) who effected the shift from grenadine to raspberry syrup.

It has a fair bit in common with the very first cocktail I featured on this newsletter, the Brown Derby and as such has suddenly made me nostalgic for those days, grim as they were!

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⚗️ WHEN I was making the above, I realised I had run out of sugar syrup. I was about to make some more when I remembered: I actually had some cinnamon syrup knocking around from the Horchata the other week. Worth a try? Particularly given the affinity between grapefruit and cinnamon? (See: The Jet Pilot). Well, friends, it was worth a try. The drink took off in an earthier, spicier direction, and ended up in some sweet midpoint between a classic tiki drink and a Prohibition-era moustache twister. My wider point is: don’t sweat it, if you don’t have the exact ingredient. Use what you have lying around instead and make something new. This, for me, is the principle pleasure of cocktailing and of cooking too. Expedience > accuracy.

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🧮 AND actually, while I’m on the theme, there’s a peculiar thing I’ve noticed from a couple of reader comments recently. Quite often someone will say: '“Oh, not so keen on Old Fashioneds, they’re too sweet”. Or: “I made this one, it was a bit sour for me”. Or similar.

I mean at the risk of thumping you over the head with a mallet marked “OBVIOUSLY!” - if you find it too sweet, use less sugar. If you like it boozier, add more booze. Etc. Recipes are there as guidelines rather than diktats. Personally, I almost always find American recipes too sweet and too big - so I will invariably rework to my own meagre preferences. You may equally find that R. Godwin never uses enough lime for your taste: in which case, please adjust accordingly! There are so many variables it would be astonishing if that weren’t the case: your sugar syrup might not be as sweet as mine; your bourbon might be stronger; your grapefruits sweeter; your shake less vigorous; your palate more refined.

Perhaps this is why cocktails and jazz have such an affinity. The ingredients are the chord sheet; all else is improvisation. And yet, this concept will often freak out a Grade 8 classically-trained musician. There is a school of drinks-making where playing the notes exactly as written matters - but it’s not really my school. To my mind, that’s best left to people who get paid to do this stuff.

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🗄️SHOULD you be thirsty for more, you might like to know that I made an addition to the CABINET this week. Yes, it’s the approachably bittersweet Italian amaro Cynar! There’s also Green Chartreuse, Maraschino, Apricot Brandy and Crème de Cacao to explore too, if you fancy. After next week’s punch recipe, I’m going to hit “pause” on the regular Friday Spirits for a couple of weeks, just in order to provide a more regular hit of these ingredient guide lists for subscribers. Falernum will be next. Then, I’m thinking: Sherry? And I might just do plain old Vodka, too. But take requests: so do feel free to comment/message. Oh and please consider subscribing, if this sounds like the sort of thing you might like.

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PLAYLIST

Blinker, as in a horse’s blinker. But since we already did horses, let’s have a playlist about eyes, sight, vision and blindness.

THIS PLAYLIST UPDATES AUTOMATICALLY EACH WEEK. The idea is, you download it and return to it each week in your Spotify. If there was an old song you’d like to hear again, you’ll find it RIGHT HERE in the ongoing archive of 2021 playlists.

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WHAT I’VE BEEN WRITING

I wrote this piece a while ago but it’s finally online. It’s about snacking - and how it has gone from something that your grandma told you off for, to something that it is sociably acceptable to do almost all of the time. I was interested to write about this as I kept feeling vaguely snack-shamed as a parent: I would always be the only one in the park without a veritable hamper of carrot sticks/oat biscuits/Yo-Yo bears for my child/ren, who would then inevitably be fed by someone else. But then I began to think it was odd how snacking has become such an accepted form of behaviour control and, indeed, entertainment. Anyway, it’s all because of the evil food industry and it’s probably the single greatest cause of global obesity. (Men’s Health)

Oh and here I am alongside the likes of Mary Berry and Nadiya Hussein, providing you with a street party punch recipe for what I believe some people are calling the “platty joobs” (Country Life)

WHAT I’VE BEEN READING

George Saunders’s new collection Liberation Day (not out until September… handy being married to a book critic).

Johanna on Anna Wintour (New Statesman)

Roxane Day on Uvalde (NYT)

Less heavy: I really enjoyed this profile of music producer Jack Antonoff, who has made masterpieces w/ Lorde, St Vincent, Taylor Swift, Clairo and Lana Del Rey (e.g. it is his eight minutes of aimless but somehow perfect noodling at the end of Venice Bitch). Actually, I thought the focus on his less successful solo stuff was not that great an angle, but the discussions of how he collaborates with these varied artists and coaxes out their best work is quite inspiring. I thought, anyway. Damn, what a life! (New Yorker).

Also, because I’ve been writing on similar themes, this is a great interview w/ the singer Mabel by Laura Snapes - on how musicians are now being forced into becoming TikTok influencers in order to have a chance of getting heard. (Guardian)

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SHOPPING LIST

Dark rum (brandy too, if you like, too, but that’s optional), whole lemons, sugar, tea (Earl Grey?), milk, Angostura bitters, absinthe (optional), whole spices.

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