The Spirits #97: The Añejo Highball

~ Extra Zing ~ Easter Parade ~ The Grimes Sisters ~

~ THE AÑEJO HIGHBALL ~

50ml dark rum
15ml orange liqueur
Squeeze of lime
Dash Angostura bitters
~60ml ginger beer

Build this one in a tall glass. Stir the rum, orange liqueur, bitters and lime with ice, then add the ginger beer, continually stirring to ensure it’s all fully mixed. Please ensure that ice is present throughout the spine of the drink. Thank you! Nothing worse than a couple of sorry ice cubes floating free. Garnish with orange, lime and/or fresh ginger.

Some A. H. notes:

1. An easy one for the Bank Holiday.

2. It’s from Dale DeGroff’s Rainbow Room, an NYC cocktailing instutition in the late-1990s. Dale apparently intended it as a tribute to old-time Cuban bartending.

3. I will admit, I flicked past this one a few times before making it, thinking it a little évident. A Rum Mule with a dash of orange, so what? But more fool me. Rum and ginger is an excellent combination of course but that extra zing from the liqueur (I used Cointreau) plus the moody bass of the bitters gives it real complexity. It’s a fine drink to resurrect yourself with after a tough week and a good thing to nurse through the long weekend too. Don’t get crucified out there.

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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.

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

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And lo! Last year’s Easter playlist is risen! And slightly better than before.

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I’m going to be fairly barebones in these free Friday posts for the next month or two as I’m putting my focus on building up THE CABINET for the benefit of subscribers. So, expect recipes but probably not playlists, etc, for the time being. If you are thirsty for more, however:

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

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WHAT I’VE BEEN WRITING

Pavement wars! Why we are seeing more clashes on Britain’s pavements (tl;dr: motorists) (Telegraph)

I repost my piece about boutique eggs from last Autumn, for topicality’s sake. (Guardian)

WHAT I’VE BEEN READING

Oh this and that but if you really want something seasonal, may I recommend The Easter Parade by Richard Yates? One of the greatest novels of the 20th century IMHO and at least three times as depressing as Revolutionary Road too. "Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents' divorce." Contains many cocktails, none of them happy.

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SHOPPING LIST

🧛 Tequila, grenadine, lime, orange juice, tomato juice, hot sauce.