At the risk of sounding like Captain Ahab, I’m beginning to think allspice dram is my white whale. After searching a few different places where I am, I cannot seem to find this mysterious liqueur. So my plan of making the cocktail mentioned in the beginning’s of last week’s post will have to get pushed back another week as I continue my search. Hopefully I won’t get any more confused salespeople thinking I want ground allspice instead of a cocktail ingredient.

So, the backup plan was to utilize some farm fresh apples and apple cider Mrs. Sharkbait brought home from a work outing earlier this week. As much as I wanted to use local resources (aka the cocktail library next to the bar), any recipe I found calling for cider was referring to the hard kind, and unfortunately the farm fresh cider is not fermented, so those were ruled out. Some quick internet research led me to an an apple cider based whiskey cocktail called…Apple Cider Bourbon Cocktail. What drew me to this particular recipe is it is more than just dumping some bourbon in a glass of cider and calling it a day. I was interested to see how the sweet vermouth, lemon and orange flavors would go with the classic fall heavy hitters. Let’s find out.

2 oz. bourbon
1 oz. apple cider
1 oz. sweet vermouth
.5 oz. lemon juice
1 dash orange bitters
Apple slices (optional), sprig of thyme for the garnish.

Combine the bourbon, cider, sweet vermouth and lemon juice in mixing glass and stir with ice. Strain it into cocktail glass.
Add a dash of orange bitters and garnish with apple slices (if desired, spritz them with a little lemon juice to prevent browning).

The nose is fruit forward for sure. A lot of apple, of which comes as no surprise given the cider and the garnish. I do however get a lot of citrus in there as well, from the lemon and the bitters, which as per the recipe are added at end, as opposed with everything else in the mixing of the drink.

The taste can best be described as fall in a glass. The whiskey initially cuts through all of the flavors, letting you know exactly what you’re getting into. Shortly thereafter I get a lot of the lemon and orange flavors coming through, which I do enjoy with the whiskey and apple flavors. The sourness from the lemon is kept muted by the vermouth, of which has it’s flavor muted, which I think is a good thing here. I don’t think this needs any more sweetness than what the cider provides, but I do like what it does to balance it out.

I really enjoyed this. This is a good fall weather drink that plays well when it is still 75 degrees out, or when it gets cooler and you want something a little different while sitting next to the fire.

(Banner image found here)