Happy Hate Week Friday! I hope you’ve all been enjoying the quality hate being tossed around the site this week. Another memorable (for some) event this week is the release of the films nominated for the Academy Awards. Me personally, I couldn’t care less about industry big wigs blowing smoke up each other’s asses over movies. Though someone must be able to complete the EGOT circuit, because that’s all I saw when people were talking about the list of nominees.

For those unaware, an EGOT is winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards. It’s an incredible artistic feat. One that has only been accomplished sixteen times. Unfortunately, I will be unable to obtain the distinction of obtaining all the awards. My TV production days are behind me, so the Emmy is out. I sure as shit can’t sing or play an instrument well enough to win a Grammy, my acting chops are non existent, so goodbye Oscar; and the only way I’m winning a Tony is if I can Kramer my way onto the stage.

However, this did give me some inspiration to make an EGOT this week, and by make I mean invent one myself since I couldn’t find any references to a known EGOT cocktail in the books (or the 5 minutes of Googling I did). So I got creative, and after a little trial and error, I’m pleased to introduce the EGOT:

2 oz. gin
.5 oz. elderflower
.25 oz. Triple Sec
2 Dashes orange bitters
Orange Twist

Add the gin, elderflower and triple sec to a shaker. Shake until chilled and strain into a couple. Add two dashes of the bitters and garnish with an orange peel

The nose is light, and orange driven. I get more gin the longer I sniff, which does start to overpower things a little bit. Overall a pleasant aroma and let’s you know this drink still means business.

The first thing I notice is how cold, crisp, and smooth the drink starts out. This drink is just like a martini in the sense that it needs to be ice cold to be optimally enjoyed.

It starts out slightly sweet from the elderflower, but not overly saccharine, which is nice. The orange from the triple sec is a nice compliment here, as it shows up almost immediately after the elderflower. The gin is very understated flavor wise. The botanicals are muted by the aforementioned elderflower and triple sec, but the inherent booziness is still there. The bitters I ended up adding at the end when in trials I deemed they were needed since the flavor profile was skewing sweet, and I needed to reign that in.

I think I’ve got something here. I’ll still do some more tweaking with this, but overall I think it’s pretty good. Award winning? I’m not sure. I’ll let you guys decide that one. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go tell Raquel Welch she’s been fired.

(Banner image found here)