Happy Friday, and happy first day of Spring! I don’t know about all of you but I’m ready for Spring. Basically I can tolerate winter through New Years day, and to a lesser extent the end of January. Once it hits February, get me the warm weather ASAP. I know March and April can have snow

So yeah, let’s not hope for that, but instead more nice days, please and thank you. Anyway, this week I was back to channeling New York, kind of. I consulted a classic for inspiration: The Waldorf Astoria Bar Book. I had bookmarked a page in there a while ago that had a riff on a gin martini called an Alley Cat. It uses Benedictine, which I havent broken out in a while so I figured I’d make it and see how it turned out:

Alley Cat:

2 oz. Citadelle Gin (Citadelle being a French produced London dry gin, I used Gordons London Dry)

1/2 oz. Benedictine

2 Dashes Regan’s Orange Bitters

Add all ingredients to a mixing glass. Add ice and stir for 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with an orange peel: using a channel knife, peel one whole orange once around, cut the peel long and thin and hang it to mimic a cat’s tail over the side of the glass*

*I did not do this because I didn’t have an orange, and it seemed too taxing to try with a lemon.

Not much of a nose on this one. I can pick up some muted gin notes. The gin is most likely toned down from the addition of the Benedictine. Speaking of, I also some slight Benedictine that comes through as well. Overall, fairly pleasant and doesn’t lead you to think this will be particularly strong.

Now the flavor on this is interesting. I would have expected the gin to take the lead but that’s not the case here. The drink starts off on the bitter side, with a bit of the gin underneath. As the sip progresses, the juniper and other spices from the gin start to fight their way to the front. It gets progressively more gin pronounced the more the flavor lasts on your palate.

The gin now takes the driver’s seat and that’s how the drink finishes. Classic London dry gin flavors on the palate, but now with a slightly more bitter undertone to it. The combined flavors hang out on the palate a little too long for my liking though, which made me sip this one slower so it did start to warm up by the time I got to the end, which made it slightly less enjoyable.

Was this my favorite? No it wasn’t. Do I hate it? Definitely not. I think the Benedictine taking over up front kinda put me off of this. Not enough to dump it, but I’m not sure where this fits into the “make it more often/ again” camp.

(Banner image courtesy Matthew Tetrault Photography)