Sharkbaits Cocktail of the Week: Carbon Copies

Welcome once again to Friday, the happiest day of the week. This week  I was thumbing through the Savoy cocktail book looking for inspiration and I came across a familiar looking drink: The Cooperstown Cocktail. What made it look so familiar is that it’s a split vermouth base with gin. What else has that? Why it’s the Medium martini from the same book. The only real difference between the two is that the medium has equal parts vermouth to twice the gin and a lemon twist. The Cooperstown has equal parts vermouth and gin, with a mint garnish. I was curious to see how they stood apart from each other, if at all. Now admittedly, I’m starting off on the wrong foot as I’m out of mint, so I’m evaluating the Cooperstown in it’s equal parts merit compared to the martini. Let’s see how it fares:

Cooperstown

1/3 French (dry) Vermouth

1/3 Italian (sweet) Vermouth

1/3 Dry Gin

Shake well and strain into cocktail glass. Add a sprig of mint

Smell is muted for a gin based cocktail. The dual vermouths hold the signature dry gin aromas at bay, and I think the sweet just edges out the dry to add it’s own subtleties. It, no surprise here, is very similar to the medium martini I did, oddly enough from the same bar and book.

Just like the aromas, the Cooperstown’s flavor is extremely similar to the medium, almost to the point that if doing a blind taste test, I couldn’t tell the difference. Here is where I wish I had some mint on hand since I think that would be X factor to tweak the flavor profile ever so slightly away from the Medium’s wheelhouse. Instead, I went garnish-less in this application because I’d rather do that then add in a twist (of more than likely lemon), which would I would argue completely destroys any chance of this drink’s individuality. That’s the issue you have when the only difference between two drinks is the proportions and a mint leaf vs. a lemon peel. To be fair, I do think my own failure of having mint on hand is being unfair to this drink. It is good, just like the medium is. I really should see if the mint makes a difference, but I didn’t anticipate it having as big of an impact on the drink as it apparently does.

So yeah. This was kind of an experiment going sans garnish and the jury is still out. It’s still very good, and I’m debating on making a second. But again, as I mentioned above, this doesn’t seem to have its own personality, outside of the mint. I’ll re-visit this one once I get the proper garnish and see if it makes a difference.

(Banner image courtesy Matthew Tetrault Photography)