The Scotch is in good form tonight!
And now for something completely different, ... Coquetiez Du Lion Recipe by Goncalo de Sousa Monteiro
1 1/2 oz Lillet Blanc
1/2 oz Tanqueray Dry Gin (Blackwoods)
2 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters (Bitter Truth Creole Bitters)
Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
Garnish with a lime twist.
The house drink for Le Lion–Bar de Paris, in Hamburg. My first attempt was an inverted Vesper: four parts Lillet Blanc to one of dry gin. The old fashioned principle of mixing gin and fortified wine worked marvelously with a Lemon Twist.
The next step to a worthy house cocktail would be the inclusion of bitters in the sense of the first definition of Cock-Tail.
Peychaud’s Bitters were the choice for several reasons. For one, earlier experiments with Tanqueray, lime peel and Peychaud’s worked marvelously. Moreover, Peychaud’s comes from New Orleans—one of the cradles of the Cocktail—and the label of Peychaud’s features a gold medal in an 1869 exhibition at Altona, today part of Hamburg. For the name, the R in Coquetier (egg cup) was changed to Z to symbolize the hypothetical American misspelling “cocktail” and as a reminder of the Martinez, a predecessor to the Martini.