Monday 18 January 2016

A Tale Of Cocktails #58

Bramble

Ingredients:


1 1/2oz gin
1/2 oz creme de cassis
3/4 oz lemon juice
1 tsp sugar syrup

Taste: 5
Look: 7
Cost: 9
Name: 8
Prep: 6
Alcohol: 6 (For, like, twenty seconds)
Overall:  6.7

Preparation: Combine ingredients and stir. Fill glasses with crushed ice and pour in mixture.

General Comments: I've never been a fan of drinks that require you to fill a glass with crushed ice, and this hasn't changed my mind. Every time I get a drink like this I either have to drink it at extreme speed (not the best idea given its high alcohol content) or experience the cocktail getting worse with every sip as the ice melts and dilutes the taste.

Not that the taste is all that amazing to begin with; it's basically a French 75 with a blackcurrant twist replacing the fizz. Which isn't a bad idea, really, but combined with the surfeit of ice the switch leaves you with a flat, almost dead drink, neither tasty enough to chug nor worth the effort of savouring, even beyond the issue with the ice. It's also a pain to make if like me you don't have sugar syrup or crushed ice to hand. Really the ice is only there to lessen the impact of the alcohol; I'm wondering whether replacing the ice and syrup with lemonade wouldn't both improve the drink and simplify its prep. Still, this is the recipe the BBC gave me. Looks like its grotesque conservative bias isn't its only idea for making the world worse.

On the other hand, as my northern friend observed, at least it's named after a bramble and not one of those shitty southern blackberries. So at least it gets a mild spike in score for some petty jingoism.  That's a nice note to end on.

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