PrintTime for a Drink: Seelbach Cocktail
Let's start the weekend right—with a cocktail recipe from Paul Clarke (The Cocktail Chronicles). Need more than one? That kinda week, eh? Here you go. Cheers!
Ah, Kentucky Derby weekend—the time each year when people across the country begin affecting Southern accents and taking stabs at mixing, or at least drinking, mint juleps.
This isn’t a mint julep. Let’s be honest: unless you’ve honed your julep-making skills over years of withering summers, or are fortunate enough to be sitting across the bar from legendary julep-making bartender Chris MacMillian in New Orleans, chances are the julep you'll find in your silver tumbler or, god help us, plastic cup is going to range somewhere between mildly disappointing and downright undrinkable. Now, don’t get me wrong: I absolutely love mint juleps, and feel they are one of the great culinary contributions America has given the world; it’s just that making an excellent julep (really, is it worth drinking any other kind?) is an exercise that requires an inordinate amount of labor, skill and love.
Fortunately, there are other drinks that are Kentucky to the core, and that are absolutely appropriate to be mixed on Derby weekend. One of these is the Seelbach Cocktail: hailing from the Louisville hotel of that name, the Seelbach rests on a base of bourbon—as if it would be anything but—and dresses up this spirit with a little Cointreau, a healthy dose of bitters and an indulgent splash of Champagne.
The Seelbach Cocktail may not be a julep, but it doesn’t have to be: it’s respectable, powerful and all-Kentucky right down to the bottom of the glass.
About the author: Paul Clarke blogs about cocktails at The Cocktail Chronicles and writes regularly on spirits and cocktails for Imbibe magazine. He lives in Seattle, where he works as a writer and magazine editor.
Seelbach Cocktail
Ingredients
1 ounce bourbon
1/2 ounce Cointreau
7 dashes Angostura bitters
7 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
5 ounces chilled dry Champagne
Procedure
Pour everything except the Champagne into a Champagne flute and stir. Top with Champagne, give everything a light stir, and garnish with an orange twist.
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3 Comments:
Should all the ingredients be chilled before going into the flute and being topped with the champagne? Or is the champagne supposed to chill the other ingredients? That sounds like a LOT of bitters.
wookie at 6:45PM on 05/02/08
Champagne will chill other ingredients - and yes, it sounds like a lot of bitters, but it works soooo well in in this combo - so don't go off standard recipe! This has got to be one of my most favorite drinks!
GingerSnap at 7:02PM on 05/02/08
I have a really hard time finding Peychaud's bitters here in California...my Angostura gets used all the time, but I know there's a difference in aromatics with the Peychaud's...is there any possible substitution, or can anyone turn me on to where to find it?
rosezilla at 10:38AM on 05/07/08