Well it's our final cocktail today. Can you flipping believe it? We can't believe this is the end. Thanks to all of you for following along with us as we went about this project. Hopefully, you enjoyed the journey as well as found inspiration and a little mirth. And with that, it's Christmas Eve, so let's get to it!
The final cocktail is based on the final Magi, Melchior. Tradition holds that Melchior's gift to Jesus and his family was gold. Given that, we wanted to make a gold colour cocktail with some echoes of Middle Eastern spice. We decided to infuse some vodka with chai tea and combine that with ginger liquer to heighten the spice profile and some pear liqueur to sweeten it and give it a golden colour.
Melchior Cocktail:
- 2 oz chai infused vodka
- 1 oz ginger liqueur
- 1/2 oz pear liqueur
- Bittered Sling Lem-Marrakesh bitters
- 1 tsp powdered ginger
- 1 tbsp sugar
- cocktail glass
Combine the powdered ginger and sugar in a bowl. Moisten the rim of the cocktail glass with water and coat it with the ginger and sugar mixture. Pour the vodka, ginger liqueur and pear liqueur into a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake until chilled and pour into the rimmed glass. Top with five drops of the bitters.
Cocktail Notes:
To make chai infused vodka, put one chai tea bag into a cup of vodka and let it steep for 2 hours.
Per our usual modus operandi, we tried several different bitters to see what would work with this cocktail (you'll note that we got out our full arsenal of Bittered Sling bitters):
- Bittered Sling Moondog Bitters - Pretty good.
- Bittered Sling Lem-Marrakesh Bitters - YES!
- Bittered Sling Denman Bitters - Again, pretty good, but not realising the full potential of the drink.
- Bittered Sling Plum & Rootbeer Bitters - No. Flattens out to nuances and emphasizes the sweet.
- Coster's Blackstrap Ginger Bitters - nice and ginger-y, but not perfect.
Our Melchior got its start with this cocktail published in Marie Claire - the Winter Wonderland. The chai-infused vodka and pear liqueur combo really spoke to us, but we had some deep reservations about the creme de menthe. So we swapped that for ginger (which is a little more "Far Eastern") and made a few other tweaks (including bitters) to arrive at our Melchior.
Inspiration:
You knew it was coming … we have one more version of "We Three Kings" that we wanted to share. This time, the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald.
Happy Christmas to you and yours.
I thought Melchior was the evil one from The Silmarillion.
Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks for this boozy Advent Calendar and I hope it will become a holiday tradition. I look forward to trying them all.
PS. My liver hates you.
Posted by: PaulV | 24 December 2013 at 11:04 PM