Unnecessarily Complicated

But doesn't that make it more fun?

I was sitting here thinking about the glory of the Quarter Deck #2 (which I had in Seattle and wrote about last time) and recreating it at home, which I’ve done, but I’ve been trying to learn a bit more about its origin and that is a stubborn endeavor. Sometimes the internet is great, and sometimes the internet is a dead end that will yield nothing more than a few basic links. How did that information get there? Who knows? Sourcing is not always a speciality of ours in this age, and while we have a lot of information at our disposal, there’s no guarantee it’s good information.

Still, I’ve gained enough facility to know how to taste a drink and figure out how to do something on my own. But we’ll write about that another time.

So what do I have, and what’s going on? A lot! So much I haven’t been making that many drinks at home. But I still have all these ingredients that won’t stay good forever sitting around, so I approached this drink with an eye on (somewhat selfishly I may add) using bottles and fruit that needed to be used.

The first thing I do when getting back from a vacation, like any reasonable person, is restock my cocktail fruit, which means I have a pineapple, which means I have pineapple juice. The canned stuff is fine, but one of the fun things about pineapple juice is it adds a nice little foam. It’s just got a different mouthfeel too. Obviously I’m team #freshjuice and all, it really adds a lot to these drinks.

The problem is one pineapple yields a whole lot of juice, and this stuff does not stay good forever. It’s much easier to use when you are hosting a bunch of people and making non-stop Carthusian Trips and all that. Which you should, I guarantee your friends will enjoy it (and possibly get a bit drunker than they realize), and you will have yourself a hit drink people have not had before but idk…I didn’t want scotch in this one particular instance.

When I open the fridge, what else pops? The sherry. Always the sherry. I enjoy a good bottle but it doesn’t last forever (this is why it is much easier to just enjoy a nice glass with the bonkers abalone mushrooms at ABV). So the bottle I opened to make that Quarter Deck #2, it’s up. In this case it’s the Lustau East India Solera because that’s what I had around and I wanted a sweeter sherry for that. Though for future iterations of this I might gravitate towards something a bit more oxidized or with more salinity.

What else is open? I got vermouth for days. In this case, I’ve still been working my way through some Cocchi. So I pulled that out as well.

Here is where I run into a bit of a construction issue. I’ve got three sweet things already pulled out and to be honest, I usually enjoy a bit more balance to it all. This is why bitters were invented, though. So I grabbed some orange bitters and old trusty Angostura. Still, you cannot just bitters your way to a proper beverage, and the two items I pulled out are fine if you are looking to make a nice low abv cocktail, but that wasn’t my explicit goal. I initially tried a version of this with gin, but it needs a bit more bite, and alas! I do not have a bottle of the St. George Dry Rye Gin at home, which I feel would be perfect. But I still got rye. Rittenhouse it is.

Here’s another moment where I played with levels, and initially put more pineapple juice in that I probably needed. Dialing that back, I had a bit more space in the cocktail, but I still wanted that lovely pineapple flavor. And that’s where an old friend, Stiggins’ Fancy, comes in.

What you are getting is basically a rough draft because I got two notes. One, this should be on a big fucking rock in a double rocks glass, and I won’t hear any disputes otherwise. But sadly, I have not been in the making giant cubes of ice business recently (for shame recently) so what do I have? I have nice looking Nick and Nora glasses. Second, like I said, I think the base spirit should probably be gin and I should use a different sherry, but well, we all work with the tools we got. And with that, I present Open Bottle Project Vol. 1:

• .75 oz pineapple juice (fresh if possible)

• .5 oz sherry (would be great with a nice amontillado or oloroso, but you do you)

• .5 oz Cochhi Vermouth di Torino

• .5 oz Plantation Pineapple Rum

• 1 oz rye (Rittenhouse)

• 2 dashes orange bitters

• 1 dash Angostura bitters

Really, do whatever you want. I think this would actually be a fascinating long-stirred drink, but my natural bias is to shake, so that’s what I did. If you shake like I did, double strain into a Nick and Nora glass, express an orange peel, and garnish with it. There you go.

I’m just gonna level with you this beverage is unnecessarily complicated and you could probably simplify it in exciting ways but where is the fun in that?

Stay tuned for a future edition where we may finish this off properly and call it Open Bottle Project Vol. 2 or something unless I get creative. Until then.

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This is Trader Jane’s, a periodic newsletter about drinks (mostly tiki) and other fun writing. Follow me on Substack for something every week or two (if we are being honest), and follow me on Twitter and Instagram for more timely updates on my beverages (and for lots of other things of course!)

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