Edible Obsessions, The Blueberry Files and Vrai-lean-uh (source of excerpt shown below) have all written up reports from last Friday’s Obscure Holiday Cocktail Tasting. The tasting is an annual event among some of the food bloggers in Portland.
This year somehow the holiday celebrated ended up being Pearl Harbor Day rather than Christmas. The evening involved a discussion of five-star WWII generals and Emperor Hirohito. And yet it was still festive! A good cocktail-and-cheese duo elevates any holiday.
The drinks this year were also all really good.* They weren’t particularly “obscure holiday cocktails” so much as cocktails that one could drink on a holiday that are maybe unfamiliar or new. I think the lesson might be that most obscure holiday cocktails are obscure for a reason.
My contribution was a drink I’m calling the Cider House Rules:
3 oz Northern Spy Barrel Aged Eden Ice Cider
1 oz Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel
1/2 oz Kyoto Ice Extracted Tower Shot from Speckled Axe
2 dashes Walnut Bitters
Served with an orange twist
Gingko blue has been doing a cider house rules for about 2 months now.
Given it was such a popular movie I’m not surprised to hear that I’m not the only on recycling the name. I originally was going with Golden Russet–the name of one of my favorite apple varieties–but people thought it sounded more like a potato. 🙂
What’s Gingko Blue’s cocktail like?
I’m pretty sure that if you name any cocktail, classic or not, you will find someone with their variation on it. The name isn’t really important, the execution is paramount.
And A.’s was executed beautifully.
Gingko’s cocktail is like……. expensive!