But, if your any kind of bartender, or friend, or host, or ‘mixologist’ you realize your first goal should be satisfying the guest/customer and you do your level best. And this is what ‘Under Duress’ is borne from; how do we handle terrible cocktail requests (my apologies to Dr. John ‘JD’ Dorian of ‘Scrubs’) with some amount of panache, and yes, our pride, intact? For this first installment, we tackle the ‘Appletini’. Yes, yes, we all know that ‘-tini’ has become a suffix for all forms of amalgamation of terrible amounts of juices and well-grade spirits dumped into a trough-sized 11oz ‘martini’ glass, but, how can we do these better and make them a little more respectable and true to the heart of a well-made cocktail?

Gary Regan bravely tackles the Appletini in his ‘Joy of Mixology‘ and his recipe follows exactly how I learned to make them in my short, and early, days ‘behind the stick’. While this recipe does the job, I find it bland, and, not fully delivering what a cocktail should:

Appletini #1 (reproduced here from Regan’s ‘The Joy of Mixology‘)

• 2 oz Gin or Vodka
• 1 oz Green-Apple Schnapps

Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

I’m going to assume that ‘Apple Pucker’ schnapps would be used here since it provides the expected color. But, again, the volume of vodka against the thin (and, to me, thinly-flavored) amount of Schnapps just drowns the poor concoction. Now, stirring, versus shaking, does mitigate this effect since you’ll have less dilution of the drink in the chilling process, but still, I’ve just not been satisfied with it. And when made with Gin, the poor lovable gin just feels wasted in the drink; I keep having images of a nice Gin & Tonic or Gin & It flit past while drinking, ruining my experience. After trying several different techniques and recipes here’s what I’ve developed, under duress:

Appletini #2

• 1 oz Vodka
• 1 oz Smirnoff’s Green Apple Twist
• 1 oz Sour Apple Pucker Schnapps
• ½ oz Berentzen’s Apfel Korn Schnapps

Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a destemmed maraschino cherry.

This recipe does a couple of notable things, it greatly amplifies the strength of apple-flavoring in the cocktail and the Berentzen’s dries out the Sour Apple Pucker significantly. I tried making this solely with the Apfel Korn in place of the Sour Apple Pucker and got consistent complaints about the color being off (Apfel Korn is gold colored) and to me it was just a tad too tart. I would be curious how replacing the Smirnoff with Grey Goose La Poire fared in this drink.

The garnish adds a nice offset to the green color and matches the style of the drink. I never sugar-rim or add any actual fruit or fruit juice to this drink. The sugared rim makes an already riskily off-balance drink that much sweeter, the fruit juice just tended to cloud the clarity, and any muddled fruit just made the drink mealy or grainy.

So, this is my attempt to improve on a fairly terribly designed cocktail; I’m curious what you have done with this particular nemesis and, if you have the time and inclination, what you think of my solution.

Prosit!

Appletini #1 Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Appletini #2 Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Under Duress: The 'Appletini' is a post from: cocktailnerd