Red who?

Red Hugh.

There’s a saying in cocktailand that goes “Everything is a Daiquiri.” While it is an enlightening concept when you first get into cocktails it is not quite right. “Everything is a Daiquiri or a Manhattan.” is closer to the truth. All but the strangest cocktails are a variation on one of these two and they serve as an excellent starting point in creating your own recipes. I love a Manhattan and today we shall be slightly tweaking it to come up with our own drink. For example in that modern classic the Black Manhattan all of the vermouth is replaced by an amaro and it is indeed a delicious drink but we do need to tread carefully when switching out the vermouth as we must be careful to keep the bitter to sweet balance intact to succeed. Amari are usually fine as the tend to be as bitter as they are sweet but this is not true of some other ingredients. Most liqueurs will sweeten our Manhattan variation too much to remain palatable but there are a few candidates which – like Amari – have bitter botanicals to help us out. Enter the sloeberry most often found in sloe gin* but also in the flavourful Spanish digestivo pacharan (aka patxaran) which we shall be using today – although I reckon you could use either. Sloe being a strong flavour we shall switch out only half of our vermouth which, as always in my case, is Punt e Mes which has the benefit of being beautifully bitter itself. Furthermore we shall ditch the bourbon (or more properly rye) and sub in some decent Irish whiskey – my current boycott of US products being only co-incidental this time. For the rest this is simply made as a Manhattan right down to the maraschino cherry nestling in the bottom of the chilled glass and you know how to make one of those already I should expect. The result is a pleasing drink with complex bitter notes from the pacharan, vermouth and bitters but enough sweetness from the first two of those to keep the balance we must always seek. All we need now is a name and thanks to a story from an Irish friend while we were on holiday in Valladolid a couple of years ago I have the perfect title for our new creation. Red Hugh was an Irish folk hero who ended his days in Spain thus giving us the name for our conveniently red drink with Spanish and Irish ingredients.

Txotx!

Red Hugh.

2oz/60ml Irish whiskey.

0.5oz/15ml pacharan/patxaran or sloe gin.

0.5oz/15ml Italian vermouth – ideally Punt e Mes.

2 dashes of aromatic bitters.

Stir with ice and stain into a chilled champagne coupé or Nick and Nora glass. Add a single maraschino cherry.

Toast Red Hugh (1572-1602) who stood up to the English occupiers, alas without much success.

*Which is paradoxically actually a liqueur.