Combining many of our favorite components into one drink
Tasting Notes
Rory: It’s like sparkly bright candy, the bright sun on an unseasonably cool day in the summer. There’s a heftier-than-usual amount of lemon here, at an ounce, but it doesn’t feel at all unbalanced. The green banana goes well with the cinnamon and allspice notes; not like banana bread (why didn’t I put allspice in the muffins I made this week? damn!) but tropical. The yellow chartreuse isn’t front and center, but I think it’s doing a lot of the work to meld those flavors. The scotch makes for a totally different base than the rum that’d be usual for this kind of layered drink.
We didn’t have a peated scotch as spec’d, and unthinkingly used 2:1 Cinnamon Syrup rather than 1:1.
Ryan: We recently bought Minimalist Tiki so we wanted to make a drink out of the book. We ended up picking one of the recipes that’s been published online, but that’s fine. It’s still in the book too! Anyway, this is straightforwardly good. I wouldn’t say it’s uncomplicated, because there are a lot of components that blend together well, but there’s nothing in here that’s particularly surprising. I like the use of scotch and lemon juice in a Tiki-like drink though.
The front of the sip is strongly banana flavored, followed by lots of sweet baking spices and ending with a touch of smokiness from the scotch. The cinnamon is present throughout (unsurprisingly, as it’s in the garnish–twice–and present in the syrup too). The herbal notes from the chartreuse are barely present, but definitely are there lending it some depth and “blending” the layers together.
Personally I find it just a touch sweet. We did use 2:1 cinnamon instead of 1:1, though, which might be the difference here. We also only have one Scotch, which is not very peaty.
Recipe
- 1 1⁄2 oz Glenlivet 12 scotch
- 1 oz fresh lemon juice
- 1⁄2 oz Giffard Banane du Brésil
- 1⁄2 oz cinnamon syrup (we used 2:1)
- 1⁄4 oz yellow chartreuse
- 1⁄8 oz St. Elizabeth’s Allspice dram
Source: Minimalist Tiki by Matt Pietrik and Carrie Smith. Recipe online on the Cocktail Wonk blog.