Ginger and tequila work well together
Tasting Notes
Rory:
I saw a recipe for the esplanade swizzle and immediately made some ginger syrup; cohuman mentioned that they’d been wanting to try the dolores park swizzle but hadn’t yet because of our lack of ginger syrup. spoiler: they’re the same drink, tequila for mezcal (and with angostura bitters). I like our tequila at the moment more than I like our current mezcal, so I swapped. Initially I cut the syrup and falernum to 1/2oz from 3/4oz because it sounded so sweet & i’d made rich ginger syrup, but when we tried it, decided that the full 3/4oz made more sense. Also I decided to stir them in a mixing glass rather than swizzle because I’m terrible at swizzling.
Mine’s a bit sweeter and gingery than cohuman’s; I guess I poured heavy on one of them. also the amontillado’s maybe oxidized a bit, though it’s not unpleasant at all. it gives it something of an unusual… something. Sherry flavor, I guess. The tequila isn’t buried under the sherry + ginger syrup + falernum, but it’s more of a supporting player than usual.
Oh, I guess the Dolores park swizzle is a rich syrup, so I didn’t even fuck up.
Ryan: We’ve been meaning to make ginger syrup for a while, and we finally did. This drink is a pretty good use for it. The bite from the tequila and the bite from the ginger seem to go together pretty well. The ginger definitely loses a bit of punch when tamped down with sugar, but it’s definitely distinctly fresh gingery flavors, not gingerbread / cooked down ginger. All the ingerdients are on the sweet side, so our initial take was to cut down the syrup and falernum, but after a taste we brought it back to the full spec–the flavors are a bit muted without it. We probably could have just increased the ginger and not the falernum if we wanted a slightly less sweet version?
Recipe
- 1 oz Cimarrón Reposado Tequila
- 1 oz Lustau Amontillado Sherry
- 3⁄4 oz John D. Taylor’s Velvet Falernum
- 3⁄4 oz Lime Juice
- 3⁄4 oz Ginger Syrup (see below)
- 3 Dashes Angostura Bitters
Ginger syrup:
- 3⁄4 cup water
- 1 1⁄2 cup sugar
- 3 1⁄2 oz peeled ginger cut into coins (it was 4oz and change before i peeled it)
Heat sugar and water, stirring, until it just simmers and turns clear. Turn off the heat, add the ginger coins, stir, stick a lid on it for 20 minutes.
Source: Drunken Diplomacy