Monte Carlo (for Justin)

We haven’t talked about cocktails much lately, which is for a reason, but there is now something to discuss in the middle of the blazing summer, peak solstice times, when it is 103º out and god is dead, and that is the precise opposite of what you want right now: a brown & stirred.

Brown & stirred is a genre, not a specific cocktail. Think of the most basic of them, an old fashioned: it’s brown (thanks, bourbon) and stirred (thanks, chemistry). Others immediately come to mind, too: manhattan, sazerac, etc. If you invoke the words “brown & stirred” in your dealer’s own order, the bartender will know exactly what to do with you. Rum, brandy, or whiskey; boozy; just enough sweetness to deal with the alcohol heat. A good brown & stirred mutes the innate violence of the spirit without overcompensating towards a more puckeringly cloying dimension. You take one sip, it is still mostly spirit, and you go “Oh, adult candy!” And then you nurse it for, like, an hour, as if you are Nick Offerman on New Year’s Eve.

My favorite brown & stirred is just long-tail enough to stump most bartenders, and done right it is nigh perfection. It’s called a monte carlo, and you probably have everything for it on hand – except for one bottle, which we’re about to fix.

That bottle is called bénédictine. It’s somewhat analogous to earth’s perfect spirit, chartreuse: made by monks, secret recipe, etc. I sort of view it as brown chartreuse, as it is heavier on baking spices & saffron, unlike its highly herbal pals. There is no substitute for it. Do not even think about subbing chartreuse for it.