Stirred cocktails are both easy and hard. Whut? Maybe I should rephrase. Seasonal stirred cocktails are difficult. You can go with bitters or some sort of seasonal type of vermouth, maybe an infusion, but the infusion has to be crystal clear and we have no centrifuge. I’m of the school that a stirred cocktail, especially served up in a coupe or Nick and Nora, should be flawlessly clarion. It just looks nice. I’ll never forget bringing a martini by the Koji Kid one night on my way out to the patio during the outdoor dining nights of 2020, and he mumbled, “That looks clean.” I think that’s the point right? A good gin martini with the right specs is a clean cocktail, just booze, vermouth, bitters, and water with a garnish in the bottom.

Chef Fox put a cool tomato salad on the menu with different types of capers, one of them being these big berries, almost fig like with the chewy, snappy seeds inside. It got me thinking about two things: One, a Gibson. Love a Gibson. It was one of the first cocktails I ever got around to really enjoying and making well even though at the time I had no idea what I was doing. This was in the New York days when I worked lunches and afterward we’d start in on the Hendricks. In the stifling and miserable days of New York summers it was mostly salty dogs made with a jug of Simply Grapefruit purchased from the bodega across the street. In the fall, I whipped up Tom Collins for all of us (so good and simple) and the winter months were dominated by the Gibson. Yum.

Two, piccata sauce. I don’t know about you and I know it’s considered not so “good” anymore but piccata is one of the GOAT sauces in my book. It doesn’t translate so well to cocktails…Or does it? I mean, some chardonnays are considered buttery. Crap, I just thought of this. A buttery chardonnay as a base for housemade dry vermouth would be hilarious.

Anyway, this one is still in R&D. It doesn’t have any seasonal element, but now that I thought of the buttery chard thing, I’m thinking I’ll go buy a few bottles of Kendall Jackson and get to work. As far as what to put in it, I have no damn clue. Something will pop up at the market tomorrow I hope.

This is the working recipe so far. It’s really tasty but like I said, there’s no “Rustic Canyon” panache anywhere…Yet…It’s a bit like how a vesper should be. Yeah, there’s few cocktails I despise more than a vesper. I wrote a blog post on it a million years ago. If you’re going to take the sting out of something as delicious as a well made gin, please do it with vermouth and not vodka for crying out loud.

Brine Phu

1.5 oz. Butter and Lemon Washed Gin

1 oz. Dolin Blanc

.5 oz. Dolin Dry

Barspoon Konbu

Stir with ice, pour into a small coupe. Caper berry garnish.