Impassioned

• 2.0 oz. apple brandy (Laird’s bonded)
• 0.25 oz. Benedictine
• 0.25 oz. Blue Lion Chicorée Liqueur
• 0.25 oz. Leopold Bros Michigan Tart Cherry liqueur
• 0.125 oz. Pierre Ferrand Dry Curaçao
• dash of coffee bitters (Cocktail Kingdom)

Stir with ice. Strain into old fashioned over ice. Garnish with cherry “rose.”

I wanted something on the boozy, Old Fashioned side, and I thought I might play with Tamworth’s chicory liqueur. For the base I went with apple brandy (Tamworth also makes an excellent offering here, if you can get it) and added my mainstay Benedictine to play with the bitterness of the chicory. Riffing on the Old Fashioned’s (sometimes) cherry and orange, I added cherry and orange liqueurs to sweeten things up. The coffee bitters completed it with a nod to NOLA’s coffee and chicory.

The name just came from rhyming Old Fashioned — nothing particularly insightful there. The rose seemed appropriate for the name. No thorns provided, except perhaps from the bite of the alcohol.