Rosa

• 1.5 oz. Cocchi Americano
• 1.0 oz. Courvoisier Rosé liqueur
• 2.0 oz. Cuvée Rosé
• 5 drops rose water

Stir Cocchi and Courvoisier with ice. Strain into cocktail glass. Top with rosé and garnish with five drops of rose water.

For The Secret Garden, I decided on a collection of floral drinks. No, it’s nothing much to do with the show, but having a drink based around cholera or melancholy (melancholera?) didn’t seem very appealing. Although not all of the flowers are necessarily something you’d find in an English garden, I started with one that was not only a flower mentioned in the show, but was also one of the characters, Rose, or, using its genus name, Rosa.

This one was all about the nose. Originally, I was going to make it champagne-based with a rose liqueur that I had on hand. That liqueur ran out before I could perfect the drink, though, and in trying to restock I found the liqueur was no longer available. Enter the Courvoiser Rosé, and building off of that I found a sparkling rosé to replace the champagne. The Cocchi adds a little more sweetness and a necessary bitter component. The final drops of rose water are really what bring the fragrance of roses to the drink.

I suppose I should represent the thorns, not only for the flower, but also for the character. Let’s just focus on the lovelier aspects, though. If you really want to, have a chaser of absinthe. That’ll get ya.

The 39 Steps Cocktail

• 1.0 oz. Canadian whisky
• 1.0 oz. London Dry Gin
• 1.0 oz. Edel Kirsch Cherry Liqueur
• 1 barspoon lime juice
• 2 dashes Boker’s bitters

Stir with ice. Strain into coupe coated with peaty Scotch.

Canadian whisky for Hannay in London, thus the addition of gin. The Professor and his nefarious alter ego lends the German liqueur. And of course the Scotch for the setting, which is also interesting since the nose doesn’t really match the taste and so I think lends itself to the deception explored in the movie. And of course in the play, which prompted this entire series of Hitchcocktails.

And with that, I bid you:

“Good evening.”

North by Northwest was a hard one for me that produced a lot of failed attempts, but one that finally stuck was a riff on the Blood and Sand. I substituted Bourbon (what they drug Roger with) for the Scotch (what he drinks by choice) into a cocktail of mistaken identity.

The North By Northwest Cocktail

• 1.0 oz. Bourbon
• 1.0 oz. orange juice
• 0.75 oz. Cocchi Vermouth di Torino
• 0.75 oz. Averell Damson Gin liqueur

Shake with ice. Strain into old fashioned glass over rocks. Garnish with an orange twist.

I played with the proportions a bit and substituted Averell, a liqueur of Damson plums, for the Cherry Heering, which always tastes like cough syrup to me. I pulled the bitters out as well as I felt they weren’t needed in the final concoction. Yummy, and nary a cropduster in sight.

I had absolutely no idea at first with Rear Window. Then I considered how through his window into the courtyard Jeff observes all these disparate people and I thought that perhaps the cocktail could be just that — a mix where each ingredient represented each of his neighbors, brought together into a single perspective. And I knew it had to be nice and cool to account for that hot summer in the film. Thus:

The Rear Window Cocktail

• 2.0 oz. Old Monk Rum
• 1.0 oz. pink grapefruit juice
• 0.5 oz. Cognac
• 0.5 oz. passionfruit syrup
• 2 dashes Fee’s Whiskey Barrel-Aged bitters

Shake with ice. Strain over cracked ice in an old fashioned glass.

So, grapefruit juice for Miss Torso, passionfruit syrup for Miss Lonelyheart, some sophisticated Cognac for the songwriter and his parties, and a dark, dark rum for Mr. Thorwald. Mix in some bitters from Jeff himself and the result was a surprising, refreshing sipper fit for any voyeur on a hot day.

The Birds Cocktail

• 2.0 oz. Wild Turkey 101-proof Rye
• 1.0 oz. Cocchi Americano
• 0.25 oz. Fernet Branca

Stir with ice. Strain into old fashioned glass over ice. Twist a lemon peel then discard.

I scoured my bar for any bottles featuring a bird, as seemed appropriate for this cocktail. Famous Grouse didn’t work well in it, and I knew there wasn’t a Grey Goose that could stand up to Fernet, so this is the combination I happily ended up with. Yes, all three bottles feature birds. They’re coming for you.

The Vertigo Cocktail

• 1.5 oz. Sliver Tequila
• 1.0 oz. St. Germain
• 0.5 oz. lime juice
• 1 egg white
• 1 dash Dandelion and Burdock bitters
• 5 drops rose flower water

Shake without ice, then shake longer with ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a barspoon of Angostura bitters, swirled into a pattern using a toothpick.

The first thing I thought of when considering a drink for Vertigo was the famous Saul Bass poster with the spirals and I knew I wanted to create a drink that would allow me to do that. An egg white would help with that, and considering that many friends have appeared queasy and afraid when I mentioned an egg white drink, I thought it would be doubly appropriate. Beyond that, I went with tequila for Carlotta Valdez in the movie (who was probably Spanish, not Mexican — I couldn’t remember, but ah well) and lots of floral flavors for the flowers that played a prominent role in the film.

The Pycho Cocktail

• 1.0 oz. Rye
• 1.0 oz. Cynar
• 1.0 oz. Green Chartreuse
• 0.5 oz. lemon juice
• 10 dashes Peychaud’s
• 5 drops of sriracha

Shake with ice. Strain into chilled coupe.

The first thought behind this was to create something blood red without resorting to a Bloody Mary’s tomato juice, hence the hefty portion of Peychaud’s, which I also found helped balance the sweetness from the Chartreuse and Cynar (itself also a bitter component). The drink is a crossdressing variation on the Last Word, with Rye wearing the Gin’s clothing, and lemon for lime, reduced. The sriracha can be included or not, but I like the little extra bite I thought the Psycho deserved.

My production of Spamalot opens tonight, and so I present the last of the cocktail series with its creator, Mr. Eric Idle.

So Spamalot is not just Holy Grail on stage, but rather a good chunk of Holy Grail with bits and pieces of other Python bits from Flying Circus and the movies, as well as new material written by Mr. Idle and John Du Prez specifically for the show. It just seemed fitting to throw a little bit of everything into this drink. To that end:

Eric Idle

• 1.0 oz. Spam-infused whiskey
• 1.0 oz. Cocchi Americano
• 0.5 oz. Cockburn’s port
• 0.25 oz. Benedictine
• 1.5 oz. Holy Grail ale

Stir all but the ale with ice, then strain into old fashioned over ice. Top with the ale.

Of course I had to do something with Spam. I have infused whiskey with bacon, so doing the same with Spam didn’t seem like too much of a stretch. I sautéd some Spam and had it sit within a bottle of Jack Daniels overnight, then strained out the meat and fat. The Jack Daniels choice was merely because I had a bottle sitting around, I will admit, though it did pair nicely in the end. The result is just a faint flavoring that doesn’t overwhelm (I don’t think you would know if I put a shot in front of you).

After that, for an additional nod to Holy Grail, I grabbed some Benedictine for Brother Maynard (after toying with the thought of some pine-infused eau-de-vie for Roger the Shrubber or an egg for Sir Robin), which added some herbal sweetness. I didn’t want too much, because I also had some rich sweetness from the Cockburn’s port. This ingredient was chosen primarily for its name, as it was the best I could find for acknowledgment of Mr. Idle’s classic “wink wink nudge nudge” character (“Cockburns? I bet it does, I bet it does!”) — perhaps hitting the nail a little too hard on the head, but a double entendre was harder to come by in the liquor store than I expected.

At this point, I had a rather heavy drink, so the Cocchi Americano fortified wine helped to brighten it up a bit and add some bitterness. Yes, the ingredient is actually Italian, but the Americano tag was a tip of the hat to Mr. Idle’s American residency for the past 30 years.

As I was putting this together, I came across the official Monty Python Holy Grail Ale (tempered over burning witches). I just had to. Topping this concoction with the ale was a welcome touch, actually, upping the bitter and muting the sweetness and creating a nice balance.

Say no more!

Spamalot cocktail #5. Now we come to the king.

Graham Chapman

• 1.5 oz. Plymouth gin
• 1.5 oz. pineapple juice
• 0.5 oz. King’s Ginger
• 0.25 oz. Captain Morgan
• 0.25 oz. Byrrh
• 1 dash Boker’s bitters

Shake with ice and strain into coupe. Dust with cinnamon.

Lots going on here, but I had a lot of ground to cover. Mr. Chapman, good for him, was a recovering alcoholic in the end, but during Holy Grail apparently was often plastered. In an interview I saw he mentioned that at his worst he was drinking four pints of gin a day. Holy… grail. There is something that is wrong about even creating a drink for him. Which is why I think he would approve.

So we start with some gin, Plymouth, which I think is decent and military. Under that is something a little fruity (I love the story that when a female fan was appalled to find out that one of the Pythons was gay — Mr. Chapman being one of the first celebrities to publicly come out — Eric Idle responded to them in a letter that the other Pythons had found out who it was and had taken the individual out and had him shot; at about the same time John Cleese had left the group and Mr. Idle always wondered whether the woman had assumed it to be true).

The ginger liqueur, of course, is for King Arthur in the Holy Grail and gives some more sweetness with the pineapple. The rum (went with Private Reserve here) is for Mr. Chapman’s Yellowbeard movie and adds a nice spiciness with the ginger. Byrrh, I’m almost ashamed to admit (almost) is a bad play on letters in order to get a representation of Life of Brian and the jokes about myrrh (“And thanks a lot for the gold and frankincense, er, but don’t worry too much about the myrrh next time.”). It adds some additional sweetness and bitter qualities, and I think brightens the drink up a bit. The Boker’s bitters are fully titled Dr. Adam Elmegirab’s Boker’s Bitters, and were included to tone down the sweetness slightly and for Mr. Chapman’s medical beginnings (he studied to be a doctor).

The cinnamon dust is for one of the funniest Chapman bits I saw, in which he appeared posthumously. When the Pythons appeared at a comedy festival in Aspen, they brought out an urn which apparently contained Mr. Chapman’s ashes. During the interview, Terry Gilliam accidentally kicked over the urn, at which point all the Pythons attempted to “recollect” them, one even with a dustbuster.

There you go. As easy as one, two, five.

Next up on the Spamalot cocktail list, Mr. Terry Jones, who codirected with Gilliam the Holy Grail (and who directed the later films), and could play a woman like no one else.

Terry Jones

• 2.5 oz. Aquavit
• 0.5 oz. Creme de Menthe
• 0.25 oz. lemon juice
• 1 dash burlesque bitters

Stir with ice and strain into cocktail glass. Spray top with absinthe from atomizer.

Following Python, Mr. Jones wrote and directed Erik the Viking, which I must admit on never seeing, though it provided a nice Norwegian base spirit for this drink by way of Aquavit (Linie, from Norway). The Creme de Menthe is for the disgusting Mr. Creosote from The Meaning of Life and the wafer thin mint that did him in. It adds a nice sweetness to this drink. The burlesque bitters are for all his time in drag as well as his nude organist. Just seemed appropriate.

The lemon? Well, sometimes a drink just needs some acid, and I’d rather have a good drink than be stifled by theme too much. The absinthe, though, is for his later work with Brian Froud (of Labyrinth and Dark Crystal fame) on Lady Cottington’s Pressed Fairy Book. I would imagine the pressed green fairy would make for a nice, albeit morbid, garnish.