The second pigment in my Sunday in the Park with George set was organic red lake. It wasn’t as easy to find examples of as vermilion, as you can tell by the image above which does not contain the result of a Google search but instead shows the color swatch from a paint brand. The color is a deep red with some yellow undertones. Looking back, I think I strayed more in the direction of blue, but as the other two red drinks were on the yellow side I don’t regret that mistake since it produced a tasty drink.

Organic Red Lake

• 2.0 oz. Aged Rum
• 1.0 oz. Crism Organic Hibiscus Liqueur
• 0.25 oz. Maurin Quina
• 4 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
• 4 dashes cranberry bitters

Stir and strain into old fashioned over ice glass.
Twist lemon peel and discard.

One thing I wanted to do with all of the cocktails in the series was to use a different base spirit for each, and, for the most part, different bitters and mixers as well (juices I wasn’t as worried about). And yet, here in the second drink I resorted to Peychaud’s to help the coloring. I tried to be better from here on out.

I love aged rum as a base, and here I used Mount Gay Extra Old, though Bacardi 8 or Ron Zacapa would work equally as well, I think. The Crism added a floral sweetness, and is not a mixer I used a lot, as I discovered when I emptied my bottle in preparing this drink for my cast and couldn’t find a replacement anywhere. It seems it has been so long since I purchased the bottle that it is no longer made in the form I had it before. It was either bought or rebranded, but I believe it is now found through this company and now is simply called Fruitlab Hibiscus Liqueur. As I have not found a bottle, though, I cannot say if it tastes the same or (less importantly) provides the same color. You could substitute another sweet floral liqueur, like St. Germain perhaps, though of course that would produce a different drink.

The Maurin Quina is a great ingredient that I have been playing with a lot in the last several months. It is a quinine and cherry based aperitif that adds a wonderful tart/sweet/bitter -ness to a drink. Finally, the added bitters contributed greatly to the color, but also toned down the sweetness, though the Fee Brothers cranberry definitely have a sweetness to them in addition to their tartness and bitterness.

The first pigment used by Seurat in A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte that I created a drink from was vermilion, a mostly red (not mostly-dead) color with slightly more green than blue (hex value #E34234 for the web developers playing at home).

Vermilion

• 2.0 oz. Silver Whiskey
• 0.5 oz. Chambord
• 0.5 oz. Ramazotti Amaro
• 0.25 oz. lime juice
• 3 dashes Peychaud’s bitters

Shake and strain into a coupe.

As this was my first paint color drink, and I was oh so young and naive, I started with a colorless base spirit in the Silver Whiskey (High West Western Oat), which is unaged so doesn’t take on the coloring you get from the barrel aging process. This was a mistake in retrospect as I got to later colors that couldn’t use a brown spirit base, which this could have used, but you must forgive my youthful transgressions.

I added the Chambord for the sweetness and tried to balance this with Ramazotti for something bitter (and the right color) and the lime juice for some acid — it also helped to add a little green to the color, which was becoming too purple. The Peychaud’s, I am forced to admit, was a cheat to get the color just where I needed it (I used it again in the next drink for the same reason; it feels good to come clean).

Nothing too off the wall in this one, and it was darn tasty. And the color looked like a drink I’d want to consume (have I mentioned the blue drinks yet?)!