Second Breakfast

• 1.5 oz. Laird’s bonded apple brandy
• 0.75 oz. Whitley Neill Quince Gin
• 0.5 oz. Leopold Bros. coffee liqueur
• 0.25 oz. Cynar

Stir with ice and strain into teacup. Garnish with fresh cinnamon.

The quince gin was a recent tasty acquisition and I wanted to play around with it. Doing a little exploration on flavor pairings I saw that quince and coffee can work together so I grabbed the Leopold Bros. coffee offering and used the apple brandy as a base (the quince gin is fairly sweet). Still needed a little additional bitterness, and that’s where the Cynar came in. The final drink had a nice sweet and bitter balance, and the cinnamon on the nose played wonderfully with the apple and quince.

Second breakfast I guess is a “thing”, though I never heard it until Fellowship of the Ring. But an apple and coffee is a common offering so it seemed perfect for this drink. Not a bad way to start the day. Again.

Moon in June

• 1.0 oz. Puerto De Indias strawberry gin
• 1.0 oz. Square One basil vodka
• 0.5 oz. Lillet Blanc
• 0.25 oz. simple syrup
• 0.25 oz. lemon juice

Shake with ice and strain into coupe. Garnish with three drops of rose water, a strawberry and some basil.

I recently acquired the Puerto De Indias strawberry gin and just fell in love with it. The strawberry on the nose is so pronounced, yet the flavor does not come across as artificial nor cloying, just a bright crisp strawberry essence within the gin.

It seemed only natural to match this with basil, and I had the Square One vodka on hand. Everything else just sort of fell in place. The lemon was on obvious choice for acid, the Lillet adds some sweet and bitter. That sweetness needed a little extra from the simple syrup. With a few drops of rose for the scent I had a drink.

The name recalls sappy lyrics from the Tin Pan Alley era, where “moon,” “June,” and “spoon” were common rhymes in love songs. But as the June moon is known as both the Strawberry Moon and the Rose Moon due to June ripening and blossoming, it seemed a perfect name. Sappy doesn’t necessarily mean insincere, and I sincerely love this drink!