Spurred by Robert Simonson's succint piece on the quiet trend towards blanc vermouths, I've decided to finally bang out a little ranty something about a Dolin Blanc drink that I've been aiming to single-handedly launch into popular culture. So it's time to mint & brand a new drink craze for all the new fabulous girls, the seflie-loving ladies who pray to Taylor Swift, the once-gangly Wintourbot who has come to dominate so much of pop culture with her catchy, vengeful anthems and meticulously styled, wildly unobtainable Instagram existence.
As The Cosmo was to the Sex & the City gangs, candy colored high octane fuel for their endless debriefings on the men in their lives as well as their endless pursuit of more men, so this drink shall be to this generation of ladies with an attitude, and appetites. It's the refreshing, easy and chic Dolin Blanc on the rocks with an orange twist, which I've dubbed "Blanc Space" after Swift's hard-to-escape "Blank Space". The light-ish drink is simplicity itself to construct--ice in a glass, rocks glass or otherwise, generous pour of Dolin Blanc atop, orange twist for citrus oils and a lively bit of zing. It's meant to be sipped (sometimes sipped rapidly) while getting dressed to go out, on the nightly mission to flirt with boys, less perhaps for the simple pleasure of it but rather so that they may have gossip fodder to share via social media, while writhing in endless paroxysms of narcissistic glee, certain that they are blameless, pure and perfectly glamorous, fueled by endless re-affirmation in the form of likes on their various feeds. Generation Swift: The end of everything! But I shall give these vampiric social media succubi their New Cosmo to fuel themselves with. And it's a good one, sustainable, sophisticated and enlivening. If "Cougar Juice" is a light white wine--almost always pinot grigio--that might like some ice or even some soda water thrown into a wine glass with it, the Blanc Space is for these young, voracious cougars-in-training. I just hope they're having actual fun in their hunt for Instagrammable moments, and Instagrammable boys.
There's a missing "orange garnish" in this version that was just published in the NY Observer.
Tyler Stevens of Teardrop Lounge (for another week, at least, before taking over the bar at soon-to-open Tusk) came up with the slight variation for the "Squad Punch" version--adding some orange twists to the Blanc and letting sit for a bit before serving up from a pitcher.
Now, I should confess that I conceived of this marvelously clever and punny drink during some late night freestyle drinking with some middle-to-late middle-aged gay buddies, and we very likely looked and sounded not unlike the very TS fangirls we were ranting about at the time. And, in the end, the drink is perfect for that getting-ready-to-go-out-and-get-some moment, whether that "some" is selfies or actual human flesh, or just some free form fun.
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