The other night I was a guest at a William Grant & Sons cocktail tasting at the Bouley Test Kitchen on lower, lower, lower West Broadway. Leisurely, intimate, and painlessly informative-the drinks' creators were right there to discuss their inspirations as they made them for you-it
was one of those surreal, highly cinematic and unusually gracious evenings you sometimes experience when you write about cocktails.
William Grant's small portfolio boasts a hardy, eclectic array of spirits, so the cocktails employing their brands were all over the map, but unified by a certain elegance and certainly a high grade of craftmanship. Bartenders and brand ambassadors. ringed the room serving Grant-based drinks, four of which were real standouts for me. William Grant's noted doyenne, Charlotte Voisey, manned the first cocktail station as you entered the kitchen, and we found ourselves migrating back their throughout the evening for another taste of her Blood and Sanguinello, a pink and amber cloud of single-malt scotch, Lillet Rouge, and exotic citrus punched up by Solerno, their new blood orange liqueur.
BLOOD AND SANGUINELLO - Charlotte Voisey
Solerno 0.75 oz
Glenfiddich 0.75 oz
Lillet Rouge 0.75 oz
Fresh pink grapefruit 0.50 oz
Fresh lemon juice 0.25 oz
4 luxardo maraschino cherries
Orange bitters 2.00 dashes
Egg whites
Combine ingredients and shake very well
Serve up in a coupe (or small wine glass)
Garnish with a thin slice of blood orange.
People kept migrating back to Charlotte's table for to further sample the Blood and Sanguinello.
Rob Krueger of Employees Only and Macao served up his Kobayashi Cocktail, with homemade candied kumquats. He told me he'd wanted to strike a balance between the style of his two establishments.