Stir with ice, strain into a rocks glass with fresh ice, and garnish with freshly grated nutmeg.
For a private holiday party yesterday, the two bartenders working the event were tasked to come up with a drink to serve to 150 guests. Since the other bartender went with a shaken drink, I went with a stirred one. I had just added St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram to the back bar, and that made me think about how well it worked with gentian liqueurs. I took the combination in a Manhattan direction. For a name, I paid tribute to one of the East Cambridge characters who we have dubbed Son of Santa from early on; now that the Christmas season was upon us, Son of Santa lived up to our name for him by wearing a red and white Santa hat. While I was trying to keep it simple given the volume we would be dealing with, I kept thinking that the drink needed a garnish of some sort and freshly grated nutmeg was the answer.