At Loyal Nine, I was removing an apple brandy drink off the menu so I needed one to replace it as a straight spirits drink. I went with a New Orleans feel akin to a Vieux Carré with aspects taken from Boston's own 1919 Cocktail. Instead of splitting the apple brandy with whiskey or agave which I have done in the past, I opted for an aged rum. I had been considering a Green Point combination of Punt e Mes and Yellow Chartreuse since those flavors both work well with Calvados, but I opted for Benedictine as the liqueur for it worked better here and did not get as lost as Yellow Chartreuse did. Finally, the name refers to a local who sometimes came into the restaurant before we open asking for a job (everything from taking out our trash to cooking for us) or for free food, but later had taken to coming in during service and yelling gibberish. Telling the town crier that he had to use his quiet voice scared him away, but this tribute here to remind us of this important job during Colonial history remains.

I was inspired by the sage plants in my garden in creating a drink of the day at Loyal Nine back in 2017. I thought about how well agave and sage pair together such as in Jacques Bezuidenhout's Sagerac. Instead of deciding on tequila or mezcal, I opted for both in similar proportions as Phil Ward's Oaxacan Old Fashioned. For a format, I opted for a Smash akin to Dale Degroff's Whiskey Smash.

I was in a mood and this expressed it.

An experiment with Pomp and Whimsey Gin Liqueur.

After discovering tropical fruit notes in Cardamaro, I decided to do a Corpse Reviver #2 riff. The pineapple notes that I was able to pull out of Cardamaro when I combined it with lemon juice and gin led me to use pineapple syrup as the other sweetener. Given the low to no proof nature of the rest of the ingredients, I figured that an overproof spirit like a funky white Jamaican rum would be necessary. Lastly, lime juice and a dash of absinthe rounded out this combination. For a name, I went with Moko Jumbie which means "healer" + "spirit/ghost" that often appear during Carnival as a masked being on stilts.

So Suze tastes to me like lime and vanilla, and this was attempt at reinforcing everything but the gentian in the Suze. It has a wavery jalapeno aroma and flavor but obviously none of the heat.