A riff on "Valley Of The Dark Lords" cocktail created by Sol Trece at La Cuevita Bar in Highland Park, CA.

I had a version of this drink at Nomad; there it was a "Porch Punch" and topped with soda, served on ice in a highball glass. I wanted to try to recreate it as an up drink without soda.

After writing about the Undertaker on my CocktailVirgin blog, it reminded me of the curaçao-Cynar combination. That got me thinking of the Hugo Ball from 2009 that perhaps introduced me to the combination. For a direction, I opted for a Sidecar styling with some rhum agricole to keep things French and a little bit weird. Since Hugo Ball was a member of the Dada art scene, I made this a tribute to a Marcel Duchamp piece that is merely a snow shovel signed and dated by the artist; it was part of his "ready-made" series of manufactured goods that were "elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist."

In April 2017, a reader of my blog from San Francisco was back in Boston and visiting Loyal Nine. One of his tablemates approached the bar and asked for a drink to end out the West Coast visitor's evening. Instead of a Flip, I decided to go in the style of a New Orleans (a/k/a Ramos) Fizz using three different amari. For the trio, I selected Fernet, Averna, and Cynar; and instead of soda water, I opted for ginger beer akin to the Fernet Buck. The end result was so good, that the original requester of the drink got envious and asked if he could have one as well (and that second one is the the one in the photo above). I feel that the amari could be swapped around depending on inventory and preference, but it was one aggressive, one funky, and one smooth as the balance.