As usual, went easy on the St. Elizabeth, about 4 mL. Dirty dump works too if you don't want to rinse your blender.

Very good with high proof cognac, grand marnier and angostura.  5 stars.

Tasty! It's overall boozy, but with some lift from the curacao and enough bitterness from the Campari to balance the sweet vermouth.

Cloyingly sweet. The Campari and lemon struggle in vain against the double whammy of curacao and sweet vermouth. If you like your Manhattan with two cherries, this might fit your palate.

I could see how if you used sweet vermouth instead of Punt e Mes that it would be sweet. Otherwise, it was Gary Reagan approved and has made a bunch of folks happy with nary a complaint about sweetness. True, not as dry as the Lucien Gaudin that was the inspiration.

The cocktail is certainly not cloying. The combination of Campari & Punt e Mes keeps the bitter profile front and center. I noted the result in the drink overall as "semi-sweet/semi-bitter" because neither dominates. I wonder if the other poster used a rather sweet triple sec/curacao rather than Pierre Ferrand, which is one of the drier offerings (although with still notable sugar, something like 180 - 200 g/liter depending on the source of the info.) Sweeter curacaos run in the 250-300+ g/liter range.

Interestingly, Punt e Mes is listed as 220 g/liter sugar while Dolin Sweet Vermouth is only 130 g/liter and Carpano Antica is similarly in the 130+ range. However, Punt e Mes has a more assertive bitter backbone and doesn't seem that sweet. For comparison, Campari is quite bitter but has 250 g/liter of sugar. As with acidity, bitterness counters sweetness, making the raw sugar content seem less than it is.

I dialed back the Campari for my husband, who is not a huge fan, and amped up each vermouth a bit so that there were equal parts Campari- dry-sweet. Still a strong Campari presence, but more pleasing to my particular crowd.

Had two out of work bartender friends over for some happy hour cocktails and we decided to give this a whirl.  Since the brands weren't specified here, I'll note that we tried this with Wray & Nephew and Rothman & Winter.  We all liked it, I thought it was sort of in "The Defend Arrack" vein.  Definitely balanced for the industry / cocktail nerd crowd, so I also tried it using .75 oz instead of .5 oz for the acid and modifiers, and we all thought that was an improvement--rounded off the rough edges of the rum's rubbery funk and petrol notes, with less of a boozy balance, and as one put it, "just made it more daiquiri-esque".

The brands are those indeed and specified in the blog link. I love R&W apricot because it doesn't taste fake (natural + aroma chemicals added) like some major brands can. And while this was Wray & Nephew, using Rum Fire, Rum-Ba, or similar would be perfect here too I'm sure. I didn't fine tune the citrus level since it felt fine to me -- Swedish punsch is half sweet, apricot is full sweet, and the spirit is overproof and rough, so my calculation was 1/2 oz lime.

Why is the drink in the image so reddish? I would've expected a greenish drink based on the ingredients and volumes.

Maybe heavy hand with Angostura? :)

Angostura to blame. Certainly. Or my drunkness preparing it.