Made for the Reddit Original Cocktail Competition, July 2026: Tea and Amaro.

Macunaíma riff, same conceptual proportions but cutting out some cachaca for wray & nephew, swapping lime juice for lemon and pineapple, and swapping syrups
Named after the Father John Misty song

After thinking about the apricot-allspice dram combination in the Pleasure Island that I had just made, I became inspired to cross two classics – the Pendennis Club and the Lion's Tail. Even if the only overlapping ingredient was lime juice, the two drinks have the same spirit, liqueur (with or without simple syrup), lime, and bitters structure. For a name, I worked with "twisting the lion's tail" as slang for provoking the British and dubbed this one Poke the Bear perhaps to bring it more in the direction of Kentucky. I also find it odd that the British half here calls for Bourbon and the Kentucky half calls for gin.

The reason why I wanted to make such a cocktail can also be seen from the name of the drink. It's because of a female classmate of mine. I'm a person who is self-conscious but appears outgoing and cheerful on the surface. My family would prepare fruits for me to take to school to eat. Since she and I are deskmates, every time we eat, I would share half with her. In fact, even if it's a male classmate, I would share the same. But we have been deskmates for a long time. And as such days pass by day by day, it's impossible without emotions. But during my adolescence, on the one hand, I didn't understand what "love" was, and on the other hand, she had returned to the countryside from a big city while I was relatively short. So I never dared to believe that she had feelings for me. This incident has indeed affected me until now. Why do I believe we had feelings for each other back then? Because we would go home together every day after school. We would wait for each other's classes to finish before walking together (the class time in Chinese schools might be extended by a few minutes). What convinced me the most was what the other person said when I opened the classmate book again ten years after graduating from junior high school: "I like boys taller than me (just kidding you)," but it's already beyond redemption. Perhaps this is just my one-sided wish, but to me, she is indeed the most important "female classmate" in my life. At that time, the fruits I usually brought to school were apples and oranges, which was also the reason why I used these two materials.