Riff on the Trainspotter, with a Japanese twist. (Shinkansen is the Japanese name for the bullet train.)

After I served a guest at work a pineapple rum-Scotch Sazerac as a follow up to a rye-Cognac one, that combination got me thinking of Pedro Ximenez-Amer Picon drinks that I made from the Pioneers of Mixing from Elite Bars: 1903-1933 book such as the Reiff. Once at home, I used the New York City-favored Amaro Ciociaro instead of Picon since Pedro Ximenez sherry-sweetened Old Fashioned riffs such as the McKittrick and Second Marriage are also popular there. I dubbed this the Red Legs after Red Legs Greaves, a Scottish pirate active in the Caribbean during the late 17th century, to capture the Scottish and tropical vibes in the drink.

After writing up the Palisades (see my blog), I got inspired by its Cynar-coffee liqueur combination. I combined that duo with the Cognac-pineapple rum split base from my Big Spender, and I kept the Peggy Lee song title theme going by dubbing the result the Why Don't You Do Right. One critique I faced on the name on Instagram was "The drink sounds great, but in the song all the fellow has to offer is a glass of gin. What a louse!", but otherwise, several folks have since tried this one out, liked it, and posted about it which has led to a second wave of users making it and tagging me in their posts. Overall, the combination of coffee and pineapple has generally been a success whether in the classic Mr. Bali Hai or in more modern ones like Moe Isaza's Bacardi Legacy drink, the Poderoso.

Winner of the Reddit Original Cocktail challenge, Feb. 2024: Bénédictine and falernum.

As part of menu development at La Brasa, I was inspired by the honey-rabarbaro combination that worked so well in the Shipwrecked. Our bar's blended Scotch sadly gets neglected save for except at weddings, and I thus recalled how well rabarbaros like Zucca pair with Scotch such as in the Caustic Negroni. The rest fell into place as I used lemon juice to cut the sweetness, and Angostura and Peychaud's Bitters to donate darker and brighter levels of bitter herbal complexity and spice, respectively. For a name, I dubbed it after Somerville's mayor, Joe Curtatone, although Joe is more of an Averna guy from the times that I have served him elsewhere in town.

On New Year's Day, I became inspired by the Streets of Gettysburg's coffee-Benedictine combination and the 1910 Cocktail's Cognac-mezcal duo. I dubbed the creation the Delores del Rio named after the Mexican actress taught by French nuns in Mexico City that mirrors the split-based spirit.

In 2018, I submitted a recipe to the USBG Cocktail Classique sponsored by Lucid Absinthe. It ended up making the cut to compete in the New York semi-final round, but it was not a convenient time for me to travel, so I bowed out. My drink idea began with considering how Tiki drinks are very absinthe friendly, and I selected the Mai Tai as a starting place. Instead of swapping pure absinthe in place of one of the rums in a Mai Tai, I opted to swap in the delightful New Orleans treat, the Absinthe Suissesse, in place of that rum. My rational was that both drinks contained orgeat as a common ingredient, and how the creamy, rich, nutty, citrus, and grassy combination in the mashup would complement the herbal spice notes in absinthe.