A few Saturdays ago at Drink, a guest asked for a Caipirinha riff, and I decided to take it on a New Orleans adventure. The original impetus was how well cachaça and rhum agricoles work with Benedictine such as the cachaça Petition and the agricole Homere Punch, and then I rounded off things with Peychaud's and absinthe. Since their next order was doubling up on this creation, I decided to make it once I got home that night. For a name, I dubbed this one later the Casa Samba after the Brazilian Carnival held in New Orleans every year.

One Friday night, a guest at Drink requested a Pisco Sour variation. My first thought was to mix things up by splitting the base with cachaça for those two South American spirits have worked well in my Javari Mai Tai and Loreto Swizzle as well as Jay Kuehner's Cienciano. As a second tweak, I swapped the simple syrup for honey. For a name, I recalled David Embury calling the Jamaican rum Bee's Knees the Honey Bee, and Yvonne's Honey Bee included egg white; therefore, I dubbed it the South American Honey Bee.

I was reminded of the Genever-Cardamaro pairing that I first learned about at Portland Cocktail Week 2012 with the Deck Hand and Walking Spanish and was reminded of years later with the Le Subtil. It inspired a series of creations such as the Wooden Shoe, and I crossed the idea with the Benedictine-Picon pairing in the Creole Cocktail. I dubbed the result The Elves and their Antics in keeping with my previous Dutch fairy tale drink name

Chorrizo is quite the superb musician and band leader.

Another of Chorrizo's many talents is teaching music.

In memory of a Naval Academy graduate.

With thoughts of Navy shipboard duty and a Naval Academy graduate.