I am digging Pasubio. Combining its earthy/musty blueberry with the smokey
Sfumato Rabarbaro makes sense in measured ratios. The name is a reference to Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" referring to a hotel fire in Montreux, Switzerland that inspired the song.

Though I’ve seen a few tries to recreate the more famous cocktail in Simpsons lore — the “Flaming Homer” / “Flaming Moe” — I have attempted to reverse-engineer a different drink from the long-running show, “Flanders’ Planter’s Punch” from the Season 2 episode “The War of the Simpsons.” Though his attitude toward alcohol (specifically blackberry schnapps) grew more conservative through the course of the series, in this early episode Ned Flanders mixes up a highly potent cocktail that got Homer so drunk it would threaten his marriage.

In that particular episode, there’s a bit more to go on in terms of ingredients than with the Flaming Homer/Moe. After Homer complains that he tastes no alcohol in the drink, Ned informs him that the drink actually contains “three shots of rum, a jigger of bourbon, and just a little dab-a-roo of crème de cassis for flavor.” Assuming a shot here is one ounce, this would be 3 oz rum, 1½ oz bourbon, and let’s call a “dab-a-roo” ½ oz crème de cassis. Planter’s Punch is also a fairly specific category, so the drink would likely include a citrus element plus dilution with water or seltzer. As the scene takes place in the Simpsons’ home c. 1991, the citrus is likely in the form of bottled sweet and sour mix. Making your own sour mix with fresh ingredients can be easily done by combining two parts 1:1 simple syrup, two parts lemon juice, and one part lime juice.

The final recipe I pieced together is 3 oz white rum (Plantation 3-Star), 1½ oz bourbon whiskey (Wild Turkey 101), ½ oz crème de cassis (Gabriel Boudier), plus 3 oz homemade sour mix and 3 oz club soda. This recipe seems to satisfy the two requirements of the drink based on information from the episode. It is, A.) delicious, and B.) far stronger than it tastes. What started out as a weird homage to a thirty-year-old cartoon may now be destined for my regular cocktail rotation.

Difford's Website notes that this was adapted from a drink by Jason E. Clapham in Oxford England in 2020. Clapham's cocktail called for 60ml Plantation Xaymaca Jamaican Rum, 7.5ml King's Ginger, and 22.5ml Montenegro.

After posting my Dark Entries on Instagram and receiving the comment by Haus Alpenz's Jake Parrott that the "50:50 rabarbaro and red bitter is a classic café drink in the Veneto – one of many drinks in Italy to get the moniker 'mezzo-mezzo'," I was inspired to tinker. I decided to use that duo of Sfumato and Aperol in a classic Negroni, and I dubbed the result the Veneto Negroni (and not the Mezzo-Mezgroni).

The Drive on L.A. freeways can be fun and fanciful, full of frolic and flummery.