A little Hanky Panky Never Hurt Anyone

The first cocktail that I will discuss is the Hanky Panky as it is a perfect example of why I love cocktails, it has a wonderful back story and it can be made to taste drastically different by just changing the brands of the ingredients or the proportions of the ingredients.

When I first started this post I was going to go into the history of this cocktail, however it has been so well covered I decided to take it a different direction.  The back story is very fun and if you are interested follow the link below to a post written by the "Ladies United for the Preservation of Endangered Cocktails". It is very well written and I love the idea of a group of ladies dedicated to saving endangered cocktails. It just seems so damn sexy.

http://lupecboston.com/2008/02/18/by-jove-now-thats-the-real-hanky-panky-3/

As I was saying the Hanky Panky can be made to taste drastically different by changing one or more of the brands of the ingredients or by changing the proportions of the ingredients.  The basic recipe is

1 1/2 oz or 1 jigger of Gin
1 1/2 oz or 1 jigger of Sweet Vermonth
A few dashes of Fernet Branca
Orange peel

Instructions:  add the spirits to a mixing jar full of ice, stir until cold, strain into a chilled cocktail glass and mist the glass with oil from the orange peel.

My bar gin is Bombay Sapphire which is a dry gin made from ten botanicals.  It is a good all-purpose gin that is relatively cheap (about $1 per oz here in BC) and it plays well with others.  My standard sweet vermouth is Martini Rosso or Cinzano and there is only one Fernet Branca.

I would like to discuss a couple of the variations that I enjoy.  The first has a polite and sweet profile and is nice to start the evening with.  The second is more forward and needs to be enjoyed later in the evening as it can overpower lighter friendlier cocktails.  These variations are definitely on different ends of the scale.

The first variation maybe my favourite, all though having a favourite is like saying that you have a favourite child.  This variation is made with G'Vine Nouaison Dry Gin and Carpano Antica Formula vermouth.  G'Vine is an 8 botanical gin from France and I find it to be sweeter and lighter than English dry gins such as Bombay and Beefeater.  Carpano Anitca is sweet vermouth that is said to be made using a formula from the seventeen hundreds. I find that it is smoother and more refined than the standard Cinzano Sweet vermouth that is normally used.  It is joy to sip on its own.

With this variation I find that you have to be very careful with the Fernet Branca, it is very easy to add too much and to overpower the other delicate flavours.  As with all variations the orange oil plays a major roll, maybe even more so with this one as the flavours of the gin and sweet vermouth are so subtle.

The second variation that I enjoy uses The Botanist dry gin from Islay.  I still prefer the Carpano Antica for the vermouth, but this could be because it has spoiled me for all others at the moment.  The Botanist gin is fairly new to the market and is produced by the well-known Scottish whisky distillery Bruichladdich.  It is a twenty-two botanical gin and is very flavourful. The botanicals are strong and forward and this allows this gin to stand well on its own and very good for classic dry martinis.  When used in a Hanky Panky it still stands out and makes its presence known.  With this variation you can be a bit more aggressive with the Fernet Branca, but be careful, I have had one friend describe it as Chinese Medicine when I have pushed it too far.

I enjoy both of these variations of this classic cocktail and at this point I am thinking that it is the perfect mixed cocktail to use to gauge new gins that I acquire.  I wonder how Hendricks’s gin will change this drink.  Maybe change the vermouth to Punt E Mes.  Oh I have so much more to try and learn.

I hope you enjoyed my ramblings and are encouraged to try this cocktail, or even encouraged to play with recipes of cocktails that you love.

Cheers

Mister Smith

Why Cocktails and Cigars

Cocktails and cigars are something from the past, something that one must take time to enjoy, they cannot be rushed. They draw you in, they seduce you. At first you go to specialty shops, to cocktail bars or friends' houses and allow someone else to choose which ones you enjoy. You buy one at a time, you enjoy them immediately and then they are gone.

This lasts for a short while and then you start to want to know more. You want to know their origins, their heritage.  Then you start collecting them yourself and with both this takes commitment and time.

With cigars you want to know where they come from, what factory they were made in,  what leaves were used in their construction, how long they have been aged and what is their flavour profile.

Cigars must be cared for. Having your own humidor is like having a fish tank, it must be attended to. You must check the temperature and  humidity daily and once a month you must rotate your stock.

Space is limited in my humidor, so I am particular about what cigars take up space within it. It can't be just any old cigar, it has to be researched and appreciated before it is added.

With cocktails it is much the same, they just taste better when you know their history, who invented them, when and where they were invented and what the inspiration was behind them.

The ingredients for cocktails are not easy to acquire here in BC and they are not cheap. You can only buy a few at a time, but which ones to get? At first the bottles take only a small space in a corner of a cupboard, your collection grows and grows and before long you have to dedicate an entire cupboard and then you start looking for a special piece of furniture for your collection.  It isn't all that long before you have over a hundred bottles, before you have ten different bourbons because each of them works better for different cocktails, for your different moods.  Here's my current collection... Hmmm... maybe it is time to upgrade the cabinet again.

Cocktails, to make properly, take time. The process cannot be rushed, the instructions cannot be ignored. You can't take the easy way out and use things like bottled citrus juices, you must take the time to squeeze your own. Cocktails do not require an extensive set of equipment but there are a few must haves and a good lemon squeezer is at the top of the list.

My intent with this blog is to share my passion for these two things, I am not an expert with either, but I do enjoy them and learning more about each of them is a good past time.  I will try to add reviews of the cocktails and cigars that I enjoy.

Hopefully you find it interesting.

Cheers

Mister Smith

My Cuban Cigar Mule

I was fortunate enough to have a friend who is also into cigars and vacations in warm places such as the Bahamas. This year he and his wife decided that they would try Cuba, even though they had heard that Cuban 5 star equaled a 4 star or less elsewhere and that the food in the majority of places was awful. Anyway, he asked me to prepare a list of 50 cigars that I would like him to pick me up.

He had never been to Cuba and nor have I, so neither of us had any idea what to expect when it came to cigar shopping there. With that said I put together a list of 10 different cigars, asking or thinking he could get me 5 of each. I found a Cuban Cigar price list on the web and it seemed to suggest that my list would cost about $500 cdn in Cuba. The retail cost for the same list here in British Columbia where I live would have been approximately $1750 plus HST of 12%. Here is the list…

Brand	Cigar	Size	Count	Cdn Price Per	Cdn Total
Montecristo	Open Eagle	5 7/8" X 54	5	33.75	168.75
Montecristo	Open Master	4 7/8" X 50	5	27.50	137.50
Partagas	Serie P No 2	6" X 52	5	29.50	147.50
Cohiba	Maduro 5 Series - Genios	5 1/2" X 52	5	52.75	263.75
Cohiba	Behike BHK 56	6 1/2" X 56	5	81.28	406.40
Hoyo De Monterrey	Le Hoyo du Député	4 3/8" X 38	5	19.05	95.25
Hoyo De Monterrey	Epicure Especial	5 1/2" X 50	5	27.25	136.25
Vegas Robina	Famosos	5" X 48	5	24.00	120.00
Romeo Y Julieta	Churchill	7" X 47	5	33.35	166.75
Fonseca	No. 1	6 3/8" X 44	5	21.70	108.50
Total			50		1,750.65

Now for what really happened.

My friend went to two different government stores in Cuba and found that they both had long lines of tourists waiting to buy cigars and that the selection at the stores was very limited.  He couldn’t find most of the cigars on my list. He tried but it wasn’t happening. Oh well, who knew, we didn’t.  He did however still bring me back 50 cigars and opening those boxes was a lot of fun, knowing that the day before they were in Cuba and that in minutes they were going to be in my humidor starting the slow process of aging.  I can’t wait to smoke some of these cigars. So here is the list of cigars that I actually received…

Brand	Cigar	Size	Count	Cdn Price Per	Cdn Total
Montecristo	Open Master	4 7/8" X 50	6	27.50	165.00
Partagas	Serie P No 2	6" X 52	6	29.50	177.00
Cohiba	Maduro 5 Series - Genios	5 1/2" X 52	10	52.75	527.50
Hoyo De Monterrey	Epicure Especial	5 1/2" X 50	3	27.25	81.75
Romeo Y Julieta	Churchill	7" X 47	13	33.35	433.55
Montecristo	No. 2	6 1/8" X 52	12	21.70	260.40
Total			50		1,645.20

I don’t have the actual Cuban unit price.  The total cost was $520 cdn, so a savings of $1,127 without including the HST of 12% which is freaking awesome.

Now for the cigar porn. Here they are just unpacked.
 

And here they are packed into my humidor along with the other 50 I have collected since Christmas.
 

It has been five days since I received the cigars, and I have my humidor up to 67% humidity and a temperature of 71 degrees.  When I first put the cigars in the humidor the humidity plummeted to 55% from 70% and the temperature soared to 76 degrees. I have had to maintain the humidifiers everyday, in fact I have had to add and additional gel pack.  I think it will take another week or so to get everything back to normal.

Now I have to decide which one to try first. Hmmm…