Eastern Cork, Riff on the Corktown Cocktail

A few years back we visited Boston’s Eastern Standard bar and wrote about our experience. The wonderful bar, along with its companion The Hawthorne, closed a few months ago which is a real shame for the city. I haven’t recently been back to Boston, so I didn’t know too much about the cocktail. All I had to go on is that it has a Prizefighter Irish Whisky base spirit, Lillet Blanc dry vermouth, Amaro Montenegro, and a pear brandy rinse.

Of that set of ingredients, the Amaro Montenegro was the only one I had handy, so I started a few rounds of experimenting and riffing on the recipe before I had something I was proud of. I’m not sure Jackson would be proud, but it’s always fun to tinker.

I subbed the blended scotch in the original recipe with Great King Glasgow Blend, which is a lightly peated blended whisky from the good folks at Compass Box. It’s a bit unusual in that it contains only around 30% grain whisky, vs. the 70+% that’s typical in most blended whiskies. It’s not overwhelmingly smoky, but it brings out some of the vanilla notes in the Montenegro.

Ingredients

• 2 oz Compass Box Great King Street Glasgow Blend
• .75 oz Lillet Blanc
• .5 oz Amaro Montenegro
• Barspoon Starwberry Brandy

Glass

Cocktail Glass

Instructions

• Rinse a cocktail glass with strawberry brandy
• Add all ingredients to mixing glass with ice
• Stir and strain into cocktail glass.