campari Archives • LiquorAlchemy

Improving the Cuba Libre and the Gin & Tonic

These two are the drinks that probably everyone knows - the Cuba Libre and the Gin & Tonic. In the past, there has even been some argument as to whether they are cocktails or not. I would argue that the Gin & Tonic is not - at least not in its simplest form. By contrast, the Cuba Libre is (it contains lime juice in addition to rum and coke). In any case, they are dead simple longdrinks and while they are excellent in principle (I do not want to doubt that), one might wish for a bit more complexity at times. Today, we will consider two recipes that…

The Carpo Lavoro – bitter and bitter means sweet???

There is whole array of drinks based around mixtures of Campari and some kind of vermouth, out of which the Milano Torino is probably the simplest. It simply consists of qual parts of Campari and sweet vermouth. Lenghtening this mix with soda water renders an Americano cocktail. Now the idea behind today's cocktail, the Carpo Lavoro is replacing the vermouth in an Americano with coffee. Sounds weird? As it will turn out, this is an excellent idea! I tried to find out more about where this Americano riff came from, which turned out to be impossible. I stumbled upon it in this video by Steve the Bartender, but…

The BITTER Long Island

The classic Long Island Iced Tea is on of the most controversial cocktails in the world. Equal parts of vodka, rum, gin, tequila and triple sec with some citrus juice (lemon or lime) and coke. Some people like it, some despise it. There are many recipes and variations, e. g. omitting the tequila or changing the proportions. The base of the Long Island, however, is always the same: a mix of the five clear spirits. So how about a BITTER Long Island? Today, we will apply this concept to the category of "bitter liqueurs", which includes bitter aperitifs and so-called amari as subcategories. This might seem counter-intuitive, but…