kill vehicle

A trusted secret agent may or may not have been dispatched to a less-restrictive state to replenish my stocks of Crème de Violette and investigate the possibilities of the intriguing-sounding Rothman & Winter Orchard Apricot and Orchard Pear liqueurs. It’s hard to say; I would never subvert the kind guidance of the PLCB like that, so it may all be a cursed hallucination. Surely I just went through the long and painful Special Liquor Order process, ordered the legal minimum twelve bottles of each variety, and waited a month or so for the PLCB to protect me from the dangers of unlicensed liquor. That has to be what happened.

Anyway, upon the successful completion of his mission and/or my hallucination, I had to figure out what to do with my new bounty. It was obvious what to do with the violette; it’ll all be turned into Aviations and Moonlights. The Aviation is one of my favorite cocktails; Laura loves the Moonlight.

The pear and apricot were trickier, though. Each one is actually a sweet eau de vie, brandy mixed with fruit juice. They’re about 50 proof, and sweet without being cloying.

The apricot has a wonderful fresh-apricot flavor, and it turns out that it can be used in a bunch of classic drinks that call for apricot brandy. It isn’t as sweet as the Marie Brizard Apry, the usual standard for apricot brandy, which is nice. You end up with drinks that are a little sharper and a little fruitier, instead of being dessert in a glass.

The pear was more of a challenge, though. It has a wonderful flavor, but it’s pretty delicate, and I didn’t have much luck finding drinks for sweet pear brandy. It wasn’t clear that substituting it in for other fruits would work well, because it’s such a soft flavor; it’d be easy to overwhelm it and lose all those wonderful pear notes. So, I had to make something up.

Step one: make a nice ginger syrup to go with the pear. Can’t go wrong with pears and ginger, right?

So: Start with a standard simple syrup mix of two parts sugar, one part water. My squeeze bottles aren’t too huge, so I went with 3 cups of sugar and 1 1/2 cups of water, heated until it’s clear and bubbling.

To that I added about 6oz of peeled fresh ginger chopped into small thin matchsticks, and a quartered vanilla bean. You need to be careful about temperature here; if the heat’s too strong and the syrup is too hot when you add the solids, it’ll boil over and you can burn yourself pretty badly.

Once everything’s in and stirred together, I put the heat on medium and let it bubble away until most of the water from the ginger was gone and the syrup thickened a bit. The easiest way to check this is with a probe or candy thermometer; about 220-223 degrees is what you want.

When you get to that point, take the syrup off the heat and let it cool and steep for two hours or so. After that, strain out the vanilla and ginger chunks with cheesecloth or a fine mesh strainer. If you’re going to keep the syrup for a while, it’s a good idea to mix in 3 oz or so of vodka to improve shelf stability — the alcohol content will keep it from getting moldy.

With that made, it’s on to step two, the actual drink.

Start with:

• 2 1/2 oz white rum
• 3/4 oz Orchard Pear liqueur
• 1/2 oz fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 oz ginger syrup

Toss it all into a shaker and shake with ice. Pour into a pint glass and fill about 3/4 of the way to the top with ice. Top it off with club soda, stir lightly, and enjoy.

This ended up being an almost-perfect summer drink — it’s not too sweet, and the aftertaste is all pear and ginger. I tried it at first with 1/4 oz of the syrup because I didn’t want it to be too sweet, but the flavor didn’t have enough depth. With the extra syrup, it’s complex and satisfying without being too sugary.

Now it just needs a name.

Edit: Laura has the name; it’s a Pear Galette Fizz.