one hundred cocktails

drinking with a purpose

Blue Paradise

07 May 2011

I have searched high and low to find two particular ingredients, Parfait Amour and Torani Amer. The Amer will wait for a few cocktails from now, but as of yet I’ve found both impossible to procure on the right coast.

Luckily, I had a business trip to California and I was able to procure both. So, this cocktail (and one coming up) have been a few months in the making. Even with this, I had to order both shipped to a liquor store in California where I could then pick them up. I’m reminded that when I started on this quest, not everything was going to be cut and dry. It turns out acquiring the ingredients for and making gomme syrup is a lot easier than aquiring some of the ingredients that can’t be had otherwise.

More ingredients, yay!

Anyway, getting to the Blue Paradise, the Parfait Amour is the object in question. And there’s nothing blue about this drink, it’s ugly and brown like the rest of them. It’s another floral liqueur, with spices and citrus additives. The specifics don’t seem to be consistent. It’s all sort of insulting given that Parfait Amour serves pretty much one purpose: Making a drink purple.

What a waste of time.

Anyhow, a little Dubonnet Rouge and some cognac; garnish with a twist and we’re off to the races…

It’s a surprisingly drinkable little thing, and I have to eat my words. The Parfait Amour seems to make the Dubonnet far more spicy and herbal on top of a relatively sedate cognac base. I think Creme Yvette would probably be a better option, but I like what’s going on here. You will too, if you like a cocktail that’s flowers and spice with a bitter finish…

Some finished cocktails. Theyre brown.

Perhaps it’s just been a long time since I’ve made forward progress and I’m overly fond of this beverage. It’s not for everybody, but it seems to work. Visually, it looks like every other brown cocktail in the book, which is a shame given the purple input.

So, coming out of the Violette/Parfait Amour/Yvette cocktails, I think you pick one and don’t worry about the rest – it’s close enough for substitutions. As a mixer, Violette seems to give a better floral note, Yvette seems the most complex, and PdA seems to be a waste.

And, with that small procurement success, hopefully we’re back to our regular schedule of working through this book. There are many exciting cocktails to go!