one hundred cocktails

drinking with a purpose

The Filmograph Cocktail

29 Jan 2012

Ingredients at an exhibition.

Kola Tonic turns out to be another really irritating ingredient to track down. It’s big in South Africa and nowhere else. I suspect this is because it’s completely horrible. I bought mine from a shop in Canada who imports goods from South Africa and sells it to Americans. So weird.

What does Kola Tonic taste like? It tastes like cola syrup, but a really terrible cheap version of it. More Dr. Pepper than Coca-Cola. It’s horrible, don’t bother.

So add some sugary piss to some brandy and top off with lemon juice, and you get this:

What do you know, brown cocktails.

Another damn brown cocktail.

I’ve discovered the secret of vintage cocktails: Make it brown. Really. There are so many brown cocktails. Something true about most modern cocktails? They’re not brown. There’s a reason. Brown cocktails, generally, suck. There are only a few lasting good brown cocktails. This is not one of them.

The recipe instructs to avoid lemon syrup and instead use lemon juice, but this means the lemon juice beats the crap out of the brandy and kola tonic. The author suggests lemon syrup would be too sweet, but at least the cocktail work work then. As it is, it’s horribly acidic, badly balanced, and just plain awful.