one hundred cocktails

drinking with a purpose

The Twentieth Century Cocktail

17 Aug 2012

You know how visions of the future are almost always wrong? Jetpacks, robotic assistants, and so forth? This has nothing to do with that, since it was designed for a train route.

Twentieth Century Cocktail Ingredients

First of all, I have to assume that this didn’t really call for Lillet Blanc as we know it, since that didn’t even exist back then, but we’ll get to that shortly in the Vesper. Be patient. This cocktail doesn’t deserve it. Why? Because it calls for a ton of gin, a bunch of Lillet, some lemon juice and uh, creme de cacao?

Ew?

Twentieth Century Cocktail Finished

The book specifically describes this as a drink that is “an amazing experience you won’t want to miss.” … “It goes down like light, zingy lemonade, but in the aftertaste there is an ethereal sense of chocolate.”

It’s definitely zingy. There’s definitely a chocolate note on the finish. I just don’t get it, however. Kina Lillet (more soon, honest, we’re almost there) would have added some bitterness, but the author shies away from this direction (as much as he embraces it in the next cocktail).

Really, it’s a corspe reviver with some chocolate on the finish. Who cares?