The recipe for this week's twist on a classic cocktail comes to us from Brooke Arthur, Bar Manager at Range:
I came across a recipe for the Algonquin Cocktail, a classic from the early 1900s, in the book Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails and thought it might be a fun drink to do a spin on. I had been wanting to figure out a recipe using the Zirbenz stone pine schnapps for quite some time and thought that rye would mix well with it. At the time one of my fellow bartenders told me that pineapple was a relative of the pine cone so that was an obvious next step. (After researching this I figured out he was wrong and it is not related, but the flavor still works.) I substituted Drambuie for the dry vermouth (a spiced honey liqueur made from malted whiskey), and after a couple go rounds it was obvious that it needed a little more acid so I added the lemon juice. I named the drink The Vicious Circle, which was what Dorothy Parker used to call the group of writers otherwise known as The Algonquin Round Table.
The Vicious Circle
1.5 oz Old Overholt Rye
0.5 oz Zirbenz stone pine fruit liqueur
0.5 oz pineapple gomme syrup*
0.25 Drambuie
0.25 oz lemon juice
Combine all the ingredients in a shaker, shake 20 times, finely strain into a cocktail glass or coup and garnish with a lemon ribbon.