125West
Recipe:
- 35ml Vallendar Orangengeist (orange eau de vie)
- 35ml Domaine Tariquet VSOP Bas Armagnac
- 10ml hibiscus tea syrup
- 1 bsp pimento/allspice dram
- 2 dashes chocolate bitters
- 1 dash Peychaud’s bitters
- (perfume/rinse with) Islay malt
Perfume your cognac/wine glass with 2-3 mists of the Islay malt, build the drink in your glass (no ice), swirl for around 30 seconds. Perfume your glass with 1-2 final mists. Garnish with a dried orange wheel (bonus: dried orange wheel, caramelized & added hibiskus tea petals).
Scaffa drinks are a completely, really completely underestimated category and overlooked world of cocktails. Their unique characteristic being that they are served at room temperature.
This results in the necessity of an ideal balance among the ingredients since the path they walk is much narrower, it can taste unbalanced or boozy much faster than if you bring it down to ice cold temperatures. Because the cold kills flavor nuances and can hide alcoholic notes well. Therefore, if you’re thinking about creating scaffa drinks you should start with elegant, aged spirits that you would drink neat anyway, which wouldn’t be the case with young or unaged, high proof rums for example.
But back to the 125West: Depending how long you took your time with the glass, swirling it with the dried orange slice, it changes in aroma from initially still noticeably smoky notes, bitter orange and dried berries (from the hibiscus), wood smoke and oriental spices, to in the later stages logically somewhat fruitier notes, more candied orange, but also wonderful, fresh hibiscus, clove and allspice further back. It then reminds you of a fine tea punch from the orient.
At the beginning you find fine incense smoke, smoked tea, hibiscus and natural, intense bitter orange, orange zest, grapes preserved in cognac, then gently comes the allspice, clove, cumin and gently roasted cocoa, always continuing with bitter orange, dried berries and anise on the finish.
While it slowly becomes more fruity on the nose from swirling with the orange, in the mouth it instead becomes quite gently more bitter on the finish, as the dried orange, but also the hibiscus tea give off some pleasant bitterness, so it still gets great tea flavors in the last fifteen minutes of drinking.
