Bittersweet Gin Fizz

Here’s another cocktail by Todd Thrasher of Restaurant Eve and The Majestic Café in Alexandria, Virginia, showing creative uses of vermouth.

Bittersweet Gin Fizz

2 ounces Bombay gin (regular, not Sapphire).
1/4 ounce sweet vermouth.
Dash of cherry bitters.
Carbonated sweet vermouth.

Pour over ice. Top the glass with the carbonated sweet vermouth (it will look like thte foamy head on a root beer). Garnish with microplane-grated orange peel.

Todd makes his own homemade sweet vermouth; use Carpano Antica for the drink, and perhaps Martini & Rossi or Cinzano for the carbonated version.

For the carbonated sweet vermouth: From 750ml sweet vermouth put 1/2 cup of it in a saucepan and heat. Remove mixture from heat and add two sheets of bloomed gelatin (1/2 of one envelope if using powdered). Whisk to dissolve the gelatin into the vermouth. Combine the vermouth-gelatin mixture with the remainder of the 750ml bottle of sweet vermouth. Let it cool and rest for a day. For service, pour the vermouth mixture into an old-fashioned soda siphon.

Wow. That sounds fantastic, but might be a bit much for home use rather than regular restaurant service. That’d be something great to serve at a cocktail party, though. Cherry bitters might be a bit of a stretch — there isn’t a good commercial product on the market at the moment. Fee’s makes a Cherry Bitters, but it tastes too Robitussin-y to me. For the moment you’re out of luck, unless you make or yown or if Jamie Boudreau lets you buy a bottle of his housemade cherry bitters at Vessel in Seattle. (He should be going commercial with those soon, though.)