Still exploring our new bottles of Hayman’s Old Tom Gin, and enjoying every drop. Killer Martinezes, lovely Tom Collinses, although we have yet to try it in a Ramos Fizz. (I keep forgetting to get eggs and cream at the store … next week for sure.) Tonight for inspiration I delved into CocktailDB, and came up with this one. The original recipes called for an ounce each of Old Tom and sweet vermouth, plus a half-ounce of Crème de Violette, with a dash of orange bitters. To my taste (in fact, probably to most contemporary tastes) this seems horribly sweet, but a possibly intriguing flavor combination with the right balance. I decided to increase the gin and vermouth to 1-1/2 ounces each, and reduce the violette to a teaspoon. Then I realized that this basically makes a Martinez with violette swapped out for the maraschino. That sounded interesting.

Rothman & Winter make the most readily available Crème de Violette.

The Demeanor Cocktail
(Chuck’s variation)

1-1/2 ounces Old Tom gin.
1-1/2 ounces sweet vermouth.
1 teaspoon Crème de Violette.
1 dash orange bitters.

Combine with ice and stir for 30 seconds. Garnish with a lemon twist.

It was … well, certainly interesting. Wes found it “viscous,” even though the only difference between this and the Martinezes he’s been loving recently is the 1 tsp. of violette instead of 1 tsp. of maraschino. We use Maraska maraschino most of the time, which we find to be a bit drier than the Luxardo (which is still excellent), and perhaps he was reacting just to the level of sweetness of the violette combined with the sweet vermouth and the sweetened gin. He thought it was too sweet; “I wouldn’t order it again.” I think this has promise, although I think it needs more tweaking. I’d try to get a little more vitterness going by using Punt E Mes for the vermouth, and I might even try a London dry gin too. Yay, tinkering is fun!

Have any of y’all tried this one? What do you think?