Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week's Cocktail, Whiskey Shamash!

A Hanukkah cocktail? Sure, why not.

Drink eight of these and you’ll get lit.

Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. I thought I’d try something new and make something different — a Hanukkah cocktail. Light the candles for the final night and let’s make a Whiskey Shamash. Here’s the recipe: 

Whiskey Shamash

2 oz Four Roses Single Barrel Bourbon

1 ½ oz Honey Fig Syrup

½ oz Amaretto Disaronno

½ oz lemon juice

Honey Fig Syrup

1 tsp fig preserves

½ oz honey

½ oz water

Heat all ingredients until the honey and fig preserves dissolve. Stir well and let sit until needed. 

Shake all ingredients and double strain into a chilled coupe glass. 

As we were doing some holiday driving, my wife followed a rabbit hole from a Wonkette non-comment and found the menu for a popup bar in Boston featuring Hanukkah cocktails. In a way, I’m not entirely surprised. Mixology havens love setting up popup bars with a special theme when the usual business dries up, especially during the holidays. Tiki Underground is running a Christmas bar in its backyard called “Mele Kalikimaka” that looks like a ton of fun. Great Lakes Brewing Company has a speakeasy in the basement for the holidays. There are even Krampus bars out there, offering a bracing tonic to the oceans of Christmas glurg. Holidays are a great excuse for a change of pace and some experimentation. 

A Hanukkah bar was a new one on me, though. They stick to the theme well, from drinks to noshes (can’t decide on a drink? Spin the dreidel!). But the flavors the bar chose really inspired me. It’s challenging to use savory flavors like olive oil and everything bagel spice outside their usual realms. Most of the drinks I make use a syrup to carry new flavors to a cocktail. Creating a savory cocktail doesn’t give you any room to hide. I was impressed enough to mix up one of the ingredients that appeared often on the menu — an olive oil infused gin. I know how to make such a thing, but I have no idea what to do with it. The olive is very prominent. Some sort of dirty martini, maybe? I’m stumped. Hopefully, I’ll figure out a recipe by Passover. 

I picked out a fairly simple cocktail from the menu that I could understand readily. The original whiskey shamash uses bourbon, honey, fig, and mint. I went with fig preserves instead of fresh figs, added lemon juice and started tasting. The ratios on an experiment like this are the hard part. Lemon will take over a cocktail in a heartbeat. I kept scaling it down as we went. The menthol from the fresh mint was interesting, but didn’t quite gel with the rest of the ingredients. I swapped the mint leaves for Amaretto instead. Almonds are definitely in the flavor mix for the season. The final result proved rich and mellow, a smooth sour with warm, full notes. Give this one a try — it’s easy to fall in love with.

Let’s talk ingredients:

Ingredient shot. The tree’s up, so I needed to move my photo background location. Kitchen boho is pretty.

Four Roses Single Barrel Bourbon: Most bourbon, or liquor for that matter, is kosher. There are very few places where any cross-contamination can occur in the distillation process. Buffalo Trace makes a certified kosher bourbon, but most distillers don’t bother to pay for a rabbi to certify them. A flavored liquor is another matter, mind you. To be called kosher, every additive in a bottle would need to be certified as well, and that makes things much more iffy. I kept it simple and used a single barrel bottle here. Four Roses is a very mild, mellow bourbon. I wanted to give the other flavors a chance to shine through. 

Honey Fig Syrup: This gets super easy if you have a small glass measuring cup. Dump the water, preserve, and honey into the glass and microwave it for 30 seconds or so. Once it’s warm but not boiling, give everything a good stir. Natural preserves are a must; any variety of real honey will be fine. Do not cannibalize Fig Newtons to make this cocktail. It can’t possibly go well. 

Amaretto Disaronno: The original is worth the money, but ask for a half-pint from the shelf behind the liquor store clerk to save some cash. Amaretto isn’t made from almonds. It’s mostly flavored from stone fruit pits, including peach pits. The flavor is so close to almonds that it doesn’t matter.

Lemon juice: Always use fresh. Be careful of your proportions. More lemon juice will make the drink less sweet, but the lemon flavor will dominate the glass quickly. 

Preparation: Pour the drink through a small strainer from your shaker into the glass. Fig seeds are no fun in your cup or between your teeth. 

In summary and conclusion, drink well, drink often, and tip your bartender — donate to Wonkette at the link below!  

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