Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week's Cocktail, Cohasset Punch!

A peachy little number from the turn of the century.

The peach color absolutely shines in the sunlight.

Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. Peaches are in season right now. How about a Gilded Age peach-laden rum punch? This beautiful classic was all the rage in turn-of-the-century Chicago; it’s only now making a comeback. Let’s make a glass of Cohasset Punch. Here’s the recipe:

Cohasset Punch

1 ½ oz Hamilton 86 Rum

1 oz peach syrup

¾ oz lemon juice

½ oz Cherry Heering

Shake all ingredients over ice and pour into a chilled coupe glass. Garnish with a fresh peach slice.

Peach Syrup

4 ripe peaches, sliced in half

1 cup sugar

4 cups water

Bring the sugar and water to a boil in a large saucepan. Add the sliced peaches. Reduce heat and let simmer for 10 minutes. Let the syrup cool to room temperature. Reserve the poached peaches for another use. Strain the syrup and store in a covered bottle in the refrigerator.

Cohasset Punch has the sort of history that reminds me of “The Bear,” if that show was about mixologists in the Gilded Age instead of scrappy chefs fighting for Michelin stars. Our setting is Williams & Newman, a posh saloon in the heart of Chicago’s theatre district. Lewis Williams, the money man of the operation, had been invited to a yacht club in Cohasset, on Boston’s South Shore. During one soiree, he overheard some bigwigs bragging about the superiority of New England rum cocktails. Williams immediately telegraphed the brains of the operation — Tom Newman, his partner and a genius mixologist. Make a punch using New England rum, he demanded, something that would “surpass anything ever before imbibed by any living soul.” Within 24 hours, Newman had sent a cask of punch to the party. It was a hit. When Williams asked what the drink should be named, Newman’s reply was simply, “Cohasset.”

The drink remained popular well into the 20th century. The last Chicago saloon to make it was demolished in the ‘80s by a greedy, short-sighted developer who planned to build a 125-story “sky needle” on the property. It never got off the ground. Thankfully, in 2024 the cocktail was revived. You can buy bottles of it online today.

I am extremely glad for that revival, because the recipes I was finding for this fruity, elegant number online had some serious issues. The New England Historical Society’s recipe uses an ounce of “sweet or dry” vermouth. That’s a bit like saying you can use red or white wine in your pasta alfredo. Suffice to say, they’re vastly different things. I tried making it both ways. With sweet vermouth, the drink was ugly and unbalanced, with competing flavors hogging the limelight. Orange bitters only made the problem worse. Dry vermouth was much better, producing a light, ethereal peach drink. Still, it seemed a little too subtle a drink for the Gilded Age.

The missing piece fell into place when I visited the 2024 revival’s website. They describe Cohasset Punch as “Rich, complex, and bursting with flavors of cherry, stone fruit, and citrus.” Cherry? You don’t get cherry flavors from vermouth … but you do get them from Cherry Heering, a concentrated cherry herbal liquor that also had its heyday at the turn of the century. Swapping the vermouth for Cherry Heering made the peach flavors pop, added an elegant cherry note, and transformed the drink from “light and ethereal” to “rich and elegant.” This was the drink enjoyed by the haute monde of Boston at the turn of the century. The Cohasset Punch lives on.

Let’s talk ingredients:

Ingredient shot, before I had my “aha!” moment and swapped the vermouth to Cherry Heering. Cherry Heering’s updated its label recently anyway.

Hamilton 86 Rum: New England rum would have been molasses-based. Not all modern rum is made from molasses; it can be made from refined sugar, cooked cane juice, or even raw sugarcane. This demerara rum has some strong molasses notes that make it a worthwhile substitute for the Boston rum of yore.

Peach Syrup: At 1:4, this syrup is much less sweet than the 2:1 simple syrup I generally use at the bar. It’s the correct level of sweetness for this cocktail, however. Eat the poached peach halves with some vanilla ice cream, or add them to your favorite peach crisp recipe. You’ll thank me later.

Lemon Juice: There’s enough sweetness in the glass to demand a strong acid to balance the drink. Always use fresh.

Cherry Heering: If Jaegermeister reminds you of cough syrup, Cherry Heering will remind you of cherry cough syrup. It’s an intense, herbal liquor that’s meant to be diluted and mixed in a cocktail. In the right place, it can make a drink absolutely decadent.

BIG TIME NEWS! By the end of the month, I’ll be behind the stick at Hemingway’s Underground, a new speakeasy opening right here in Medina, Ohio. Watch this space for details, but when we open our door, you’ll finally have a place to come meet me and have a drink!

OPEN THREAD!