Black Dresses Cocktail, Featuring Widow Jane Applewood Rye

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Last week, we featured one of my favorite modern classic cocktails, the Black Manhattan. In that feature, we included a Demerara rum-based riff I worked on last year, but in further evidence of the quality of Black Manhattan format, I actually returned to it for this week’s featured drink. It’s one I had been thinking about for a little while, and my inspiration came when I settled on the base spirit, Widow Jane’s Applewood Rye. Widow Jane has built a reputation as one of New York State’s most beloved craft brands, known for outstanding bourbon and rye blends. They define themselves in blending with limestone filtered, hard water from the legendary Rosendale Mines roughly 100 miles north of their distillery in Red Hook, Brooklyn. We’re glad to have an extensive representation of their portfolio here at the store, but the Applewood Rye is truly something special. After blending their own distillate with some great rye whiskey from Indiana and Kentucky, they add fresh cut applewood staves to the maturation, naturally infusing the whiskey with mature, complex apple notes.

Accordingly, this expression was the natural choice for a particularly autumnal take on the Black Manhattan. With that interplay of rye baking spice and nuanced fruit, I wanted to turn the dial up on both. In addition to the Averna, I turned to the somewhat fruity, very spice-forward profile of Sorel, another Brooklyn spirit paying homage to the traditional Caribbean hibiscus liqueur spiced with ginger, cinnamon, and clove. Then to really drive the apple pie point home, I included a barspoon of St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram. I always enjoy naming drinks after songs, and a favorite band of mine had an ideal fit for the feel of this drink. With that, we present, “Black Dresses.” Enough sweetness to intrigue, but a mature gravity to befit those born with a stone where there should’ve been a heart. With this drink in hand on a cold fall night, there’s no need to mourn.

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