Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Kiss-friendly tipple
For Valentine’s Day you can hardly do better than the Divine Aspect
Land & Water’s Divine Aspect
Mike Mayaudon
It ain’t pink or red, doesn’t include anything remotely chocolate, and it doesn’t come with a rose garnish, but for Valentine’s Day you’d hardly do better than suggest a drink that brings out a bit of the divine aspect in your better half…
Among the natural resources on Land & Water Co.’s cocktail menu, says this organic eatery’s bartender Mike Mayaudon, the Divine Aspect reshapes the bitter Compari-based Negroni into a more graceful image of balanced, kiss-friendly sweetness.
“You get a heavy apple flavor in the front and it ends sweet and smooth with the apricot,” Mayaudon says. “It’s light-bodied but finishes with a sweetness because of the apricot liqueur.”
As one of the basic “mother sauces” of cocktails, the Divine Aspect’s 1-1-1 proportion starts with the right combination of liquors. But don’t dare shake the thing, Mayaudon adds.
“Rule of thumb is that anything with all spirits is stirred, not shaken,” he says.
Director of mixology for Southern Wine and Spirits-Southern California and architect of Land & Water’s cocktail menu, Tricia Carr developed the drink (and its curious name) as a variant on the Angel Face (equal parts gin, apricot brandy, and calvados) — a classic Prohibition-era cocktail.
“It seems to me that ‘Angel Face’ could have been a fairly common term of endearment for a lovely lady — in the vein of Bogart’s famed use of ‘Doll Face,’” she says. “As for ‘Divine Aspect,’ I simply used what I thought were pretty sounding synonyms.”
The results are more than “pretty,” though — unless you add “darn good” — and Mayaudon sees the apple-cum-bourbon as a key component in that goodness.
“The flavor is not all apples but also has the bourbon taste,” he says. “Because Wild Turkey is such a high-proof liquor and good quality, it extracts a lot of the apple quality out. Meanwhile, the gin basically lengthens out the drink. Instead of having two ounces of Wild Turkey 101, which would make the drink too strong, the gin dilutes it a little bit. It also gives a more viscous texture when you stir the cocktail. The juniper notes of the gin play really well with the apricot, too.”
- 1 oz. Broker’s gin
- 1 oz. apple-infused Wild Turkey 101*
- 1 oz. Luxardo apricot liqueur
Pour ingredients into cocktail tin with ice, stir for about 30 revolutions (“the magic number” for stirred cocktails, says Mayaudon), strain it into rocks glass filled with ice, and garnish with a twist of orange peel.
*Apple-infused Wild Turkey 101: Fill up a quart Mason jar with apple slices and whiskey, lid jar, and let infuse for two days.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Kiss-friendly tipple
For Valentine’s Day you can hardly do better than the Divine Aspect
Kiss-friendly tipple
For Valentine’s Day you can hardly do better than the Divine Aspect
Land & Water’s Divine Aspect
Mike Mayaudon
It ain’t pink or red, doesn’t include anything remotely chocolate, and it doesn’t come with a rose garnish, but for Valentine’s Day you’d hardly do better than suggest a drink that brings out a bit of the divine aspect in your better half…
Among the natural resources on Land & Water Co.’s cocktail menu, says this organic eatery’s bartender Mike Mayaudon, the Divine Aspect reshapes the bitter Compari-based Negroni into a more graceful image of balanced, kiss-friendly sweetness.
“You get a heavy apple flavor in the front and it ends sweet and smooth with the apricot,” Mayaudon says. “It’s light-bodied but finishes with a sweetness because of the apricot liqueur.”
As one of the basic “mother sauces” of cocktails, the Divine Aspect’s 1-1-1 proportion starts with the right combination of liquors. But don’t dare shake the thing, Mayaudon adds.
“Rule of thumb is that anything with all spirits is stirred, not shaken,” he says.
Director of mixology for Southern Wine and Spirits-Southern California and architect of Land & Water’s cocktail menu, Tricia Carr developed the drink (and its curious name) as a variant on the Angel Face (equal parts gin, apricot brandy, and calvados) — a classic Prohibition-era cocktail.
“It seems to me that ‘Angel Face’ could have been a fairly common term of endearment for a lovely lady — in the vein of Bogart’s famed use of ‘Doll Face,’” she says. “As for ‘Divine Aspect,’ I simply used what I thought were pretty sounding synonyms.”
The results are more than “pretty,” though — unless you add “darn good” — and Mayaudon sees the apple-cum-bourbon as a key component in that goodness.
“The flavor is not all apples but also has the bourbon taste,” he says. “Because Wild Turkey is such a high-proof liquor and good quality, it extracts a lot of the apple quality out. Meanwhile, the gin basically lengthens out the drink. Instead of having two ounces of Wild Turkey 101, which would make the drink too strong, the gin dilutes it a little bit. It also gives a more viscous texture when you stir the cocktail. The juniper notes of the gin play really well with the apricot, too.”
- 1 oz. Broker’s gin
- 1 oz. apple-infused Wild Turkey 101*
- 1 oz. Luxardo apricot liqueur
Pour ingredients into cocktail tin with ice, stir for about 30 revolutions (“the magic number” for stirred cocktails, says Mayaudon), strain it into rocks glass filled with ice, and garnish with a twist of orange peel.
*Apple-infused Wild Turkey 101: Fill up a quart Mason jar with apple slices and whiskey, lid jar, and let infuse for two days.