Blood and Sand

Not many cocktails today feature Scotch as the spirit, but this wasn’t always the case as is demonstrated by the Blood and Sand:

• 1.00 ounce Scotch
• 1.00 ounce orange juice
• 0.75 ounce cherry-flavored brandy
• 0.75 ounce sweet vermouth

Shake in an iced cocktail shaker, and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a cocktail cherry.

There are a couple of vintage cocktails I’ve seen in the wild, and this is one of them. I have had it at least twice but while I found it good it never wowed me. Until now.

For some reason, and I am certain it was because there is “blood” in the name, I thought this drink required blood orange juice. Since I had some on hand I used it and its sweetness made this drink fantastic. The Wikipedia article specifies blood orange as well, but Dr. Cocktail does not.

The name comes from a 1922 movie starring Rudolph Valentino and not the type of orange juice used.

Had we not gone out to dinner and come back full, I would have made another one of these. I did garnish it with a cherry, but I just dropped it in the drink instead of making it look all pretty on the side.

Rating: 5/5

Notes: I wasn’t going to use one of my single malts for this, so I picked out a bottle of The Famous Grouse that I had on hand. This turns out to be the blended scotch Dr. Cocktail prefers in this drink. I used [Cherry Heering][4] for the brandy and, of course, Camparo Antica Formula for the vermouth.