Spanish Lady

As this was the inspiration for the Oaxacan Lady, I decided to make the Spanish Lady:

• 3/4 ounce aged rum (Havana Club 7 Year)
• 3/4 ounce Bénédictine
• 3/4 ounce Amaro Montenegro
• 3/4 ounce lemon juice
• 1 dash Angustora bitters

Shake all ingredients with ice, then strain into a coupe.

One reason I made this cocktail is that I’m lazy.

In our old house we actually had a room with a dedicated bar. It was a bit by accident. In the southern United States it was common for houses to have a “formal living room”. This was a room, seldom used, in which you would put nice furniture for entertaining guests.

As people who tend to buck tradition, when we came across a large wooden bar in a thrift store, we decided to call it the “entertainment center” and we put it in our previously empty formal living room. Ironically, this was several years before I would develop my cocktail habit (you can see a a picture of it on the About page).

When we moved several years ago, there really wasn’t a place for it so we sold it. In its place we have a large metal cabinet that used to store medical records (the “liquor vault”). The downside is that it isn’t nearly as easy to access and I end up carrying several bottles at once up stairs. I do miss walking a few feet from the kitchen to the bar to make a drink.

Since I had already made the Oaxacan Lady, I only had to swap out the mezcal for rum and to switch up the bitters (the lemons and limes live upstairs). See, I’m lazy.

I also got to use some of the rum I bought when I was in Havana many years ago. I bought the aged Havana Club seven year not knowing that most period cocktails called for a lighter rum (I would buy some three year Havana Club in London years later) so it was nice to finally get to use it properly.

I found the Spanish Lady on Frederic Yarm’s blog and was once again suckered in by an equal proportions cocktail.

It was okay, and it made me come to a realization. Since equal proportion cocktails can’t highlight a single ingredient, like the bourbon in a Manhattan, they can lend themselves to just being average. Don’t get me wrong, when the ingredients combine and support each other, such as in the Last Word, the cocktail can be amazing. But when they don’t they just kind of wash out. The Spanish Lady is very similar to the Oaxacan Lady, but the smokiness of the mezcal in the Oaxacan makes it special and the lack of it makes it “meh”.

Just to be clear, if I was served a Spanish Lady at a bar I wouldn’t turn it down, but I wouldn’t seek it out, either.

As I have been getting back into the swing of things with respect to this blog, my mild OCD is making me eager (well, anxious) to get back to tackling the Prohibition Centennial Edition recipes as that part of the Index is bothering me for being incomplete.