Four I'm Under My Host

And so the long journey comes once again to an end. What I speak of, of course, is the journey from the inspiration for a new cocktail, through the many twists, turns, and iterations of experimentation, up the steep hill of choosing a name, and finally to that welcome destination where the recipe crystallizes into something more than the sum of its parts, the synergy of a truly great drink. In this case the vision was for a well-balanced cocktail based on vodka, Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur, and pear juice, and the beginning of the journey was documented in my earlier post entitled (aptly enough) Ginger Pear Cocktail. But that was only the starting point, like a small, preliminary sketch for a monumental painting. That first session set me off on a quest over many weeks to fuse the flavors of ginger and pear with the vodka base, but then to build upon that foundation a drink with exotic Asian flavors that would be nuanced but assertive, refreshing but not cloying, and that in the end would transport the drinker to another place entirely.

The challenge with Canton is to embrace the intense almost peppery ginger flavor, but to also balance it so that it doesn’t overpower the drink. Pear juice was the initial counterpoint, but I found that it needed something more to balance the ginger, and fortuitously Michael had a bottle of vanilla infused simple syrup lying around just looking for a drink to call home. So I added that, dropped the lemon but kept the lime, and with the final addition of a crystallized ginger garnish converged on the ingredient list that stands today. That convergence occurred, interestingly enough, on an evening that I was hosting a TV viewing of a major boxing match between the great Filipino fighter Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto. Now I’m not normally a fight fan, but my wife’s family is Filipino and in the Philippines Pacquiao is a living God, so I was only to happy to host the party and, of course, serve cocktails. Since the drink came together in its near final form that night (ratios were later tweaked slightly), I initially called it the Pacquiao Punch. While that name was very popular with my fine brothers-in-law and fitting for that evening given that Pacquiao thoroughly pummeled Cotto, it soon became clear that a name for a wider audience would be required. So I started thinking about the ingredients and where that place that I wanted the drinker to be transported to was–somewhere on the vast Asian steppe, centuries ago, on a camel caravan transporting pears and ginger and vanilla beans from China to the Mediterranean with the blood orange sun melting into the distant horizon. And so I arrived at The Silk Road, the end of this journey and a drink that I feel truly delivers on its inspiration. Let it transport you.

The Silk Road

• 4 – 4 ½ parts vodka
• 1 part Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur
• 1 part pear juice
• ½ part vanilla simple syrup (Sonoma Syrup Co. or homemade)
• ½ part lime juice
• Crystallized ginger slice

Shake all ingredients vigorously in a shaker two thirds full of ice and strain into cocktail glasses. Garnish with long strips of crystallized ginger.

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