Espadin Queen (Death & Co Recipe)

 

This is a drink very much in my comfort zone. It includes all of my favorite things: mezcal, St-Germain, Ricard or absinthe, and cinnamon. As a bar, Death & Co. makes a lot of batched ingredients like cinnamon syrup and something called Don's Mix. Looking in the glossary, I discovered that Don's mix is really 2 to 1 grapefruit juice and cinnamon syrup. Having something batched for a drink and already in one bottle saves steps, but there are many steps to making Don's mix if you do it like a restaurant. At home, however, it shouldn't be so hard to make one cocktail.

To make cinnamon syrup you cook simple syrup with cinnamon sticks and allow it to cool before straining out the sticks. This takes about a half hour between dissolving the sugar, bringing it to a low boil and cooling it slowly. Then you have to juice grapefruit and bottle the juice and syrup together. That's three steps, but when you aren't making ingredients for mass consumption you can save yourself a step. If you have MurLarkey cinnamon whiskey you can save yourself two. 

Simply put a splash of cinnamon whiskey in the portion of simple syrup you were going to use for the cocktail and you have cinnamon syrup. Now to make Don's Mix, just adjust the amount of grapefruit juice you will need and think of it as one ingredient--the juice itself--and the cinnamon syrup as another separate ingredient.

That is why I will include my modifications to the recipe so that it is easy to follow. I more than nailed this cocktail with my home bar ingredients and it was easy. The cinnamon sticks in the photo are just for show. 

• Vieux Pontarlier absinthe (Ricard used)
• 1 1/2 oz. del Maguey Vida mezcal
• 1/4 oz. St-Germain
• 1/2 oz. grapefruit juice (1 oz. total grapefruit juice used)
  
• 1/2 oz. lime juice
• 1/2 oz. Donn's mix (1/2 oz. cane sugar syrup with 1 tsp. MurLarkey cinnamon whiskey used)
  
• 1 tsp cane sugar syrup (not needed if you made the modifications above)

Rinse a coupe glass with absinthe (Ricard) and dump. Combine the remaining ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake and double strain into the glass.