Recipe
- 2oz gin (Tanqueray)
- .75oz dry vermouth (I used Yzaguirre)
- .5oz green Chartreuse
- Couple dashes of orange bitters (Regan’s no6)
Stir everything with plenty of ice and strain into a stemmed glass. Garnish with a sprig of fresh thyme.
About
This is the Bowtie, a riff off the classic Tuxedo no.2 cocktail, created by Served By Soberon. It is beautifully herbaceous, and for anyone who loves martinis or other gin-forward, dry, botanically complex drinks, this is one I think you’ll enjoy. The addition of fresh thyme adds a beautiful finishing touch, not just in appearance, but in the flavor experience.
Let’s talk about ‘aromatic garnishes.’ Oftentimes at cocktail bars, you’ll see elaborate garnishes atop your fancy cocktails. Sometimes, those garnishes never even make it into your glass (in cases where a citrus peel is discarded after being rubbed across your glass rim). The tongue itself detects only about 20-25% of ‘flavor’ as we perceive it, with the remaining 75-80% coming from the scents we smell thru the nose.
There are only 5 basic tastes: salty, sweet, bitter, sour, and savory (umami). However, we definitely ‘taste’ much more than those 5, and it’s the combination of taste with aroma (scent) that makes up the rest of what we refer to as flavor. If you’ve noticed, when you’re sick with a congested nose, nothing has flavor. (try this by just squeezing your nose shut) What’s happening is your loss of scent (from your nose) reduces your flavor detection to only those your tongue can detect (5 basic tastes).
So, really those aromatic garnishes serve much more than just visual splendor and in fact actually transform the flavor of your drink. Don’t skip it when recreating at home.