COCKTAILS WITH APPLE JACK MANUAL

Mr Embury liked his cocktails notoriously dry/tart so we’ll go with his suggestion of balancing them to our own taste. Indeed the Jack Rose is one of his hallowed six classic cocktails along with the Daiquiri, Old Fashioned, Sidecar, Manhattan and Martini. After all he was a lawyer (as well as a the author of the first “modern” cocktail book) so we know we can trust him. And if Embury says it’s better than applejack that’s good enough for me. On the other hand calvados is a traditionally made and aged apple brandy from the Normandy region of France that is available and affordable here in Europe. These days applejack is made by distillation of apple juice and then mixing it with neutral spirit. America’s first home-grown spirit was originally made by repeatedly freezing (hard) apple cider and chucking away the ice – a process known as “jacking” – a kind of distillation-free way of making a potent liquor. Decent quality commercially available grenadine is a thing of the past and, while I can’t say for certain, the same may be at least partially true of applejack. Just apple brandy, lemon juice and grenadine but, make no mistake, quality of ingredients is key here and possibly the reason the Jack Rose fell from grace. And, damn, but isn’t the Jack Rose a delicious and deceptively simple little cocktail. It was so obvious! Aged French apple brandy in hand I proceeded to mix up the cocktail that I should really have tried a long time ago. Embury is of the opinion (and boy, does he have a lot of those) that calvados is a similar but superior apple brandy.

COCKTAILS WITH APPLE JACK MANUAL

Embury’s 1948 classic cocktail manual The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks a solution emerged. However, whilst perusing my copy of David A. Applejack (aka Jersey Lightning) is an American apple brandy that turns out to be not even particularly available on its own shores with just one surviving mainstream* brand – Laird’s. It’s a cocktail that I neglected for a long time due to the unavailability of its base ingredient upon these shores. More’s the pity as it can be quite delightful when well made. The Jack Rose is a positively ancient cocktail that was very popular a century ago but has gradually faded into relative obscurity.

By any other name… Jack Rose + apple brandy

Cocktails with apple jack