Obituary Cocktail
Every morning when I woke up as a kid, I’d head downstairs and find my father doing one of two things: shaving or reading the newspaper. My father’s day couldn’t start unless he’d read at least the front section of the paper. To this day, he still reads the paper from cover to cover. I always understood why he read the news and sports sections, but I never got why he read the obits. “To see who’s died,” he’d always tell me. It was rare that we knew anyone, but every so often he did and felt better knowing what happened and how.
I don’t read the obituaries. It’s morbid. Some of the stories are interesting, but it’s not something I do regularly. Even so, I can’t help thinking about death and graveyards this time of year. It’s almost Halloween and if death and destruction isn’t everywhere you look, something’s wrong. Ghosts, skeletons and fake cemeteries dot lawns all over. So, since my front lawn is covered with styrofoam tombstones, I thought why not introduce you all to the classic Obituary cocktail.
The Obit is pretty much a riff on the classic gin martini. Where the standard martini is simply gin and dry vermouth, the Obit adds one more ingredient that changes the drink entirely: absinthe. That’s right, the Green Fairy, a liqueur that’s perfect for the mystical holiday. A holiday where people tend to see things that aren’t usually there; things like ghosts or zombies or… dead people.
While I try to avoid the dead like the plague, there’s one place they’re kind of hard to miss. A place that’s not only known for being haunted, but for cementing the use of absinthe in the American cocktail culture. That place would be New Orleans, the old harbor city where the Obituary was created. I can’t think of a better place for a drink to be conceived. Imagine walking down the cobblestone streets of the French Quarter at night with nothing but the fog and gas lamps to light your way. I get chills just thinking about it. This drink may not give you chills, but a greenish cocktail full of herbal flavors couldn’t be better suited for this creepy time of year.
Ingredients
- 2 ounces gin
- 1/4 ounce dry vermouth
- 1/4 ounce absinthe
Instructions
- Place all ingredients in a mixing glass. Add ice and stir until chilled.
- Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and serve.
