Squid Mixes: The Williamsburg

Now that we have a bottle of Punt e Mes (initially acquired for this drink), many new cocktails are accessible.  Gary Regan, author of The Joy of Mixology, seems particularly fond of it.  He got the recipe for The Williamsburg from Brooklyn-based bartender Clif Travers.  The Williamsburg is a Manhattan variant combining bourbon, Punt e Mes, dry vermouth and yellow Chartreuse.  Funky mixing math: with Punt e Mes and dry vermouth in equal parts, you still have a 2:1 ratio with vermouths but now it's 2:1 in favor of dry.  Woah.

The combination isn't too different from a Greenpoint.  You switch out the rye for bourbon, impose a different vermouth regime and skip the bitters.  Frequent visitors may recall my wife wasn't so impressed by the Greenpoint but she was willing to try The Williamsburg anyway.

Chartreuse is always the wild card in a drink.  There are so many interesting flavors in the liqueur that you can never be sure what's going to pop out when it plays with others.  This time, I got an apple Jolly Rancher vibe along with something else I couldn't quite label.  My wife acknowledged the hard candy taste but still didn't care for The Williamsburg.  She was willing to finish it - she hadn't been with the Greenpoint - but wouldn't ask for it again.  Still too cough syrupy, she says.