- Julia Thiel
- Toby Maloney adds a dash of Angostura bitters to a Tradewinds cocktail.
“If you’re a champion you should drink this in like two minutes, tops,” Violet Hour mixologist Andrew Mackey says. He’s referring to the Blushing Lady, a cocktail he’s created for the bar’s spring menu (Plymouth gin, lemon juice, grenadine, orange marmalade syrup, fig bitters, and egg white—a take on the Maiden’s Blush). It’s a Thursday afternoon in mid-March, and the Violet Hour’s 20-odd bartenders and servers have assembled to taste and discuss new additions to the menu. As head mixologist and founding partner Toby Maloney has reminded everyone, they have 33 drinks to get through in three hours. Mackey’s Blushing Lady is the first on the list.
Once the menu is set, the Violet Hour bartenders get together to make all the drinks, taste them, and tweak the recipes. That happened yesterday; today the drinks are finalized and the servers are getting their first chance to try them. The menu changes almost completely in the spring and fall (the Juliet & Romeo, the Dark and Stormy, and the Violet Hour Old-Fashioned are always on the menu); in the summer and winter, about half the drinks change.
About an hour and a half into the tasting, a rendition of “Raspberry Beret” started in the back row, inspired by the raspberry syrup and garnish in Fry’s Argyle Cat—Ardbeg 10-Year-Old scotch, Banks 7 rum, lemon juice, raspberry syrup, and cinnamon bitters. Though there was three times as much rum in the drink as scotch, the whiskey was much more evident in the smoky, sweet-tart cocktail.
Feet on the GroundEmpire Strikes FirstThe Paragon CocktailApril in SevilleTradewinds: Batavia arrack, green chartreuse, pineapple juice, lime juice, demerara syrup
