Dos Amigos i un Amico

Recipe

1 oz dark rum (I used Ron Zacapa Centenario 23)
1 oz Aperol
1 oz Amontillado Medium Sherry [I used Savory & James Deluxe Medium Sherry Amontillado.]

Stir ingredients with ice, strain and serve over ice in chilled rocks glass.

Garnish with a lemon twist.

I’ve been going at this blog for a couple of months now, and my home bar is rapidly reaching critical mass. The fruit bowl, there to tempt me to healthier pursuits, is being boxed out by the Chartreuse, and I can barely find a place to set the Pepco bill until I pay it. Talk about first world problems. Between that and the fact that I’m making significant contributions to my local liquor store’s coffers, I’ve been trying to work within the confines of what I already have in stock.

To that end, I’ve brought together the Aperol from the Solar Flare, the Amontillado Medium Sherry from When Doves Cry and a Guatemalan dark rum graciously donated by a friend who had it for nine years without opening it. I’m going to let you sit with that for a moment.

Dos Amigos (rum & sherry) i un Amico (Aperol) is inspired by the classic Negroni cocktail’s 1 x 1 x 1 formula. The dark rum stands in for gin, Aperol subs for Campari, Amontillado Medium Sherry replaces sweet vermouth, and it’s garnished with a lemon, rather than orange, twist. This is a good example of how classic cocktails can serve as guideposts for experimentation. Viewing the recipe as a ratio, you can substitute spirit for spirit, bitter for bitter, and one fortified wine for another. That’s not to say any old substitution will work, but it’s a good starting point.

This week’s cocktail would be a great choice for a dinner party, as it requires almost nothing in terms of prep and can be built individually in glasses without even breaking out the shaker. Whether you roll with, “¡Salud!” or “Salute!”, I think that calls for a toast.