New Cocktails, full descriptions: 98 Degrees, Tangarang

Tangarang

1.5 Pisco

1 Orange Cordial

.5 Nonino

.5 Lemon

Shake.  Dbl strain to Coupe.  No garnish.

This cocktail belongs to Jill’s brain. She was inspired by a classic called a Pegu Club: gin, curacao, lime, angostura.  Simple, yet delicious.  The drink was invented as the house cocktail at the Pegu Club in Yangon, Myanmar (known then as Rangoon, Burma), an outpost established for British colonials in the 1920’s.  The place was hip, and so was the drink, eventually making its way to Harry’s New York Bar in Paris, itself one of the most influential bars in the history of cocktail culture.  Today, another influential bar started by Audrey Saunders takes its name from the cocktail as well.  If you find yourself in NYC, definitely go get a tipple at her Pegu Club. 

To transform the Pegu Club into the Tangarang, Jill decided to play with Pisco, a grape brandy native to Peru.  Also, instead of using curacao, she made an orange cordial from the juice, pith, and peel of oranges and a little bit of sugar.  The cordial gives the cocktail an intense orange citrus flavor but maintains the silkiness that you want in a cocktail (as opposed to just using orange juice, which tends to create an undesirable thickness).  The final result is light, citrusy, and refreshing, and reminded us of what we wanted Tang to taste like as kids.  Also known as Orange Danger.

98 Degrees

1 Gin                       

.5 Campari                

.5 Zucca                   

.25 St. Elder            

.5 Lemon                  

Quick shake to integrate.  Rox.  Top Cava.  Orange swath.

There’s not much of a backstory for this one.  I was looking for a cocktail in the Sprize tradition: something that will help you unwind and enjoy some gorgeous late-afternoon weather as you pretend to be at a sidewalk cafe in St. Mark’s Square in Venice.  Sigh… Anyway, the spritz is popular all over northern Italy, and the Aperol style is just the one that took off the fastest in the US.  Campari or any other bitter can certainly be spritzed, and in this cocktail we’re going after it the way they do in Milan by using multiple kinds.  The one thing I do know is that this cocktail is dry, refreshing, and exactly what I want when it’s 98 degrees outside.  Cin cin.