Wednesday Vieux Carre a Day Late Blogging

Believe it or not, INOTBB doesn't just sit in front of the internets all day, reading and composing and obsessing over the stat counter, let alone considering tinkering with the fantasy baseball team by deciding what middle reliever to bring up to replace Joakim Soria (you kow the heartbreak of Soria, don't you?). At times there's other writing to be done, writing nominally paid for. And that takes time, when you can't just babble on like I'm doing right now. But that's why I'm writing Wednesday's entry on what weaker minds insist on calling Thursday. INOTBB is beyond time.

INOTBB also has to eat, and the other day while dining at an undisclosed downtown location we'll just call the Cungry Hat with the delectable Amy, we both enjoyed a cocktail called an Elysian Field, a sort of cross between a Sazerac and a Whisky Sour. That was good, but as usual with cocktails, it got me thinking about previous potent potables I'd poted (isn't that the verb form?), and led me to the coolest bar of all-time. If you've been to New Orleans and drinks matter to you and you know Pat O'Brien's hurricanes are for people for whom 4 years of fratdom wasn't enough, then you go elsewhere, and first and foremost, you go for a merry-go-round ride. For in the Monteleone Hotel, you can sit at the Carousel Bar, where you end up spinning even before you've had a drink. It's at the Monteleone, where Faulkner, among others, used to sit deep in his cups, that you can get a Vieux Carré, which takes the basic Sazerac (not that a Sazerac is anything to sneeze at) and jiggers it up a notch. Turns out you can make a nifty variation at home, especially if you delve into Ted Haigh/Dr. Cocktail's indispensible Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails:

Vieux Carré

1 oz. rye whiskey (Old Overcoat is fine--yes, straight rye, what else?)
1 oz. Cognac
1 oz. sweet vermouth
1/2 tsp. Benedictine
2 dashes Angostura bitters
2 dashed Peychaud's bitters

Shake over ice in cocktail shaker, pour into chilled up glass. Garnish with lemon twist.

Oh, and don't tell me you don't have the bitters, and no, you can't substitute and you can't leave them out. They do matter. You can mail order from those purveyors of magic elixirs Fee Bros.--the "old-fashioned" bitters is Angostura, and get some orange bitters for those martinis--while Peychaud's, created back in the day when an apothecary couldn't do much for you medically but could still make you feel better, you can get from the Sazerac Company itself.