The “Widow’s Kiss” is the Platonic concept of cocktail names. It has an air of hazard and thriller and it guarantees to seduce the drinker with its charms. So beguiling is the title that it was utilized by a number of pre-Prohibition greats, Harry Johnson, Jack Grohusko and William Schmidt amongst them. However it’s George Kappeler’s 1895 model—a combination of apple brandy, yellow Chartreuse, Bénédictine and Angostura bitters—that has endured, doubtless as a result of, with some tweaking, it nonetheless appeals to the fashionable drinker.
Kappeler’s Widow’s Kiss resurfaced throughout the first decade of the cocktail renaissance, showing in each Ted Haigh’s Classic Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails (2009) and Jim Meehan’s PDT Cocktail Guide (2011). However for Deke Dunne, his reference to the Gilded Age traditional is extra private. Again in 2017, when he was slicing his enamel on the Gibson in Washington, D.C., an trade buddy got here in and ordered a Widow’s Kiss from him. Pretending to ring in an order, Dunne secretly Googled the recipe. His first try wasn’t successful. “It was too candy, off-balance and the apple brandy was astringent and overpowering.” He and his buddy workshopped the drink and bought it to a greater place by the tip of the evening.
However Dunne wasn’t completed with the Widow’s Kiss—he has carried the cocktail with him to completely different bars as a sort of signature, persevering with to work on his spec. When he grew to become beverage director of Allegory in Washington, D.C.’s Eaton Resort, he usually leaned on the drink when friends requested a stirred and boozy bartender’s alternative. Ultimately, Dunne determined to create a menu of classics to accompany the bar’s imaginative major menu, and the Widow’s Kiss was a shoo-in. However the spec that landed on the menu isn’t the identical one Dunne had workshopped years earlier than on the Gibson. This one was new and improved—with a capital “I.”
For Dunne, the Widow’s Kiss is a traditional instance of the Improved Cocktail style, whereby sweeteners and fragrant parts like bitters and absinthe are cut up amongst a number of components to create complexity. This innovation is typical of the later nineteenth century, an period that might be characterised as that of the “modifier cocktail,” in keeping with Dunne, a time when liqueurs and vermouths incessantly changed conventional sweeteners. The 2 French liqueurs within the Widow’s Kiss—Bénédictine and yellow Chartreuse—began appearing in bar manuals within the Eighties, initially as components in Pousse Café variations, however by the mid-Eighteen Nineties, when Kappeler printed the recipe in Trendy American Drinks, their use was now not restricted to that layered subgenre.
The Widow’s Kiss formulation Dunne has developed through the years exhibits a cautious need to deliver the drink into steadiness. His first change was to cut back the apple brandy base to 1 ounce and so as to add three-quarters of an oz of Cognac, as a result of the 2 aged fruit brandies “sing collectively.” He discovered that “the roundness and juiciness of the Rémy Martin VSOP actually performs fantastically with this particular apple brandy.”
The apple brandy in query is an uncommon alternative. Somewhat than a bonded, four-year-old apple brandy like trade normal Laird’s, Dunne opts for Chapman’s Apple Brandy from native producer Republic Restoratives, a product which sees solely two years in barrel. It’s a dry, contemporary spirit that Dunne says lacks the astringency and metallic end he finds in another apple brandies.
As with many different modernized specs for outdated classics, Dunne knew he needed to cut back the measures for each the Bénédictine and the yellow Chartreuse which, within the authentic recipe, comprised half the drink’s quantity. He settled on a scant quarter-ounce of every. Although each are natural and produce honey notes into the equation, Dunne sees them as distinctive parts within the Widow’s Kiss. Yellow Chartreuse lends contemporary mint and pine, whereas Bénédictine imparts a stronger herb-and-spice profile with much less perceived sweetness.
Lastly, the one factor Dunne’s spec doesn’t alter is the quantity of bitters he makes use of—two dashes of Angostura, identical to the 1895 recipe.
However the place Kappeler’s authentic recipe requires the drink to be shaken, which was exceedingly widespread for spirit-forward cocktails on the flip of the final century, Dunne follows the rule of thumb codified by the cocktail revival that such drinks ought to at all times be stirred, giving the ultimate product a “silky mouthfeel.” With a view to protect the specified texture, Dunne sticks to Kappeler’s option to serve the cocktail up, to keep up the right degree of dilution. Serving the cocktail down over even a big ice dice, he says, may swiftly mute its distinctive flavors.
In spite of everything these years, Dunne’s nonetheless smitten with the Widow’s Kiss. With its mixture of apples and grapes, honey, herbs and baking spices, it’s a lesser-known traditional that, for Dunne, has a selected autumnal attraction. “It’s the right fall cocktail.”
