Are You Sure You Don't Like Artichokes?

The Art of Choke.

Sorry to come in so late with this newsletter! I had a bout of COVID and wasn’t drinking for a good week. But I’m back to pick up where I’ve left off, and will be back on schedule this Thursday with another drink!

Let’s start with this one’s name: the Art of Choke. There are a lot of good cocktail names in Beta Cocktails, but for my money, this is one of the best. It’s also a bit deceiving, because, while this is another drink that uses Cynar, it doesn’t hit you over the head with bitterness like the Bitter Giuseppe does. It’s a much rounder experience — but still a flavor bomb nonetheless. If you’re new to Cynar and got a bit scared off by my Bitter Giuseppe writeup, don’t count this one out.

The Art of Choke has a few similarities to the Bitter Giuseppe past the Cynar. It also involves stirred citrus, and it was also invented at the Chicago bar the Violet Hour. Both drinks feel really emblematic of the bar’s early style: They’re very daring, but also pretty simple, and evolve into something totally new.

This one was developed by Kyle Davidson in 2008, in the early days of the bar. According to Robert Simonson’s book Modern Classic Cocktails, it started when a patron asked for something with rum and bitters, to which he added a rinse of Green Chartreuse, which is an herbal liqueur made from 130 botanicals,¹ and a mint garnish. Davidson later refined the drink for the bar’s menu — balancing out the light rum and Cynar, upping the Chartreuse, adding the demerara syrup and lime juice, and stirring it all. Gasp!

Founder Toby Maloney later told Punch, “That drink ran against everything I taught him.” He was presumably talking about more than stirred citrus — this drink is just weird, but it really works. Kirk and Maks even praise it in the book as “a brand new cocktail template.” It’s one of the only drinks in Beta Cocktails I’ve made before, but also one of the more mind-blowing things I’ve ever had.

Art of Choke²

1 ounce white rum

1 ounce Cynar

1/8 ounce lime juice

1/8 ounce demerara syrup (2:1)

+1/4 ounce green Chartreuse³

Fresh mint sprig

Muddle a mint sprig in the mixing glass with the other ingredients.

Add ice, stir and strain over fresh ice in a rocks glass. Garnish with an artfully positioned mint sprig.

By Kyle Davidson

Featuring half a ceramic bunny.

I’d never made this drink with a muddled mint sprig before, and it really changes the game. It gives an herbal, cooling undertone to the whole thing that really lingers for a long time between sips. The drink itself is an herbal flavor bomb with the interplay of the Cynar and the Chartreuse — it tastes like a fancy cough drop in the best way possible. I used Plantation 3-Star, which brings sweet banana and vanilla notes that play extremely well with the mint and lime, along with the licorice and very faint chocolate notes in the drink. The bitterness of the Cynar really gets rounded out thanks to the sweetness in the Chartreuse and rum (why I think a sweet-ish rum like Plantation works here), along with the extra demerara boost, making this a much more approachable Cynar cocktail than something like the Bitter Giuseppe. The best thing about the drink, though, is that you can taste all the elements, but it doesn’t really taste like any one of them individually. It’s a real cocktail.

Next week (or, in a few days), a martini! Well, as much as anything from this book can be called a martini.

1. Green Chartreuse is in short supply right now; I’m lucky to have a bottle. I do not currently have a bottle of Yellow Chartreuse, which is necessary for a number of these cocktails, so if you have any leads, please email me!

2. From Beta Cocktails by Maksym Pazuniak and Kirk Estopinal, 2011.

3. I don’t know what this +1/4 ounce measure means, but it appears multiple times in the book, along with some -1/4s. I’m taking it as fat/short versions of the measurements.