The Genius of Don Lee

The DLB (and the Sawyer).

Few bartenders are known, respected, and bold enough to name a cocktail after themselves. Don Lee is one of them. Really, he’s less of a bartender than a genius who’s chosen to focus on cocktails. “While most people stretch to use whatever percentage of their brain that is available to them, Don has way more access to his brain than we do,” Jim Meehan, another cocktail legend, has said about Lee.

Lee has bartended at David Chang’s Momofuku restaurants, PDT, and Existing Conditions, among other roles in the cocktail world. His biggest accomplishment is inventing the process of fat-washing, or infusing a spirit with a fat. That’s pretty opposite from the Rogue/Beta philosophy, so I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to talk about Lee’s genius formula for blending bitters, as exhibited in his DLB — or Don Lee’s Bitter.

Remember at the beginning of this newsletter, when I was pouring large quantities of Angostura and Peychaud’s? Lee does that in the DLB — and crosses the streams. The cocktail features 1/2 ounce of Angostura bitters, 1/4 ounce of Peychaud’s bitters, and 1/4 ounce of orange bitters.

To some, that’s a terrifying amount of bitters, never mind a terrifying prospect to blend all three major cocktail bitters. But when I first heard about this drink, I was excited. See, I’d made a similar drink of Lee’s before, the Sawyer. That one calls for 14 dashes of Angostura, 7 dashes of Peychaud’s, and 7 dashes of orange — also a 2:1:1 ratio, just like the DLB. It also features gin, lime, and simple syrup. When I first made it, I’d never tasted anything like it before.

The DLB messes with the formula, adding Fernet-Branca and swapping the gin for Rhum Barbancourt 8 Year, an aged Haitian rum distilled from sugarcane juice. Obviously, I had to know how big of changes these were and make both cocktails side by side. (For comparison’s sake, and to avoid buying multiple new bottles of orange bitters, I used Angostura orange in both.)

DLB¹

1 ounce Rhum Barbancourt 8 Yr

1/2 ounce Fernet Branca

1/2 ounce lemon

1/2 ounce simple syrup (1:1)

1/2 ounce Angostura bitters

1/4 ounce Angostura orange bitters

1/4 ounce Peychaud bitters

Shake and strain into a coupe.

By Don Lee

Sawyer

2 ounces gin (preferably Beefeater)

1/2 ounce lime juice

1/2 ounce simple syrup (1:1, sugar:water)

14 dashes Angostura bitters

7 dashes Peychaud's bitters

7 dashes orange bitters (preferably equal parts Fee Brothers West Indian Orange Bitters and Regans’ Orange Bitters No. 6)

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker.

Add ice and shake.

Strain into a chilled rocks glass.

By Don Lee

A blend of bitters that sings.

So, yes, both of these cocktails are drying and bitter. But they’re much more fun, and approachable, than that. As my boyfriend put it, the DLB tastes like a cherry cough drop, thanks to the dominant, cooling menthol note of the fernet. That’s amped up by the slight grassiness of the rhum, but I don’t really taste any of the rhum’s age. Overall, it feels like a more late-night, digestif version of the Sawyer. That’s the drink where I feel like I can taste the interplay of the bitters more. They kind of all come together to taste like a drier Hawaiian punch, with a lot of fruitiness. There’s a dominant orange note that evolves from an orange candy sweetness to a Campari bitterness. I don’t taste much of the gin, which makes me think you could get a similar flavor using almost any spirit.

So … that’s what I tried. At my boyfriend’s insistence, I made a third version of the cocktail using rye whiskey, which he figured would actually come through against the bitters. We used 1 1/2 ounces rye, 1/2 ounce lime, 1/2 ounce simple, 1/2 ounce Angostura, 1/4 ounce Peychaud’s, and 1/4 ounce Angostura orange. The drink had the same fruity, bitter punch of the bitters blend, but was warmer thanks to the rye. As we were sipping it, I decided to add a bit of Fernet-Branca, thinking the rye might complement it, but it actually made it worse. I think we might have to revisit this one — maybe call it the MTB, named after the BF?

For now, on Thursday, I’ll be back with two drinks that layer bitters in a totally different way.

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