Gotham Spiced Apple Pi (TDN Cocktail)

Last night’s TDN was apples and pears — spirits and alcoholic beverages made with apples and pears.  As luck would have it, I had just restocked a new bottle of Calvados in the liquor cabinet, so I decided to use that as a base.

For this week, I’m not sure why or how the thought struck, but having a hankering for manhattans (maybe its because fall is in the air!), and working with my preferred ratio of vermouth/rye of  3:4, I began thinking of pi (just stick a 1 in between).  So, using Calvados as a base spirit instead of rye, and the 3:4 ratio, I tested both sweet and dry vermouth.  I preferred the sweet vermouth myself, but a version of this with dry vermouth was tasty, but a bit crisper in flavour.   To add in the “1″, I felt like the spicy bite of ginger liqueur, and then I added quite a bit of Angostura to provide a nice herbal note to play off the sweetness of the Calvados and the vermouth.   Overall, I think its a nice cocktail for fall sippin’.

Gotham Spiced Apple Pi

• 1.5 oz. sweet vermouth (3 parts)
• 0.5 oz. ginger liqueur (1 part)
• 2 oz. Calvados (4 parts)
• 1/2 tsp. Angostura bitters

Stir ingredients together with ice until chilled.  Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a very thin slice of apple.