Old Vermont – Recipe from David Embury’s ‘The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks’

APPLEJACK RABBIT 

1 part Maple Syrup 

1 part Lemon Juice 

1 part Orange Juice 

6 parts Apple Brandy 

Shake with cracked ice. 

Maple sugar may be used in place of maple syrup but has the same disadvantage that ordinary dry sugar has as compared with a sugar syrup. This drink is also sometimes, for no reason at all, called the Applejack Dynamite. The same cocktail made with a gin base plus a dash of Angostura is called the Old Vermont.

Ok so I’m trying all the maple syrup cocktails before someone decides that pancakes are a better use for the best damn maple syrup I’ve ever had. There’s been quite a bit of off piste tasting as well, and my favourite to date has been a Manhattan with just 5ml of Maple, which is killer.

The Old Vermont here is OK, I can’t help but wonder why there aren’t more maple drinks with dark spirits, so far all I’ve found is the Applejack Rabbit, and applejack is more than a little niche these days.

I wonder if maple syrup is too heavily invested in everyone’s psyche as a breakfast prop, and people can’t imagine it in drinks? We had a Rocky Mountaineer on our menu a couple of years ago, basically an old fashioned sweetened with maple syrup, and black walnut bitters, absolutely delicious, hardly sold any.

I suspect the reason for an absence of whiskey and maple drinks had something to do with the whiskey industry in the states in the 1940’s, from memory it took a lot longer to recover from prohibition than other spirits, and didn’t really come back into its own until years after this book was printed.

Anyway this drink was ok, not great by any stretch, I preferred the Habitant, I think maple goes very well with red vermouth which is why this has worked better.