I set out to find a St. Patrick’s Day cocktail for this week’s Sunday Special with exactly three goals in mind:
- No Irish whiskey.
- No Guinness.
- No green food coloring.
No Irish whiskey because that’s a spirit best consumed neat or on the rocks, not in a mixed drink. In my opinion.
No Guinness because it is a perfect beer and should never be combined with liquor or, worse yet, turned into jello shots.
And no green food coloring because we’re adults, for god’s sake.
But my quest turned out to be harder than I expected. None of my dozen or so mixology guides served up anything meeting my three conditions. I suspect that most accomplished bartenders do all they can to avoid St. Paddy’s, a day that seems designed mostly to sell putrid concoctions in ridiculous volumes to novice drinkers, with predictably chunderous results. Some bars stock up on only two spirits by the case in advance of the holiday: Jameson and Lysol.
I finally found my pot o’ gold at, of all places, a Dublin restaurant with a Mediterranean-inspired menu and a reputation for creative cocktails. Coppinger Row topped the Irish Post’s 2018 “Best Irish Cocktails” contest with the Dingle Mingle, a remarkably refined combination of Irish gin, chardonnay wine, and—here’s a surprise—peach jam.
Just one problem: The recipe calls for Dingle Irish Gin, a London dry variety with a unique botanical profile, including rowan berry, fuschia, and bog myrtle. Unfortunately, Oregon state liquor stores don’t carry the Dingle, so I was forced to substitute a different Irish gin, just as unique but with a very different flavor: Drumshanbo Gunpowder Irish Gin, made with green tea and Asian-inspired botanicals, such as star anise and kaffir lime.
For the chardonnay, I went with a 2018 bottling from Del Rio Vineyards just up the road in Gold Hill, Ore. The peach jam was also local, from Oregon Growers in Hood River. I found that half an ounce of simple syrup rounded out the formula.
The result? I don’t have the original for comparison, but the gunpowder tea in the Drumshanbo gin gave the cocktail a wonderful dry counterpoint to the fruit and the chardonnay; the star anise added just a hint of licorice.
But with the Dingle in absentia, I can’t really call this a Mingle.
So here it is, Sunday Specials fans, an Oregon take on an Irish cocktail from a Mediterranean restaurant: the Drumble Mumble.
And because Irish sayings are as traditional as paper shamrocks on St. Patrick’s Day, I leave you with this one, attributed to the great Irish journalist and rebel Charles Gavan Duffy:
The horse and mule live thirty years
And never know of wine and beers.
The goat and sheep at twenty die
Without a taste of scotch or rye.
The cow drinks water by the ton
And at eighteen is mostly done.
The dog at fifteen cashes in
Without the aid of rum or gin.
The modest, sober, bone-dry hen
Lays eggs for noggs and dies at ten.
But sinful, ginful, rum-soaked men
Survive three-score years and ten.
And some of us, though mighty few
Stay pickled ’til we’re ninety-two.
Drumble Mumble
Inspired by Coppinger Row, Dublin, Ireland
1 ounce Drumshanbo Gunpowder Irish Gin
2 ounces chardonnay wine
1/2 ounce simple syrup
2 bar spoons of peach jam
3 sprigs of fresh thyme
Chill a coupe or martini glass. Place all ingredients except one sprig of thyme in a shaker with ice. Shake hard for 10 seconds. Fine strain the cocktail into the chilled glass. Garnish with the last sprig of thyme.