Japanese 2 ounces brandy 1/2 ounce orgeat (almond syrup) 2 dashes Angostura bitters Stir with ice, strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

Japanese
DrinkBoy Says: Obscured by time's shadow, it is unknown how this cocktial might have originally received its name.

The Japanese Cocktail is a wonderful cocktail that is very easy to make. It's slightly sweet almond flavor makes it a very approachable cocktail for almost anybody.

I recently participated in an exciting cocktail event over in New York city. It was a special tribute to Jerry Thomas, who not only wrote the first bartending book (How To Mix Drinks, 1867), but was perhaps the first bartender to attain world-wide fame. This special event was the brainchild of David Wondrich, the cocktail and spirits expert for Esquire Magazine, and was hosted by the Slow Foods organization of New York at the Plaza Hotel.

Being a Jerry Thomas tribute, each of us were to select one of his cocktails, and to prepare them for the sold out crowd. The recipe that I chose to use, was the Japanese cocktail. While you might find the "Japanese Cocktail" listed in some of the modern cocktail books, you'll be hard pressed to find one tht uses the original Jerry Thomas recipe. In his recipe he listed "Boker's Bitters" to be used, which unfortunately can no longer be found. When I made this cocktail in New York, I chose to use a bitters recipe that I worked up myself, but Angostura bitters also works quite well.

Orgeat is a almond syrup, and these days can often be found anywhere that they sell gourmet syrups used to flavor coffee at espresso bars and coffee stands. Monin, Torani, Da Vinci Gourmet are all popular brands of this product, and you can also by it online from Trader Vic's. If you can't find orgeat easily, you can also substitute almond syrup.

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If you are interested in reading further about this event, you can read my own writeup in A Tribute to Jerry Thomas, or refer to one of the following links:

The New York Times:
Shaken, Stirred or Mixed, The Gilded Age Lives Again
By William Grimes

(Or you can alternately access the text of this article here: http://www.kingcocktail.com/TimesMar2003.htm )

Beverage Media
PROFESSOR JERRY THOMAS
The Father of the Cocktail
By Dale DeGroff

(And you can read some more of Dale's cocktail articles for Beverage Media here: http://www.bevaccess.com/cocktail_corner.html )