Ch-Ch-Changes
Spring’s Cherry-Picked Pour
It’s tough to know what spring might bring. Will El Niño bawl his baby eyes to flood us? Will summer’s heat expand months ahead of schedule? This time of year we have to be prepared to drink almost anything for any occasion.
That said, one of the best harbingers of the season is cherry week. I kid, sort of. For while cherries tend to hit the farmers market for about a month, it usually seems peak cherry—and by peak I mean flavor, not plentitude—tends to be about 10 days. But those 10 days are glorious, for what fruit so tiny packs such a pleasurable punch? Plus the vermillion hue of cherry juice is almost enough to make one turn vampire, at the least it makes one’s cocktail deeply desirable.
Developing this cocktail, then, was a hunt to find the best way to highlight the cherry. Alas, too often they only end up at a bar as Maraschino cherries, mere luridly colored props to drop into your Manhattans and feel like you’ve become your parents. But a fresh cherry is a thing of beauty. (If you wondered, we tested for you: Thawed frozen fruit isn’t a terrible substitute—the flavor will be 87% of the way there, it’s the mushier texture that will let you down. Since you’re mostly mashing them anyway here, it’s an OK substitute.)
In the kitchen a chef knows cherries have an affinity for chocolate, and even other juices like OJ, so that’s the direction I took. Plus, come spring, all those oranges that weighed your tree’s boughs need to be used for something—so juice and mix. That expands the flavor base so you have sweet-tart and sweetsour, and learning there’s such a surprising tone poem along the possibly saccharine scale is one joy of a well-made drink.
That gets us to the one part whimsical, three-parts honed with keen intent name of the drink, the Ch-Ch-Changes Cocktail. The whimsy is the nod to the sadly departed Bowie, of course, and a historical hint this is a classed-up, non-layered revision of the Tequila Sunrise, beloved by many a ’70s rock star. The stuttered Chs refer to the cherries and chocolate, of course. Plus even the word “change” is pretty much as close as you can get to rhyme with orange, so there’s that. If spring isn’t a time for rebirth and change, when is?
It’s also fun to include two types of bitters, just in case Eliot is right and April is the cruelest month after all. There are numerous chocolate bitters available (what a bounteous world we live in, at last, especially with so many available in town at Still), but while you could go for a Oaxacan chocolate with some chili zip, I opted for one that for my palate is the cacao-est of the lot, made by Scrappy’s in Seattle. Jut a few dashes of the magic elixir will do the trick, making you feel less bad about spending so much on a tiny bottle.
The drink also offers two ways to add cherry complexity. Luxardo Maraschino liqueur has nothing much to do with the red-dyed wonders dismissed above, but is one of the few actually distilled liqueurs, made from sour Marasca cherries in Croatia. It’s very dry for a liqueur, and having it in your liquor cabinet means you can make the classic gin drink the Aviation, so you’re welcome. The other cherry enhancement is Bittercube Wild Cherry Bark bitters, which in addition to the cherry, brings vanilla and yet another mild chocolate note.
Speaking of which, this drink might be a perfect accompaniment as you nibble the ears off an Easter basket bunny. Or perhaps we can hope Jessica Foster Confections makes a special Ch-Ch-Changes truffle for us?
Ch-Ch-Changes
Ingredients
- 8 cherries
- 5 ounces tequila
- 2 ounces orange juice, fresh
- 1 ounce Luxardo Maraschino liqueur
- 4 dashes chocolate bitters, per glass
- 2 dashes cherry bark bitters, per glass
- 2 tequila-soaked cherries, for garnish
Instructions
- Muddle the 8 cherries in a cocktail shaker even before you add anything else. (Yes, this is a bit odd, but it guarantees their incorporation into the drink.) Really pop each one and mash them about. Add the tequila, orange juice, Luxardo Maraschino, and muddle again to incorporate the cherry flavors with the rest of the drink. Add ice and shake the cocktail until chilled.
- Pour the drinks into 2 highball glasses filled with crushed ice (you might have an ice crusher in your freezer; some of us do it manually—it’s all OK). Add the 2 kinds of bitters to each drink. As for bitters and the difficult denomination of dashes—indeed, it’s hard to be sure if each little splash is the “official” weight of a dash. At this amount of liquid, don’t fret it, but estimate and then feel free to do what tastes best to you. Maybe you want a really chocolaty drink, then go for it. You add the bitters to each drink last as so much of the pleasure of bitters comes through your nose. Just wait until that chocolate hits you.
- Garnish each drink with one of the tequila-soaked cherries.
Tequila-Soaked Cherries
- Up to 2 days before you want to make these drinks, put as many cherries as you think you’ll make drinks (plus a bonus few to, uh, test) into a sealable container, and then fill with tequila to just cover. Keep in the refrigerator until use. Feel free to use the soaking tequila—even in this cocktail—after the cherries have been liberated.
