Melon Meets Its Maker

Make Mine Melon for Summer

How about we get 130 botanicals into your cocktail glass? Even better, let’s drop a melon in, too, like a refreshing cannonball into a backyard pool. This issue’s cocktail, the Melon Meets Its Maker, has its evolution in trying to figure out how to replicate a famous dish—prosciutto e melone—in a drink. Even non-vegetarians would have to imagine that getting ham, however thinly sliced, into a drink might be not just difficult but, well, unpleasant. But a liquor like bourbon has many of prosciutto’s key notes—some sweetness, some salt, plenty of depth. And then the rest of the drink does its best to extend all those gorgeous flavors that made prosciutto e melone a first-course classic.

For what says summer more than a ripe cantaloupe? Its very color is the orange sun of the best days. While you might not grow your own, they are easy to find at the farmers market, so the trick is to learn how to shop for the best. Your melon is ripe is if smells like cantaloupe—it’s that simple (the spot where the stem connected should be most pungent). Sure, you can give it a squeeze, but that wonderfully rough rind usually doesn’t give much unless the melon is over-ripe, so don’t expect that to be a great help. Trust your nose.

Note in the procedure for the cocktail, turning the fruit into “juice” is a teensy bit complicated and easily messy. So be patient and set up an area where you can splash with impunity. Feel free, if you love your kitchen electronics, to drop a bunch of chopped cantaloupe into a blender and watch as it totally liquefies it. But a bit of texture does wonders for the feel of the cocktail when you drink it. So I heartily recommend the muddler method below, which really isn’t that hard.

Bourbon is the cocktail’s base because it’s summer and you should be enjoying corn. (You do know that bourbon’s mash bill has to be at least 51% corn, yes? Maker’s Mark, for instance is made from 70% corn.) Bourbon also has to be produced in the U.S., so it’s a perfect Fourth of July sipper. For no doubt Thomas Jefferson considered penning a line about “life, liberty and the pursuit of distilling.” While it’s not the perfect sub for the sophisticated hamminess of prosciutto, its barrel aging gives this drink toasted notes you might find in cured pork. Somehow in the cocktail the whiskey and the melon keep shifting from foreground to background, giving the drink intriguing depth and character.

And don’t ignore the ingredients added in smaller doses. Chartreuse, the centuries-old product of Carthusian monks in the French Alps, is a botanical bomb of flavor, like a vermouth on steroids. There’s a green and a yellow, the former stronger, the latter easier to play with, especially with brown liquors. Hence its use here, helping bridge the fruit and the whiskey and then taking them on a magic saffron, honey, every-herb-in-the garden trip. It’s not cheap, but you tend to use it sparingly, and you will keep finding excuses to get it into drinks. (Look up the recipe for a Greenpoint, a delightful Manhattan variation. You’re welcome).

The orange bitters are a very controlled way to get just a hint of citrus in. A blast of juice or even a decorative peel of lemon tends to overpower the drink, but a few dashes of bitter gives you just the hint of lift you need. The same is true for the salt, as you make an obvious move to ape prosciutto’s lusciousness. We can’t help but use smoked salt for pretty much everything in our house, so we might not be objective. But here it especially adds the right character.

The rosemary sprig garnish doesn’t just look pretty, either. It functions as a handy stirrer, when you want to give the drink a quick whirl, which is easy to want to do with all the crushed ice. (Very refreshing, crushed ice on a summer day. It makes me wonder why it’s most associated with the Mint Julep, which at least in our parts tends to be drunk in brisk May.) Of course, it’s also a wonderful aromatic, inviting your nose into the drink, too.

Add it all up and you couldn’t have a more welcoming aperitif, waiting to be paired with a charcuterie or cheese plate and go mano-a-mano. It will echo and expand on those flavors in ways that will make any summer afternoon outdoors all the more delightfully languorous.