Amuse Bouche: Vieux Carre

I have come to realize something about my weekly posts that I intend to remedy this week. You come here on the reg and read all about how I love this cocktail or I think you should try making that cocktail but I am leaving out something very important. What is the Queen Boucher’s favorite cocktail. (Why the hell aren’t more people calling me the Queen Boucher yet? I love that.) Well I will tell you.

As I am sure you have come to realize, Whit is a wine drinker by trade. (Duh and/or Hola) She loves the red sauce and usually doesn’t have much need for the brown sauce (I like to think that is liquor discrimination, but what do I know). However, every now and then, when we are at one of our favorite speakeasy’s she bellies up to the bar and orders a “Proper Vieux”. Most of the bartenders at this point have come to realize that she means a Vieux Carre but some still give her funny looks. Now, the Vieux Carre is a classic cocktail that combines rye, cognac, benedictine, sweet vermouth, and bitters. And let me tell you it is tasty. You can usually tell it is a good one when Whit takes her first sip and she looks like a child who has just taken a drink of hot chocolate on a cold winter day. (I mean, isn’t the definition of cognac and rye ‘hot chocolate’? Oh, I thought that’s what it was..) It warms you throughout and tastes so good in the process.

For the longest time she would ask me to make one but I didn’t have the right bitters or the benedictine so I would try to pawn off one of my other favorites on her (Black Walnut Manhattan anyone?)

This worked for a while until I decided it was high time I get my bar in order so I could make my wife a “Proper Vieux” and could share with all of you the brown drink recipe that can make Whit give up the red sauce (if even for one night). So I hope you enjoy my “Proper Vieux.”