The Bullseye Cocktail.

If you detect a trend in our weekly cocktails toward citrus and spice combinations, you win a gold star. 😉 To our tastes, few flavor combinations work better for the holiday season. And one of our favorite flavor combos is ginger and orange. Many holiday orange/spice recipes go heavy on the allspice and cloves, and that is great (particularly in Tiki drinks, which work for any season), but ginger is a brighter, lighter spice that works well in cocktails and doesn’t hit you over the head. And the Bullseye is a very tasty example of a ginger/citrus cocktail. .

The Bullseye combines dry gin, ginger liqueur, orange juice and lemon juice. You get a light, bright and spicy sip that is very refreshing but still tastes like a cocktail for the fall or winter. You can also serve this drink as a cocktail or a “long” drink on the rocks, it works either way. The orange and lemon juice balance the sweet and sour, the gin adds herbal notes and the ginger adds a touch of zing, but also cleans the palate. A true “cocktail” in the sense that it tastes better than the sum of its parts.

But, to be fair, there is very little wrong with the “parts”. There is never anything “wrong” with fresh orange or lemon juice (other than not having enough). And any good juniper-forward gin will work well here, as the juniper plays very well with the ginger. As for the ginger liqueur, the best choice these days is Domaine de Canton. Domaine de Canton combines ginger and other spices with quality brandy and a touch of vanilla and honey. It is sweet and spicy with well-integrated ginger flavor. You can substitute Domaine de Canton for part or all of the Curaçao or sugars in many traditional cocktails for added spice and a change of pace. Domaine de Canton isn’t cheap, about $35 dollars a bottle, but a little goes a long, long way. And if you want to try more “modern” riffs on traditional cocktails Domaine de Canton, along with St. Germain, gives you all sorts of room to play around.

The Bullseye also works as a long drink.

So where did we find the Bullseye? It comes from the Cafe Royal Cocktail Book, a British cocktail book from the 1930’s.  We were working on a guest cocktail post for Claire at Promenade Plantings and found this recipe. The Bullseye did not make it into that post (you will see what did next week), but we tried it and then kept “trying” it until we decided to make the Bullseye a weekly cocktail. We immediately took to the citrus and ginger spice and thought the Bullseye would be a delicious holiday cocktail. We expect to serve this one a lot over the next few months.

The Bullseye Cocktail:

Ingredients:

• 1 oz. dry gin
• 1 oz. ginger liqueur (Domaine de Canton)
• 1/2 oz. fresh orange juice
• 1/2 oz. fresh lemon juice

Assemble:

1. Combine all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake thoroughly and pour into a chilled cocktail glass, coupé or flute. Or pour into a highball glass with a few ice cubes. Serve.

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