Featured Cocktail : The Stopping By Woods
This episode is being published on December 21, 2017, which happens to be the winter solstice. And it brings me back to the very first drink I ever invented, which might be a bit strong of a word for this occasion. But nonetheless.
This drink is called the “Stopping by Woods,” after Robert Frost’s famous poem which takes place on the winter solstice: the day when the northern hemisphere receives the shortest duration of daylight during a given year. The poem’s speaker says:
“My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.”
This drink is designed to celebrate both the rich rum distilling tradition in the US, as well as the woodsy atmosphere of the poem.
To make the Stopping by Woods, you need the following:
- 2 oz Dark or Spiced Rum
- 1 sugar cube (Dominoes or something darker)
- Several Dashes of Embitterment Aromatic Bitters
- 1-2 sprigs of Fresh (not dried) rosemary
To make this rosemary-spiked rum old fashioned, soak your sugar cube in the bitters, add a splash of water, and then you muddle the sugar and bitters together in a mixing glass with your fresh rosemary sprig. After that, you add ice, rum, and stir. And once the drink is well chilled and the sugar is dissolved, you strain that into a rocks glass over a single large cube if you’ve got one.
You can optionally add another sprig of rosemary or maybe a lemon twist for garnish, and then you enjoy that bad boy in front of a crackling fire with a book of Robert Frost poems in-hand.
If you decide to make a Stopping by Woods this holiday season, definitely snap a picture and hit us up @modernbarcart on Instagram and Facebook so we can share it with our cocktail community.
