This drink, plucked from the mind of Morgan Schick, the bar manager at San Francisco’s Trick Dog, began as a mash-up of the Mint Julep and the Sherry Cobbler—two drinks cut from the same crushed-ice cloth. Schick likes to add a bit of booze to his cobbler to give the drink a bit more backbone, and he decided to go with genever, a Dutch-style gin whose distinct maltiness, Schick knew, would comingle nicely with the nuttiness of amontillado. The addition of curaçao might seem unorthodox in the world of sherry cobblers, but there’s historical precedent: toward the latter part of the 19th century the cobbler started to embrace a number of embellishments, like pineapple gum syrup, orange curaçao, and port. Where things get weird here is with Schick’s menthol tincture, a relatively simple mix of menthol crystals dissolved in vodka—which he came up while reading soap-maker forums. While the drink certainly benefits from the cooling menthol sensation, if you can’t get your hands on menthol crystals at your local soap store, the drink is plenty delicious without it.
Reprinted with permission from Sherry by Talia Baiocchi, copyright © 2014. Published by Ten Speed Press, a division of Random House, Inc.