Happy (Belated) New Year!

When I launched this blog two Septembers ago, I promised myself that I wouldn’t aspire to any particular standards for volume and timeliness. No matter what happened, I didn’t want this site to fall victim to the same fate that befell so many of its predecessors, a vicious cycle of unrealistic expectations resulting in guilt and unhappiness and leading inevitably to deletion. And so it is that I bring you a post about my favorite of all Christmas movies, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, in February. I had originally hoped to also publish a deep dive into just *why* love it so much, but life got in the way. I’m still planning to finish that post in time for next year’s holiday season, but in the meantime please enjoy the story behind and recipe for the beverage depicted above, an original creation I call Chicago Nog!

My starting off point was a drink called San Francisco Nog that I read about on Frederic Yarm’s Cocktail Virgin Slut blog a few years ago. For my first attempt at a drink inspired by Christmas Vacation, I simply substituted a Chicago-based spirit, Letherbee Distillers’ Fernet, for the Fernet Branca in this recipe:

It was good, but basically tasted exactly the same, so I next tried a different Letherbee product, Besk:

The result tasted overwhelmingly of licorice, so I experimented with different combinations of Fernet and Besk before concluding that something was missing. Thinking about one of my favorite cocktails of all time, Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s Amaretto Sour, I first sought help from Jack Daniels, which definitely resulted in a more balanced drink. The light bulb really went off, though, when I switched this out for a housewarming present from my best friend Anthony, who used to live in Chicago and who jump-started my interest in mixology by taking me to The Violet Hour for the first time, New Liberty Dutch Malt Whiskey:

From there it was a simple matter of replacing the Sugar In The Raw I was using with a a 50-50 mixture of Lyle’s Golden Syrup and water for the sake of convenience and figuring out the optimal ratio of Besk to Fernet. I finally landed on the following:

• ¾ oz. New Liberty Dutch Malt Whiskey
• ½ oz. Letherbee Besk
• ¼ oz. Letherbee Fernet
• ¾ oz. cream
• 1 oz. golden simple syrup
• 1 egg yolk

1. To make golden simple syrup: shake together equal quantities of Lyle’s Golden Syrup and water. 
2. To make drink: dry shake all ingredients, then shake with ice. Serve in a moose glass, garnished with freshly grated nutmeg.

The drink is funky and sweet with a complex bitter finish, not entirely unlike Clark Griswold’s big family Christmas. It’s probably not for ALL tastes, but I definitely kept coming back for more, and will make this every year moving forward!