Angler Cocktail

The Savoy Project Day Twenty-Eight – Angler Cocktail

The Savoy Project is an online chronicle of Cocktails, 365 editor Mark A. Vierthaler’s quest to make every single cocktail in The Savoy Cocktail Book. Each recipe contains the original recipe as it appeared in the book, as well as which brand Mark used in parenthesis next to the ingredient.

Angler Cocktail | ® Cocktails, 365

• 2 Dashes Angostura Bitters
• 2 Dashes Orange Bitters (Fee Brothers)
• 1/3 Hercules (See explanation below)
• 1/3 Dry Gin (Captive Spirits Distilling Big Gin)

Shake well and strain into a cocktail glass.

Mark’s Notes:

The Angler Cocktail is one of several in the Savoy Cocktail Book that features a now-defunct spirit by the name of Hercules.

This Serious Eats article gives a pretty good overview of what we’re pretty sure Hercules was – although there is still a bit of debate on how to exactly recreate it. As you can tell from the ad above, Hercules appears to have been a red wine based apéritif similar vermouth, infused with Yerba Maté. So, when blogger Erik Ellestad underwent his Savoy Stomp project several years ago, he came up with several different versions of “Hercules” that you can make ahead of time.

(As is noted in the Serious Eats article, these aren’t really attempts at recreating the original Hercules as nobody’s really sure exactly what it tastes like.)

For me, I went the simpler (read: lazier) way and simply took some Dolin Vermouth de Chambéry Rouge and infused it with a bit of yerba maté for the green tea flavor and caffeine kick. Lazy? Certainly. Tasty? Also most certainly.

The Angler Cocktail falls under a similar umbrella for several of the drinks we’ve already mixed – heady, bitter, and powerful. And also – brown.