Penicillin

New drink of the twenty-first century has gone further in terms of fame than this complex, spicy, smoky turn on a Whiskey Sour. The Australian Sam Ross created it while at Milk & Honey, just a year after he emigrated to the United States from Melbourne.

“We got one of the earliest shipments of the Compass Box line in New York – Asyla, The Peat Monster, and two others,” recalled Ross. “I was playing around. I did a riff on the Gold Rush, which was one of our big sellers,” using Asyla. “Now, our ginger juice is sweetened, so it acts like a syrup. I split the sweetening between the two, the ginger and the honey. And it was great. Then I grabbed The Peat Monster – might as well play around with the smoky whiskey. I poured a float on top. That smoke stayed on the top. I preferred to never serve it with a straw. I want that smoke in the nose and that spicy sweet cocktail underneath.

“I went to bed that night not thinking much of it. Like, ‘That was a good drink.’ It wasn’t until nine months later, at Little Branch, one of our waitresses, Lucinda Sterling, she came back from a table, and they all wanted Bartender’s Choices. She said I should put a Penicillin out because every table needs to experience one of them. It wasn’t until she said that, that I was like, Oh, maybe there’s something there.”

The Penicillin included in the list of IBA official cocktails.