The Silva Standard: Brian Silva



FOUR OF THE GREAT AMERICAN COCKTAILS:
Old Fashioned – with a Balthazar stir
“It’s one of the first cocktails that were named,” says Silva. “Original cocktails were bitters, spirit and sugar; that’s how it all started. But this drink only got a name when people had had enough of people adding apricot brandy to their whiskies, so they asked for their drink ‘the old fashioned way’.”
Method
Step 1 Add the drops of bitters onto the sugar cube and put into an old fashioned glass
Step 2
Muddle with a bar spoon disk end down to break down the sugar. Add the orange slice and cocktail cherry. Muddle lightly to extract juices. Don’t over muddle.
Step 3
Add 15ml of the bourbon and a few cubes of ice. Stir for 15 seconds.
Step 4
Add a few more cubes of ice and 30ml of bourbon. Stir for 20 seconds.
Step 5
Add the last of the bourbon (15ml) and a bit more ice. Stir briefly. Taste and stir a bit more if needed. Top up with a couple more cubes of ice.
Ingredients
60ml Makers Mark Bourbon
1 sugar cube
4 drops Angostura bitters
¼ orange slice
maraschino cherry
Glassware – old fashioned
Hint
Taste the drink as you go along so as not to over stir.
Vieux Carré
“So this is really a take off of the Manhattan, made in New Orleans in the 1930s,” says Silva. “It was made up in the Carousel Bar – which does actually rotate. You could almost call it a Deep South Manhattan – it’s got the vermouth, and the whiskey, but it’s also got the Benedictine. In my version I use less Benedictine and a bit less vermouth – it brings out the whiskey more. The modern palate is a lot dryer, and people like the taste of whiskey.”
Ingredients
25ml Sazerac Rye Whiskey
25ml Courvoisier Exclusif Cognac
15ml Martini Rosso
5 ml Bénédictine
dash of Peychaud’s bitters
dash of Angostura bitters
Glassware – old fashioned
Garnish – cherry

Aviation Twist
“This is a cool drink. It’s been around a long time, and people ask for it a lot,” says Silva. “The old recipe was heavy on the lemon juice and maraschino – I think that was a case of people wanting to hide the gin. I’ve got four or five recipes in the book - this one has lemon juice, but nowhere near as much. It’s a drink that just works. It’s pretty much for me more like a wet martini than anything.”
Method
Fill the shaker with ice. Add all the ingredients. Shake hard and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
Ingredients
60ml Plymouth Gin
7.5ml lemon juice
5ml Luxardo Maraschino
Glassware – cocktail
Garnish – cherry
Martinez
“Again, a really interesting drink. There’s plenty of stories about who invented the Martinez; lots of people claim it was an old bartender named Jerry Thomas in the 1880s. But the main thing about the drink is that it’s a precursor to a martini. Back in the day they used sweet vermouth, and then over time it became gin and dry vermouth. Either way, it’s heavy on the vermouth, which I like.”
Method
Add all the ingredients into a mixing glass filled with ice. Stir to chill and balance. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass
Ingredients
35ml Martini Rosso
5ml Antica Formula
15ml Old Tom Gin
2.5ml Maraschino
2 drops Angostura Bitters
2 drops fresh orange
Glassware – cocktail
Balthazar’s Brian Silva’s “Mixing in the Right Circles” is being published on Saturday, 26 November and is available at Balthazar London (4-6 Russell Street, London WC2B 5HZ, balthazarlondon.com) and at Selfridges (London, Birmingham & Manchester)