Bolt From The Blue

Chill the martini glass. This can be accomplished ahead of time, but if time is a factor then you can just fill the glass with ice and water and let it sit while you work on the rest of the drink. Add the gin, curacao, and vermouth to the mixing glass and stir. Strain into the chilled glass (if using the ice water method to chill, dump the water out first.) Garnish with a lemon twist. Of our dragon cocktails, the Bolt from the Blue is our gin forward offering. This one’s simple. If you know how to build yourself a martini, you can build one of these   A citrus forward gin plays well with the blue curacao, but we decided to go with Bombay Sapphire because, well… color association I guess? (Vodka could also be used, but as a fan of proper gin martinis, I opted to stick with the better stuff.)   Begin by chilling your martini glass. To your mixing glass, add the gin, curacao, and vermouth and top with ice. Stir until well chilled and everything is incorporated nicely.   If you are using gin for this drink, please, please resist the temptation to pull a James Bond and shake your drink. Shaking a gin “bruises” the spirit, meaning that some of the botanical compounds break down into their much more bitter sub-compounds. However, if you are opting for the vodka variant, you don’t need to worry about this and can shake away.   Presentation From this stage, all you need to do is strain the contents of your shaker into the chilled glass, and garnish with a twist of lemon. Alternative garnishes include an orange twist, or a desiccated orange or lemon float. I personally prefer the slight aromatic zing of the lemon, but you can’t go wrong with any of those.