Strange Days SQUID: Cocktails from Beyond

3-4 oz Sparkling Wine (Prosecco)
1/2 oz Maurin Quina
1 oz Jameson Irish Whiskey
1/4 oz Demerara syrup

Stir the Demerara Syrup, Irish Whiskey, and Maurin Quina with ice and strain into a chilled Flute. Top with Sparkling Wine and Garnish with an Orange Tendril that will crawl into the inner recesses of your memories.

Happy Freaking New Year. In my quest to make an appropriately themed bubbly New Years Cocktail I delved into my extensive movie library once again for inspiration. This drink is an homage to my favorite New Years Movie, if not one of my favorite movies, Strange Days. In this film, Ralph Fiennes is an underground broker for black market memories that are recorded and experienced through a device called a SQUID, Super-conducting Quantum Interference Device. See what I did here yet?

“S” was for Sparkling Wine, in this case a nice dry Prosecco, The “Qu” had to be some kind of Quinine, in this case a Quina. “I” was a little difficult to come up with but this needed a solid spirit, so Irish Whiskey it was.  The hardest part was trying to figure out the “D” (yeah…). Since I didn’t have any Drambuie, I went looking for some sugar (geeze…) and I had some Demerara Syrup already made.

I was concerned that adding the syrup would make this too sweet, but by using a dry Prosecco over a sweet sparkling wine, it really balanced well. The rich, dark fruit of the bitter cherry Maurin Quina really shinned well.

Look… everyone needs to take a walk to the dark end of the street sometimes. It’s what we are. -Lenny Nero