Peaches! Peaches! Peaches!

The Smash Daddy, perfect for summer and early fall.

Well, if you haven’t figured it out already, peach season is coming to a close. So we implore you to run to the grocery store or farmers market and pick up some peaches ASAP. Sorry for posting so late in the peach season, but sometimes it takes a while to perfect some cocktail recipes. They’re worth the wait when they taste as delicious as these two rocks drinks.

First up is the Smash Daddy, a simple concoction made with some muddled white peach and one of our favorite new liqueurs, Catdaddy Carolina Moonshine (now called Catdaddy Spiced Moonshine). It’s a vanilla-, cinnamon-, and nutmeg-flavored Moonshine that tastes like someone just dropped a bit of wedding-cake frosting into a vat of virgin whiskey, and added a few other spices like coriander seeds and a sweetener like sorghum. The smell is reminiscent of juicy fruit gum. Confused? Well, trust us, you have to try it to believe it. It got Steve’s lazy ass out of bed when we were at Tales of the Cocktail, and he was happy that Paul played reveille so he could try this beguiling elixir at a morning tasting. Just a splash of soda, a few drops of peach bitters, and you’ve got a sweet sipper that may just turn into a gulper depending on how you take a shine to the Catdaddy. If you’re a fan of sweet tea or, say, and an Old-Fashioned with muddled fruit, think of the Smash Daddy as a Peach Old-Fashioned. If you only have regular yellow peaches, we won’t tell.

Smash Daddy
(created by Paul Zablocki, Cocktail Buzz)

Ingredients
1 1/2 ounce Catdaddy Carolina Moonshine
splash of soda
3 drops peach bitters
quarter of a white peach
peach slice, as garnish

Method
Score half a white peach. Muddle in a rocks glass, skin side up. Fill with ice. Add Catdaddy, then soda. Add bitters. Garnish with peach slice.

P.S. Don’t forget to eat the booze-soaked peaches. This is one drink where you want to eat the garnish after you’ve relished the last drop.

❤ ❤ ❤

Our second cocktail, one of Steve Schul’s creations, is the Tokyo Momo. Momo is Japanese for peach, and this rocks drink uses a muddled white peach shaken with Yamazaki 12-year Whisky to create a deep and complex combo. But that’s not all. Steve also added two unique liqueurs that complement the sweetness of a peach: Cherry Heering and Dumante Verdenoce Italian Pistachio Nut Liqueur. He decided on these two liqueurs for several reasons. First, he realized that the strong scotch-like flavor of the Yamazaki whisky needed a strong counterpoint to balance it, and Cherry Heering is such a liqueur to do the trick. Second, being a pie lover, he knew that bittersweet cherry mixed with peach is a great combination. But what other flavor would add to the complex fruitiness already brewed? That’s where the third element comes in. Nuts. Something nutty, like the refined beauty of the Dumante pistachio liqueur, with its complex nutty sweetness, was a perfect addition. A drop of whiskey bitters brings all the flavors together so that the Tokyo Momo tastes like you made a peach cobbler and let the juices run over the side of the pie crust. One sip and we proclaimed our love for the early days of fall.



Tokyo Momo
(created by Steve Schul, Cocktail Buzz)

Ingredients
1 1/2 ounces Yamazaki 12-yr. whisky
1/2 ounce Heering cherry liqueur
1/2 ounce Dumante pistachio liqueur
2 drops Fee Brothers Whiskey Barrel Aged Bitters
quarter of a white peach
brandied cherries, or peach slice, as garnish

Method
Score the white peach, flesh side, making sure not to go all the way through the skin. Muddle in a shaker. Add the whisky, liqueurs, and bitters. Fill two-thirds with ice. Shake for 30 seconds. Strain into ice-filled rocks glass. (If you’re having trouble straining, be patient and keep shaking and straining. If you’re not that patient, then strain the mixture all at once through a sieve into a pitcher.) Garnish with brandied cherries on a skewer or a peach slice (or both).

photos © Steve Schul, Cocktail Buzz