Cocktail Corner: Scotch, Bourbon, And A Taste Of Ginger

We return this morning with our second monthly installment of Cocktail Corner — which means we’ll be exploring a couple more drinks off of Tender Bar + Kitchen‘s ever-delicious Banker’s List.

For those of you who missed our last installment of Cocktail Corner, essentially, the Banker’s List is a small catalog of 28 vintage and contemporary classics that you ought to experience. You’ve got shaken drinks, stirred drinks, Tiki drinks…it’s fun to watch them be made, and even more fun to drink them.

This month, we tried two scrumptious cocktails: the Penicillin and the Stone-Fence. We paired these two up, even though the base spirits differ, because of a couple uniting ingredients that appeared in Tender’s version of each drink.

Penicillin
This tasty concoction is composed of scotch, honey, ginger, and lemon.

Fox found the drink to be spicy and savory. I loved how the ginger cut through at first to give the drink a kick. The sweetness of the honey followed behind, kind of undergirded by the lemon. And the scotch? Oh, there’s plenty of it in there — but it’s just hiding in the background, in its old trench coat, waiting for an opportune moment to flash you.

Stone-Fence
Tender’s incarnation of the Stone-Fence is a bit fancified from its simpler, traditional version. Rather than just being rum or whiskey and hard cider, this update is made with bourbon, locally-produced Arsenal hard cider, plus lemon, ginger, and bitters.

Now, I’m betting that the bourbon with that Arsenal cider would have tasted just dandy. But I loved the little-something-extra provided by the lemon-ginger addition. It was pretty cool to see how that flavor manifested with this drink, juxtaposed against our previous round. Where the Penicillin kicked off with a spicy tingle, the Stone-Fence led with a tart, cinnamony quality. The ginger and lemon was more of an accent, like when you hear a small riff from a beloved tune repurposed in a brand-new song. In this drink, too, the base spirit was well hidden. I could barely taste the bourbon — though, again, I saw it made. So I know there was just the right amount — which is to say, lots.

In the end, I enjoyed both drinks about equally, while Fox gave a slight edge to the Penicillin. We’d both recommend giving them a try, though!