Crème de Cassis Death Match

So, we have both learned important lessons about the seeming unimportance of crème de cassis in cocktails. Neither of us thought it added much to the cocktails we tried, so tonight, after a trip to Food City, we set about making our own original cocktails featuring crème de cassis.  

Dave's is on the left, Joe's is on the right.

I call mine Ina's Vineyard:

1 oz vodka
1 oz crème de cassis
1/2 oz lemon juice
Blueberries
Sugar
Club soda

Muddle a small amount of sugar and a small handful of blueberries in the bottom of a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Add vodka, lemon juice, and crème de cassis. Shake vigorously.

Strain mixture into a highball glass over ice. Top with club soda. 

This drink was amazingly okay. It is the first cocktail in which I've been able to taste crème de cassis. That said, it tastes a bit sweet and syrupy - like a starter cocktail for people who really don't like alcohol that much. I might drink it in summer, but it doesn't taste terribly different from the classic crème de cassis and soda with a spritz of lime that Amy Stewart raves about. Final grade: C+

Joe's Take on Dave's Drink:

Before Dave's drink hits your palette, you can smell it. I can't put my finger on it, but I just told Dave it smells like rotting fruit (and I wish you could see his face right now). He's incredulous, but laughing.

But really. It kind of smells like rotting fruit. 

It's confusing, because there's something else that's under there - a smell that is triggering vague memories that I can't fully recall. Grapes? Celery? Bad apples? I honestly don't know. If I were a trained sommelier or food critic, I'm sure I'd be able to pinpoint it immediately. Alas. 

Here's the hitch, though. The drink is actually quite refreshing: it's light and effervescent, mild but tasty. I don't get much of the lemon, but the black currant flavor is a subtle surprise (perhaps because the base liquor is so unassuming). I can imagine drinking it on the beach, one of those adorable cocktail umbrellas jutting from the ice. 

Maybe vodka is the best vehicle for crème de cassis. Maybe it's what we've been missing all this time. If we were to continue experimenting with the liqueur, I think we'd continue in this direction.

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And then there's mine. 

Having already made a crème de cassis cocktail with a clear alcohol, I decided to explore what a darker alcohol would bring to the black currant flavor. 

I call mine Grotesque Démodé. My friend Tricia would roll her eyes at my poorly appropriated French.

2 oz. bourbon
1/2 oz. crème de cassis
orange peel
club soda
sugar

Muddle orange peel and sugar (like you're making an old fashioned). Add bourbon and crème de cassis. Stir. Pour over ice. Wish you were never born. 

Pretend for a moment that you are walking through the woods on a crisp autumn day. The temperature is chilly, but the sun is bright and high in the sky, and its light filters through trees, a kaleidoscope of warm colors. Every time you breathe in deeply, you are filled with the beauty of the season. 

In the distance, you spy a log. A tree has fallen, perhaps decades ago, and it lays in mounds of leaves: some recent, some from years past. There's a fecundity that emanates from the log - it isn't necessarily unpleasant, but it is pungent with age and decay. You kneel before the log, plunge your hands into the rot, and stuff it in your mouth. The oaky fermentation fills your mouth. Your eyes water immediately. You wonder why you didn't resist the impulse to eat that which was clearly inedible. 

You have just tasted the equivalent of my crème de cassis drink.

I have come to the horrible, sinking conclusion that I am a long, long, long way from being a mixologist. In short: this drink is awful. 

Dave's Take on Joe's Drink: Yuck. 

I mean, it smells nice. There are hints of vanilla and berries and orange - it's a very Christmas-y, holiday, let's-get-blitzed-and-make-snow-angels smell. That would all be good and well if we were making potpourri. 

Alas, we have to drink it. 

It's quite alcohol forward and hits your tongue and is immediately dark and pungent, but oddly crisp and sharp as well (the orange, maybe?). 

So, I think I win this death match, but only by being the lesser of two evils. I am like the winner of the Republican National Convention, winning because I am the least disgusting here, the most digestible, and the least likely to make you want to vomit too much.