{"id":483,"date":"2021-08-05T12:26:36","date_gmt":"2021-08-05T12:26:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cocktailians.com\/2021\/08\/considering-rtds-the-perfect-cocktail.html"},"modified":"2021-08-05T12:26:36","modified_gmt":"2021-08-05T12:26:36","slug":"considering-rtds-the-perfect-cocktail-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/?p=483","title":{"rendered":"Considering RTDs: “The Perfect Cocktail?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I haven't ventured out to very many liquor stores since the pandemic began – I certainly have a pretty good stash at home, and I haven't been doing much inessential travel, and only recently (and rarely) have I gone anywhere in Manhattan other than straight to the office and straight back home. (I did get to a VABC<\/a> store on vacation, and managed to snag a couple extra bottles of Beefeater at the old 94 proof<\/a>.) <\/p>\n

I spent a recent weekend in Connecticut, and hit up both a friendly small liquor store with a nicely curated selection<\/a> and a location of the behemoth chain Total Wine & More<\/a>, where I kinda went nuts, picking up some things I hadn't seen at my closest stores in Queens: Plantation Stiggins' Fancy Pineapple Rum<\/a>, Cruzan<\/a> Black Strap<\/a> Rum, Ford's Gin Officer's Reserve<\/a> overproof, and more fun stuff. (And some Maraschino. More on that anon.)<\/p>\n

But one thing that caught my eye was the whole section devoted to ready-to-drink cocktails; the RTD market has been burgeoning lately, goosed by the pandemic no doubt. I've picked up some in the past: I'm fond of the small cans of Hochstadter's Slow and Low Rock and Rye<\/a> \u2014 co-author Tony disagrees, calling them too sweet, but I'll occasionally lengthen them with some seltzer for a highball-ish kind of drink. (Together with the cheese tray from the cafe car, that's gotten me through several different Amtrak rides.) The Cutwater Spirits line of canned cocktails<\/a> is enormous; I've enjoyed the Gin & Tonic and Rum & Ginger. Durham Distillery<\/a> makes an excellent canned Gin & Tonic<\/a> with their Conniption Gin<\/a>, and Greenhook Ginsmiths<\/a> makes a really nice one too. Less successful in my book were the On The Rocks<\/a> entries I've tried; their Aviation had a little too much of the sweet-floral note that makes me think of my grandmother's hand soap, and their Mai Tai not only had coconut flavor (a<\/span> dealbreaker<\/a>!)<\/span>, but had way<\/em> too much of it.<\/p>\n

\"Rtdpouches\"<\/p>\n

A standout approach in the RTD section at Total Wine on my visit was the line of cocktails by The Perfect Cocktail<\/a>, from Italy – they're packed in small pouches, which might make them easier to transport (and conceal?) than the bulkier, heavier metal cans and glass bottles that pre-mixed drinks producers typically use. All the pouches were exactly 100ml in volume, so one could theoretically get these past a TSA checkpoint (though I note that federal air regulations prohibit serving yourself alcohol<\/a> on flights; my inflight mixology several years ago<\/a> was done with spirits bought from the airline and I only brought vermouth and bitters.) I didn't see any sharpened straw attached, to drink them \u00e0 la Capri-Sun or juice boxen, but they do also have 3L bag-in-box offerings<\/a> if you really<\/em> wanna go nuts.<\/p>\n

The Perfect Cocktail makes a line of ten different drinks<\/a>, from the Dry Martini to the Daiquiri (and how do they do an Americano without bubbles?!), but only three are available in the US<\/a>: the Manhattan, the Negroni, and the Old-Fashioned. Total Wine & More sells both the individual pouches and multi-pouch variety packs. (I should note that a Perfect Cocktail Manhattan<\/a> \u2260 Perfect Manhattan<\/a> cocktail, which is a completely<\/em> different thing.)<\/p>\n

\"Rtdglasses\"So how were they? I got together with co-author Tony Hightower<\/a> and Joanna Scutts<\/a>, and we poured each over a big rock and started tasting. (we served them on ice, as The Perfect Cocktail recommends, though of course we'd normally serve a Manhattan up. I think these all would have been infinitely better had we chilled the pouches first in the freezer for a while.)<\/p>\n

Our first impressions were not entirely positive. As noted above, they were fairly warm and the big icecubes were working hard to chill them down to a more appropriate serving temperature. All of the cocktails were fairly sweet right out of the gate…not so much that they were cloying, but sweeter than I'd have typically made them. I was wondering if the Negroni was indeed made with equal parts vermouth\/red bitter\/gin. And all of them had an unusual mouthfeel, so much so that I wonder if\/suspect that they use glycerin<\/a> in their recipes; there was kind of a sweet gumminess to all three that reminded me of the Fee Brothers bitters<\/a> line.<\/p>\n

All three had lower alcohol levels than I'd been expecting, too; per Total Wine's site, the Old-Fashioned is 28% abv, the Manhattan is 25.5% abv, and the Negroni is 22% abv. This matters because a higher alcohol content brings \u2014 besides heat, general oomph, and tipsiness \u2014 more flavor. If I were making these drinks, my Old-Fashioned would be roughly<\/a> 37.5% abv (2 ounces of 50% abv whiskey<\/a>, a teaspoon\/sixth of an ounce of rich simple syrup, two dashes or 2\/41 ounce<\/a> Angostura bitters at 44.7% abv, half an ounce of water from ice melt), my Manhattan would be 30% abv (2 ounces of 45% abv whiskey<\/a>, 1 ounce of 15% abv vermouth, two dashes Angostura bitters, half an ounce water), and my Negroni would be 24.5% abv (one ounce 47% gin<\/a>, one ounce of 15% abv vermouth, one ounce of 24% abv Campari, half an ounce water).<\/p>\n

So the flavors weren't terribly strong, but they weren't bad<\/em>: just not fantastic. The Negroni was the best of the three but didn't have that aggressive bittersweet slap with tons of herbal notes dancing around that I'm looking for in a good exemplar of the drink. The Old-Fashioned was, as mentioned, too sweet and didn't really have a strong bourbon flavor; in a drink that's meant to showcase good whiskey, you want to really taste it. And the Manhattan was kind of a mess and there was an artificial-cherry note in the mix. (No brand names were specified, by the way, except for Angostura bitters in the Manhattan and Old-Fashioned. I do wonder what kind of gin, "Kentucky bourbon", or vermouth they use.) So I'd give these a pass. It felt like a real step up when we'd finished our glasses and could refill them from the bottle of Willett Pot Still Reserve<\/a> I'd brought along. (I like it a lot better than TikTok does<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A look at some of the burgeoning RTD cocktail landscape and considering the offering from The Perfect Cocktail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ingredients"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}