holy city handcraft | blog

EXTREMELY 👏🏽 FLAVORFUL 👏🏽

Up next on Charleston’s tour of #NegroniWeek with @campari_southcarolina is Stephen Blackmon (@stephenblackmon) over at Doar Bros. (@doarbros) - make sure to stop by and give this one a try in person!

“I was inspired by one of my favorite Indian restaurants, Chai Pani in Asheville, NC owned by Chef Meherwan Irani. The backstory of his great grandfather running one of the only Irani Cafes in his hometown along with what it must have been like hanging out there on a regular basis painted a vivid picture for what I wanted to share with others. The combination of culturally driven flavors and lively but chill vibes are what incited me to produce this very special cocktail riff.

I knew I wanted to have three things come out of this cocktail’s production: tea, spices, and savoriness in homage to Meherwan and his family’s heritage. By using the specific barrel-aged gin with big notes of Indian spices, infused for further complexity with malty Assam Tea along with traditional Masala Chai, I was able to ground the base idea around those bold flavors. I then chose to infuse a commonly found Italian aperitif white wine with spiced orange tea to play off both the infused gin and also tie it to both the Campari and Grand Mariner rather than use the typical sweet vermouth. I chose to do a “fat washing” process using traditional brown ghee along with coconut oil to round out the entire cocktail with a lingering silky and savory finish.”