Green Lantern Cocktail

Another month, another Mixology Monday. This MxMo's theme is Vermouth, hosted by Vidiot at Cocktalians. In my usual tradition, I've got two drinks, one with Italian vermouth and this one using Dolin Blanc. Both of these are doing double duty in another way, since I came up with them for recent TDNs.

This drink I came up with last night for the theme: "Not Absinthe: Aquavit, Arak, Anisette, Becherovka, Pernod, Ricard, Sambuca - any anise spirit that isn't absinthe!"

Green Lantern

• 1½ oz Akvavit (Aalborg)
• 1 oz Green Chartreuse
• ½ oz Dolin Blanc Vermouth
  
• 1 dash Celery Bitters

Stir and strain into brandy snifter and garnish with Hal Jordan's ring fashioned from a slice of jalapeño.

Now, you certainly have to like both aquavit and chartreuse to enjoy this drink, but that said, I think they do play nicely and cut some of each other's harshness. The Dolin mellows it even more and adds some floral notes. The celery bitters seem to be made for aquavit they go together so well. I usually reflexively add an extra dash of bitters to many recipes because I tend to really like them, but here just the one dash is perfect, two is too much. And the jalapeño is purely for the visual to complete the association with the name, I could not resist. Green Lantern was by far my favorite comic growing up. Heck, still is I suppose. I really hope the movie doesn't suck.

I also toyed with adding one of those light up fake ice cubes to make the name more apropos:

Here it is with the lights off. Didn't photograph too well, but it was a fun effect in reality.