I’m not embarrassed to admit that I’m a lazy home bartender. I stick to three ingredients or fewer, ideally something stirred, or better yet, built directly in the glass from which I’ll be drinking. Breaking out the shaker is a rare occurrence for me. But every so often, a drink enters my orbit that makes the requisite rigorous upper body workout that comes with the territory seem worthwhile. Bar Agricole’s Japanese Cocktail is one of those drinks.
I first tried their version of the Jerry Thomas original last summer while visiting Quince in San Francisco, the Jackson Square restaurant where Bar Agricole is in residence, overseeing the cocktail program. “We always wanted to make Milk & Honey–style drinks with great ingredients,” says Thad Vogler, owner of Bar Agricole, a San Francisco bar turned spirits company. “This is a perfect example—a tight little recipe that allows us to use ingredients with real provenance.”
The ingredients in question—California brandy, housemade orgeat and aromatic bitters—transform the drink into something far more enticing than its three elements would suggest on paper. The drink is layered and rich, but not to the point of spoiling the food it is served alongside. Despite its name, in Vogler’s hands, the Japanese Cocktail becomes the perfect liquid representation of California.
“California’s state spirit should be AVA brandy, and it’s my favorite cocktail spirit,” says Vogler, noting that he uses Bar Agricole’s own biodynamic Calfiornia brandy, a blend of barrels aged 8 to 15 years, for the base. Quince makes its own orgeat—“another great California cocktail ingredient, as beautiful almonds grow here,” Vogler says—as well as its own aromatic bitters to round out the recipe. In fact, the farm that grows the grapes for the brandy and for the high-proof spirit in the bitters is the same one that grows the almonds that go into the orgeat. “So it’s a single-estate, grower-producer cocktail,” says Vogler.
To me, it demonstrates the power of a simple drink done well. It is, without a doubt, a cocktail worth traveling for. Or, at the very least, worth breaking out the shaker for.
