What do you call this? Besides fabulous.

I may be good at making drinks, but I am bad at naming them. So, apparently, is everybody else because I have yet to hear a good one for this drink.

I’m hesitant to even get into the story of how this drink came about. It was commissioned for an evening of watching the 90’s TV show Young Indiana Jones. The challenge was to come up with a drink that was both appropriate for a warm fall evening and which also harkened back to America abroad during the Great War. Seriously? I was tempted to hand everybody beers with shredded pages of A Farewell to Arms floating in them. But I love a challenge. Or, more accurately, I love not backing down from a challenge.
There are a lot of classic WWI-evocative cocktails, and the ones I find most interesting are the champagne based drinks. The French 75, Death In The Afternoon, the Air Mail, and the Americana (which I will write up later), to name a few.

I felt that the Americana’s bourbon-and-champagne mix was thematically right on, but previous experience taught me that this drink produces a lot more vomitting and passing out than is normally desired at a casual get-together. So in search of a less potent variation I struck on the idea of non-alcholic champagne alternatives. I recalled my sister Angie’s wedding, where Tony the bartender openly mocked guests ordering sparkling apple cider, and realized that I had solved several problems at once. After a bit of experimentation, much of which led me further away from the Americana, I hit on a good recipe….

In a champagne flute…
1.5 oz bourbon
1/2 oz fresh lemon juice
Approx. 1/2 oz honey syrup (honey thinned with boiling water – I have never been precise in mixing this, hence the “approximate”, I recommend adding honey to taste, keeping in mind that the cider will sweeten the drink even more)
Add 1 crushed ice cube, fill with Langer’s Sparkling Apple Cider*

Langer’s is a better cider, but Martinelli’s is the easiest to find. Martinelli’s is much sweeter, so cut back on the honey and increase the bourbon to compensate. I made this mistake at Rowan and Adrian’s pumpkin carving this year, and man was that sweet.

Suggested names include The Honeycutt, The Back Po’, and the Apple Bourbon Sparkler. These are terrible. Better suggestions are welcome.