The Baldy Cocktail

Today we tried a largely forgotten cocktail, the Baldy.

It sounded promising: a mix of orange juice, gin, and orange bitters.

Sadly, the execution didn't quite live up to the promise offered in the description.

But I digress.

Per The Ideal Bartender:

The Baldy Cocktail
Large mixing glass with lump ice
1 jigger (1.5 oz) Burnett's Old Tom gin
1 pony (1 oz) orange juice
1 dash orange bitters

Shake; strain into cocktail glass and serve

This was my first experience with Old Tom gin.

 It's botanically similar but sweeter than our standby gin, New Amsterdam. We'll do a whole post soon about the different styles of gin.  For now, suffice it to say that today's standard variety of gin is London Dry: Beefeater, Tanqueray, Bombay Sapphire, basically every gin you encounter in the wild.  Old Tom, very popular in 1917, is now uncommon; while easily enough sought out, most people don't -- in part because it tastes so unfamiliar, significantly different from London Dry. Burnett's, the brand favored by Bullock, no longer exists; instead we used Hayman's, one of the most widely available Old Toms. In a side by side comparison, the New Amsterdam is cleaner and brighter, where the Hayman's Old Tom is noticeably sweet with a more complicated flavor profile.

My first sip of this, all I could taste was cold and botanicals. As it warmed up a little, I warmed up to

it a little. The mix of gin and orange juice was unusual from a modern standpoint, with more gin than orange juice and vigorous shaking the citrus flavor of the orange juice was not as pronounced as I would have liked. It felt under powered next to the botanical bite of the gin, and all the flavors seemed to just lay next to each other rather than get along nicely. Delicious though they are, it's possible that my homemade orange-vanilla bitters were to blame; they are busier than commercial orange bitters, and the vanilla seemed a bit out of place in this drink. Before I discount the Baldy entirely, I should try it again with commercial orange bitters.

Since this was my first experience with Old Tom gin, it seemed natural to mix another round using New Amsterdam for comparison. The result was cleaner and clearer than the Old Tom version, and I have to say, was more to my liking. The London Dry allowed the orange flavors to show more clearly without dominating the drink as much as the Old Tom did.

I have some notion that this would make a great batch cocktail. One might add a spoonful of orange oleo saccharum and use a dry gin.