Liquor In The Winter: The Abbey Longs for Springtime

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Even though I’m practicing my koselig to be more okay with winter, that doesn’t mean I’m not counting down the days until I see green again. I’ve had my fill of warm drinks — what can I make that both reminds me of a warmer season, but doesn’t feel out of season? Enter The Abbey — except I’m going to make it with blood orange because a) that’s what I have in my kitchen and b) I like the color of blood oranges (makes me feel like I’m drinking liquid rubies or some shit).

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The color makes it a perfect drink for Valentine’s Day, if you do Valentine’s Day (which my fiancée and I don’t, but you do you!). I’m riffing off the recipe found in The Architecture of the Cocktail, which is beautifully illustrated and easy to follow; same proportions, I’m just changing up the ingredients a little bit.

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You will need:

1 1/2 oz. gin

3/4 oz. Lillet blanc

a blood orange for juicing 3/4 oz. fresh blood orange juice

a dash of orange bitters

a shaker — fruit juice always means a shaker!

strainer

plenty of ice

a martini glass

Chill your martini glass before you get going. Then fill your shaker halfway with ice. Juice your orange, slicing the citrus lengthwise in half. I don’t know why that produces more juice, it just seems to. Juice that orange!

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Add the gin, Lillet, juice and bitters to your shaker. Shake that sucker over your shoulder (with no one and nothing behind you, please, in case you get overenthusiastic!) until the outside of the cap is frosty. Dump the ice out of the martini glass and strain The Abbey into it. Carefully slice a piece of the orange peel — no need to waste a whole orange for the garnish! Twist it into the glass and serve. Dream of warmer days.

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A.E. Osworth

A.E. Osworth is part-time Faculty at The New School, where they teach undergraduates the art of digital storytelling. Their novel, We Are Watching Eliza Bright, about a game developer dealing with harassment (and narrated collectively by a fictional subreddit), is forthcoming from Grand Central Publishing (April 2021) and is available for pre-order now. They have an eight-year freelancing career and you can find their work on Autostraddle (where they used to be the Geekery Editor), Guernica, Quartz, Electric Lit, Paper Darts, Mashable, and drDoctor, among others.

A.E. has written 542 articles for us.

13 Comments

    • Thank you very much! I totally continued working after this, by the way, that’s why the drink is sitting on my desk.

  2. my roommate just made an upside down blood orange cake last night and I was struck by how beautiful (and delicious??) blood oranges are.

    And now I have another reason to go out and buy a buttload of them! Thanks, Ali!

    • I’m a Farmer’s gal myself, but we’re really enjoying this one! Which is good, because our last gin was Brooklyn Gin and we didn’t enjoy it nearly as much.

      • I like the flavor but I also like that this is totally a gin Neville Longbottom would make, collecting all those botanicals out on the Scottish countryside, distilling it himself with his special plants and herbs, realizing he could have probably passed his Potions O.W.L. along.

    • Why thank you. Those are the ones above my desk that are inspiring my fiction at the moment. I have to add To the Lighthouse and Ready Player One.

    • Apparently the universe heard me say that. Cause this was the week I saw a wild gif of someone fingering a blood orange.

  7. YES. vesper (gin/vodka/lillet) is a fave of mine…thrilled to mellow out with this instead. thx!

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