Happy Birthday Mr. Poe: Quoth The Raven Cocktail *Updated
2 oz Copper & Kings American Brandy
3/4 oz Averna Amaro
1/4 oz Haint Absinthe
1 bsp Rich Simple Syrup
2 dashes Berg and Hauke’s Jerry Thomas Bitters
Stir everything with ice and strain into a chilled Old Fashioned glass. Garnish with an Blood Orange twist flamed over the glass and discarded.
I first came up with this cocktail on this very day a couple of years ago to celebrate the birthday of the tragic poet. If I would have planned it better, I would have tried the Poe Family Eggnog that I just came across today, however, I don’t have all the ingredients I need to make this and my plans for this long, snowy weekend don’t include putting on pants and voyaging out into the world. Instead, I decided to revisit this and make it a wee more interesting.
The original version was essentially a Blackened Improved Whiskey Cocktail exchanging the Maraschino for the blackening Averna, but, I felt like I could do better. With the freedom from conforming to an Improved Cocktail, I was able to rebalance the drink a bit. Also, I wanted to make this a little more personal to the grim author who’s favorite poison was Brandy.
Now, Edgar Allan Poe was a renowned alcoholic and it’s said that he often liked to add opiates to his drinks. While there’s a good chance that his abuses lead to his death, there are some that say that it was rabies that killed him in Maryland. Apparently his reputation for drunkenness and inability to remain sober is what lead to his once fiance, Sarah Helen Whitman to break off the marriage just before the wedding here in Providence.
Back when he was courting Miss Whitman, who lived in a lovely house on Benefit Street that is still standing, her friends and family warned her of his intoxications. In order to avoid her parents and meet with her, he would sneak to her back yard and rendezvous with her in the Cemetery of Saint John’s like the proto-goth he was. I’ve had occasion to linger in that same cemetery myself with The Pretty One under the massive tree that shades the dead there.
