DISSECTING A COCKTAIL

In 2014, famed New York City bar Death & Co. released its first cocktail book, Modern Classic Cocktails. It was the book that bartenders had to have and one of the best cocktail books ever printed.

One of the cocktails inside, the Naked & Famous, was created by bartender Joaquín Simo in 2011. The drink immediately caught my eye. The Naked and Famous is an Indie rock duo from New Zealand that had a hit song at the time of the drink’s creation, and I appreciated the fact that I wasn’t the only bartender in the world who tended to name drinks after bands and songs. The specs were interesting, too, with equal parts mezcal, Aperol, Yellow Chartreuse liqueur and lime juice. Why did this seem familiar? According to Simo, “This cocktail is the bastard child born out of an illicit Oaxacan love affair between the classic Last Word (a gin-based cocktail) and the Paper Plane, a drink Sam Ross created at the West Village bar Little Branch.”

I once read somewhere that Simo chose Aperol and Yellow Chartreuse instead of Campari and Green Chartreuse because he wanted lower ABV liqueurs to avoid overpowering the mezcal. The cocktail became an instant classic, and I put it on my outside patio bar menu, where it sold like crazy. These days if anyone hears the words “Naked and Famous,” it’s the drink — and not the band — that comes to mind.