Is That a Butterfly in February?

Today's cocktail in my calendar is a New Yorker. A lot of these drinks seem to have some connection to New York. I'd drink a lot if I lived there too, I guess, though I'm doing pretty well here several leagues away. Do Woody Allen's characters drink cocktails? I've seen a lot of his movies but couldn't tell you off the top of my head if Geraldine Page downs one before she walks into the ocean in Interiors. I guess his characters just take pills.

The ingredients for this one are simple: bourbon, lime juice, a little sugar, a dash of grenadine. It's harder to dash grenadine than it is bitters, since the bottle doesn't have a dasher top, so I just poured some into the cap. But you don't have to shake this cocktail, just stir. You're supposed to twist an orange peel and a lemon peel over the drink, but I try to avoid sharp objects, or pills.

Verdict: I used Maker's Mark, and it's awfully limey, almost a bourbon sour. A note says if you use blended whiskey instead of bourbon, you get a New York. No -er, so I guess that's the feminine New York form, or maybe the neuter. I have a several-year-old bottle of Canadian Club that I've never known what to do with, so I dusted it off and pried off the cap.

Verdict #2: I liked the blended whiskey version better. Not so citrusy, though I used a tad more sugar, so that may have made a difference. What else is there to do on a cold and snowy February afternoon than to have a third? This time I used a little more grenadine in it. Even better. Of course, it was my third drink. The grenadine adds a nick syrupy undertone. Not a bad cocktail (the blended whiskey version). One of Woody's characters should try one.