I stole this one right from the source Tony Abou-Ganim who created it at Harry Denton’s Starlight Room in San Francisco. Of course it has proliferated around the country via the Michael Mina restaurant empire that is headquartered in San Francisco. Through the Mina restaurants’ support and great execution, the Cable Car is one of the best known cocktails to be created in the last 25 years. Basically, the cable car is a daiquiri with spiced rum and the addition of orange liqueur and a sugared rim. Hopefully, we will catch up with Tony soon to tell us his inspiration.
Ingredients
1 1/2 oz Spiced Rum (Tony uses the Captain.)
3/4 oz Curaçao (Tony uses Marie Brizard)
1 oz Lime Juice
1/2 oz simple syrup
Garnish
Orange twist.
Glassware
5 oz coup
Assembly
Chill a coup. Fill cocktail shaker with ice. Measure and add lime juice, simple syrup, Curaçao and rum and shake until chilled. Moisten the glass with a lime wedge and coat half the glass in super fine sugar crystals. Strain into glass coup and garnish.
Suggestions
Brandies are not seeing nearly the interest as Whiskeys or gins in the cocktail revival but virtually every craft cocktail place will have a featured Sidecar or Cablecar or both. Brandy is made from wine, so anywhere there is wine, there can be brandy, but that is also part of the problem. In any distillation for spirit meant to be aged, it is common to be left with less than 20% of the original volume. Economically that means that If the grapes that went into the brandy could make a $10 bottle then the bottle of brand would need to be sold for $50 to make the same amount of money and that is before aging. The only way brandy makes economic sense is to grow grapes of high yielding crops in areas not suitable for quality wine production. That means that grapes have to be planted and land owned to start a new business so the entry to market is way to high for experimentation. Two quality California brandies are Jepson from Hopland, CA and Germain-Robin also from Mendocino County.