Rudolph Valentino's 1922 film.
| 1 oz · 30 ml | BLENDED SCOTCH | 40 % |
| 1 oz · 30 ml | SWEET VERMOUTH | 16 % |
| 1 oz · 30 ml | CHERRY HEERING | 24 % |
| 1 oz · 30 ml | ORANGE JUICE |
1 oz taken as 30 ml in the metric column.
1 oz taken as 30 ml in the metric column.
| Pre-batch | 4 oz mixed with ice, 0.8 oz of it pure alcohol |
|---|---|
| Melt | Shaken: +20 % of the pre-batch, +0.8 oz of water |
| Served | 4 + 0.8 = 4.8 oz in the glass |
| Strength | 0.8 ÷ 4.8 = 16.7 % ABV as served |
| Ethanol | 0.8 oz × 29.57 ml × 0.789 g/ml = 19 g · about 131 kcal from the alcohol alone |
FROM SCOTCH · from oak barrel aging
Bourbon's fingerprint, extracted from the charred American oak the law requires for aging. Same molecule as the vanilla bean's signature, so a well-aged bourbon legitimately tastes like vanilla. Chemistry, not metaphor. Cognac, aged rum, tequila reposado all extract vanillin from oak too. Different barrels, same molecule.
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FROM ORANGE JUICE · citrus peel oil
An orange rind, squeezed, throws a spray that catches the light. That's d-limonene boiling off. It's roughly 95% of orange peel oil by mass, and the molecule that puts the "orange" in orange anything. Used industrially as a green solvent because the chemistry that dissolves citrus oils also dissolves greasy machinery. The expressed-peel garnish on a cocktail is delivering vaporized limonene to the rim of the glass.
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FROM SWEET VERMOUTH
The bitter from gentian root, used across Campari, Aperol, sweet vermouth, Angostura, and most amari. Bitter compounds activate TAS2R taste receptors that evolved to detect plant alkaloids. The same machinery that makes broccoli taste bad to children also makes a Negroni taste like an adult ordered it.
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Scotch, sweet vermouth, Cherry Heering and orange juice, in equal parts, which is unusual for a cocktail this complex. Vanillin comes from the Scotch barrel, benzaldehyde from the cherry liqueur and d-limonene from fresh orange. The orange juice is what makes it work: it bridges the Scotch's smoke and the cherry's sweetness without either winning.
Named for the 1922 silent film 'Blood and Sand' starring Rudolph Valentino as a bullfighter; the deep red of the Cherry Heering and the gold of the scotch evoke the film's title imagery. The recipe was first printed in the 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book. Equal-parts cocktails are notoriously unforgiving: change any ingredient's proportion by a quarter ounce and the balance breaks. The scotch must be blended, not single-malt: a peated single-malt overwhelms the cherry.
