Vendome Club, Hollywood, 1933.
| 2 oz · 60 ml | BOURBON | 40 % |
| 1 oz · 30 ml | GRAPEFRUIT JUICE | |
| ½ oz · 15 ml | HONEY SYRUP |
1 oz taken as 30 ml in the metric column.
1 oz taken as 30 ml in the metric column.
| Pre-batch | 3.5 oz mixed with ice, 0.8 oz of it pure alcohol |
|---|---|
| Melt | Shaken: +20 % of the pre-batch, +0.7 oz of water |
| Served | 3.5 + 0.7 = 4.2 oz in the glass |
| Strength | 0.8 ÷ 4.2 = 19.0 % ABV as served |
| Ethanol | 0.8 oz × 29.57 ml × 0.789 g/ml = 19 g · about 131 kcal from the alcohol alone |
FROM BOURBON · 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 GRAPEFRUIT · 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 HONEY · the rose-honey aroma
The rose aroma: exactly the molecule that gives rose petals their scent, and one that yeast produces during slow fermentation. Mead, sweet wines, and certain Belgian ales carry it; a sherry that smells of honey and roses is leaning on phenylethanol. Industrial perfumery uses synthesized 2-PE because rose absolute costs more than gold by weight.
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Bourbon, grapefruit and honey. D-limonene from grapefruit wraps the bourbon's vanillin, and honey's mixed-sugar load provides the structural sweetness without the one-note quality of simple syrup. Named for the Hollywood restaurant in Los Angeles.
Named for the Brown Derby, the Los Angeles restaurant whose Wilshire Boulevard original was shaped like a hat; the drink is credited to the Vendome Club, a separate Hollywood nightspot, and was printed in the 1933 booklet Hollywood Cocktails. The grapefruit-bourbon combination was unusual at the time; the modern revival came through David Wondrich's writing in the early 2000s. Honey syrup is the canonical sweetener; simple syrup is a downgrade.
