A French monk and a Chinese monk walk into a Tiki bar… Created for the February contest on /r/cocktails and my entry got 1st place! This time, the required ingredients were Bénédictine and tea. When I saw the required ingredients, I quickly realized there could be a theme of monks for my drink. Bénédictine was never truly made by monks, but the marketing is clearly geared to suggest that. Pu’er tea, however, is often associated with Chinese Buddhist monks. This might be my chance to finally use raw pu’er in a cocktail! If you haven’t heard of it, pu’er is a category of tea that has been fermented and usually pressed into large “cakes” wrapped loosely with paper so that it continues to age and develop over the months and years. There are two types: ripe (or shou) and raw (or sheng). Ripe pu’er is fermented in large piles in a hot, humid environment, creating an extremely earthy, deep, dark flavor, while raw pu’er is fermented and aged much more gradually. The flavor of sheng is fascinating yet elusive, but I always pick out dried stonefruit and a strong minerality not unlike that of mezcal. There is also a fair bit of gripping tannic bitterness, which I have grown to love. This particular sheng is from my favorite local tea shop in San Diego, Paru, and it has notes of pear and apple which I knew would work wonders in this drink, especially with the mild, fruity hogo of the Scarlet Ibis. That being said, use any sheng you want; it should work. I had a chuckle when I imagined a French and Chinese monk having a tropical drink together, so I named it the “Sabbatical.” The word comes from the Greek “sabbatikos,” meaning “of the sabbath.” Who’s to say this isn’t how a couple of monks would unwind on their day off?
Sabbatical
Ingredients
- 2 oz Rum Scarlet Ibis rum infused with sheng, raw pu'er tea
- ½ oz Bénédictine
- ¾ oz Lemon Juice
- ½ oz Orgeat
Garnish
- Lemon Wheel
- Nutmeg Grated
Instructions
- To infuse the rum, add 1 heaping tsp of sheng (raw) pu'er tea leaves to 2.5 oz of rum.
- Let it sit covered at room temperature for 90 minutes.
- Whip shake ingredients with pebble/crushed ice.
- Dump into double rocks glass.
- Fill with pebble/crushed ice.
Garnish
- Lemon wheel and grated nutmeg.
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