The latest cocktail menu at Sanctuaria reads like any normal craft cocktail bill of fare – that is, until you get to the ingredients listed for a drink called The Creature from the Black Lagoon: Koval Dark Wheat Whiskey, blue curacao, Cynar, Whiskey Barrel Bitters, votive candle. Votive candle?
We’ve seen a lot of cocktail menus, but we can’t remember a time when we’ve encountered a drink that includes an inedible ingredient as part of the recipe. So is the flickering candlelight actually incorporated into the cocktail? Well, sort of. Order this funky creature and the bartender will place a lit votive candle directly behind the martini glass. Look down into the glass and you’ll see blackish-brown colors. But look from the side and the bottom half of the glass will be glowing green. “We decided to use the candle because the colors that come through the drink are bizarre. We wanted to highlight that,” explained bartender Ryan Wilmsmeier, creator of The Creature from the Black Lagoon. The candle-enhancing effect was discovered quite by chance, as there was a lit candle at the bar when Sanctuaria’s bar team was testing cocktails for the summer menu.
As far as taste goes, this all-booze drink is fairly heavy on cinnamon, but an orangey flavor from the Cynar “smooths everything out,” noted Wilmsmeier. The aged whiskey, which sports Chicago-based distiller Koval’s Lion’s Pride label, is brand new to St. Louis and is appearing on the shelves at quite a few bars around town.
This article appears in Jul 1-31, 2011.