Dandy

One of my favorite cocktails is the Dandy, as reported in Eric Felten's How's Your Drink? at p. 67. Here are the ingredients:

1.5 oz. rye or bourbon
1.5 oz. Dubonnet rouge
.5 oz. Cointreau
1 dash Angostura bitters
lemon and orange peels

Shake with ice, strain into chilled cocktail glass.

Felten assigns this as a forgotten classic, and I must agree. It's every bit as good as a Manhattan in my opinion; the orange and lemon peels in the shaker really add an exciting taste.

I've made it the last two nights, once with bourbon (Evan Williams) and once with rye (Jim Beam). Cointreau is not present in my cabinet at the moment, so triple sec had to sub for it. When I tried it with the bourbon, it was the first time; I think I had used rye every other time. I wasn't sure it would be as good with the triple sec. There's an amazing amount of difference between Cointreau and ordinary triple sec, considering they're functionally the same thing. But no, the bourbon version was not just good, but excellent. The rye version definitely suffers from the lack of Cointreau. It's pleasant, but uninspired.

Admittedly, Jim Beam rye is not all that one could wish; it's ok, and certainly better than their bourbon, but Michigan's socialistic and arbitrary liquor control commission does not provide many ryes. One can obtain Jim Beam at a reasonable price; Wild Turkey at a higher proof is a bit more (I find the higher proof in that particular whiskey off-putting, although the Wild Turkey tastes good); Sazerac is the next grade up. My experience with the Sazerac is that it wasn't so much better than the cheaper ryes as to justify the cost. Michigan also has Rittenhouse - but not the regular stuff, which I gather from reviews is very highly regarded and highly affordable, only a super-premium aged variety that is from my perspective absurdly expensive. And that's it as far as I know.

So my advice would be to use the bourbon for this one unless you have Cointreau handy. Also, perhaps I should mention that while in my opinion Lillet rouge is often a better choice than Dubonnet (I am a heretic on this point, I believe), only Dubonnet will do for the Dandy. Lillet just doesn't work in this case.