And when I was working on my cocktails notebook – a metal-covered Fallout 3 notebook I got at E3 – I saw a drink called the “Scofflaw”.  Thus, I had to make it.

Scofflaw
1 ounce Canadian Whiskey (I used Canadian Club)
1 ounce dry vermouth (typical Noilly Prat)
1/4 ounce lemon juice
dash of grenadine
dash of orange bitters
Stir with ice, garnish with a lemon wedge.

(Thanks to Robert Hess aka Drinkboy for the recipe.)

So I gathered upon my ingredients.

Having been reading earlier what the various proportions “double” to (or the such) when making a 1/3rd bigger Virginia Autumn (don’t ask), I knew that technically, a dash = 1/8 of an ounce.  Thus, I used:
2 ounces Canadian Club, 2 ounces Noilly Prat dry vermouth, 1/2 ounce lemon juice (squeezed from that lemon you see there), 1/4 of an ounce of Grenadine, and two generous dashes of Fee’s Orange Bitters.

It’s a surprisingly light drink.  It is strong; but the lemon and dry vermouth lighten it up and make it surprising tart.  In fact, the Canadian Club disappears almost completely behind the vermouth and lemon juice, making this taste kind of like a tart lemon drink.

I don’t know exactly what I think of it right now.  It’s not bad, per se – but it’s so lemon-y, and light, that I feel like I could stand possibly a bit more whiskey in the drink.

I might experiment with this – I’d be interested in seeing how turning it into 1 1/2 ounces of Canadian whiskey and 1/2 ounce of dry vermouth instead makes it, but that might not be the right move – but we’ll have to see.  If I get up the gumption to do so – and in all odds, I won’t, I’ll just continue working through my new notebook full of recipes I can make.

(Notebook, uh, note: I just wrote down all the recipes I can make and I give a crap about in a notebook, mostly from Drinkboy.com.  That means drinks with, say, Campari, aren’t in there yet – but when I get a bottle, I’ll add them in, I still have a lot of pages open.)