A Pair of Rye-Apple Brandy Cocktails

Use the same split base to make two different drinks.

In last week’s newsletter, we covered two different ways to build a Pumpkin Spice Old Fashioned — one with a conventional single-spirit base of bourbon, the other with a two-part split base of Laird’s Apple Brandy and aged demerara rum. 

We’ve looked at some split base drinks before (and I’ve argued that some four-equal-parts classics are actually just split-base cocktails). But today I want to delve a little further, examining two different split base cocktails that use the exact same base — an equal split of Rittenhouse Rye and Laird’s Straight Apple Brandy — in different cocktail formats. 

Both of these drinks are relatively easy to make: They use spirits we’ve already dealt with in this newsletter, and they don’t require significant preparation. You’ll have to separate an egg, and you’ll need to make some quick syrups if you don’t already have them around, but other than that, these are relatively low-effort drinks. They’re good illustrations of how split-base drinks can add complexity to conventional cocktail formats. They also demonstrate how the same split base can be used to create very different types of drinks. Importantly, they’re also quite tasty. 

All Your Base Are Belong to Us 

Before we look at the cocktails themselves, let’s refresh a little bit on what, exactly, the base of a cocktail is.