A Surprising, Vegetal Riff on the Bamboo

Sherry and vermouth and...celery bitters? Yes. Celery bitters.

In last week’s newsletter, we looked at a series of related drinks that combine sherry with some other fortified wine.

In the Bamboo, dry sherry is paired with dry vermouth for something like a sherry Martini. In the Adonis, dry sherry is paired with sweet vermouth for something a little more like a sherry Manhattan. 

My essential argument was that once you grasp the basic fortified wine-on-fortified underpinnings of this essential low-ABV structure, you can riff and iterate and modify to your low-proof delight, swapping and substituting and splitting portions in whatever way strikes your fancy. 

As an addendum, then, let me demonstrate with yet another example, a cocktail that essentially splits the difference between the Bamboo and the Adonis, combining sherry with both dry and sweet vermouth, plus a final, seemingly small, modifying ingredient that subtly but radically reshapes the entire enterprise. 

The drink is Washington, D.C., bartender Derek Brown’s Bamboo Shoot, which can be found in Mindful Mixology, his excellent book on low and no-ABV drinks. 

In addition to dry and sweet vermouth, plus the orange and aromatic bitters usually found in a Bamboo, Brown adds a single dash of celery bitters. I used Bittermens Orchard Street Celery Shrub, but Miracle Mile and Bitter Truth make excellent bottles as well. 

The result is a grassy, vegetal, delicately complex concoction that recasts the Bamboo-style cocktail in a whole new light. 

With a combination of dry sherry and dry vermouth, the classic Bamboo is, of course, naturally dry, which is why, as I noted last week, most modern bartenders have added some sort of sweetening, softening ingredient — like syrup or blanc vermouth. In Brown’s drink, the sweet vermouth plays that role. But the celery bitters pull the drink back toward, if not dryness, exactly, then a sort of earthy, lightly bitter flavor profile. The Bamboo Shoot brings to mind a lightly dressed, garden-fresh arugula salad with walnuts and microgreens. It’s unusual, unexpected, and shockingly good. 

With its distinctive and delightful nutty-dry-vegetal flavor profile, this drink makes the case for…

• Low-ABV, sherry-forward cocktails, which are sometimes viewed as lesser, low-proof compromises, but offer flavor combos that high-proof drinks can’t achieve. A drink like the Bamboo Shoot is more evidence that wine-on-wine, low-proof drinks are not compromises, but high-value players in your cocktail lineup.

• Bitters maximalism, and unusual bottles of bitters as an easy, relatively low-cost way for home bartenders to add distinctive flavors to their cocktails. You might think you’ll never use celery bitters in another drink, but they’re surprisingly useful for adding grassy notes to cocktails. Indeed, I plan to feature celery bitters in at least one more drink this year. 

Here’s the recipe: 

Bamboo Shoot

• 1 dash Angostura Aromatic Bitters

• 1 dash orange bitters (Regan’s)

• 1 dash celery bitters (Bittermens)

• ¾ ounce sweet vermouth (Cocchi di Torino)

• ¾ ounce dry vermouth (Dolin)

• 1 ½ ounce amontillado sherry (Lustau or Hidalgo preferred)

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass. 

2. Add ice, then stir until chilled. 

3. Strain into a coupe or Nick & Nora glass. 

(Brown’s version calls for a garnish of celery leaves, which I’ve left out for the sake of simplicity.)

Very Large Dogs Who Do, In Fact, Enjoy Arugula (It’s Weird)