The One Ingredient Hot Toddy

All you need is one bottle! And some hot water.

A bit of housekeeping: This week, I had the pleasure of appearing on the Charles C.W. Cooke podcast. We talked about cocktails — what they are, why they matter, my own personal cocktail journey, and much more. At the very end, Cooke asked me for my all-time, top-five, desert island cocktails, High Fidelity style. I wasn’t prepared for this question, so I had to wing it, making the list in real time. I reserve the right to change my answers in the future. But I’m pretty happy with my five choices, and the drinks I mentioned can be found in the archives of this newsletter.

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Spirit.

Sugar.

Bitters and/or spice. 

For more than 200 years, these have been the fundamental elements of the cocktail. 

You can find them straightforwardly in the Old Fashioned, the Manhattan, the Negroni. But this overarching three-part structure — in which a spirit is balanced by two other contrasting elements — repeats over and over again throughout the cocktail universe in drinks well-known and obscure: The Daiquiri, for example, is not a spirit-sugar-bitters combo, but it is a spirit-sugar-sour combination that balances sweet and sour in much the same way that the Old Fashioned and the Negroni balance sweet and bitter. Most basic sours (the Whiskey Sour, the Gimlet, etc.) work the same way. 

In most cases, you need three ingredients to obtain this trifecta — whiskey, syrup, and aromatic bitters, for example, in an Old Fashioned. But on a purely conceptual level, it should be possible to combine all of these elements together into a single bottle, a single spirit that captures the three-part arc of a cocktail without any additional elements. 

As it turns out, this isn’t just a hypothetical.

There is, in fact, a bottle that meets all of these criteria. (Actually, there are quite a few.) But today, we are going to look at one in particular. 

Let’s back up a little bit. Since the beginning of the year, we’ve been observing Hot January,¹ a celebration of hot cocktails, all of which are some sort of variation on the Hot Toddy. The Hot Toddy, as we learned several weeks ago, is just an Old Fashioned with somewhat different proportions, thanks to the inclusion of a big pour of hot water. 

A basic Hot Toddy is very easy to make. I like mine with rye whiskey, maple syrup, and bitters. But you can simplify the process even further with a single spirit that captures all the core elements. 

That spirit is Benedictine, the sweet-herbal liqueur that has been kicking around for hundreds of years and is now a staple of classic cocktails like the Viuex Carré and the Monte Carlo. Benedictine is an essential element in just about every home bar. 

So today, we’re going to close out Hot January with a ludicrously simple Benedictine Toddy — better known as a Benny & Hot. And then a the end, we’ll look at yet another easy way to incorporate Benedictine into the hot cocktail format. 

Bennie and the Jets

Look, it’s a one-ingredient cocktail — just Benedictine and hot water — so there’s not all that much to discuss recipe-wise. The main point of contention is about how much hot water to use. We’ll get to that in a bit. But for the most part, you just combine Benedictine and hot water in a pre-warmed mug or heat-safe glass, maybe add a wedge of lemon, then enjoy. That’s pretty much it.

But there is a good story associated with this drink.