How to make the Army & Navy cocktail

Army & Navy Cocktail

60ml Star of Bombay
25ml lemon juice
15ml orgeat
3 dashes of bitters

Shake all ingredients and strain into a chilled glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

How can you make a drink that tastes complex, but doesn’t end up less than the sum of its parts?

Story by Sam Bygrave
Photography by Christopher Pearce
Presented by Mike Enright, The Barber Shop, Sydney
In association with Star of Bombay

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It’s not uncommon to see newer bartenders throwing a number of different ingredients into their cocktail creations to come up with something new, some different taste sensation — something never done before. That’s the great thing about youth, you don’t really pay heed to everything that has come before you, you’re not beholden to any one particular way of doing things. You experiment, you try new things.

It’s just that there’s been generations of bartenders who’ve come before you and done exactly the same thing. And they’ve made the same mistakes.

And if it’s a complex drink you want to make, there’s an old way of doing it that has stood the test of time: keep the number of ingredients minimal, and employ complex ingredients.

Gin is a wonderfully complex spirit.

That’s why, paired with orgeat, the Army & Navy is a great drink. It’s got a simple four parts strong, two parts sour, one part sweet ratio (or, depending on the spec, thereabouts). What gives the drink complexity is the botanicals of the gin (we’ve used the new 47.5% ABV Star of Bombay here), and the almond and floral character of the orgeat.

The drink first appeared in David A. Embury’s 1948 book, The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, and though it appears there’s no substantiated connection with the US armed forces, the Army & Navy shares something in common with a drink that Washington’s Army and Navy Club helped to popularise: the Daiquiri.

What’s the connection? They’re both members of the Sour family, and they’re both delicious. It’s just that the Army & Navy Cocktail, well, it could be said it’s a little more complex.

Notes on ingredients
Star of Bombay’s 12 botanicals are juniper, coriander, lemon peel, orris, angelica, almonds, liquorice, cassia bark, cubeb berries, grains of paradise, bergamot and ambrette seeds.

They use a slower vapour infusion process, which gives the final spirit a greater concentration of flavour. This is reinforced by it being bottled at 47.5% ABV.

The Star of Bombay comes in a 700ml bottle, is made at their Laverstoke Mill distillery and is based on a recipe from 1761.
Distibuted through Bacardi Lion.