Charles Joly, the chief mixologist at the acclaimed Drawing Room in Chicago, had never heard of Purim’s obligation to drink “until one cannot tell the difference between ‘blessed is Mordechai’ and ‘cursed is Hamen.’ ” When we asked him to design a few drinks for what he delightedly called “the Jewish drinking holiday,” he jumped into the task, reading up on the festival and asking Jewish friends to help.
“The thing that kept coming up were these Jelly-filled cookies [Hamentashn]. Jam is something Midwestern bartenders use in cocktails quite a bit. We have to make cocktails delicious, right now, and if you are in a climate like this where nothing’s growing, we lean towards Jam and Jelly.”
Joly adapted this drink from The Ethel, an ode to the eponymous still at the North Shore distillery run by Sonja and Derek Kassebaum.
