Archangel

The aughts were the heyday of New York’s Milk and Honey, arguably among the most influential of that decade’s influential speakeasies. Born around 2006 in the dimly lit Lower East Side cocktail bar, the Archangel was the brainchild of bartenders Michael McIlroy and Richard Boccatto. While never as widely lauded as drinks like the Penicillin, this cocktail was passed from bar to bar as an underground back pocket drink by some of those years' most skilled bartenders.

You don’t find much cucumber in the classics, but you certainly did in some of the less classically-driven drinks of the cocktail revival. So in its way the Archangel represented a bridge from the more formally centered Milk and Honey style to a more modern outlook. The drink resembles many martinis in proportion, and to an extent can be thought of as one, but it forgoes dry vermouth for lower-alcohol Aperol. This mildly bitter aperitif provides a splash of fruity orange and rhubarb flavor. Brightened and complicated by green cucumber, the Archangel is nothing if not unique yet can be made with only a minimally stocked home bar.

A quick note: I’d recommend double straining any cocktail with muddled fruit or veggies in it. What that means is that in addition to the julep cocktail strainer that most people use with a mixing glass (or Hawthorne strainer if that’s what you have on hand), get yourself a handheld tea strainer to fine-strain the little juicy bits of cucumber out. Hold the julep or Hawthorne strainer over the mixing glass as you pour, then direct the liquid through the fine-mesh strainer before it goes into the glass. Pulp is okay in orange juice but terrible in most cocktails. —Al Sotack

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