The 100-Year-Old Cigar cocktail should be a modern classic

[JohnS]

The 100-Year-Old Cigar cocktail should be a modern classic

Story by M. Carrie Allan 

The 100-Year-Old Cigar cocktail should be a modern classic

A perpetually nosy kid, at 10 years old, I would snoop through our parents’ personal spaces, looking for secrets. What kind, I couldn’t say — caches of chocolate? Hidden birthday presents? Their secret superhero identities?

I never found the latter, but in our dad’s work desk, I did once happen across a little wooden box. I hadn’t thought of this moment in years, but immediately remembered it upon my first sniff of a cocktail called the 100-Year-Old Cigar. The aromatics stirred an intense recollection: sliding the heavy drawer open, unlatching the thin clasp on the box, spotting the cigars at the instant I smelled them, both fruity and vegetal, spicy, a slightly leathery funk that I wanted to keep breathing in.

The “smoking will kill you” message had taken good hold in the culture by the time I was old enough to be around smokers, so beyond a few teenage-rebellion-driven clove cigarettes, I never really saw the appeal. And yet that smell of fermented, dried tobacco has an incredible draw.

Apparently I’m not alone. Back in the late ‘00s, driven perhaps by the longtime association of drinking and smoking — our Rat Pack-inspired forebears figured, why stick with one vice when you can indulge in two at once? — some bartenders were trying to figure out how to get tobacco into cocktails.

Capturing those rich, earthy aromatics and flavors in liquid form is a tantalizing idea, and, if you try to use actual tobacco, a really bad one. A number of drinks writers (myself included) have covered why putting tobacco in drinks is dangerous, but it’s worth repeating: Nicotine is a poison, dangerous in surprisingly small doses, and the amount you get from infusing dried tobacco into alcohol is very difficult to control and can be significantly greater than what you get from smoking a cigarette.

(And before you light up that comment section, yes, I’m aware that alcohol is also a carcinogen. Should you choose to eschew it completely, I salute your virtue! You’ll never see me making any claims that cocktails are good for you, and … it’s also true that your standard drink is far less likely to prompt a cardiac event than a cocktail containing a heart-punching dose of nicotine.)

But the 100-Year-Old Cigar is a different story.

I came across this perfect liquid stogie — containing zero tobacco — in a spot I wouldn’t have expected: on social media. Generally, I’m skeptical that what #Drinkstagram and #DrinkTok offer cocktails will have much staying power: the Dirty Shirley, the drinks peacocking do-it-for-the-‘gram garnishes better consumed by eye than by mouth, the infusions of candy into vodka, that stretch where everyone seemed to be putting pickles into Margaritas and parmesan cheese on their espresso martinis.

Such gripes, I know, are the equivalent of inserting a chyron that will scroll beneath me as I go about my day: “Drinks writer, over 40, struggles with a changing media landscape.” Come on in, the water’s tepid! As long as we’re here, if influencers could stop click-baiting us by taking a bite of their 20-ingredient salads, widening their eyes and nodding so enthusiastically that I suspect “TikTokNeck” will become a mysteriously ubiquitous health issue around the year these kids hit 45, that would be greaaaat.

That said, one of the creators I tend to trust — his role in the viral cheese-topped espresso martini notwithstanding — is Jordan Hughes, a former pastor turned drinks influencer and photographer, who goes by the handle @highproofpreacher. Hughes is genuinely knowledgeable, with an approach to cocktail culture that strikes my sweet spot: He’s both appreciative and gently sardonic. He also takes, and teaches others how to capture, gorgeous drink pictures; as much as I dislike how social media tends to drive obsession with flash over substance, I’m a sucker for a great citrus oil expression.

So when Hughes posted about the 100-Year-Old Cigar, and said it would be in his top three list — Top three! Out of all the cocktails! In the world! — I paid attention. As Hughes emailed me, the drink “is one of those cocktails where you read all the ingredients, which are all tasty things … but it’s a bit of a mystery of how they would all taste together. It’s a ‘you just have to taste it’ situation.”

When I noticed that the drink was created by Maks Pazuniak, I was further intrigued: In 2009, Pazuniak and Kirk Estopinal released a book called “Rogue Cocktails” (later revised as "Beta Cocktails), based on drinks they had developed while working at Cure in New Orleans. It was an influential book, presenting unusual cocktail builds based on unexpected, often bitter-forward ingredients, spawning interest in modern classics such as the Gunshop Fizz, the Art of Choke, and the Salt and Ash.

Pazuniak, who’s had a varied career ranging from commercial real estate to bartending to app development, created the 100-Year-Old Cigar while working at the now-shuttered Counting Room in Brooklyn and carried it on to his work at Jupiter Disco, a cocktail bar in Brooklyn. He didn’t start out aiming for a cigar profile. He says he just started playing with the Guatemalan rum Zacapa No. 23 and the Laphroaig — intrigued by how the rich, vanilla-forward cane spirit would play with the aggressively smoky Scotch whisky — adding his favorite amaro and more richness via herbal Bénédictine.

“And when I tasted it, I was like, this is sick!” he recalls. “It had this cigar vibe to it that I really liked, and with the funk from the rum and the Laphroaig, it gave it almost a fermented feeling, like something that had been in the ground for a while.”

For those who like their drinks rich and complex, this is a showstopper, a non-tiki/tropical example of how complex a rum cocktail can be. It deserves more awareness. Some drinks with a lot of ingredients can get muddy, but here, everything in the glass — the barreled rum; the vegetal, caramelly Cynar amaro; the herbal liqueur; and the tiny but critical doses of bitters, absinthe and peaty whisky, adding a hint of smolder — plays a critical role, a masterful balancing act.

As not only a cocktail- but a word-lover, I must note that it’s also a drink that is perfectly served by its name. Yes, the way the ingredients work together genuinely called to mind those cigars hidden away in my dad’s desk, creating the memory of tobacco aromatics — but I was also primed for it, the name employing power of suggestion so that my brain was ready to experience a 100-Year-Old Cigar and conjure a moment I had otherwise forgotten. Drink makers, remember: You may not be able to judge a book by its cover, but you can sure sell a drink by its name.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2025/03/20/100-year-old-cigar-cocktail/

[JohnS]

(Scott Suchman for The Washington Post/food styling by Carolyn Robb for The Washington Post)

100-Year-Old Cigar Cocktail Recipe

By M. Carrie Allan

This complex, spirit-forward cocktail combines aged rum, herbal liqueurs and just a touch of peated Scotch whisky to evoke the fruit and smoke of a fine cigar.

It was created by bartender Maks Pazuniak at Jupiter Disco, a cocktail bar in Brooklyn, and is an ideal cocktail for anyone who loves stirred, brown spirit-focused drinks.

Adapted from bartender Maks Pazuniak’s recipe in “Brooklyn Bartender: A Modern Guide to Cocktails and Spirits” by Carey Jones (Black Dog and Leventhal, 2016).

Ingredients

measuring cup

Servings: 1 (makes 1 drink)

• 1 3/4 ounces aged rum, preferably Ron Zacapa No. 23
• 1/2 ounce Cynar
• 1/2 ounce Bénédictine
• 1/4 ounce Islay Scotch whisky, preferably Laphroaig 10-Year
• 1 dash Angostura bitters
• 1/4 ounce absinthe

Directions

Total: 5 mins

1. Step 1

   Chill a coupe or Nick and Nora glass in the freezer for 5 minutes.

2. Step 2

   Fill a mixing glass with ice. Add the rum, Cynar, Bénédictine, whisky and bitters, and stir to chill and dilute, about 20 seconds. Spritz or rinse the chilled glass with the absinthe, discarding any excess. Strain the cocktail into the absinthe-rinsed glass and serve immediately.

Adapted from bartender Maks Pazuniak’s recipe in “Brooklyn Bartender: A Modern Guide to Cocktails and Spirits” by Carey Jones (Black Dog and Leventhal, 2016).

Tested by M. Carrie Allan.

Published March 19, 2025

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/recipes/100-year-old-cigar-cocktail/

[riderpride]

Interesting - sounds like I have some shopping to do.

Cheers!

[westg]

Sounds pretty good to me.

[Cestis4]

Definitely want to try this!

[KRunch61]

Well written, John, and VERY intriguing!👍

[JohnS]

  On 3/30/2025 at 11:50 PM, KRunch61 said:

Well written, John, and VERY intriguing!👍

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Believe it or not, this is from the Washington Post. I agree, it is well written! 👍