A LEAP YEAR COCKTAIL

LEAP YEAR

2 measures gin

½ measure Grand Marnier

½ measure sweet red vermouth

Dash of lemon juice

Lemon rind garnish

Ahhh… Leap Day. The day that demonstrates how hard it is to squeeze 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 16 seconds of a year – as measured by one trip around the sun – into a calendar with only 365 days. Leap Day was born around 46 BC when Julius Ceasar reformed the old Roman calendar. That messed up thing had been based on a lunar month. Ceasar changed the calendar to reflect a solar year, and without it we would have to add a whole month to the calendar every two or three years. How crazy would that be? 

Leap Day is also the day that put the 366 into Cocktail Connie’s 366. I had already hatched the plan for a cocktail-a-day blog when I figured out that the upcoming year was a Leap Year. That meant one extra day of drinking a cocktail. But it didn’t scare me off and I decided just to roll with it. It made my little project all that more unique.

It also allowed me to drink a cocktail called the LEAP YEAR — a great, if strong, drink. To make it, put the ingredients above into a shaker, fill it with ice, shake and strain into a martini glass. I then tried to add a twist of lemon using my new zester, but, as you can see by the picture, I need to work on my twisting.

Hubby really loved the LEAP YEAR and I did too, but it was a little too bold for my taste. It’s sweet and packs a wallop, but it still went down pretty easy. I couldn’t even taste the gin. The LEAP YEAR was my first cocktail with Grand Marnier, which is an orange liquor. It’s similar to Cointreau, but different enough that I couldn’t cheap out and use the Cointreau I already had on hand. Cocktailing is no time to be cheap. I have a feeling Mr. Ceasar would agree.

Drink Up^

Cocktail Connie