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After being teased with advance ads for over a month, we were finally able to get our hands on a bottle of RHUBY, Art In The Age’s newest liqueur. We sat down to try it out by itself first. I will say it’s not quite the sipping spirit that I found ROOT to be, mostly because it’s got a much more delicate flavor, so I could taste the neutral spirit coming through a bit. Once we started mixing it, however, it really started to shine. I was most impressed with the way it blended with bourbon and rye, really enjoying glasses of 1:1 RHUBY and Bulleit bourbon, which I expanded on a little in this one:

Common Sense
1 oz Buffalo Trace Bourbon
1 oz RHUBY liqueur
0.25 oz Grand Marnier
0.25 oz Cherry Heering
0.5 oz Vanilla Syrup

Shake ingredients well with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass and serve up with a maraschino cherry garnish.

NOTES: Pretty damn good. With the exception of the vanilla syrup failure, it balanced nicely. The first couple sips of the drink before the chemical vanilla ruined it were really enjoyable, and I might sound like a broken record here, but those cherries really improve EVERYTHING. I’m definitely going to revisit this one when we get some proper vanilla pods and make the syrup correctly.

Vanilla Syrup
I’m going to get it right out of the way in the beginning: the corner-cutting we did to get this done without a trip to the store was a big failure. The flavor was right for a minute or so, and it smelled fantastic, but imitation is really just that. We’re going to give it another shot with vanilla pods, and I’d even try it with real vanilla extract, but imitation was gross. It had a real chemical aftertaste that ruined drinks after a couple fingers.

6 oz water
6 oz sugar
1 oz Imitation Vanilla extract