Some people discover pencillin. Others spill battery acid and then somehow, suddenly, they’ve invented the phone. Me? I improvise Sazeracs with applejack brandy.

While riffling through my ever-beloved Difford’s Encyclopedia of Cocktails recently, I was stopped dead in my tracks by Simon Difford’s recipe for a Sazerac. Ask any goomba how to make a classic one and you’ll be told rye whiskey, bitters (Peychaud’s, sometimes Angostura too), a sugar cube, and an old-fashioned glass coated with absinthe. Well, that’s just not good enough for Monsieur Lord Simon Difford, Esq., Ph.D. VII…

I know I reference Simon’s namesake book a lot, and as a straight-up, serious-minded reference tome it practically cannot be beat. But I’m starting to think Simon Difford might be part peacock. He’s quite the fancy lad; you can tell from his recipe write-ups, with their ostentatious notations. Oftentimes he’ll call for “chilled mineral water (omit if wet ice)” which I will admit to you, my fellow peanut-gallery proletariats, I just don’t get. Is Simon McFoppishstein making his cocktails with dry ice? Does he live in a space colony?

Rather than rye, Master Simon’s Sazerac employs a mix of cognac and bourbon — cognac because Mr. Peychaud often mixed his eponymous bitters with brandy, and bourbon “as is more communally used to make this drink today.” (Um, no, Knight of OnePercentershire; us down here in Proleville use rye, not bourbon, and by the way, the word is commonly.)

Because I am a class warrior, I decided to take on Difford’s rococo Sazerac. (Never mind that I’ve yet to craft an actual — ahem, I’m sorry, communal — Sazerac for this blog.) Then I discovered gravity our cognac had been 86’d by a PhoBlograpHusband who’d taken to secret brandy nightcaps as of late. So I grabbed the neck of my next-closest bottle: Applejack brandy.

My new favorite way to describe bourbon-based cocktails is chewy, and the Applejack Saze-wack is like the freaking caramel nougat of bourbon-based cocktails: Mondo chewy. Nay, even rococo chewy. Freaking Baroque chewy. It’s absolutely delish — well-balanced, intriguing — and my new favorite mistake.

The Applejack Saze-wack

(A riff on Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, Ph.D.‘s Simon Difford’s Sazerac as found in his book on page 367)

2 ounces Laird’s Applejack Brandy

2 ounces Buffalo Trace bourbon

1 ounce Lucid absinthe

1 ounce simple syrup

3 dashes Peychaud’s bitters

3 dashes Angostura bitters

Combine brandy, bourbon, simple syrup and both bitters in an ice-filled cocktail shaker. Shake vigorously for about 20 seconds. Strain into a chilled, absinthe-coated highball, rocks or old-fashioned glass.

Tasting Notes

I will concede to Mr. Difford that his method for coating a glass with absinthe is preferable to the norm. Rather than rolling a splash of absinthe around the interior of a glass by hand, he simply fills the glass with ice, pours in his absinthe, then fills with cold water. (Or, as he insists upon, “chilled mineral water.”) Then he lets that stand while preparing the cocktail. In this way, you can chill and coat the glass at the same time. Point, Difford! En garde!