"Our friends may be here...It was that thought that led us to Castle Oblivion, where cards rule all." - From Jiminy’s Journal in Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories

Inspiration

Castle Oblivion, the setting for Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories is a space between worlds. Not much is obvious about this locale aside from the characters that lie within and the stories that, once experienced, may soon be forgotten. Our namesake drink for Castle Oblivion takes the form of a layered shot with alternating layers of minty green and floral purple. It resembles the castle’s outer appearance and takes inspiration from what lies within.

Workshopping

Castle Oblivion was a pretty tough drink to come up with inspiration for mostly because there isn’t much that is revealed about Castle Oblivion in Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories. What we do know is that it’s been taken over by Organization XIII where Naminé is kept captive. On the outside, Castle Oblivion appears to be convoluted in appearance with a number of pointed green steeples jutting out in every direction. Looking at this castle, my only thought was “That castle just screams mint”. So, that’s where the workshopping begins.

“That Castle Just Screams Mint”

That’s what I thought! Just look at it! (photo reference) In my opinion, it looks like every steeple on the castle is a mint leaf just protruding towards wherever the sun shines from between the Realm of Light and the Realm of Darkness.  I’ve had this bottle of mint chocolate chip cream liqueur behind my XBar for quite a while and its mint green hue felt to me like a good place to start

Having already experimented with density and layering with both Naminé’s drink and Replica Riku’s drink I started with determining whether this liqueur floated. It sunk to the bottom of a shot of vodka, soda water, and sweet liqueur (I tested with sloe gin). Conclusion: it’s a sinker. Cool for layering if the ground were minty green, but it’s the roofs that are green! Well, when I mixed the liqueur with the sloe gin, it began to curdle a bit. Okay, maybe I try clarifying it next.

So clarify I did. I added a bit of lemon super juice to the liqueur and in about an hour, most of the opaqueness was gone. Oddly enough, the resulting liquid did have a slightly green tint to it, and it sort of tasted like a mojito.

Clarified Mint Chocolate Chip Cream Liqueur Recipe

• 2 oz (59 ml) Mint Chocolate Chip Cream Liqueur (Ole Smoky)

• 0.25 oz (7 ml) Lemon Super Juice

Yield: 50% (1.125 oz - 33.2 ml)

Where to go from here?

Memory Pods

Deep inside Castle Oblivion, we find at the end of Sora’s story that there are a number of pod-shaped machines that will help Naminé restore Sora, Donald, and Goofy’s memories. Interestingly enough, these machines have a striking resemblance to a lotus flower as it opens and closes. It appears to “bloom” and unfurl its petal-like walls to allow Sora for instance to walk inside before it closes him in. This gave me the idea to add a floral component to Castle Oblivion’s drink. That’s something!

Now, I don’t have access to anything that is flavored like lotus, or even lotus itself. However, I do have two floral liqueurs, one flavored with rose (a liqueur local to Connecticut) and one flavored like violets (good ol’ creme de violette). Going back to my visual references, the image of Castle Oblivion appears to be surrounded by a dark purple and blue miasma. I think this is supposed to be the space in between worlds. I dig it! So I opted for the purple creme de violette liqueur.

On a whim, I used a dropper to add some creme de violette to the clarified mint liqueur from earlier (I tend to use droppers or teaspoons when workshopping to conserve spirits). To my surprise, the creme de violette floated on top of the clarified liqueur. I took a taste of the two together and was really pleased with the bittersweet, flowery mint flavor. Now there’s an idea!

Having already clarified the mint chocolate creme to a transparent green color, I thought that perhaps I could make a transparent purple solution by adding creme de violette to a bit of milk and clarifying that. This clarification came out completely colorless! Not something I’ll use here, but might be useful in the future.

Clarified Creme de Violette Recipe

• 1 oz (30 ml) Creme de Violette (Giffard)

• 1 oz (30 ml) Whole Milk

• 0.25 oz (7 ml) Lemon Super Juice

Yield: 66% (1.5 oz - 44 ml)

A Many Layered Castle

My first impression of the creme de violette and clarified mint liqueur from earlier was that they tasted well together and they layered pretty nicely. The creme de violette floats on top of the clarified mint liqueur. As I was workshopping, my Dearest came to visit and questioned why I was putting in so much work for layering the two spirits. I couldn’t come up with a good answer so I opted to show her what would happen if I put the creme de violette on top of the unclarified mint cream liqueur. What happened surprised me, but did not surprise my partner. The creme de violette sunk below the mint cream liqueur. I was surprised because I had just seen the opposite occur with the clarified liqueur. She was not surprised because creams tend to be lighter than spirits due to their fat content.

I had really fallen in love with the tart mint flavor of the clarified liqueur since it did include the lemon super juice. If I didn’t have the juice, then the balancing sourness would disappear. Since the unclarified version floats above the creme de violette, and the clarified version sinks below, I now had the means to keep both flavors within the same glass without any undo curdling. Genius!!

That’s a Shot, Not a Cocktail…

Yup, I totally agree with you. As I’ve mixed things up behind my XBar the last year or so, I’ve been dancing around this idea of what recipes we do or do not decide to publish. The premise of Castle Oblivion being a shot isn’t that far removed from the lore of the game. The way I see it, Sora’s memories of his time in Castle Oblivion are there for a brief moment, and then they’re gone, sort of like a shot. The layers of the drink correspond to the varying floors in Castle Oblivion: the basement levels, the upper levels, and then I suppose the interstitial spaces between. That, and visually the shot shares some color cues. I’ll take it as a solid implementation. Think you can do it better? I’ll see you in our Discord server.

Printable Card Garnish

For each of the Chain of Memories-themed drinks, we created a couple of cards reminiscent of the ones seen in the game! Feel free to snag the printable sheet here (printable cards link) if you'd like to print your own. 

Flavor Analysis

A bitter and floral shot with the residual flavors of a tart mint.