Inspiration

Of all the star drinks that emblazon the landscape of cocktail mixology, none takes the stage so openly as the porn star martini. Don't be alarmed! This drink we drew inspiration on does not promote itself in any promiscuous or otherwise provocative ways (to my knowledge). However, it does boast a number of flavors that I thought would be a great jumping-off point for our own Supernova cocktail (AKA The Crystal Star Martini).

Workshopping

My first thought was to try and create a normal porn star martini (which traditionally uses flavors of lime, passion fruit, and vanilla chased with a bubbly wine). As I pondered about this implementation, cocktail extraordinaire Kevin Kos actually did a video on just the subject. So I'll let him take it from there!

Instead, I decided to create my own inspired riff that uses a bottle of Don Q Pasión (a passion fruit rum) that the XBar received from a generous Puerto Rican friend. I took my first look into the Flavor Matrix book that suggested tropical flavors like passion fruit go well with a number of flavors including black currant. I tried a combo of the Pasión and crème de cassis, and it really wasn't bad, but the color was all wrong. I wanted to keep things as clear as could be to create a drink that looks like the star.

Turning my attention in another direction, it struck me that the OG porn star martini is paired with several vanilla ingredients. What if I took some vanilla syrup and added it? Nah, too similar to the original. What about something that tastes vanilla-like?

Aged Spirits

An oak barrel's impartment to a spirit's flavor development is often described as vanilla-like. I turned my attention to try and pair the passion fruit rum with flavors from a number of aged spirits in the XBar's bottle collection. Many of the bourbon bottles are just too dark, and this includes the brandies and cognacs. One bottle had a very light hue to it and had an age requirement that convinced me that it had spent 'enough' time in oak to impart that vanilla-like flavor that I was searching for. A bottle of Patrón reposado tequila beckoned to me (I had purchased this for my tequila-loving mother who decided to let me keep the bottle).

Mixing with a little bit of this gave just the right amount of spice to pair with the light sweetness from the passion fruit rum, but there was something else missing. The reposado tequila gave a lot of notes of vegetal agave that just wasn't gelling with the rest of the mix. Not to mention the whole gambit still felt too flat!

"Well, the passion fruit rum has a rum base...", I thought. Do I add rum to the mix? What about something a little more expressive?

Balancing

I'll admit I took a leap of faith here and grabbed a bottle of cachaça which in the past has tasted like funky, ripe bananas. I'm not totally off base with this. Cachaça and rum can be quite similar, however, the former tends to be distilled from sugar cane juice while the latter from molasses. The almost caramelized banana notes from the cachaça worked well to pair with the slight vegetal and vanilla notes of the tequila. Combined with the passion fruit rum, things almost seemed perfect, but one more dimension was missing. In the past, I'd played around with saline before, but adding even a little to this drink seemed to make the whole thing taste like salt. I went in for a bottle of celery bitters to bring on the savor and miss the saline, and it worked like a charm. Garnishing everything with a mint sprig didn't feel very on-point for the whole star motif we were going for, but sometimes you can't force a theme on something that doesn't need it. But if you really have to, then throw some edible sparkle (luster) dust in there to make the hues shine!

Flavor Analysis

The nose is potently cachaça-forward on those notes of ripe banana. We'd describe this cocktail as tasting like a "spicy leaf". Such a dry and rooty flavor is supported by the light notes of fruit from the passion fruit rum. It is not a sweet drink by any means. Instead the fruit expresses itself like a peel over a glass, in essence but not in full-flavor (if that made sense). Overall, it is a vegetal and slightly savory, spirit-forward experience that has a slight hint of smoke to it (thank you tequila).

Star Garnish

Opting instead for a star-like appearance (in the way that a star twinkles) this drink's star motif is gained by adding a sprinkle of edible glitter (AKA luster dust) to the cocktail. This dust will settle over time, but while it's suspended in solution, the drink refracts light in such a way as to appear almost polychromatic.