All Work and No Play Recipe
All Work and No Play Ingredients
2 oz. / 60 ml Jack Daniel's Bonded
.75 oz. / 22 ml Sweet Vermouth (I used Carpano Antica Formula)
2 dashes Angostura Bitters
.5 oz. / 15 ml Cherry Heering
Absinthe, 3 or 4 sprays from an atomizer, or a rinse
A pinch of maple wood chips for the cocktail smoker
How to make an All Work and No Play
Spray the inside of a rocks glass with absinthe, three or four sprays from an atomizer. If you don't have one, pour in a quarter ounce, swirl it to coat the glass and dump it.
Stir the Jack Daniel's, sweet vermouth and Angostura with ice for 20 to 25 seconds. Strain over one large clear ice sphere in the sprayed glass.
Smoke it: set a skull cocktail smoker on the glass with a pinch of maple wood chips, torch the chips until the glass fills, and lift the skull off once the smoke starts leaking out of it. Any cocktail smoker works; the skull is for October.
Last, pour the Cherry Heering slowly down the inside of the glass, or over the back of a bar spoon held against the ice. It falls through the drink and settles in a red layer at the bottom. Don't stir it. The first sip is whiskey and vermouth with anise on the nose. Give it a stir and the cherry comes up from the bottom and the whole thing goes darker. No garnish. The red is the garnish.
Whiskey: Jack Daniel's Bonded is the point of the drink, and at 100 proof it holds up against the vermouth and the Heering. Old No. 7 at 80 proof gets lost. If you can't find Bonded, Jack Daniel's Single Barrel or any 100 proof rye works.
Absinthe: anything you have, it's a rinse. Absente, Herbsaint or a pastis all do the job.
Cherry Heering: the Danish cherry liqueur, dark and heavy enough to sink. Luxardo Sangue Morlacco is the backup. A maraschino liqueur is clear and won't sink.
Ice: one big clear sphere or cube. It keeps the Heering layer intact longer than small ice does, and it's what Lloyd would use.
All Work and No Play is a Shining cocktail built on the whiskey Lloyd actually pours. Jack Torrance orders bourbon in the Gold Room, Lloyd sets up a bottle of Jack Daniel's, and that's the base here: Jack Daniel's Bonded, 100 proof, with sweet vermouth and a spray of absinthe for the ghosts. Underneath it's a Remember the Maine, a 1930s drink of rye, sweet vermouth, Cherry Heering and absinthe that Charles H. Baker wrote down in Havana. I swapped in the Jack Daniel's and kept the Maine, because Stephen King is from Portland, Maine.
The Cherry Heering goes in last, poured slowly down the side of the glass so it sinks and settles in a red layer at the bottom. Stir it when you want the drink to change. The glass gets smoked with maple chips before the pour, because before Jack Daniel's goes in a barrel it drips through ten feet of sugar maple charcoal. That's the whole reason it's called Tennessee whiskey instead of bourbon.
I made it for the Gnome's Halloween livestream on Gnome's Tavern, where he'd made his own Shining drink the week before and nearly used the Jack Daniel's.
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