Wyomingites have a couple of new and unique cocktails to add to their rotation of fun, unique drinks they can offer guests.
Several of the distillers participating in this week’s Wyoming Governor’s Hospitality and Tourism Conference were challenged to use their one-of-a-kind spirits to make either a new cocktail or a new bloody mary.
During a break on on Monday and Tuesday of the three-day conference, participants were given small samples of the new concoctions, and then invited to vote for their favorites.
Old Faithful, Not Old-Fashioned
Casper’s Backwards Distilling was the crowd favorite with its creation, which took an old-fashioned whiskey sour and made it new with a few modern twists.
The drink, which has a few secret ingredients that weren’t shared, is essentially a tart cherry whiskey sour, topped with cotton candy steam for a cool visual effect and a smoked salt rim.
The overall effect was like abstract art and had quite a few people smiling.
Mallory Pollack came up with the cocktail by reading old historical newspaper articles written the same year that Old Faithful, Yellowstone National Park’s famous geyser, got its name.
Turns out whiskey sours were popular at the time.
“Whiskey sours are a drink that we do at our tasting room all the time,” she said. “It’s a drink that I really like with our product. So when I found out that was, you know, kind of from the same era, I knew it would be really good with our whiskey.”
Make Room For Dirty Charlotte
Winning the best bloody mary, meanwhile, was none other than Wyoming Whiskey, which celebrated its 10-year anniversary in November.
Its recipe is essentially a classic bloody mary, but, instead of vodka, Amanda Moeller used Wyoming Whiskey’s maple finish bourbon to top off the drink.
Making a bloody mary is old hat for Moeller, who was a bartender and has made that drink for years.
“Our twist is really just the maple finish bourbon, which you can only buy at the Wyoming Whiskey store,” she said.
There’s A Story Behind The Name
While Moeller’s recipe isn’t a secret, the name of the cocktail does have a little story behind it.
“We have an older lady who works with us, and she’s 76,” Wyoming Whiskey’s Nichole Martens explained. “She’s been with Wyoming Whiskey for eight years now. She used to be a tour guide and her name is Charlotte.”
It was Moeller’s idea to call the drink Dirty Charlotte, in her honor.
“We asked Char for her permission, and she immediately said yes,” Martens said. “She was very giddy about it, and so that’s what we did.”
No telling how giddy Charlotte will be now that her namesake was voted Wyoming’s best bloody mary at the Tourism and Hospitality Conference.
Maybe she’ll have to drink one — or maybe even two — Dirty Charlottes, to celebrate.
