Inside the R&D Shift: Vol. 2
Updated: Aug 24
Three Classic Riffs, Three Different Directions
One of my favorite parts about weekly R&D is taking something recognizable and figuring out how far I can push it without completely losing the identity of the original cocktail.
Not every drink needs ten homemade ingredients or some crazy technique to be interesting.
Sometimes the better challenge is starting with a classic, understanding why it works, and then swapping spirits, modifiers, textures, and flavors while keeping the finished cocktail approachable.
This week I ended up developing three cocktails: a rum-driven Blood & Sand riff, a floral
Corpse Reviver No. 2 riff, and a very crushable Blue Hawaiian-inspired vodka cocktail.
Three completely different drinks, but all built around the same idea:
Respect the classic. Then make it your own.
🩸 REDRUM
A Blood & Sand Riff
The Blood & Sand is already an unusual classic.
Traditionally, it's built around Scotch, Cherry Heering, sweet vermouth, and orange juice.
Instead of completely abandoning that structure, I wanted to keep enough of its DNA that
you could still see where the cocktail started.
Because my assignment was technically rum, I went with a split base.
I paired Del Bac Private Barrel American Single Malt, bottled at 56% ABV, with Bacardi 8 Year Rum.
The Del Bac gives the cocktail oak, malt, intensity, and whiskey structure, while the Bacardi 8 brings rounder aged-rum flavors and keeps the drink anchored in the rum category.
From there, I stayed close to the original with Carpano Antica Formula and Cherry Heering.
Instead of orange juice, I went with Perfect Purée Blood Orange.
That change made a big difference.
Blood orange brings deeper citrus flavor, tartness, color, and more body than traditional orange juice. I added fresh lime to sharpen everything and prevent the fruit from becoming too heavy.
Finally, cinnamon syrup made the cocktail more approachable while pulling the aged rum into a warmer, almost tiki-adjacent direction.
One dash of saline ties the whiskey, rum, cherry, citrus, spice, and vermouth together.
Final Specs
0.75 oz Del Bac Private Barrel
0.75 oz Bacardi 8 Year Rum
0.25 oz Carpano Antica Formula
0.25 oz Cherry Heering
0.75 oz Perfect Purée Blood Orange
0.5 oz fresh lime juice
0.5 oz cinnamon simple syrup
1 dash saline
Service: Dirty dump into a rocks glass over ice. Finish: Expressed orange oils. Garnish: Half dehydrated orange resting over the cocktail
Why It Works
This drink hits a lot at once: oak, dark fruit, citrus, baking spice, malt, and aged rum.
But every ingredient has a job.
The whiskey provides structure. The rum rounds it out. Cherry Heering and Antica create the darker fruit-and-spice backbone. Blood orange and lime brighten everything, while cinnamon bridges the fruit with the barrel-aged spirits.
It's recognizable as a distant Blood & Sand relative without tasting like a copy.
💜 LAZARUS EFFECT
Corpse Reviver No. 2 Riff
For gin, I wanted to go in a completely different direction.
The inspiration was the Corpse Reviver No. 2, but I wanted this version to be more floral, fruit-driven, and visually dramatic.
Empress 1908 Indigo Gin made sense immediately.
Beyond the color, its botanical character gave me a great starting point for the floral direction of the drink.
I didn't have Cocchi Americano available, but that didn't bother me much.
That's the point of R&D.
We're not recreating a Corpse Reviver.
We're building something new from its framework.
I went with Martini & Rossi Riserva Speciale Ambrato, which brought herbal depth, dryness, and stone-fruit character.
Then I started breaking apart the traditional orange-liqueur component.
Instead of relying on one modifier, I used Giffard Pamplemousse for its sharp grapefruit character alongside Dry Curaçao for richer orange and Cognac-driven depth.
That's where the drink really started becoming its own thing.
Prickly pear purée added body, color, and another layer of soft fruit. Honey reinforced the floral side of the gin while fresh lemon gave the drink the acidity it needed.
Finally, the Corpse Reviver connection comes back with an absinthe rinse.
Three sprays were enough to put that anise aroma right on the nose without dominating the cocktail.
Final Specs
1 oz Empress 1908 Indigo Gin
0.5 oz Martini & Rossi Riserva Speciale Ambrato
0.25 oz Giffard Pamplemousse
0.5 oz Dry Curaçao
0.5 oz Perfect Purée Prickly Pear
0.5 oz 2:1 honey syrup
0.75 oz fresh lemon juice
1 dash saline
3 sprays absinthe rinse
Service: Shake and double strain into a chilled Nick & Nora. Garnish: Lime twist
Why It Works
This one is about layers of citrus and florality.
Instead of getting all the citrus character from one orange liqueur, grapefruit, Curaçao, lemon, and the botanicals of the gin each contribute something different.
The prickly pear fills out the middle of the cocktail while honey softens the sharper citrus edges.
Then the absinthe comes in at the very end.
You smell it before you really taste it.
That small aromatic detail keeps the drink connected to the Corpse Reviver family.
And the name felt obvious.
LAZARUS EFFECT.
Back from the dead.
🔵 BLUE RANGER
Blue Hawaiian Riff
I wasn't originally planning on developing three cocktails this shift.
But there was one bottle staring at me from the back bar.
Blue Curaçao.
So, why not?
I wanted the third drink to be completely different from the first two.
No overthinking it.
Something blue. Tropical. Fun. Approachable. And extremely easy to drink.
Basically, let's riff on a Blue Hawaiian.
Since this needed to qualify as a vodka cocktail, I started with St. George California Citrus Vodka.
That was a useful choice because the vodka wasn't just there to technically check a box. Its citrus character actually reinforced the orange flavors already happening in the drink.
From there, I brought in Bacardi light rum to keep some of the DNA of the original tropical cocktail.
Then came one of my favorite little tricks:
0.25 oz Smith & Cross.
Not enough to turn the drink into a Jamaican rum bomb. Just enough funk to make you stop and wonder what's happening underneath all that pineapple and coconut.
The Blue Curaçao was intentionally kept low. I wanted the orange character and that electric blue color without letting it dominate the drink.
Then a bar spoon of St-Germain ended up being the little piece that tied everything together.
It sounds random on paper, but that small floral lift works surprisingly well between citrus vodka, orange, pineapple, coconut, and funky rum.
Add Coco López, pineapple, lime, and saline and this thing becomes dangerously easy to drink.
Final Specs
Service: Shake and dirty dump over ice. Glassware: Nadine glass. Garnish: Pineapple fronds and orchid
Why It Works
Blue drinks don't have to taste like sugar and food coloring.
Underneath the color, this cocktail actually has structure.
The citrus vodka and Curaçao reinforce one another. The light rum gives it its tropical backbone. Smith & Cross adds just enough Jamaican funk. St-Germain lifts everything aromatically.
Then pineapple, coconut, and lime give you the familiar tropical combination people already know and love.
Sometimes approachable is exactly the goal.
🧠 Inside the R&D Process
These three drinks are a pretty good example of how I approach weekly cocktail development.
I don't start every R&D shift asking:
“What's the craziest thing I can make?”
I usually ask:
“What am I trying to make the guest feel or taste?”
Then I work backward.
REDRUM needed to be dark, rich, slightly mysterious, but still approachable.
LAZARUS EFFECT needed to feel elegant, floral, citrus-driven, and a little strange.
BLUE RANGER needed absolutely none of that.
It needed to be blue, tropical, fun, and crushable.
And that's part of being a working mixologist.
Creativity isn't always about adding more.
Sometimes it's knowing when to use a 56% single malt.
Sometimes it's understanding why an absinthe rinse completely changes a drink.
And sometimes it's looking at the last bottle of Blue Curaçao on the shelf and saying:
Yeah. We're doing this.
That's R&D.
Cocktails Worth Confessing.
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