The Pegu Club
The Supreme LeaderAs served at the source, and nowhere else quite like it
The Pegu Club was the colonial officers' establishment in Rangoon, Burma, and its eponymous cocktail dates to the 1920s. Harry Craddock included it in The Savoy Cocktail Book in 1930 with the note that it had "travelled, and is asked for, round the world." The Supreme Leader drinks it because it is a drink that traveled under its own authority, and he respects that in a thing.
Ingredients
- 2 oz
London Dry gin
A particular English distillery whose name he has never written down in any Club correspondence. The botanicals lean toward coriander and angelica root with a restrained juniper.
- ¾ oz
Dry Curaçao
Not triple sec, not Cointreau. A dry, bitter, spirit-forward Curaçao from a Dutch producer. He imports it by the case.
- ¾ oz
Fresh lime juice
Pressed within the hour. Not bottled. Not preserved.
- 2 dashes
Angostura bitters - heavy dashes
A single drop — not a dash, a drop — of aged coconut arrack from Sri Lanka, applied to the surface after pouring.
Method
Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker over ice.
Shake hard until the shaker is almost painful to hold.
Double strain into a chilled coupe.
No garnish. The drink is the garnish.
He arrived at the 2011 Boar Moon Supper carrying his own bottle of Curaçao, which he placed on the table without comment. The following month a new arrangement was in place regarding the Club's bar provisions. No one has been able to explain, exactly, how this was communicated.