Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week’s Cocktail, The Ultimate Bloody Mary!

Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. I found some olive oil-washed vodka in the fridge on Sunday and found it paired nicely with some Zing Zang Bloody Mary mix. I like Bloody Marys; a good mix can be better than coffee when you need to get going in the morning. You don’t need more than vodka and a decent mix for a nice brunch cocktail.

But can we do better? What if I did a deep dive into Bloody Marys, pulled out all the wild tricks I know, and made something special for your Sunday morning? Hold on to your hats, folks. It’s time for The Ultimate Bloody Mary. Here’s the recipe:

3 oz Campbell’s Tomato Juice

2 oz olive oil-washed Absolut Peppar

1 oz Bloody Mary Base

2 dashes celery bitters

Salt and pepper

Rim a pint glass with a 50/50 salt and pepper mix. Shake all other ingredients and pour over ice into the pint glass. Garnish with a lime, pickles, and an olive.

750 ml bottle Absolut Peppar

½ cup olive oil

Remove ½ cup of vodka from the bottle. Add olive oil to the bottle and shake well. Place the bottle in the freezer for 24 hours. Break the oil cap and strain the vodka into a bowl, removing all fat from the liquid. Keeps indefinitely in the fridge.

⅔ cup water

⅔ cup Worcestershire sauce

⅔ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (strained)

1 t citric acid

1 t Louisiana hot sauce

1 t freshly grated horseradish

½ t celery salt

½ t ground black pepper

¼ t Accent Flavor Enhancer (MSG)

Combine all ingredients and let rest in the fridge overnight. Strain with a nut bag and fine sieve into a pint bottle. Keeps indefinitely in the fridge.

I know, that’s a lot. But it’s worth it in the quest to craft the smoothest, richest, most intensely flavored Bloody Mary possible. Bad Bloody Marys resemble a gazpacho milkshake, with gritty spice forming a sludge in the bottom of the glass. This Bloody Mary is perfectly smooth, rich like chocolate milk but savory, spicy, and complex. The difference between this drink and Zing Zang is night and day.

A purist’s Bloody Mary should be made fresh — tomato juice, spices, and sauces all added to the shaker with the vodka, nothing premade. That’s how Fernand “Pete” Peiot first made the drink at Harry’s Bar in Paris. After Prohibition ended, he moved to America, renamed the drink the Red Snapper to avoid offending delicate sensibilities, and started heaving Tabasco, lemon, and salt into the glass. From there, it was off to the races.

It sounds fantastic, but it’s an intensely fiddly process that I’ve never actually seen done at a bar. Jeffrey Morgenthaler created the Bloody Mary base in this recipe as an elegant compromise. Building the base separate from the juice keeps the juice as fresh as possible. It also gives us the option of dialing in the perfect level of spice in our Bloody Mary. This base will be fantastic for micheladas in the summer. Who knows? It might find its way into some other cocktails this year.

Let’s talk ingredients:

Campbell’s Tomato Juice: The purest tomato juice on the market — nothing but juice and citric acid in the bottle. Premade Bloody Mary mixes like Zing Zang use V-8 as their main ingredient.

Absolut Peppar: Absolut Peppar was first made in 1986 as the perfect Bloody Mary vodka. It’s a bit vegetal and harsh for today’s palate. Fat washing the vodka with olive oil makes it mellower and gives it a silky mouth feel that’s perfect for this Blood Mary. Two ounces of vodka is pretty stiff — Hegseth levels of alcohol, even — so be careful who you group text over the weekend.

Bloody Mary Base: Adding citric acid and MSG to this ingredient intrigued me. MSG has gotten a bad rap over the years. It will not give you headaches and is perfectly safe in small doses. It does boost the richness and savory elements of any food tremendously. Likewise, citric acid can boost the acidity of an ingredient without using a juice. I’ve got some plans for these ingredients in the future.

Celery Bitters: These bitters, like Absolut Peppar, were destined for the Bloody Mary. In between the bitters and the vodka, we only need an ounce of base in the tomato juice to make the drink spicy, keeping the acidity to a minimum.

Garnishes: Yr Editrix and I thoroughly disagree here, but I believe that garnishes on a Bloody Mary should be minimal. A pickle or two and a single olive are all you need. It’s what’s in the glass that truly matters.

In summary and conclusion, drink well, drink often, and tip your bartender — donate to Wonkette at the link below!

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We aren’t linking to Amazon anymore, because fuck Bezos with a rusty bar spoon. Go read And a Bottle of Rum, Revised and Updated by Wayne Curtis instead. Mr. Curtis wrote the history of the Bloody Mary I linked to earlier in this article. That sample of his prose should easily convince you that his history of the American cocktail will be a fun read.

You can find me on Bluesky at @samuraigrog!

OPEN THREAD! DRINK!