Lion's Tail
ClassicBourbon, allspice dram, and lime. A spiced, forgotten Prohibition-era sour.
Warm, spiced, and tart. Bourbon's vanilla and oak meet the clove-and-cinnamon scent of allspice dram, with fresh lime cutting through and a dash of Angostura rounding the edges. Rich but lively, and more complex than its short ingredient list suggests.
Ingredients
- 2 oz Bourbon
- 0.5 oz Allspice Dram
- 0.5 oz Fresh Lime Juice
- 0.5 oz Simple Syrup
- 1 dash Angostura Bitters
- Orange twist · optional garnish
Method
- 1
Add every ingredient to a shaker with ice.
- 2
Shake until well chilled.
- 3
Strain into a chilled coupe.
- 4
Express an orange peel over the surface and drop it in.
The Story
The Lion's Tail appears in the 1937 Café Royal Cocktail Book, an American-whiskey sour that was rarely seen for decades before the modern craft-cocktail revival pulled it back out. Its calling card is allspice dram — a rum-based liqueur steeped with pimento berries — which gives bourbon a warm, baking-spice backbone. It is a little-known classic that tastes like autumn.