Pedro's Martinez

Made from a diverse mix of indigenous herbs, spices and local ingredients, including canela, allspice, cloves, nutmeg and ginger—Mexican mole sauce was once reserved for simmering meats. Now, mole-style sauce is showing up in haute cocktails in the form of bitters. Take Pedro’s Martinez: Made at Manhattan’s swanky Monkey Bar in New York, Bryan Schneider’s mole-accented rum drink gets its savory, spicy profile from Bitterman’s Xocolatl Mole Bitters, an original combination of cacao, cinnamon and spice inspired by the spice-rich mole sauces of Mexico. “I'm usually not one for lengthy cocktail explanations, but I'm going to give you my spiel here because I think it makes a good background story,” says Schneider. “The drink is a play on the classic Martinez cocktail, which calls for gin, sweet vermouth, maraschino liqueur, and bitters. I'm subbing out the gin for Brugal 1888 Rum, using a great quality sweet vermouth, the maraschino is being replaced by Pedro Ximenez sherry, and I'm finishing with a dash of molé bitters as well as one of Angostura. The cocktail is also an homage to the former Mets pitcher Pedro Martinez, who is from the Dominican Republic, so Brugal being a Dominican rum makes it that much more appropriate!”