The 100-Year-Old Cigar cocktail is an unexpected modern classic
A perpetually nosy kid, at 10 years old, I would snoop through our parents’ personal spaces, looking for secrets. What kind, I couldn’t say — Caches of chocolate? Hidden birthday presents? Their secret superhero identities?
I never found the latter, but in our dad’s work desk, I did once happen across a little wooden box. I hadn’t thought of this moment in years, but immediately remembered it upon my first sniff of a cocktail called the 100-Year-Old Cigar. The aromatics stirred an intense recollection: fruity and vegetal, spicy, a slightly leathery funk that I wanted to keep breathing in.
Beyond a few teenage-rebellion-driven clove cigarettes, I never really saw the appeal of smoking. And yet that smell of fermented, dried tobacco has an incredible draw.
Apparently I’m not alone. Back in the late ’00s, some bartenders were trying to figure out how to get tobacco into cocktails.
Capturing those rich, earthy aromatics and flavors in liquid form is a tantalizing idea, and, if you try to use actual tobacco, a really bad one. Nicotine is a poison, dangerous in surprisingly small doses, and the amount you get from infusing dried tobacco into alcohol is very difficult to control and can be significantly greater than what you get from smoking a cigarette.
(And before you light up that comment section, yes, I’m aware that alcohol is also a carcinogen.)
But the 100-Year-Old Cigar is a different story.
I came across this perfect liquid stogie — containing zero tobacco — in a spot I wouldn’t have expected: on social media. Generally, I’m skeptical that what #Drinkstagram and #DrinkTok offer cocktails will have much staying power.
That said, one of the creators I tend to trust, mostly, is Jordan Hughes, a former pastor turned drinks influencer and photographer, who goes by the handle @highproofpreacher. Hughes is genuinely knowledgeable, with an approach to cocktail culture that strikes my sweet spot: He’s both appreciative and gently sardonic.
So when Hughes posted about the 100-Year-Old Cigar, and said it would be in his top three list, I paid attention. As Hughes emailed me, the drink “is one of those cocktails where you read all the ingredients, which are all tasty things … but it’s a bit of a mystery of how they would all taste together. It’s a ‘you just have to taste it’ situation.”
When I noticed that the drink was created by Maks Pazuniak, I was further intrigued: In 2009, Pazuniak and Kirk Estopinal released a book called “Rogue Cocktails” (later revised as “Beta Cocktails”), based on drinks they had developed while working at Cure in New Orleans. It was an influential book, presenting unusual cocktail builds based on unexpected, often bitter-forward ingredients.
Pazuniak created the 100-Year-Old Cigar while working at the now-shuttered Counting Room in Brooklyn, and carried it on to his work at Jupiter Disco, a cocktail bar in Brooklyn. He didn’t start out aiming for a cigar profile; he says he just started playing with the Guatemalan rum Zacapa No. 23 and the Laphroaig — intrigued by how the rich, vanilla-forward cane spirit would play with the aggressively smoky Scotch whisky — adding his favorite amaro and more richness via herbal Bénédictine.
“And when I tasted it, I was like, this is sick!” he recalls. “It had this cigar vibe to it that I really liked, and with the funk from the rum and the Laphroaig, it gave it almost a fermented feeling, like something that had been in the ground for a while.”
For those who like their drinks rich and complex, this is a showstopper, a non-tiki/tropical example of how complex a rum cocktail can be. It deserves more awareness. Some drinks with a lot of ingredients can get muddy, but here, everything in the glass — the barreled rum; the vegetal, caramelly Cynar amaro; the herbal liqueur; and the tiny but critical doses of bitters, absinthe and peaty whisky, adding a hint of smolder — plays a critical role, a masterful balancing act.
As not only a cocktail, but a word-lover, I must note that it’s also a drink that is perfectly served by its name. Yes, the way the ingredients work together genuinely called to mind those cigars hidden away in my dad’s desk. Drink makers, remember: You can sure sell a drink by its name.
• • •
100-Year-Old Cigar
1¾ ounces aged rum, preferably Ron Zacapa No. 23
½ ounce Cynar
½ ounce Bénédictine
¼ ounce Islay Scotch whisky, preferably Laphroaig 10-Year
1 dash Angostura bitters
¼ ounce absinthe
Chill a coupé or Nick and Nora glass in the freezer for 5 minutes.
Fill a mixing glass with ice. Add the rum, Cynar, Bénédictine, whisky and bitters, and stir to chill and dilute, about 20 seconds. Spritz or rinse the chilled glass with the absinthe, discarding any excess. Strain the cocktail into the absinthe-rinsed glass and serve immediately.
Makes 1 drink.
Nutritional facts | Calories: 227; Fat: 0 g; Saturated Fat: 0 g; Carbohydrates: 5 g; Sodium: 1 mg; Cholesterol: 0 mg; Protein: 0 g; Fiber: 0 g; Sugar: 5 g
— Adapted from bartender Maks Pazuniak’s recipe in “Brooklyn Bartender: A Modern Guide to Cocktails and Spirits” by Carey Jones (Black Dog and Leventhal, 2016)