Rusty Nail (cocktail)

Rusty Nail

IBA Official Cocktail
Type	Cocktail
Primary alcohol by volume	Scotch whisky
Served	On the rocks; poured over ice
Standard garnish	Lemon twist
Standard drinkware	"old-fashioned" glass, stemmed glass "martini-style"
IBA specified ingredients*	45ml (9 parts) Scotch Whisky 25ml (5 parts) Drambuie
Preparation	First fill a 16 oz glass with crushed ice until it is overflowing. Pour in 5 parts drambuie and 9 parts scotch. Stir gently, as to not bruise the ice. Keep stirring until a thick frost develops on the side of the glass. Garnish with a lemon twist. Serve.

A Rusty Nail is made by mixing Drambuie and Scotch whisky. The drink was included in Difford's Guide Top 100 Cocktails.^[1] Some prefer less Drambuie to decrease the sweetness of the drink. Scotch whisky has a fairly biting and hot taste that is counterbalanced by the honeyed, herbal overtones of the Drambuie. A Rusty Nail can be served in an old-fashioned glass on the rocks, neat, or "up" in a stemmed glass. It is most commonly served over ice. A Rusty Nail served without ice is sometimes called a Straight Up Nail.

Variations

Versions of the drink can be made using any aged spirit, though blended Scotch whisky is traditional.^[2]

Other variations include:

• The Rusty Ale, in which a shot of Drambuie is added to any beer, served without ice.
• The Smoky Nail, which uses Islay whisky in place of blended Scotch whisky.
• The Clavo Ahumado, using mezcal instead of blended Scotch whisky.^[3]
• The Railroad Spike, often served at brunch and made with approximately four parts Cold brew coffee to one part Drambuie in a tall glass over ice.
• The Donald Sutherland, which substitutes Canadian rye whisky for blended Scotch whisky.^[4]

History

According to noted cocktail historian David Wondrich, "The Rusty Nail took a while to find its proper place in the world." The combination of Drambuie -- "the world's most distinguished Scotch-based liqueur"—and the whisky it's made from first appears in 1937 in the form of the B.I.F., credited to one F. Benniman and ostensibly named after the British Industries Fair.^[5]

Wondrich goes on to note that "It took another generation or so for the drink to assume its classic name and form, during which time it tried on several identities. Here it's a D&S...there a Little Club No. 1 (the Little Club being a rather swank sort of joint on East Fifty-fifth Street much haunted by showbiz types); at USAF Officers' Clubs in Thailand and the Republic of Viet-Nam, it's a Mig-21, while in the upper Midwest it's a Knucklehead." ^[6]

No less a cocktail authority than Dale DeGroff notes, "The Rusty Nail is often credited to the clever bartenders at the 21 Club in Manhattan sometime in the early 1960s." ^[7] The cocktail's name was finally cemented in 1963, when Gina MacKinnon, the chairwoman of the Drambuie Liqueur Company, gave the Rusty Nail her endorsement in The New York Times.^[8] DeGroff observes that in the early 1960s "the Rat Pack was enamored of the drink, which may have been responsible for the wide appeal in those years." ^[9]

References