The Broken Shaker Guys: Moonshine Cherries and Building a Cocktail

All photos by Laine Doss

Gabriel Orta takes the moonshine challenge.

​It happens every once in a while. A mystery box arrives from a PR firm, usually introducing a new product or book. We've gotten coffee, coconut water, red wine vinegar, and cupcakes, to name a few. But even I was surprised when the UPS guy arrived recently with two mason jars filled with Ole Smoky Moonshine ($29.99 at Crown Wine & Spirits).

One jar was filled with a bright amber liquid, which was a 40-proof, apple pie-flavored moonshine. The other was filled with maraschino cherries soaked in 100-proof moonshine. I was intrigued, but had a bad experience once with moonshine, when I purchased some home brew from Virginia. That stuff was better suited to strip varnish than to drink, as I found out the hard way with a group of friends who thought I was trying to poison them.

So the jars sat in my kitchen unopened and sad (in my opinion, there's nothing sadder than an unopened bottle of booze) until I packed them up in my car and brought them over to the Broken Shaker.

Gabriel Orta was behind the bar and immediately opened the jars. He pronounced the apple pie delicious as we tasted. "This is my favorite dessert, by the way," he said. At 40-proof, it had some bite, but it certainly wasn't turpentine. "I taste nutmeg, and cinnamon," Orta explained. The soaked cherries packed a punch and reminded me of Starburst chews, only this time my mouth was greeted with a burst of booze instead of mouthwash and sugar.

​I challenged Orta to do something with the libations and he immediately got to work, pulling large bottles of spirits and tiny bottles of home made elixirs off the shelves.

While Orta worked, I asked him the basics for making up a cocktail. He explained that he uses the same principles for cocktails that he does when cooking.

"When you work with food, you take a key ingredient and you build on that flavor. It's the same with a cocktail. Taste the spirit, which is the base for your recipe. What notes do you pick up? Even vodka, a neutral spirit, will reveal different notes if you take the time."

Orta then suggested building on the first note you hit

"If you taste cinnamon, then you could, for example make a cinnamon syrup to compliment it."

The next step is to use fresh ingredients to build more flavors, tasting as you go. Orta explained that a good cocktail should have a foundation, a citrus note, and some sweetness -- a touch of agave, sugar, or honey.

"Like this apple pie moonshine, for example. What's good with the sweet and spicy notes of an apple pie? I would start with bourbon, then add rosemary to balance the sweetness," Orta said.

The Pie-Oh-My cocktail.

​Then Orta presented me with his cocktail. This master mixologist had blended the moonshine with bourbon, honey, apple cider, lemon juice, and rosemary. Its name? The Pie-Oh-My, after Tony Soprano's race horse.

Oh, and the moonshine cherries?

"I'm just going to eat them," Orta said, as he passed out a round of the potent red fruit for everyone at the bar. Ask for one, while there's still some left in the jar.

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