Bamboo Cocktail (Palo Cortado recipe)
Stir ∙ 3 min ∙ 15.2% ABV ∙
The Bamboo Cocktail is a low-ABV stirred aperitif of Palo Cortado sherry, dry vermouth, and orange bitters, built like a Martini but sherry-forward. Nutty and dry with a saline, oxidized edge from the sherry, a faint orange lift on the nose, and a crisp, gently bitter finish suited to before a meal.
Ingredients
1
Servings
Garnish
Instructions for 1 serving
- Pre-chill a glass
- Stir all ingredients with ice: Palo Cortado sherry 45 mlDry vermouth 25 mlOrange bitters 1 dash
- Fine strain into the chilled glass
- Express a lemon twist over the cocktail and use as garnish
Tips
- Keep the sherry ahead of the vermouth — roughly two to one here — and add the orange bitters so their aromatics are not lost under the sherry.
- Chill the sherry and vermouth bottles beforehand since this build has no high-proof spirit to mask warmth or under-dilution.
- Express the lemon twist's oils over the surface before dropping it in, rather than just placing it on the rim.
- Use a 2:1 ratio of Palo Cortado to dry vermouth and add the orange bitters last so its aromatics sit on top after straining.
History
The Bamboo Cocktail is traditionally credited to Louis Eppinger, a German-born bartender who managed the bar at the Grand Hotel in Yokohama, Japan, and is generally said to have created the drink there in the 1890s. That attribution rests largely on William "Cocktail Bill" Boothby's 1908 book The World's Drinks and How to Mix Them, which named Eppinger as the inventor after he had earlier tended bar in San Francisco in the 1870s. However, newspaper references to a sherry-and-vermouth drink under the same name appear as early as 1886, before Eppinger's Yokohama years, so some historians treat the Eppinger story as unverified rather than settled. This variation keeps the original's equal-parts sherry-and-vermouth structure but swaps in Palo Cortado sherry for a drier, nuttier, more oxidative character than the fino or amontillado styles typically used.
